TuHir FF: Never Your Wife Again!! Ch: 12 on page 23: Chai.. aur Kaada - Page 23

Originally posted by: ABC_1234

Love how you portray the emotions so beautifully in an abstract manner…

Thank you so much. Glad you liked it. Please keep commenting

Thank you for such appreciable writing skills, amazing really loved it , would like to read the next update soon

Originally posted by: nikki-73

Absolutely love your story.. especially how you’ve etched out the characters.. makes me feel like I’m a part of the story.. would also love to read something from Mihir’s pov

hey thank you for your feedback. Glad you are enjoying this story. I’m happy I could present the story this way. Mihir’s pov - I am trying to give lil by lil - not all at once - for a reason- just wait a while- you will get in future chapters

Originally posted by: graphicd96

Good.keep on

Thank you

Originally posted by: TianaWrites

Tulsi is melting... You make Mihir so romantic with all the sad lover man vibes. So much like all the tragedy lovers in fiction we see. There is profound love between the two. So the call for chai is like... a date?

Thank you so much

yes tulsi seems to be thawing but whether it’s genuine or because of his health or both - is yet to be seen

She now knows he needs her the most (even before she overheard Shobha and gayatri- she knew it in her subconscious mind - but now she can’t ignore that fact) so these 45 mins every day are like she’s testing the waters or rather trying to give him what she can without exposing herself to further hurt! But yes in genZ language you could call it a date I guess

A

I loved Pari bring professional and Tulsi too. You know somehow more than Tulsi I am attached to the family in your story. Especially these last few chapters, they have worked so much in sync that its such a pleasure to read about them. You have written them as strong pillars. Love them.

I also liked writing the Pari part.

Oh you know- I think you’re the first person to say that you’re liking the family … that’s huge considering that I am trying to keep the focus on TuHir

Wonderful update.

Thank you so much

My response in color font

Originally posted by: saloni_306

Great part... Best thing I liked about is whatever happening between Tulsi and Mihir is only between them... Like any incidents where something had passed between them or any interaction.. so it's like they are coming closer but without anyone noticing or having any expectations from them...

Thank you so much. Yes everything is between them without anyone noticing so far. They have way too much to heal between them to handle the burden of family.. that’s why tulsi explicitly states that they will meet for tea daily but family should not know

I would love to read if in future Mihir talks about what happened 6 years back from his POV to Tulsi .. realising is different thing and vocalising to the person you wronged needs so much of guts..

Yes Mihir will do so in future chapters

Back to the chapter, loved Shobha and Gayatri convo.. in a very subtle way we do know now how difficult and painful mihir's life was without Tulsi ..

Yes.. tulsi had no idea earlier - or if she had some idea, she didn’t know the extent of it.

Tea part , do gives us hope for something good so .. let's see

Hopefully the first tea morning doesn’t disappoint many of you -

Thank you again. My replies in red.

Hope I have responded to all reviews comments and feedback!

Posting the next chapter

Kuch Raaz.. Pyar ke..

Chupana kitna mushkil hai insan k liye? Life is nothing like picture perfect, the Virani house displaying the picture perfect around Tulsi, anyone can catch easily, especially the woman who lived in that house for 38years of life and the kids whom she raised, she can easily pick it up a slight change in it.

Firstly I am really sorry for the delay. By the time I saw your review, I was already deep into writing the next chapter so I thought pahle woh kar loon.

Hey no need to be sorry

Yes the family is happy with Tulsi’s return - she’s like the life of SN - but at the same time sab ki class lagi hui hai - take care of Mihir (as well as his kasam) - ensure normalcy on the surface when all are worried about his health

Hmm afterall, that's the involvement.

Ok the opening dhamakedaar, Tulsi ko Chachi ke yha jaana tha, but she heard something important, she was shaken by the news( kitne dramebaaz ho writer, Ekta maiyya ki competitor😂), Shobha n Chachi ki baatein, so Mihir had serious anxiety attack and BP issue , and he was on medication constantly. She cannot hold anymore, she lived all her life for this man and his wellbeing. She drifted to the hallway side table to read the prescription and the medical history, just like that, is it panic or concern.??

Arre frankly this section I consider as my failure as a writer. At this point in my story Tulsi needed to know about his health (insomnia and bp fluctuations issues) so I used the very cliched and popular itv trope of tulsi overhearing stuff and then Shobha (being in the anxious state over Mihir’s health since morning) forgetting both the eno sachet meant for gayatri as well as Mihir’s medical file downstairs- she’s been taking care of him all day so thakaan and anxiety ki wajah se bhool gayi file- I tried to find a better way to disclose to tulsi but couldn’t find any way that wasn’t typical itv trope.

sometimes drama is required, especially in the stories. No worry as long it is meeting the requirements, it's all ok.

Tulsi is obviously concerned and in a kind of panic - file haath lag gayi by chance toh naturally she will read it.

Hmm it just happened..

Anyways, she had to know the unknown, 6years she led a life alone, single handedly, she yearn for him, family, to prove herself her sorrows have taken the path of building something, her depression has boosted her to be an independent woman, her exhaustion gave her energy to work hard, create something on her own. She used all her negatives to build something positive.

very true. And it is that hard- earned independence that she needs to protect along with her heart - she has absolutely run out of her capacity for hurt - esp from Mihir- Noina was the last straw that broke the camels back (it is a popular idiom- if you know)

Mihir is all she is here for, made family with, nourished, protected, shared the unconditional love and her heart, so he is the only one answerable. He is the one who made her rediscover herself, who hurt her, so obviously it was him to help her get back into her original form. She has shut her heart's door, either bcoz she is scared of not having enough strength to go thru that heart break or scared of loosing again herself.

In contrast to Tulsi, Mihir dealt all his misery and sufferings differently. The self realization, guilt is so occupied his mind and heart, he could no more control himself but end up under medication.

This is exactly how nature has created men and women. Women are strong emotionally, men are strong physically, probably that's the exact reason, two different structurally built qualities of men and women are married to each other, so that their is a completeness. Universe has given us lots to learn and understand.

Absolutely right! Men are strong physically but weak emotionally - which is also why it is kind of easier for a parayi aurat to seduce or behkaao a man while the opposite is not true.
Hmm

शिव वैराग्य हैं, तो शक्ति सृजन की ऊर्जा हैं। दोनों एक-दूसरे के पूरक हैं।

Exactly

Well, you narrated her worries, concern her being all up the whole night, not knowing where she is going she found the mandir. The moment she cleaning the idol, it started coming up into it's original form, this is refreshing to read, Tulsi ki bhavanoan pe jo dhool chadh gya tha, shayad usska ek layer hat gya hai. She remembering all her old days then her youth, father, baa and bapuji, then suddenly that innocent, charming Mihir's entry. And her comparing the Mihir whom with she lived, loved, played with to the Mihir of six year before, till yesterday wo khud hi kashmkash me hai, which one is right. Her whole life has been rewinded in her mind, this piece is beautiful❤️

Yeah. Bilkul sahi - jo tha woh toh temple ke idol ki tarah tha hi - but her cleaning the idol was symbolic- just as the idol ki chhavi clear hoti gayi waise hi tulsi ki nazar me Mihir ki bhi clear ho gayi

Hmm, it signifies lots of things. When your heart is full of fear, angst, humilation it's makes sense to maintain your composure and reiterate, only then you can find the right path. She succeeded to some extent.

She is restless too, but again women can hold the pain for longer, until she heard he is alright. She leaving her place quietly, pretending she doesn't know anything and allowing her kids to take Mihir to the Hospital was just her presence of mind and her worry, probably not for husband, but for the person once she shared her everything with.

Very true - when she realizes that her own presence in the house is an obstacle to the much needed doctor’s visit, she has that presence of mind to take herself away. You are also right about it not being for her husband.

Pari n her first day at office, Tulsi teaching her from the scratch, is nothing wrong. This is how Indian Gurukul shiksha used to be. Even prince were made sit on the ground and learn everything along with others, so that they understand human beings, and the difficulties of any work, a trait to learn so that one day can become king the ruler.Not because he is King's son, but bcoz he is efficient and deserving.Similarly Tulsi's vision is to make Pari the same, liked Pari's acceptance to it.

Yes true - this part is my fave too. Yes tulsis training module at least for Pari is based on Gurukul system. Tulsi also wants to see if it’s time pass for Pari or is she really serious about working

Hmm, pampering kids is the new way of parenting, but earlier days it was teaching kids thru small house hold help, assignment, so that parent can guide kid in a better way and also identify the kids inclination towards the subject. Great job by Tulsi.

Rithik arriving late, her mind is after Mihir's health condition, she cannot ask directly, she asked indirectly, Son can't reveal, kasam jo hai papa ka.

True.

Then her heart is not at peace until she

heard from Kamla Sahab has come for lunch. And after that, the relaxed breath she took says all. Her going home and having a sound sleep of 2hrs boosted her up again.

Yes once she’s assured he’s at least not worse, she gets suddenly aware of her extreme exhaustion- it’s been a tough 2 days for her with barely any sleep

Mithali ka she needs to work out wisely.

In next chapter

Well dining, she need not have to look at him, neither he to look at her, there silences and every breath can humm a song, it's bcoz of the year old bond, they noticed every single movement of their body and soul.

True - their silences speak more than words can ever.

She is relived seeing him.

Last me tadka tha, 😂😂 chai pe chupke se aajavo wah.

shobha and gayatri ki baat ka natija - he needs her the most (and in fact she too needs him the most to heal her badly wounded heart though she won’t admit even to herself)

yup dono k dil k key ek dusre k paas hai. I think that key is lost somewhere, they need to find that lost key inorder to open that lock.

let's restart with Chaiii..

Bgm me ye song...

मिलो ना तुम तो हम घबराए

मिलो तो आँख चुराएं

हमें क्या हो गया है

हमें क्या हो गया है

Hey great song to suit their situation

I loved this paragraph so much❤️

She was not excusing it. She was not collapsing the distance between his failure and his suffering. Both were real. They did not cancel each other out.

But she was sitting with both of them. For the first time. Without managing the distance between them.

U know what - I rewrote these lines at least 7-8 times- wasn’t getting the effect I needed. The fact that you quoted these very lines - means mere efforts waste nahi gaye

It's absolute treat to read this para, i personally loved it a lot. The woman with two distinct facts, none of them can she reconcile.however, she has to find a way to create a new path along these facts.

Thank you writer. ❤️

Thank you for this beautiful review

Chapter 12: Chai … Aur Kaada

He had not slept.

Or had slept in the way that is not quite sleep — the surface of it, the form of it, without the substance. His body had been horizontal and his eyes had been closed and the house had been dark and quiet around him and none of it had added up to rest.

The *shayad* was the reason.

Not the word itself — he had replayed the balcony conversation many times through the night, each time arriving at the same place. *Kabhi nahi* was what she had said twenty-three days ago, in the specific tone of a woman who has made a decision and is not inviting discussion of it. She had said *Lekin Tumhari Patni banke nahi. Kabhi nahi* in the outer lawn. And last night, in the balcony, she had said *shayad kabhi nahi houngi.* One word had entered the sentence. *Shayad.* Maybe.

He was not building a palace on that word. He had told himself this several times through the night, with the specific firmness of a man who knows his own tendency toward hope and is trying to manage it responsibly. He was not reading more into it than was there.

He was also lying awake at — he looked at the time — five forty-three in the morning, having not slept, because of that one word.

He got up.

-----

He freshened up without quite deciding to. The routine of it carrying him forward — the bathroom, the water, the mirror — without his mind fully participating. He was thinking about *shayad.* He was thinking about six baje. He was thinking about what forty-five minutes on a balcony would feel like after six years of separation and 23 days of managed distance and peripheral vision and the careful discipline of not being in the same room alone.

He was at the bottom of the stairs before he realized he had come downstairs.

He looked at the time.

Five fifty.

Ten minutes early.

He stood in the hallway for a moment — the house completely quiet around him, the particular pre-dawn dark of a February morning, the dhoop from Baa’s prayer corner still faintly present in the air from whenever she had lit it. She was always up before him. She had always been up before him. Thirty-eight years of waking to a house that had already been tended by the time he came downstairs.

He stood in the hallway and waited.

He did not have to wait long.

Her door opened.

She came out already dressed — saree crisp, hair done, the particular composure of a woman who has been up long enough to have assembled herself completely before the world requires anything of her. She was carrying her phone. She had not expected him to be there — he could see that in the fraction of a second before her face settled — and then it settled, and she simply looked at him.

He looked back.

A nod. From her. From him — and with it, without deciding to, a slight smile. Not large. Not performed. Just the involuntary thing that happened to his face when he saw her, that he had spent twenty-three days suppressing and had apparently not suppressed completely.

Her eyes moved. Just briefly — toward the corridor that led to the balcony.

He understood. He went.

He had wanted, for a moment, to accompany her to the kitchen — the instinct of thirty-eight years, the automatic movement toward wherever she was going. He noted the instinct. Set it aside. Went to the balcony.

He stood there with his back to the railing and his eyes on the entrance and he waited again.

-----

From the balcony he could hear, faintly, the sound of the front door opening. Not the kitchen. He had expected the kitchen.

He did not turn around. He stayed where he was — back to the railing, eyes on the entrance to the balcony — and he listened to the sounds of her morning without seeing them.

The soft sound of the front door. A pause — he understood without seeing it, from thirty-eight years of knowing the rhythm of her mornings, that she was at the tulsi plant. The small sound of water. Another pause. Then the door again, closing softly.

Then — after a few minutes — the kitchen. The particular sounds of early morning in a kitchen that is waking up. The tap. The stove. The specific rhythm of someone who knows exactly what they are doing and is doing it without fuss.

He stood on the balcony and he listened and he did not let himself think too much about what she was making.

She went to the tulsi plant first.

It was at the front door — it had always been at the front door, since before she could remember, her Baa’s plant and then hers, the particular dark green of it in the pre-dawn light, still cool from the night. She filled the small pot from the water outlet beside the door and watered it slowly, the way you water something you have been tending for a long time — without hurry, without drama, just the quiet attention of someone for whom this is simply what mornings begin with.

Then she took a few leaves. Carefully, the way Baa had taught her to take from a tulsi plant — never too many, always with intention. She held them in her palm for a moment.

Then she collected the newspapers from the door. Four of them — she noted this without reading the headlines, set them on the dining table on her way to the kitchen and went inside.

-----

The kitchen was dim — only the small amber light above the stove. She moved through it the way she moved through it every morning, without turning on the overhead light, her hands knowing where everything was without needing to see it.

She put two pots on the stove.

The first was for chai — the usual, the routine, the thing she had been making in this kitchen every morning for twenty-three days and in another kitchen for six years before that.

The second was for a kaada. She added the tulsi leaves she had just brought in — still cool, slightly damp — along with a few other ingredients. A home remedy, known to help regulate blood pressure. She had not made it for anyone else. She had not announced she was making it. She simply made it, with the specific quiet attention of someone who has decided to do something and is doing it without ceremony.

She set both pots to simmer.

Then she stood at the counter and waited for them to be ready, and she did not examine why she was making two cups of something she had never made for herself before this morning and would tell him she drank every day.

When both pots were ready she took a tray from the shelf — the sturdy one, the one that had always been used for things that required some care in the carrying. She set four cups on it. Two chai. Two kaada.

She lifted the tray and went to the balcony.

He heard her coming before he saw her — the soft sound of the balcony door being approached, the particular quality of movement that was hers and no one else’s, that he would have recognised in a crowded room without turning around. He had been standing with his back to the railing and his eyes on the entrance and he had been telling himself, for the last however many minutes, not to make anything of this. It was chai. It was forty-five minutes. It was nothing more than what she had said it was.

She appeared in the entrance of the balcony with the tray.

He moved before thinking. Crossed to her in two steps and took the tray from her hands — not abruptly, just immediately, the automatic movement of a man who has seen a woman carrying something and has taken it from her for thirty-eight years without either of them making it a discussion.

She let him take it.

He set it on the small table. She turned and pulled the balcony door shut behind her — the soft click of it, the balcony becoming its own separate space from the house, from the corridor, from everything inside.

They were alone.

For the first time in six years, intentionally, with nowhere else to be.

He looked at the tray. Two cups of chai. Two cups of something else — darker, the particular colour of a kaada, the tulsi leaves visible at the rim.

He looked at her.

Tulsi: Ye kaada main roz peeti hoon. Tumhe nahi peena toh kal se tumhara nahi banaoongi.

She said it simply. Without meeting his eyes for more than a moment. Already settling into her chair, already reaching for her own kaada cup, already making it ordinary.

He looked at the cup in front of him.

This man — who had not touched a kaada in thirty-eight years of marriage, who had refused them with the cheerful stubbornness of someone who considered himself in excellent health and had no patience for home remedies — picked up the cup.

Simply. Without comment. Without making it anything.

He drank.

She sat with her back to the balcony door, facing the garden. He sat across from her, his back to the railing, facing inward — facing her, facing the balcony door behind her, facing the small enclosed world of the balcony itself.

She had somewhere to look.

He did not.

The garden below was still mostly dark — the February morning taking its time, the sky lightening at the edges without committing to it yet. She could see the lawn, the old trees, the far corner where the temple stood in its particular darkness. She looked at it. She had somewhere to look and she used it — not avoiding him exactly, just having a reason to keep her eyes ahead that required no explanation and no effort.

He had the table. The cups. The balcony door behind her. And her face — which was directly in his line of sight whether he intended it to be or not, which meant that looking at anything that wasn’t her face required a deliberate sideways shift of his eyes, which itself felt like too much of a statement about the fact that he was trying not to look at her.

He looked at the table.

He looked at his kaada cup.

He looked, occasionally and briefly, at her — and then at the balcony door behind her, which was not a satisfying thing to look at but was at least not her face.

She looked at the garden.

They drank their kaada.

The silence was full in the way of something that has been accumulating for a long time and has not yet found its release. Six years of things unsaid pressing against the inside of it. Twenty-three days of things noticed and filed and not examined pressing against it from another direction.

He had things he needed to say. Not in the general sense of *I owe her an apology* but in the specific sense of particular words for particular failures — the comparisons, the disappointments shared with the wrong person, *tumhari shaadi mein kuch nahi bacha* said to him repeatedly, sometimes even in his house - rather her house - and not stopped or opposed. He knew what he owed her. He had known for a long time now.

But this was not the morning for it. She had told him what this was. He had agreed. He was a man who kept his word when it mattered and this mattered more than anything had ever mattered in his life.

So he sat with everything pressing against the inside of his silence and he drank his kaada and he looked at his cup.

-----

The kaada finished. She set her cup down. He set his down. She reached for the chai. He reached for the chai. Their hands moving at the same moment toward the same thing — not touching, not close to touching, just simultaneous. She took her cup. He took his. Neither acknowledged it.

The chai was the way she had always made it. He had not had her chai in six years, except the first morning of her return. He did not say this.

The awkwardness was present throughout and he would not pretend otherwise even to himself. He had the worse of it — she had the garden, the sky, the trees, the whole open expanse of the back of Shantiniketan to rest her eyes on. He had the table and the cups and the balcony door and her face, which kept being there in his direct line of sight no matter where he tried to look.

At some point she turned from the garden and looked at him — just for a moment, just briefly — and he was already looking at the table and so he missed it, or caught only the edge of it, her gaze moving away before he could fully register that it had been there.

At another point he looked at her directly — a moment, no more — and found her looking at the garden again with the particular focused attention of someone who is looking at something in order not to be looking at something else. He looked back at his cup.

The silence brimmed.

Neither of them spilled it.

The sky had lightened fully by the time she set her chai cup down.

Not dramatically — just the particular shift from pre-dawn grey to the pale gold of early February morning, the garden below becoming visible in its details, the temple in the far corner emerging from the dark into something that could be seen clearly. She looked at it for a moment. Then she looked at the time.

6.46 am.

She stood.

He watched her stand — the specific quality of her movement, unhurried, the cup set down with the same care with which she set everything down. She bent slightly toward the table to pick up the tray.

Mihir: Tum leke aayi.

She straightened. Looked at him.

Mihir: Khaali cups main utha loonga. Roz.

The *roz* came out quietly. Tentatively. The word of someone offering something they are not sure will be accepted, dressed in the casualness of a practical arrangement.

She looked at him for a moment — just a moment, the direct look that assessed without softening, the look he had been on the receiving end of for thirty-eight years and had learned to hold without flinching.

Then:

Tulsi: Kal aana.

She went inside.

He stayed.

The balcony door had closed behind her with the soft click of a door handled carefully — the same sound it had made when she shut it at the beginning, the balcony becoming its own space, and now becoming the house’s space again. He sat where he was. His hands around his empty cup. Her empty chai cup and the two empty kaada cups on the tray in front of him. The tray she had left.

He stood up, and turned back, his one hand finding the railing with the cup still in his other hand. The garden below was fully visible now — the morning having arrived properly while they were sitting in it, the way mornings arrive when you are not quite watching. The temple in the far corner. The old trees. The lawn.

*Kal aana.*

He stood there he didn’t know for how long. Then he put his chai cup in the tray picked up the tray, opened the balcony door and went to the kitchen. Set the tray down near the sink. Then without meaning to, he looked at the cups, to be precise, her used cups, a moment longer than would have been necessary. Then rinsed them and left them in the sink the way he had seen her do since almost forever. He then set the tray upright on the counter against the wall and left the kitchen.

-----

Breakfast was at its usual time.

The children came down first — all four of them, the particular morning energy of small people who have slept well and are now fully operational and have things they want. Akshay and Madhvi were already in a conversation that had apparently begun upstairs and was continuing with the focused intensity of children who do not allow location changes to interrupt important discussions. Timsy was asking Angad something. Vrinda was managing the general arrival with the practiced efficiency of a mother who has done this every morning for years.

Garima came down holding Pari’s dupatta — one she had apparently found and decided to carry — looked around the table, and said with the uncomplicated directness of a five year old:

Garima: Mumma kahan hai?

A small pause. The kind that lasts less than a second but is felt.

Angad: Mumma kaam pe gayi hai beta. Subah subah.

Garima absorbed this. Looked at the dupatta in her hand. Then climbed into her chair.

Garima: Toh aaj kaun paratha banayega?

The table exhaled — not visibly, not dramatically, just the particular quality of a room that has been holding something and has been given a reason to release it.

Vrinda: Main banaati hoon. Teri Mumma se poochh ke recipe bhi seekh li hai.

This was apparently satisfactory. Garima set the dupatta on her lap and reached for her glass.

Tulsi came to the table.

He was already there. At the far end. In his place.

She sat. Reached for the water jug. Filled her glass. Set it down.

The meal began.

They tried too hard. To behave distant.

Not obviously — not in any way that could be named or pointed to. Just the specific quality of two people who are being normal on purpose and are slightly too successful at it. A fraction too much attention to the food. A fraction too much conversation with the people immediately beside them. The careful maintenance of the usual arrangement — him at one end, her at the other, the family between them — performed with marginally more care than it usually required.

It was the kind of thing you would not notice unless you knew what to look for.

Shobha knew what to look for.

She said nothing. Did not look at either of them for longer than the conversation required. But Tulsi — who noticed everything, who had been reading this table for thirty-eight years — caught the specific quality of Shobha’s not-noticing, which was itself a form of noticing.

Ritik knew too. She could feel it in the particular way he passed the dal — a fraction too casually, the gesture of someone who is being very careful not to be careful.

And then — across the table, in the corner where she always sat, slightly apart from the main conversation in the way she had been sitting for six years — Daksha Chachi.

Tulsi reached for the achaar. Looked up.

Daksha Chachi was looking at her. She, a chatterbox earlier had become a complete recluse over the last 6 years - quiet, serious, not talking unless being talked to. But at least since Tulsi’s return, she had started coming down to meals.

Now she was looking at Tulsi.

Not at Mihir. Not at the table. At her. With the specific expression of a woman who has been waiting for something for a very long time and has just seen the first sign that it might be coming — not happiness exactly, not relief exactly, something more complicated and more private than either. Something that had lived in the specific face of a woman who had slapped her own nephew repeatedly six years ago and had been carrying the weight of that household’s broken state ever since.

The expression lasted perhaps two seconds. Then Daksha Chachi looked down at her plate.

Tulsi looked back at the achaar.

Neither of them said anything.

Neither of them needed to.

He came upstairs after breakfast to collect his files.

The room was quiet — the particular quiet of a space that belongs entirely to one person, that has arranged itself around one person’s habits and presence over time. He moved through it with the efficiency of a man who knows where everything is and is thinking about other things.

He heard a knock.

He looked up.

Daksha Chachi stood in the doorway.

He went very still.

She had not spoken to him in six years. Not one word — not at the dinner table, not in the hallway, not in passing, not in the specific way that people who live in the same house and do not speak to each other manage to communicate the bare minimum of coexistence. She had simply — stopped. The day Tulsi left. The day she had slapped him, repeatedly, with the specific force of a woman who loved his wife and had watched what he had done and could find no other available response. After that day she had looked through him the way you look through something that is present but not worth acknowledging.

Six years of that. In his own house.

And now she was standing in his doorway.

He opened his mouth — the instinct since childhood, the warmth of a man who had once had a relationship with this woman and had not forgotten it even across six years of her silence:

Mihir: Arre Chachi — aayiye! Chhe saal baad —

She stepped into the room.

And stopped.

Something on the walls had stopped her. He watched it happen — the way her eyes moved, the specific quality of her stillness as she took in whatever she was seeing. She stood there for a moment. Just stood.

Then she looked at him.

Daksha Chachi: Maine abhi maaf nahi kiya hai.

A beat.

Daksha Chachi: Lekin interview dekha. Ab sahi raste pe ja raha hai.

She turned. Walked out.

He stood in the room — files in hand, the warmth of *Arre Chachi aayiye* still faintly present in his voice from ten seconds ago — and received it.

The room was quiet around him again. Whatever was on the walls, still there. Her words, still there.

*Ab sahi raste pe ja raha hai.*

He stood with it for a moment.

Then he picked up his files and went to work.

-----

Tulsi found Mitali in her room.

Not seeking her out dramatically, just the particular purposefulness of a woman who has decided something and is acting on it before the decision can be complicated by further thought. She knocked. Mitali opened the door. Whatever she had been expecting, the ordinary morning, Kamla with something, one of the children, it was not this. Her face did the thing faces do when they receive an unexpected visitor whose expression tells them immediately that this is not a casual call.

Tulsi: Andar aa sakti hoon?

Mitali stepped back. Tulsi came in. Closed the door.

She did not sit. Neither did Mitali.

Tulsi looked at her for a moment. Long enough for the air to shift. Then,

Tulsi: Kareeb saadhe chhe saal pehle, jab Angad ki tumhare saath shaadi hone waali thi, tumne kya kya kiya, main tab bhi jaanti thi.

A beat.

Tulsi: Aur aaj bhi jaanti hoon.

Mitali’s face changed, quick, defensive, something rising.

Tulsi (cutting across, voice still even but sharper now):

Virani naam chahiye tha tumhe. Status chahiye tha. Angad se shaadi nahi hui, toh tumne meri absence ka fayda uthaya. Ek vulnerable Ritik ko trap kiya. Woh bhi itni giri hui harkat karke.

Mitali opened her mouth.

Tulsi raised her hand.

Not abruptly. Not loudly. Just enough to stop the interruption before it began.

Tulsi (quieter, but the control tighter now):

Please. Mujhe jhoot sunne me koi interest nahi hai.

A pause. She let that land.

Tulsi: Jo hua woh main badal nahi sakti. Aur main yeh sab dobara dohrana bhi nahi chahti.

A breath.

Tulsi: Lekin iska matlab yeh nahi hai ki main bhooli hoon.

Mitali didn’t speak now.

Tulsi continued, steady again:

Tulsi: Ab tumhe decide karna hai. Agar tum yahan nahi rehna chahti, toh mat raho. Ritik se divorce lena chahti ho, woh bhi ho jayega. Seedha. Bina jhagde ke. Reasonable alimony milegi. Timsy ki parvarish mein koi kami nahi hogi, woh main ensure karungi.

A slight pause.

Tulsi (looking at her directly):

Lekin Timsy ki custody ke liye ladne ki koshish mat karna.

A beat.

Tulsi: Tumhari gambling aur gambling debts ka proof hai hamare paas. Tumhare liye messy hoga. Ritik ke liye nahi.

Silence.

Then, just as evenly:

Tulsi: Aur agar rehna chahti ho, toh raho. Lekin is ghar ke ek hissa banke. Family member banke.

She didn’t soften it. Didn’t dress it up.

Tulsi: Yeh options hain. Dono.

Mitali stood still, processing.

Tulsi turned toward the door. Then paused.

Without turning back:

Tulsi: Soch lo. Koi jaldi nahi hai.

A fraction of a second.

Tulsi: Par clarity honi chahiye.

She opened the door and left.

The choice remained in the room behind her.

-----

Mihir sat at his desk for — he checked the time — forty minutes before he realised he had not opened a single file.

The morning was replaying itself. Not all of it. Pieces of it. The way pieces of something keep returning when the mind hasn’t finished with them yet.

The kaada.

He had known, the moment she said *roz peeti hoon*, that it was not true. He had known it the way he knew things about her — not from evidence, not from deduction, just from thirty-eight years of knowing her. She did not take kaada daily. She had never taken kaada daily. If she had, he would have known.

So she had made it for him.

The question arrived fully now, in the quiet of his office, with no tray to take and no cup to look at and nowhere to put his eyes except the files he wasn’t reading.

*If she knows — did she offer it because of that?*

Not *shayad.* Not the interview. Not twenty-three days of watching and filing and the structural shift he had felt happening in her. But his health. His body. Her inability — because she is who she is — to simply not tend to someone she knows is unwell.

He could not answer this.

A kaada could be for anything. He had no proof she knew about his BP. The kasam had held — he had to believe the kasam had held. No one from the family could have let on anything after the strong words he used when he extracted that kasam from all family members.

And yet.

She had taken tulsi leaves from her own plant and put them in a pot for him. On the first morning. Without being asked. Without announcing it. And then told him she drank it daily with the specific composure of a woman who has decided what she is going to say and is not going to waver from it.

The not-knowing was its own weight — because it meant he could not be certain whether *kal aana* was what he had thought it was. Whether the step she had offered was because something in her was moving toward him. Or whether it was simply Tulsi, unable to watch someone she has known for thirty-eight years be unwell without doing something quiet and unceremonious about it.

He sat with this for a long time.

Then he opened the first file.

He would be at the balcony at six tomorrow regardless. Whatever the kaada meant.

-----

At Bandhej she was checking a frame when she realised she had been looking at the fabric for two minutes without seeing it.

She stepped back. Checked it properly. Moved on.

The morning was with her the way mornings stay with you when something in them has shifted the ground slightly — not dramatically, just differently underfoot.

She had looked at his face for forty-five minutes. Not intentionally — she had the garden, she had the temple, she had the sky. But he had been in her direct line of sight regardless, and she had read him the way she had always read him, and she had seen what was pressing against his silence.

She knew what it was. She had always known. She didn’t need to name it even to herself.

And she was not ready to receive it.

This was what she understood this morning and was understanding more clearly now, standing on the factory floor. The accounting was waiting — it would come eventually, when she was ready, when she said she was ready. She wanted it. She had always believed in things being named precisely.

But receiving it would require her to open in a way she had not opened yet. And she had been hurt enough — twice, in ways she understood completely — that she could not afford even a small hurt more right now. Even the hurt of finally hearing the right words. Even that.

She thought about his ghutan. Shobha’s voice from the corridor — *jee bharke dekh bhi nahi sakte.* Six years of that. And 24 days of a different kind - The suffering of having what you need in the same house and being unable to reach it.

She felt something about this that she was not going to examine too closely in the middle of a factory floor.

*Shayad kabhi nahi houngi* — she had meant it when she said it.

She meant it slightly less this morning.

She went back to the fabric.

The table at dinner had been quieter than usual — the children picking up, the way children do, some quality in the adults that suggested the ordinary rules of dinner conversation were slightly different tonight without being able to say why.

It was Pari who brought it up first.

Pari: Mumma — bacche teen din se ghar pe hain. School kab se?

Tulsi opened her mouth. Then stopped.

Tulsi: Sab ki kya rai hai?

The table looked, almost instinctively, toward the far end.

Mihir: Kal se. Sab kuch normal ho gaya hai ab — media bhi nahi hai bahar. Zyaada din ghar pe rakhna theek nahi.

He looked at her briefly. The checking glance — not for permission, just the thirty-eight year instinct of confirming.

She nodded. Small. Unremarkable.

The matter was settled.

Then Pari, a little hesitantly:

Pari: Mumma — Garima ka school bhi kal se hoga. Drop time 7.30 hai. Wahi time hai mera factory ka. Toh kya main 15 minute late aa sakti hoon? Baad mein afternoon shift mein 15 minute zyaada kar loongi.

Tulsi looked at her daughter for a moment. Thoughtfully. Then:

Tulsi: Main jaanti hoon tujhe lagega main heartless hoon. Lekin yeh unfair hoga baaki workers ke saath. Unke liye bhi rules hain. Tere liye alag nahi ho sakte.

Across the table — she was aware of it without looking directly — Mihir continued eating.

No glance at Pari. No slight softening of expression. No old reflex of pampering, of quietly signalling *your mother is being strict but I understand and I am with you.* He simply continued eating, with the specific focused attention of a man who is not intervening in something that is not his to intervene in.

She noticed.

She said nothing.

Pari: Toh main — Garima ko —

She stopped. The question unfinished. The upset in it visible but managed — a grown woman who had agreed to every condition without flinching and was now sitting with what one of those conditions actually meant in practice.

Ritik, immediately:

Ritik: Main drop kar doonga. Waise bhi Timsy aur Garima ek hi school mein hain.

He turned to Garima, who had been following this conversation with the focused attention of a five year old who understands that something is being decided about her.

Ritik: Garu beta — kal se aap mamu aur Timsy ke saath chaloge na school?

Garima considered this with the seriousness it deserved.

Garima: Haan. Par mumma?

Pari, quickly:

Pari: Beta — mumma aapko aur Timsy ko pick up karengi. Okay?

Garima absorbed this. Looked at Timsy.

Timsy — who had a driver picking her up every day and had apparently never once considered that her *bua* might be an alternative — processed this information for approximately one second.

Timsy: BUA?? YAAYY!!

The whoop was immediate and total. Akshay and Madhvi, who had not been following the conversation at all, looked up — and then, because Timsy’s enthusiasm was contagious and the reason for it didn’t particularly matter, also became enthusiastic about something they didn’t understand.

The table exhaled. Not visibly. Just — the particular quality of a room that has been holding something and has been given four children and a whoop as a reason to release it.

-----

It was after this — the children settled again, the dinner continuing — that Angad glanced at Vrinda. Vrinda glanced back.

Angad: Papa — hum soch rahe the. Hum bhi wapas chale jaayein chawl mein. Zyaada din ho gaye yahan. Sab normal ho gaya hai ab toh —

The sentence didn’t finish.

Because two voices arrived at the same moment, from opposite ends of the table:

Tulsi: Nahi.

Mihir: Nahi.

The table went still.

Not dramatically. Just — still. The particular quality of a room where something has happened that everyone has registered and no one is going to comment on. The children continued eating. Kamla continued moving. The adults continued breathing.

Angad looked at his wife. Vrinda looked at her husband.

Then Mihir, as if the simultaneous *nahi* had not just happened:

Mihir: Waise bhi plan tha na — ek mahine mein shift karna. Abhi kar lo. Koi zaroorat nahi us ab intezaar karne ki. Waise bhi Angad, tu keh raha tha na .. tujhe apne uss job me sirf apni replacement ko guide karna hai? Toh yahan se kar le … I know door hai par week me ek-do baar hi toh jaana hai

Tulsi, also as if it had not just happened:

Tulsi: Aur bachchon ka admission bhi paas wale school me final ho gaya hai. Zyaada convenient hoga.

Angad looked at his mother. Then at his father. Then:

Angad: Haan — theek hai. Main aur Vrinda kal subah jaate hain, saamaan le aate hain. Chawl ka ghar bhi owner ko handover kar denge.

Immediately — offers from around the table. Ritik would come. Shobha said she’d help. Pari said she could manage the children here.

Angad: Nahi nahi — hum manage kar lenge. Zyaada saamaan hai nahi wahan. Do ghante ka kaam hai.

Vrinda: Sach mein — aap log rehne dijiye. Hum le aayenge.

The offers subsided. The dinner continued. It was the most normal dinner in twenty-four days.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Nobody said anything about the *nahi* that had arrived from both ends of the table at the same moment.

Nobody needed to.

-----

-----

She was retiring to her room.

The kitchen had been wound up, the children taken to bed, the house settling into its nighttime rhythms the way it always did — doors, footsteps, lights going off floor by floor. She had said her goodnights. She was walking toward her room.

She heard him on the stairs.

The particular weight of his step — she had been hearing it every night for twenty-four days, had learned it the way you learn things you are not trying to learn, simply by proximity and repetition. He was on his way up. The pause would come at the midpoint, the way it always came.

She slowed without meaning to.

The pause came.

She had reached her door. Her hand was on it. She did not go in.

Then his voice — quiet, from the staircase, not calling out, just present:

Mihir: Mujhe subah ka intezaar rahega.

He did not wait for a response. She heard his footsteps continue up the stairs. His room. His door, closing softly.

She stood at her door for a moment.

The house was quiet around her. The February night outside. The dhoop from the prayer corner still faintly present in the air.

*Mujhe subah ka intezaar rahega.*

She stood with it.

Then she went inside. Closed the door.

Note: I put a lot of thought into every chapter and I genuinely want to know if it’s landing the way I intend it to. Detailed reviews are always welcome but even a single line telling me you’re here and reading means more than you know.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Mithali was given the best of two options😂😂. It's still a great negotiation - Mithali will anyways be benefitted both ways. Tulsi did the right choice to confront her directly, without blaming or arguing just announced her decision. Quiet firm and authoritatively.

Ok cool. I thoght she will have a word with Mihir about her confronting Mithali, anyways let's see, how it progresses.

Mihir has largely lived his life in guilt, watching things around him, probably looking at the ceiling, his restlessness has not allowed him peace of mind, hence most of his nights were spent in sleeplessness.