YOU
Of all the things, I wanted to ask her was why did she do that?
Shravan climbed the stairs towards Suman's house, step by step. It was as if touching the creaky wood with his heels would try to dissolve the heaviness he felt in his chest. It was like the sky falling over his shoulders, the stars crashing his brain, and the moon sprawling in his heart. He felt cold and unwelcome, feeling terrified that once he had been happy standing at the same spot. Time is a big betrayer.
He could see the crack of Suman's door, a small night lamp burning its oil. The room was dark, and it made him feel good and bad at the same time. So he put his feet across the entrance, boring his gaze all over the expanse of the room. To his great horror, Suman sat all sprawled and loose on her desk with a bottle of rum. Her room suddenly smelled of the sour bitter taste of alcohol, burning your nostrils and throat at the same time.
He stood inside, tightly packed in his Army uniform, trying to solve the puzzle of the woman he had once known and loved. At his commotion, Suman turned around, her eyes lit in heaven and her mouth turned heavy at the ends. It felt like she was holding something behind her tongue. But then it didn't exactly feel like her.
'Sharvan!' she called out, easy and calm. She had no hurry to hide her business as if she wanted him to see it, that how much she was drowning little by little, each day. 'Any business?' She asked nonchalantly and then turned around without his answer. She took her glass and slipped its content through her throat- enjoying the wetness of its remnants on her lips.
Shravan felt it awkward, but then for a few moments, he felt that her face was grim, fleshy, and red. Maybe, she was happy or maybe she wasn't just sad.
'I came to meet you in your senses.' he pointed out the glass in her hands, clearly disappointed. 'But never mind' he turned around to leave.
'I am at my best at this moment. Don't lose the opportunity to get your answers, Malhotra!' Suman spat her reality down his feet. She felt satisfied seeing him hurt.
Shravan could feel the self-hatred brewing hot in her heart. That how much she was ready to hurt and destroy herself if it meant that he is going to taste defeat.
'Why do you want to fight the case in the high court, when it's already over?' Sharvan blurted out the question he had pitted in his stomach.
Suman looked at him for moments 'Okay.' she said and again shrugged as if the answer to this question was the most obvious thing in the world. 'You want to seek answers?' She asked after five minutes, and still, Shravan felt like a guest in this conversation, willing to stay as long as it could take.
'Dead people don't really feel the pain. They don't. But I do. I do, whenever I read my father's last letter to me. He was my pride, but I was his most hurtful disappointment. Then came my mother, she looked at me as if I was some vacuum the minute before she died. My grandfather had already lost trust in me. Easy isn't it? To expect? To expect out of your child like crazy! Suman's gonna do this, gonna do that!' She felt her stomach somersaulting, her heart throbbing, and her throat burning. 'But Suman can't be happy.' She gulped another sip.
Shravan shook his head 'So you think, that you are a pathetic git, who spoiled her own family. And now you want to spoil mine too?' he could barely hold the whirlpool of all if's and but's inside him. What if she hadn't taken it upon herself to destroy everything!
Suman looked at him, her eyes glassy and watery. She just let out a hideous chuckle, thinking that it's so transparently obvious that she couldn't hide it anymore.
'Why did you not leave Shravan? Why did you not, just go away? Bribe- huh, just the way your father once did?' Suman looked at him as she cross-questioned.
'Because my father is innocent.' Shravan spat, trying to hold himself together. What did she think of herself?
'So was mine.' she mumbled under her breath. 'But, why did you stay? For whom?' her question was still the same. It wasn't as if the Malhotra industries had nobody but just their son to look over a damn case which stretched for 7 years, almost forgotten by everybody.
Why did he join the army?
Why does he still paste this case like a second soul in his background?
Why, does he want to come back and visit all of this again?
Shravan could feel his inners burning, even if the alcohol was slipping down her throat. The answer to this question could alleviate his ego, could crush her confidence, could make her taste sand in her clean mouth.
But then did he really know the answer himself.
How many times has he told the answer to this question?
'You.' he whispered, screamed, or mumbled, he didn't know, but as soon as he said that she heard it. Hate her or love her but be with her.
Suman shook her head, the intoxication leaving her body in a swoosh. She felt as if she knew this answer, and after a long sojourn of letdown's, she was finally not disappointed.
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