Chapter 36
RK pulled over at Vikram's address and stared at the house, not quite ready to step out of the car. It was a large independent house in a posh neighborhood, and RK's eyes inadvertently went to the terrace, as if Madhu would come running any second. Was Madhu here?
The moment Trishna had called with Vikram's address from her office records, RK had rushed to drive over. The anxiety and the hope of being able to finally find Madhu sent adrenaline pumping through his body as he drove. He was finally a step closer, and his heart beat with the possibility of seeing his Madhu again. But now that he was here, he hesitated. What would he tell Madhu? What would he do? How would he apologize? And what if...what is she wasn't here? What if all of this was for nothing and Vikram didn't know about Madhu? Or what if he knew but refused to tell him where she was? What if Madhu refused to listen to him? What if she refused to come back? She had sent the divorce papers. She wanted to be happy and free from him. What if she was happy? Is that why she had come to Vikram, to be happy? Who was Vikram? Vikram was her friend, but maybe he was more? He certainly did care for her, she had always said. Maybe Madhu cared for him too, especially now, especially after everything Rishabh had done.
Had he not only broken Madhu's heart, but actually driven her away from himself for good?
"No! I shouldn't think all this. Howsoever bad things are, I know my Madhu has loved only me and still loves me. I hurt her trust, but I have full faith in her. She is angry and hurt, but she is mine and I will make it up to her, whatever it takes." RK told himself and stepped out of the car with a renewed determination. He wouldn't let anything and anyone come between him and his wife, including Destiny. He was ready for any punishment, any form of atonement she sought. He deserved that.
However, no matter what happens, he promised himself he wouldn't ever let his Madhu go away from him ever again.
Destiny, for once, actually felt relieved and not affronted by a challenge.
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For a millisecond Rishabh's heart fluttered as he heard a giggle on the other side of the door seconds before the door was opened. But he didn't need to see the person opening the door to Vikram's house to know it wasn't Madhu. It wasn't her laughter. Instead, a girl, probably in early twenties, greeted him as he told his name and asked for Vikram. He was almost about to ask for Madhu, but he stopped himself. The girl led him to the living room and asked him to wait as she went upstairs to presumably call Vikram. Unable to sit, RK nervously paced around the living room watching the many portraits and photographs hanging on the walls. Somebody in this house was either a photographer or loved art.
The house was largely silent, and RK could hear his own heartbeat thudding loudly even though all his senses were on extra-alert trying to pick up the faintest whiff of Madhu. He peeped out of the living room towards the corridor which led to the other rooms and the stairs when his eyes stopped on a picture in the room right across. RK's feet automatically led him to the room, which seemed to be a lounge-cum-study. His eyes were stuck on a photograph of his frowning wife. She looked so...beautiful. RK didn't recognize the photo and the background was not in focus, but Madhu seemed dressed up for an occasion. He saw the eyes and he saw pain. But he also saw life. It wasn't anything like the pain he had seen in the same eyes the last time he had seen Madhu. This girl...this girl in the photo...she was alive. She was innocent and nave. She had her demons, but she had a will to live. This was the Madhu he had first fallen in love with. How had he lost her?
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" a voice from behind him broke RK's chain of thought. He turned back to see a tall, good-looking man stand behind him who he had never met but vaguely recognized from one of his engagement photographs, his expression calm and yet serious at the same time.
"Yes..I..I am..." RK stuttered and slightly held out his arm to shake hands.
"Rishabh Kundra. I know you RK. We have never properly met, but I believe we aren't strangers. How can I help you?" Vikram answered, folding his arms together.
"Vikram, I am sorry for coming to your home like this, but you are my only hope. I...I need your help. I need to find my Madhu."
"You're here to find Madhu? Why?"
"I...I don't know where she is. I have to apologize to her. You are her friend. Do you know where she is?"
"No. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Don't you think you've given her enough pain for a life time?" Vikram spoke with a hint of anger in his voice. He noticed though the pain rise up in RK's eyes as the words came out and wondered why RK was really here.
"You're lying, Vikram. I know...you must know where she is. She is your friend, right? Help me please, Vikram. Help your friend. I know...I know I hurt her a lot. What I did...maybe she would never forgive me...but I love her. Please Vikram, tell me where she is. I beg of you. I will do anything you say, just tell me please my wife is safe and help me find her." RK pleaded, tears falling from his eyes.
"Do you really love Madhu, RK? Did you ever really love her? Do you even understand her?" Vikram asked, his voice loud and tormented.
"I love my Madhu more than anything in this world..."RK choked.
"Then why did you let her leave?" Vikram's anger was unabated.
"I couldn't stop her. I made mistakes...I didn't know...but it was a misunderstanding. I have never loved anybody other than Madhu, but she left before I could understand and explain. Please Vikram, I have been looking for her for so many days. I know she probably hates me, but I can't live without her. Please tell me where she is? Please..." RK knelt down, broken.
"I can't help you RK." Vikram said stoically.
"You can. You signed this. You sent this, didn't you?" RK stood up and stretched his hand with the courier receipt he had in his hand and showed to Vikram. Vikram looked at it and RK identified the look of recognition in Vikram's eyes. RK was sure Vikram knew about Madhu, but he didn't know what to do to make him tell. All he knew was that he wasn't going to leave today without an answer.
"I know you sent the papers."
"Yes, I did, because Madhu wanted me to. If you're here to return a signed copy, you can give it to me and leave."
"No! I don't want a divorce. I cannot live without her. And I know Madhu doesn't want it either. Vikram, please, this is a big understanding. Please give me a chance to explain. You know where Madhu is, please tell me."
"Why should I trust you?"
"I know you have no reason to trust me, but please believe me. I can't live without her, and I know my Madhu can't live without me either. I know I hurt her, but I will never let another tear fall from her eyes. I am her sinner, and yet, I am begging of you for one chance. Please give me that chance. All this was never meant to happen. This is wrong, and I can explain everything to Madhu. She's your friend. For her sake, please tell me." RK implored, trying to convince Vikram, who seemed affected seeing RK's condition but still did not respond.
"Is she here? Is she in this house? Madhu! Madhu!" RK started yelling and ran towards the door. If Vikram wasn't going to tell him, he was going to look for her himself.
"She is not here." Vikram spoke with a loud but steady voice from behind. RK turned and walked back towards Vikram, who sat down.
"Then where is she? Vikram, please, tell me. I need to see my Madhu. I need to know she is safe"
"Why?" Vikram suddenly said. "Why now? Madhu has been gone for over a month. Did your guilt finally catch up to you? Or do you want to meet her to absolve you of your sins and tell you that it's okay for you to move on? Or have you come here to check if she's still alive? What do you want RK - Madhu has no more love left to give you...she has finished her quota of tears on you...what do you want from her now...you've never given her anything but pain...did you enjoy it so much and are missing it now...or is it that you will only be satisfied the day you finally kill her? Is she your wife or your toy for your sadistic pleasure? Go away, RK. Madhu does not love you anymore."
"Vikram!" RK's anger bubbled through his veins and reddened his face. He may be a sinner, but he wasn't here to appease a guilty conscience or to take pleasure in watching Madhu's pain. More than anything else, he couldn't hear a third person - no matter who he was - tell him about what to do or believe about his wife and his marriage. Yes, he deserved to be punished for what he had done, but only Madhu had the right to punish him. She was his life, not a toy. Even if Madhu herself told him she didn't love him, he wasn't going to believe her words. Vikram saying so meant nothing to RK.
"My wife loves me and I love her. I don't care what you say...I don't believe you. I know I hurt her, and I know you care for her, but I don't need to prove it to you. Only she has the right to demand an answer and if you won't tell me where she is, I will find out myself. I have been looking for a month and I will continue looking till my last breathe, because Madhu is mine and will always be, and nobody can come between us, understand."
RK closed his fist trying to control his anger. He didn't come here to fight. "I am sorry. I didn't want to shout at you in your house. I know you don't believe me, but trust me I don't want to hurt Madhu. I want to be happy and I want to make her happy...our happiness lies only with each other, nowhere else Vikram. I am not going to give up on our love and marriage. I want to make this right Vikram, and I came here hoping you will help me to make this right. But if you won't..."
RK tried to steel his determination. He couldn't force an answer out of Vikram, but at least he had been reassured that Madhu was indeed safe. Vikram on the other hand had conflict written all over his face. His initial coldness seemed to have given away to sympathy at RK's plight. Perhaps he was starting to believe in his honesty.
"Why did you let her go?" Vikram looked at RK and asked, his voice much softer. "You love her...why did you let her go away?"
"I couldn't stop her in time. I made an enemy out of my destiny. My bad luck combined with my foolishness...I know I hurt her, but I wish I could go back in time and stop that moment..."RK ruefully sighed as fresh tears fell from his eyes.
"She is not here," Vikram softly said, "but she is alive. She had made me promise to never tell you, and I swear I didn't want to, either, but maybe...maybe her happiness is only with you. "
"Where is she?"
"In New York."
"But I went to New York, to her old apartment...she wasn't there. I even went to her office..."
"She quit. She works at another firm now, the parent company of our firm, but she is still in New York." Vikram answered before RK could finish, a hint of surprise on his face. "The day she gave her resignation, I got a call from her supervisor in New York, because I used to be a part of the same team before her and they wanted an emergency replacement since she had quit so suddenly. I couldn't understand what was going on. I tried to call her but I couldn't reach her. That same night, I left for New York. I went straight to office, but Madhu had already handed over her work and nobody knew where she was. I then went to her apartment, but it was empty. I knew she wasn't coming to India, because she had sent an email to our Indian boss as well informing about her resignation. I knew the landlord of her apartment because he was my landlord as well when I was there on the project. I called him, and he told me Madhu had vacated the apartment the same day and moved into another apartment owned by him a few miles away. That was how I found her." Vikram's eyes moistened as he recollected the day he had found Madhu, sitting alone in an empty apartment staring at nothing. For a few moments he had been scared. She looked barely alive, like she was losing herself in another world. Then, she had broken down in his arms. He had somehow managed to console her and in a few hours her tears dried out. He tried to ask her what the matter was, but she didn't say. He knew, however, that it had to do with RK. Nothing and nobody else had the kind of power on Madhu that RK did, Vikram knew from the past. Over the next couple of days, all he could gather was that Madhu didn't want to go back to her old life again and wanted to start afresh in a place where nobody could find her. He called his boss and managed to get Madhu transferred to the parent firm of their company, headquartered in US, by citing some personal reasons, instead of having to quit. However, other than the two of them, everybody else was told that Madhu had quit the firm and gone to some unknown place because that's what Madhu wanted. Madhu did not cry after the first night Vikram found her. In fact, she was uncharacteristically calm and quiet, and after 4 days, she asked Vikram not to come visit her. She said she needed a few months by herself to build her life again without anybody's help. He persisted, but in the end gave up after making her promise to stay in touch regularly and call him if she ever needed anything. A couple of weeks back he had come back to India because he needed to help his sister start her post-graduation, but once that was done, he was planning to either get Madhu to India or move to New York himself so he could be close to Madhu.
"I still don't know what happened." Vikram continued telling RK. "She never said. She just told me it was over. She said it wasn't meant to be. She said she had realized your happiness wasn't with her. She was guilty that she had somehow taken away your happiness from you, RK. I swear I have never hated anyone like I hated you then. What did you to do to her? How could you? Didn't you know what a precious thing you had in the form of Madhu's love? How could you not value it? How could you break that girl? If you don't love her..."
RK had been quietly listening to Vikram. His tears reflected his anguish on hearing Madhu's pain, but they were also adulterated with his own relief. His ears had been waiting to hear any news about Madhu, and Vikram's words - no matter how harsh and painful - felt like bubbles of oxygen that were giving him the strength to swim upwards in the ocean of helplessness that he was drowning under.
"I love her Vikram. Trust me I love her more than anything else. She has a misunderstanding that my happiness is not with her. And I need to clear that misunderstanding. I need to make her believe in me again, in our love again. Thank you for telling me. You don't know what I went through, wondering each moment if Madhu was safe...if she was..."
"...dead? I know. I still worry about it. She is alive, but she is not the same person. Whatever happened between you two...I don't know RK. Maybe this is a mistake telling you about her, but something in me wants to believe in your love. But if I am wrong...I wouldn't be able to live with myself." Vikram put her hands on his forehead and wondered if he was doing the right thing. He continued "I was so scared Madhu was going to kill herself...but she told me I shouldn't worry because she had promised and so she would wait until the day her love completely disappeared. Now I live every moment wondering when that would happen, and I feel utterly helpless because I can do nothing about it. She wouldn't even meet me. I pleaded with her so many times to come back with me, but she didn't agree."
"...I need you to promise me that no matter what happens, no matter what destiny throws at us, as long as even the tiniest bit of love for me exists in your heart, you will not hurt yourself again..."
RK remembered the promise Vikram was talking about, and at this moment, there was nothing he was more grateful for than the fact that Madhu had remembered the promise he had asked when RK had found the bottle of poison in her bag.
"She still loves me..."RK muttered. "Vikram, please give me her address. I cannot let another second pass. I need to bring my Madhu home before it's too late."
Vikram wrote down the address on a paper and handed it to Madhu. RK grabbed the paper from Vikram's hand "Thank you! Thank you so much Vikram! I will forever be in your debt. Thank you for being there for Madhu and saving her. I know you hate me..."
Vikram stood up and faced away from RK and towards Madhu's picture that he had taken at her sister's wedding in Benaras. He remembered that girl, that Madhu. How much had she changed!
"Just promise me you will keep her happy." Vikram softly spoke even though tears now started flowing freely in his eyes. Madhu's happiness was all he ever wanted, wasn't it? He had tried to make her happy, but she wouldn't let him. Because it wasn't him she needed. At least not right now. Maybe with time, he had believed, she would start to get over her past and then he could help her come back to life and be herself again. Or maybe not. The truth was, Vikram knew, that no matter how hard he tried, he could never make Madhu truly happy, because her happiness had only one name written on it, and that was Rishabh's. Rishabh had the power to break Madhu, and only Rishabh had the power to heal her. She had chosen Rishabh.
"I promise. I really promise. Thank you Vikram." RK said and turned to hurriedly leave the room. He had just taken a couple of steps and reached the door when Vikram called out his name.
"RK" Vikram said, and RK stopped and turned his head to look back. Vikram turned his head back as well, and RK saw the deep pain in his eyes. Did he...did he also love Madhu? He didn't need to hear the words. The truth stared at him...Vikram was Madhu's true friend...he cared for her and probably understood her better than RK himself had. And yet, he had never gotten back the same love and passion from Madhu that RK had. In that instant, RK knew that Madhu had never loved Vikram, possibly never even known how Vikram felt because for her it had only been one person - Rishabh. And yet, RK could clearly see that the reflected pain of that rejection in Vikram's eyes was much less important to him than his concern for Madhu's well-being and happiness. In a way, RK felt like Vikram's selflessness was a slap on his face because it put his own selfishness under the limelight. The only way to respect Vikram's selflessness was by becoming truly worthy of Madhu's love, RK realized as he silently looked at Vikram who finally voiced his thought.
"You are right, I hate you. But you know the biggest reason I will always hate you for...", Vikram paused, then saw the acceptance in RK's eyes, turned his face away one more time towards the photograph and answered his own question
"...is that you came in Madhu's life before I did."
Edited by teekay - 11 years ago
Vanshaj
Love Friendship Dating and Relationships
Udne Ki Aasha
