Chapter 85

78.Suns Exist

‘How was your exam?’ Mayank asked as soon as he spotted Kirti.

‘No idea!’ She said but then grinned. ‘I was lying. It went okay, I think.  Let’s go,’ she ordered, climbing on the bike.

‘Lunch?’ He asked, putting on his helmet.

‘Yes, please.’ She replied. Second hour through the exam she had started feeling the pangs of hunger.

‘I am so hungry, Mayank.’ She stated, walking beside him into a dining place. ‘When is your lawyer friend coming?’

‘Let’s eat and then talk?’ He asked, a little taken aback at her display of camaraderie. After his confession last week, she had stopped meeting his eyes. He gathered that her exams went well.

‘So when is your friend coming?’

He sipped his mocktail while she, picking off the star anise, dug into her pulao. The aroma of dal makhani placed near him tickled his nose.

‘He’s not coming,’ he replied.

‘He’s not?’ She looked up licking away a grain of rice that had stuck to the corner of her lip. ‘Busy with some other gig?’

He opened his mouth in surprise and then closed it around the straw.

‘You must want to know how I got to know?’ Kirti served herself some raita.

‘Biplab said no marriage registration happened that day or any other day,’ she explained without wasting any time. ‘That we aren’t married!’

‘Your brother has become quite resourceful,’ he remarked. He wondered if Urmila Singh was his source for she had approached him to discuss the ‘marriage’.

‘I know right! Same thing I asked him!’ Her tone indicated that she might be aware of the source as well.

‘I recalled that day,’ she continued, ‘Your insistence on not going to uncle when he’s a lawyer as well. Your friend appeared out of blue and we didn’t even have to go to court! We both just signed a document. After that, your friend was going to take care of everything. Because he knew people and had sources. Nice fool you made out of me!’ She looked up and smiled coldly.

He shrugged his shoulders refusing to feel guilty. ‘I had no other way to deal with the madness that had seized you. What kind of a friend would it make me if I had married you when you were not in your right senses? And you were so determined! I was coming back to tell you that we could pretend to be married but then I saw you with Nishit and you were about to agree to his proposal.’

‘What business it was to you, then?’

‘Kirti that man mistreated you and your brother! That night I tried hard not to hear anything but I got the gist of it. He was the one who had broken your trust in school as well. Don’t I remember how much you cried? He was the one you were so sensitive about since childhood!’

She chewed her food quietly looking outside. The sky was sunny and the beams of yellow sun broke into a thin palette of iridescent colors when it fell on the glass that separated them from the world yawning outside.

‘You clearly have some unresolved feelings for him. If he’s anything like his brother, marriage with him would have broken you. It also hit me that you were ready to get into an arrangement with anyone! You were hell-bent on ruining your life, Kirti. I decided I’d tell you once you were back to normal.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’ She asked, observing the curve of his bow-shaped lips and the sharp lines of his jaw. It felt the Creator had expended extraordinary care to carve them. His face felt naked. It could be because he had finally decided to shave or because he had finally revealed the truth.

‘You had so many occasions, didn’t you?’ The first time she heard about the truth, she was terribly hurt and agitated.

She must have deserved it was the thought that followed next.

But she had spent tormented and conflicted months at his house trying to repent for her mistake, did she still deserve all of it?

He pushed the chalice away, disturbing the thin ring of pink in the glass, and leaned back in his chair. She had never really paid attention to him but every move and gesture of his looked practiced and graceful.

‘I wanted to but you were preoccupied with Biplab’s anxiety attacks and then other things. I had to leave for my shooting. When I returned, my father had decreed you to stay at our place. I was counting on you to deny it vehemently after all it was not a real marriage. But you disappointed me! You agreed quite easily, Kirti!’ His accusing eyes narrowed at her.  ‘I was livid.’

She flushed under his eyes and looked away.

‘I needed a home and people at that time. I had no intention of intruding in your personal space but when your father continued to press I couldn’t refuse. Aunty was unwell and I thought this way I would be able to return your favour.’

‘Exactly. Needed people. Couldn’t refuse. Return your favour.  This attitude of yours has always irked me like nothing and I decided I had to do something about it. I am sorry Kirti. I knew my behaviour was deplorable. But I had to do it. A little softness on my part and you would’ve gotten comfortable with the arrangement.’

Kirti could not really tell what she was eating. ‘You mean to say, if you were going to be kind to me then I would fall for you? You have a very high opinion of me.’

‘No, I didn’t think you would fall for me. I thought you would just compromise and accept it as your fate. You have been so complaisant it makes my blood boil! I hated you for putting yourself in a perpetual martyr position. You clearly did not have any feelings for Ujjwal yet you dated him. You let Tejas take you for a ride! You were going about life so impassively letting others make decisions for you. I lost my cool that day when I heard you had agreed to marriage not because you really wanted it but to get Dadi off your back. Kirti, I have seen my parents’ marriage. There is no love and there's a major power imbalance. My father lived a colorful life but I saw my mother shrivel with each passing day; insecurity, jealousy, and bitterness, all avarice finding a home in her.  It is such a huge disrespect to the sacred institution when people get into it just for the sake of it. I decided I would prove to you that this isn’t the kind of marriage you could live in. I wanted to prove to you that unless you’re mentally ready, marriage shouldn’t be thought about.I was going to see how long you can go with this marriage without any warmth or love. It was only when Shruti came and made me see how miserable you are, that I realized I was overdoing it. That you needed my friendship and I was being an ass.’

‘But before Shruti also you didn’t speak the truth?’ She questioned.

‘I couldn’t. I was scared I had taken it too far and she’d tell you and you’ll explode. That day when you were angry at your family for lying, I was shivering inside because I had been no different. There was also the reason that you hadn’t yet sold your house and once you know the truth, you wouldn’t want to stay in my house. Truth is spoken, I was waiting for you to come and confess what a mistake you had committed.’’

‘What about that horrid confession?’

‘That,’ he fidgeted in his seat, his face coloring. ‘That was to teach you a lesson. Had you married another man, it wouldn’t have been so easy. That any other man at my place could have refused to divorce and you would have been badly stuck. It was also to check how far you have come. Would you still give under emotional duress?’

‘And I passed your test? So it was a successful experiment? Enough to be turned into a film?’ She dabbed at her lips with the tissue paper.

‘See, you were equally at fault. I am sorry I kept you in the dark but I had your well-being in mind.’

‘Well-being! Lately, I have found so many people having my well-being as their priority. Do you have any idea how much mental trauma I had to go through at your house?’

‘That was your choice. The moment you decided to break away from that toxicity, you could.’

‘Mayank, sometimes it's not about choices, it's about circumstances one is in. So we aren’t married?’

He shook his head.

‘We were never?’ Her heartbeat hard.

‘Never.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, truly meaning the words. Getting up graciously, she added, ‘I am sorry to have put you through all this mess. It must have been tough on you. I am sorry I wasn’t a good friend.’

He got up, but she waved her hand. ‘It’s okay. Your role is over. I am traveling solo from here.’

 [NOCOPY]

[MEMBERSONLY]

P.S. - Eastender, I dedicate this chapter to you for being the first one to guess the truth regarding the marriage and to Shradha too, for reading Mayank's reasons correctly.