She watched him as he grabbed clothes from his cupboard and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. She looked inside the packet---a saree, blouse and petticoat. So Anjaliji had asked Jiji for some clothes.
She went in as he stepped out of the bathroom, his arm brushing against the clothes she held. It sent a quiver down her body, but she ignored it.
She had always been curious about the inside of his bathroom. The musk of his fragrance and the steam from the shower he'd just taken pushed back at her as she entered. Being in there, looking at his shaving kit, his perfume, the wet towel he'd used soothed yet frightened her. She would be here for six months, live with him this close every day. She had dreamed of this sometimes, and then brushed it off as too far away, impossibly beyond reach.
And now she was here, only not as part of a dream, but a nightmare. How was she to face everyone downstairs tomorrow? She sat at the edge of the bathtub, her head in her hands, her body wracked with sobs. She felt desolate, the way she'd felt the day she lost her parents and was left alone and grieving, with no one to comfort her.
She wrapped the saree, feeling very cold all of a sudden. When she stepped out, the room was dark, and in the faint light coming in from the French windows she could see his body outlined on the bed. Not knowing what else to do, she placed the packet now containing her jewelry and lehenga on the floor near the foot of the bed and sat down beside it."Hey Devi Maiya, Raksha Karna...!" Soon her shivering, exhausted body and tortured mind crumpled into sleep, unable to take the weight they had been asked to carry that terrible winter night.
He woke up before dawn, thrashing, in the clutches of a nightmare. She was there, with Shyam, bare-bodied, moving over her. He wanted to walk to them, murder them in the bed, but he stood there, rooted. Then he heard her cries, "Amma, Babuji, nahin...mujhe bhi aana hai" and it registered on his sleep-fogged senses that her cries were real, that he was no longer dreaming. The cries were faint, from somewhere below his feet. He shot up from the bed, and found her curled up into a foetal ball on the floor.
He shook her, calling her name. But this only agitated her further, "Babuji, mujhe le chalo, mujhe le chalo Babuji!" That call and its meaning stabbed him, he flinched and called her name, but this didn't wake her up.
He bent to touch her and the hand on her arm burned. He picked her up and laid her down on his pillow, and the last time this very thing had happened came rushing back to him. That morning in Nainital when he had left her alone in the dark, the night she'd pretended to be married to him, and he had threatened her with Suhaag Raat.
And today, it was actually their Suhaag Raat, the first night between husbands and wives---the night he had thought about just two days ago, imagined for the first time, this idea of having a wife, of that wife being Khushi. Way to go in writing your destiny, Mr. Arnav Singh Raizada, his own voice mocked him.
He stood up, remembering how he had brought down her temperature the last time with cold compress on her forehead. Time to do that again. And yet again, her small hand, clutching at his shirt, while her frantic voice called for her parents.
"Shhh...Khushi, Khushi, utho, Khushi,"he whispered, "don't worry, I'm here."
And his own voice came back to him, "Yes, you're here, and that's why she's in this state, you moron!"
He ignored it, and prying her hand from his shirt, ran to the bathroom, from where he returned with a cold towel. When he reached her, she had stretched out her arm and snuggled into his pillow. And though her breathing was still shallow, she looked at peace, at home, and unafraid. He sat down beside her, and placed the cold wet towel over her hair as she slept on.
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