Chapter 65: Home

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Chapter Sixty-Five

Home

– October 2019 –

“There we are,” said Neeti, one of the most highly sought out make-up artists in Delhi.

It was a chilly October morning in the capitol, and she had just finished getting the bride, the daughter of a very affluent business tycoon, ready for what was being called wedding of the decade.

To Khushi, however, it felt more like a funeral than a wedding. Dressed in luxurious silks and adorning the Gupta family’s finest jewels, she couldn’t help but feel like a lamb being fed before a sacrifice. Life as she knew it was coming to an end.

“What’s wrong?” Neeti asked. The make-up artist had been watching her closely that entire morning, too closely in fact.

Khushi shook her head, her eyes not budging from her mehendi clad hands. It had turned a deep maroon shade, something all her relatives were quick to deem as a very good omen. Not that she believed it of course.

Khushi was a woman of science, not superstition.

“Do you not like the look?” Neeti pressed. “I can still change things if you don’t, we have time.”

“No, it’s good.”

“But you didn’t even look.”

“I trust you Neeti.”

Neeti was not convinced. Grabbing an enormous handheld mirror, the makeup artist walked around and gently slipped it in Khushi’s hands. “Tell me seriously… I want you to be happy today.”

Happiness was no longer an option. Khushi was being tied down a man she didn’t know and a family that wasn’t hers. So, what did it matter if she looked “good” or “happy” during it. Either way, it would be her loss to bear. Hers and only hers.

Neeti waited patiently for a few minutes before lowering her voice and asking, “Do you not like the guy?”

Khushi blinked, refusing to acknowledge the truth.

“I can help you run,” Neeti continued in earnest.

Khushi smiled without humor. “Don’t let my father catch you saying that; he will end your career.”

Neeti understood the message loud and clear. Giving Khushi’s hand a reassuring squeeze, she stood up and began packing up her things.

“I think you are worrying unnecessarily,” she said light-heartedly. “Who wouldn’t fall in love with you? You’re beautiful, smart, wealthy…”

Khushi knew Neeti was trying to be sweet, but she really was in no mood to appreciate the gesture. The minutes to her cremation were literally in the single digits now.

“… besides, God has a way with these things you know, I’m sure–”

“I’m sure He left a long time ago,” Khushi finished without emotion. “He definitely has better things to do than deal with our petty problems.”

Neeti stopped mid-way from zipping up her bag. “Don’t say that… look at your mehendi, your husband is going to love you–”

If she heard that line one more time, Khushi would quite literally scream. Luckily, Vihaan had just arrived with a grimmer face than hers, announcing that it was time to go. She gingerly stood up, gathering her veil.

Neeti hurriedly came forward and adjusted the sheer organza dupatta over Khushi’s face.

“Trust me,” she whispered. “God always has a plan… something tells me this man is the one for you.”

For some reason –perhaps, desperation– a very teeny, tiny part of Khushi had believed those parting words.

– Present –

Khushi stumbled out of the taxi, vaguely registering where she had arrived. She didn’t even remember uttering directions to the driver, for her mind had been occupied with words she had been gullible enough to believe:

God always has a plan... something tells me this man is the one for you.

That was the first time Khushi had let herself believe. Believe that there was hope for a better future, that destiny had a bigger plan for her. Despite her father’s warnings that the Raizadas were not looking for anything more than a dutiful wife, she had let herself imagine that maybe, there was indeed one person other than her mother who would care for her.

She shouldn’t have.

Her sham of a marriage was never going to become anything real. She had followed through with it for this long first out of fear of her father’s retribution and then, on the hope of reciprocation from her husband. But at the back of her mind, she knew that she was always going to come back to where everything started.

The Gupta Manor shone magnificently under the setting skies. But the stone-cold house meant nothing to her, except that it still held one of the last remaining beating pieces of her heart. 

Telling the taxi driver to wait, she crept up to the front door and rang the doorbell. The head butler, although startled to see her at this hour, politely welcomed her inside.

“Mr. Gupta is not home ma’am,” he explained.

She couldn’t care less. “Pay the driver,” she muttered, heading straight to her mother’s room. In a hurry to leave Arnav’s penthouse, she neither collected her handbag nor her phone.

Perhaps that was a good thing. She didn’t want to be found, least of all by the man she was running from.

Garima looked frailer than usual when Khushi entered her room. Although she appeared blissfully unaware, her skin looked more translucent than ever, the wrinkles on her face just too dominant to ignore.

“Hi Maa,” Khushi whispered, sitting down on the bed and taking her mother’s limp hand in hers. 

The minutes ticked on in silence as Khushi watched Garima’s peaceful form, refusing to give into the grief raking her into shreds. Perhaps she held the world record for the shortest-lived happiness anyone ever experienced. She didn’t even have a day to revel in the misconception that Arnav loved her… his soft lips, which until now only brought colour to her cheeks, began to seem like betrayal.

Because Myra, in her infuriatingly perfect voice, had a point.

You’ve always thought about others, and I can’t believe it took me so long to understand that… It's been, what, a year since you married Khushi? Only a year, and you care so much about her…

Did Arnav love her because Khushi was the only one who stayed with him when he was at his lowest, or did he love her because of who she was as a person? And no matter how similar both those options sounded, deep in her heart, Khushi knew they weren’t.

“You know,” she murmured, training her focus back on her mother. It was easier talking to her, than listening to Myra’s words reverberating in her ears:

Khushi knows nothing about your company, about your friends, your life. She was the rebound you needed, and no one can know better than me that you can’t spend your forever with rebounds…

“I always thought nothing matters more than equality in a marriage,” she croaked to her comatose mother. “And that’s probably why I… I let myself fall in love with him… because he was the first person after you, who made me feel like I was a person… he cared about what I liked or didn’t like, what I wanted or didn't… it mattered to him that I existed.”

Silence followed her confession.

She hadn’t even told Arnav yet that she loved him… not that she needed to of course. He had understood, just like she thought she had understood him.

“But I was wrong,” Khushi continued, defeated. “Nothing replaces love… no matter how much respect he gives me, it won’t make up for the fact that…”

She couldn’t finish. Admitting it out loud would make her anguish that much more difficult to swallow.

As stillness settled in the room, Khushi couldn’t help but wonder what was it about her that always seemed to push people away?  First it was her father, who never seemed to like her no matter what she did, and now it was Arnav… who would never want her the way she wanted him. Were people like her supposed to be alone? Is that what life was trying to tell her over and over again?

"Khushi? What are you doing here?” came an unmistakable voice.

Khushi jerked out of her thoughts, startled at the interruption.

Standing in the doorway, dressed in his usual three-piece suit, was her father, his expression ambiguous. He seemed to have just returned home from the company.

“I… I wanted to see Maa,” Khushi lied.

Alok didn’t follow. “Is… is everything okay?”

“It’s okay Papa,” she answered, having no energy for small talk. “You don’t need to pretend that you care.”

“That’s quite rude of you to assume–”

“It’s not an assumption,” she cut in flatly. “It’s what you have been proving to me since the beginning of time.”

Alok, strangely, didn’t rise to her bait. He simply took a deep breath and waited for her to elaborate.

Khushi was very surprised to see that. Her father was not the type to back down from a fight, least of all, with her. When the awkward silence began to pinch, she simply turned back to look at her mother, wishing to be left alone. He could give her that much at least.

Of course, he didn’t.

“Did you have a fight with Arnav?” Alok asked, curious now.

“Why?” Khushi replied sarcastically. “Is that the only problem I am allowed to have in my life?”

“That’s not what I–”

“If you want me to leave, then just say it. I will go.”

Alok let out an exasperated sigh. “You are very exhausting Khushi… I just want to…”

“You want to what? Mock me? Scream at me?” she raged. Somehow it was easier to yell at her father than deal with pain choking her heart. “Help me see that I am the problem? That my very existence is the biggest issue of this family?!”

Alok didn’t answer. With a sigh, he simply sat on the opposite corner of the bed, appearing quite feeble.

“Go ahead,” he muttered, dryly. “Get it off your chest. I’m sure I have heard it all before.”

It was so weird to see her father so calm and composed. Since when did he have so much patience to listen to her accusations?!

“I have nothing to say,” Khushi snapped, turning back to her mother. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Will you be staying long? Should I ask the butler to make dinner?”

What was going on?!

“Is that a trick question?”

“Not everything I do has ulterior motives, Khushi.”

She snorted in response. “Everything you do has ulterior motives.”

Alok chose to ignore that.

Keeping up with his uncharacteristic behaviour, her father continued to sit in silence, neither asking her questions nor passing her disapproving glares. It was both odd and somehow calming, enough for Khushi to gather her thoughts about what bothered her the most in everything she had witnessed that day.

Clearing her throat, trying very hard to keep her voice neutral, she said: “Can I ask you a question?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alok nod curtly.

“If Maa had passed away that day instead of slipping into a coma… would you have considered remarrying?”

“At my age?” Alok asked, the disapproval stark in his voice.

“So, you would rather be all alone in this great big house without even Vihaan now than go against what society expects out of you?”

“Where is this coming from?”

Khushi took a breath, trying to rephrase her thoughts. Her father, at the end of the day, was a man too. If not Arnav, maybe he would be able to answer the doubts tormenting her.

“I just… I want to know if moving on is easy,” she said finally. “Maa loved you, and I feel you did too in your own way… So, do people ever… move on from something like that?”

Her question stumped Alok, for he took many minutes to ponder it over. Khushi waited in silence, looking at her mother’s face for strength to listen to the answer she already knew.

“No,” Alok finally admitted heavily. “I can’t imagine anyone else in your mother’s place… whether she is with me or not… It's the same. She is the love of my life.”

Khushi guessed as much.

Hadn’t she seen it etched on Arnav’s face as clear as day? The way he tortured himself after Myra’s departure, the way he fiercely held her memories close… it was obvious from the start, and Khushi, in the giddiness of newfound love, had brushed it aside.

“Khushi?” Alok called. “What’s wrong? Why… why are you asking me this all of a sudden?”

Khushi gulped. She was never the one for tears, always blaming them to be the reason why women looked like the weaker gender. So then, why was there a lump in her throat today? And that too, for a man?

It was unacceptable.

So steeling herself, she turned to her father, the ice in her voice palpable. “I’m asking because I’m trying to understand why you thought Arnav would ever love me?”

Alok did a double take. “What do you mean?”

“I know you know about Myra,” Khushi continued boldly. “For how controlling you are, I’m not sure if there is anything about Arnav that you don’t already know.”

Her father didn’t deny her accusation. How typical.

Khushi pushed on, focusing her eyes back on her mother, knowing that if she saw Alok eye to eye, she would surely lose it today. She had been stretched too thin.

“So, if you, the ever so perfect Alok Raj Gupta, can never get over his first love even after her death, then how did you expect that Arnav would ever get over his?”

Khushi paused, waiting to see if her father would even bother to defend himself. He didn’t.

“So basically, you married me off to a man knowing that he would never love me… and you expected me to stay married to him, not caring even once that I might never be what Maa was to you…is that correct?”

Alok chose to be silent still.

“Oh, why do I even bother,” she muttered in exasperation. “Of course I’m right. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is, I am not surprised you did that… in fact, I might have even been expecting it. Because what else have you done except neglect me my whole life?”

It was a rhetorical question, but a very tiny part of Khushi had hoped for a rebuttal, no matter how feeble of an excuse it was. She received none, however.

“I used to be okay with it, you know,” she continued solemnly, stark memories of her childhood swimming before her eyes. “Or rather, I made peace with it… I had a mother who loved me, and a brother too, so I told myself it’s okay if my father doesn’t like me… but today… I just… I just want to know why. Why do you hate me, Papa?”

Khushi paused, taking deep –futile– breaths.

“It can’t just be because I am a girl,” she reasoned, more to herself than him. “I mean… I didn’t ask to be born to you for crying out loud, nor did I ask to be a girl… it just happened. So, then what is it about me that made you think it’s okay to disregard my entire existence? If I didn’t look like Maa, I would have really believed that I was adopted… because at least then I would be convinced that… the fault is not mine.”

Khushi closed her eyes, letting the bitterness of her pain seep into her voice.

“I tried a lot, you know…to make you happy, to make you proud. My marks were always better than Vihaan’s, I always won more awards than him at school, but you only ever bothered to come meet his teachers and ask about his progress, his achievements… why didn’t you ever come to ask about me? Why did Maa always lie that you had meetings?”

She swallowed, the resentment raking her to pieces

“Everything about Vihaan mattered to you… and nothing about me did, not even when I was sick. Maa would stay up all night beside me if I got a fever, but you couldn’t even come check on me even once… Did I really mean nothing to you?”

Khushi looked out the darkened window –the raven skies were covered with a blanket of stars– not wanting Alok to see the treacherous tears starting to pool. 

“Do you know why I insisted on becoming a doctor? You always just assumed that I wanted to break the rules of this family… but I didn’t. What I wanted was your attention, I wanted you to care, I wanted you to understand that I have some value…”

Khushi sighed, shaking her head. “I was stupid… because if you could get me married to Arnav, even after knowing that he loved someone else, then it is clear that I am never ever going to mean anything to you… you will never accept me as your child, isn’t it Papa?”

She fell quiet, this time deciding to wait for her father’s response. For so many years now, she accepted her mother’s excuses or Vihaan’s half-hearted explanations, but now, she needed to hear it from the man himself. She needed it.

The minutes ticked by in silence, but her father refused to answer. When Khushi’s patience finally waned, she looked over her shoulder to see Alok sprawled on the carpeted floor, having slipped off the bed unconscious.

By the looks of it, he was barely breathing.

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