I was breathing hard by the time I finished this update. It's not about Arnav's romanticism nor about his relationship with Khushi. This chapter is just about Arnav and all about him and him alone.
Chapter 11: Men with masks
Lavanya's parting words were noxiously haunting and I understood the double entendre in them. She was mostly talking about us rather than about my impending talk with Khushi. I cancel all my appointments for the rest of the afternoon and lay down on the couch. I never knew why one would want a couch in their office but Khushi and Akash had insisted that it was a necessity. He was the interior decorator and she was my life, I had held my tongue.
Khushi's arrival has upset the penumbra under which we have all been living for last few years. Her exit distorted the dimension our universe had set in and the timing was poignant enough to enhance the distortion to a catharsis from which we are all still reeling from. I had become the abject of apathy in an unperturbed solidarity. Hadn't it been for Lavanya, I would have been still swimming in the bottomless pit of self-pity and mortification. My organized life had turned utterly chaotic and my fingers slipped while trying to grasp the shards of sanity.
The clean cut map of my life had turned into a blur of colors: shapes ever changing and color always mutating. Stasis had taken me as its slave and I rolled under dark clouds of betrayal and red sun of anger. Lavanya found me in a pool of alcohol, eyes red and voice hollow. Wordlessly she had dragged me to the bathroom, dumped me in bathtub and turned on the shower. She got into the tub and sat in front of me and held my hands in hers. She didn't say anything. There was no need for comforting words. Khushi was her best friend too. We sat there without an aim or a purpose and for once, it seemed like a pretty neat idea. I stood up from the tub and pulled Lavanya along with me when I saw her failing attempts to hide the shivering. I had smiled for the first time in twenty three days.
The world had become mechanical variant of what it once was: sky was a canopy of myriad colors, people were puppets, wind was blown from an exhaust fan and feelings, emotions were the noises made during shifting of gears. This wasn't the world I was born into. It was a new world - the world which I discovered in the chasm of confusion and chaos and it's the world which made me what I am today. The new world was easier to deal with as it held no memories, no Polaroid photographs, no warm colors hazing the wall, no stars hanging from the ceiling, no new discoveries and most important of all - the world didn't have her in it.
What had happened was beyond our control but...there were signs. Khushi seemed to brew in a perpetual panic which she refused to divulge when asked. It was one of those things that one does in their life and repents it for every waking moment of their life. Khushi and Akash disappeared to different towns in search of...something. Her absence during dinners and lunches didn't perturb me enough to stop her for a breathing minute and demand some details. Maybe then she would have told me what was bothering her? Maybe then she wouldn't have taken such a drastic step? Maybe then I wouldn't be in a pain not induced by anything physical but born from misguided sense of romance and a farce of a relationship. This pain has been sucking me in its infinite void and every day I fall a bit more into the darkness. Here, I am stripped of my identity, my countenance, my name and everything I have made of but except for: choices.
Webs made of choices are intertwined with one another and have isolated me in a corner where I perform like a puppet. I try clawing my way out of this web surrounding me but every time I do so, nausea hits me with bunch of memories and apathy embraces me in its cold arms. I gulp down the necessity of bursting through this web that's binding me in its cruel labyrinth and blow out the candle of change.
I am a mere reflection of what I once used to be. I know that, Lavanya knows that and Payal knows that. In fact, we are all our own retrospective selves from a different universe. Somewhere around the time of my planned wedding, we all stepped into an alternate universe and our lives turned into a freak show for the socially depraved. It is one of my favourite explanations to why the three of us go suddenly quiet while having lunch or dinner or watching a movie as a common memory that binds us all manage to rendezvous with present. The quietness stretches for long moments and it takes us several awkward conversation starters to reel back normalcy to our times.
The couch is extremely comfortable and there are times when I wanted to move it to my room. However the time I spent at work steadily increased thus having it in office started making more sense. I am digressing from the thing which I really have to think about, I know. Khushi hasn't always been the patient one when it comes to decision making. She called me indecisive while I was merely slow. I called her impulsive for which she used to reply tartly -'At least I am making one Arnav, unlike you sitting on a wall and twiddling your thumbs'.
This is one of the few memories that repeatedly hit my mind over the course of years. It made me question my ignorance towards my fiance's discretion during the days leading to our wedding. If I had acted the way most men would do: by putting on a mask of fake sincerity and questioning her motives, would I have the answers before my wedding and not now? This thought has been gnawing my gut and sending hot and cold flashes to my spine notifying my inability to take a decision in most painful manner.
Pain has become my constant companion.
Now that she is back and is offering answer. I don't care about the reasons; I don't care about complicated theories or benign misunderstandings or even the fact that she didn't love me anymore or was in love with someone else. All I want to ask her is, 'Would you have told me what you were up to if I had asked you back then?'
The answer would give me a candle to navigate through darkness in the web of choices.
I have to save myself, from myself.
Next Chapter: Chapter 12, Demons in the closet Edited by RockBarbie - 12 years ago
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