TuHir FF: Never Your Wife Again!! Ch14 on pg 29: Woh Zakhm .. Ab Bhi - Page 29

I liked gayatri and Shoba's conversation. Gayatri saying that tulsi is what is necessary for mihir was true.pari's factory scenes were nice.Good that hrithik told tulsi that mitali is leaking everything to noina.nice to read the past scenes where payal was involved.mihir telling tulsi that there is no pressure and obligation and tulsi saying that it's just a tea and not more than that was painful.

Chapter 14: Woh Zakhm .. Ab Bhi

The rose was in his hand.

He had cut it without thinking — or with the particular thinking that disguises itself as not-thinking, the impulse arriving before the deliberation. One stem. Nothing elaborate. He had stood in the garden for thirty seconds and then come back.

She had been on the balcony.

He had placed it near the tray and said what he said — *bejaan sa lagta hai, glass mein achha lagega* — and she had gone very still, the specific stillness of a woman who has been handed something she was not expecting and is deciding what to do with it. He had not looked at her directly. He had finished his chai and reached for the tray with the particular motion of a man who has said a thing and is now moving away from it before it can be examined.

He went inside.

Left the tray on the dining table.

Stayed near the door where he could see the balcony without being seen.

And then watched her pick it up.

He had not planned to watch. He had stayed because his feet had not moved and the light was at the angle it was and she was sitting with the rose in her hands and her face was — not controlled. Just for a moment. The specific unguardedness of a woman alone, who does not know she is being seen.

She broke off one petal.

Held it.

Set the rose back. Stood. Went inside.

He went to the sink. Began rinsing cups.

She passed. Petal in hand.

He did not look up.

-----

Now he was on the stairs.

The master bedroom was above. His room — though the word *his* had become strange over these past thirty-three days, the room belonging to the fact of her absence the way a held breath belongs to the lungs that are holding it. He had lived in it for six years. He lived in it now. He would not ask her to return to it. He had understood that on the first night when he offered and she went still and he understood immediately without needing her to say it.

When he had said *bejaan lagta hai* he had not been lying. His room, their room - like his life - was absolutely lifeless without her.

He went up.

The room was as it was every morning — dim, the curtains not yet drawn, the particular quality of a February mid-morning filtering through. He set the rose on the side table.

Her side.

He did not examine this. The side table was there. It had always been hers. The rose needed somewhere to go. These were the facts.

He looked at it for a moment.

One petal missing.

He knew she had it. She had carried it into the house in her hand and she had it somewhere now — in Baa’s room below him, in a pocket, on a desk. He did not know exactly where. He knew she had it.

He told himself the rose on her side table was not a palace. But he still took a glass, went to the bathroom to fill it till half with water, brought it back to the side table. Put the rose in it.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

Thirty-three days. Thirty-three mornings. The balcony ritual, the newspapers, the kaada she made and called her own remedy — *roz peeti hoon* — knowing he would not challenge it, knowing he knew. The one word she had stopped before completing on the twelfth morning. The petal she had broken off and carried in her hand past him at the sink.

*Ek second bhi zyaada nahi, ek second bhi usse pahle nahi.*

He had meant it when he said it. He meant it now. He would sit with this rose on her side table and mean it every day until — whenever.

He lay back.

The ceiling above him. The February light. The sound of the house beginning its morning below.

*She had smiled.*

He had seen it. The corner of her mouth — quick, unguarded, the newspaper a wall she had not thought to check. He had lowered the paper just enough and she had not known, and the smile had stayed one moment longer than she would have allowed it. Then it was gone, and she had turned the page with the practiced ease of forty-four years of composure.

He was going to ration that out for weeks. He knew this about himself.

He looked at the rose on her side table.

*Not a palace,* he told himself yet again.0

He was failing.

-----

Baa’s room was quiet.

She was at the desk.

The petal between her fingers — she had carried it in from the balcony without quite deciding to. Past the kitchen, past him at the sink not looking up, down the corridor to this room. She had set it on the desk and looked at it for a moment. Then she opened the planner to the back pages where nothing was scheduled. Pressed it flat. Closed the cover.

Not tenderly. Just — not thrown away.

She sat back.

Outside, the house was finding its morning rhythm. Children’s feet. Kamla in the kitchen. The ordinary sounds of Shantiniketan doing what it had always done, indifferent to the fact that she was sitting here with a pressed petal in a planner and absolutely no satisfactory explanation for why.

*Why.*

She had been not-quite-looking-at this question for ten days. It had been manageable while the mornings had their newspapers and the evenings had her files — while there was always something to hold, something to look at that was not the question itself. Now it was Valentine’s Day morning, the house was about to fill, and she had a rose petal in a planner and she was sitting with it.

*Why did you agree to the green tea?*

She had told herself it was practical. He had offered, she had a free half hour in the evening, the balcony was already an established space. Simple. The kind of decision she made a dozen times a day at Bandhej: arrangement available, need present, accept it.

She almost believed it.

Except she knew what *koi bhi* becoming *chamomile* had cost her. She had opened her mouth to say the easy thing — *koi bhi*, any flavour, it doesn’t matter, I am not someone who has preferences in things you offer me. And then she had stopped. Because three nights before, the house asleep, she had typed the word into her phone and read for twenty minutes. Not for herself. For him — his BP, his insomnia, the entries in Dr. Sharma’s file that she was not supposed to know about. She had read because she wanted to understand what would help him, and she had found chamomile, and she had filed the information away, and then he had asked — *koi specific preference?* — and her mouth had opened and the word had come out before the careful part of her could stop it.

Giving herself away. Knowing, even as she said it, that he would understand exactly what the word meant — that she had looked, that she had chosen, that she cared enough to do both.

He had looked at his newspaper.

She had looked at hers.

And the newspaper had been a very useful thing to be holding.

And then this morning.

She sat with it separately because it required separate sitting.

He had turned the pages — she had heard it, the familiar sound of him going through the paper — and then stopped. She had not looked up immediately. She had been on her own page, actually reading, the kind of morning where the silence had settled into something almost ordinary. And then he had held the paper slightly differently. A shift in the angle. A small thing.

Then she had seen it.

*Happy Valentine’s Day.* Red. Bold. The kind of advertisement that does not require reading so much as recognition.

She had kept her eyes on her paper.

She had read the same line three times.

And then — without permission, without any warning — the corner of her mouth had moved.

She turned the question over now in the quiet of Baa’s room. A full-page advertisement was not a declaration. He had not said anything. He had simply stopped at that page and held it at that angle and she could not prove — could not prove — that it had been deliberate. It could have been entirely accidental. A man reading his newspaper, pausing at a page.

She did not believe this for a single moment.

He had known she would see it. He had calculated exactly the right amount of plausible deniability — enough that she could choose not to acknowledge it, enough that nothing was required of her. And yet.

*She had smiled.*

Not a decision. Not a choice. Quick and unguarded, the specific warmth of being caught genuinely off guard by something — by *him* — and she had felt it happening and looked down immediately.

She had assumed he had not seen it.

She was no longer entirely certain of this.

-----

She got up. Went to the window. The garden below — the tulsi plant, the old temple in the corner, the February light doing what it did at this hour.

The love had never been in question. Not from her side and not from his side. Her heart knew this and her brain got whatever validation it needed on that night in the corridor - in the overheard conversation in Gayatri chachi’s room. She had known this since the night in the temple, sitting with her hands in the old ash and the memories arriving one after another. She had not needed the temple to tell her. She had known it the day she came back, the day she said *tumhari patni ban ke nahi, kabhi nahi* — you do not say that to someone you have stopped loving. You say it to someone you love too much to spend rest of your life watching diminish you.

The love was not the question.

The question was the door.

She had built it carefully over six years. Not out of anger — she had been angry in the early months, the specific white-hot anger of a woman who had spent thirty-eight years giving everything she had and had been handed Noina’s fabricated photographs in return. But anger burns itself out eventually. What she had built the door out of was something quieter and more durable: the understanding that if she opened it, she would feel everything she had not let herself feel.

Six years of not feeling it.

Bandhej had been part of it — she would not diminish what Bandhej was, what she had built, the real and substantial thing it had become. But she was honest enough, sitting here in the February morning, to admit that it had also been insulation. Work you can disappear into. A reason to be somewhere else when the evenings got quiet. A reason to be someone — *founder and director, Tulsi Virani* — who was not also the woman who had been left.

She had constructed a life that did not require the door to open.

And then — *mujhe tumse bahut kuch kehna hai.*

She had known it was coming. Had known since the first night on the balcony that he was not offering chamomile and thirty minutes of silence purely for the sake of a quiet evening. She had accepted it anyway. Had sat across from him in the dark with no files and no newspapers and no buffer and waited for whatever was going to come.

And what had come was not what she had braced for.

*Main jaanta hoon ki tum jaanti ho.*

He had looked at her directly. Had not looked away. And then — *now I am done taking you for granted.* Said in the same breath as *koi expectation nahi, koi obligation nahi. Jo tum de sakti ho, jab de sakti ho — bas utna.*

She had nodded. Small. Once.

She had left four minutes early. Had needed to.

Because what she had felt, receiving those words, was not relief. It was something more unsettling than relief. It was the door — the one she had built carefully, maintained carefully — registering, for the first time, that there was a hand on the other side of it. Not pushing. Not demanding. Just present. Still there. Waiting with the specific patience of a man who understood, finally, that the waiting was the only thing he was entitled to do.

She looked at the planner on the desk.

The petal inside it.

She had broken it off because — she stopped. Then made herself finish the thought. The rose was his. She was not ready to take the whole of it. One petal was the exact measure of what she was able to receive this morning, and she had taken precisely that much and not one thing more.

*Ek second bhi zyaada nahi, ek second bhi usse pahle nahi.*

She had said that to herself, she realised. Not to him. Regulating her own measure. Holding to her own terms even in the privacy of this room.

She sat back down at the desk.

The question she had been not-quite-looking-at was still there. It had not resolved itself during the looking. She had not expected it to.

What she knew: the door existed. It had always existed. She had built it, she maintained it, and she alone held the key. What she did not know — could not know yet — was whether the grief on the other side of it, when it finally arrived, would be survivable. Six years of it. Unfelt. Waiting.

She put her hand on the planner.

The breakfast sounds were getting louder now. Angad and Vrinda. The children. The ordinary noise of the family finding its morning.

She would go. In a few minutes she would go and sit at the table and be Maa and be Bahu, the woman who held this household in her hands the way she always had. She was good at that. She had been good at that for thirty-eight years.

But first she sat here for a moment longer.

With the petal.

With the question.

With the door.

-----

So a full circle in one second — Mihir’s face, Tulsi catching it, him catching her catching it. Three beats, no words, the whole history of their marriage sitting in that exchange across a breakfast table while their children laugh around them.

___

The breakfast table on Valentine’s Day morning had a particular quality to it — the kind that arrives when a household contains one couple who are very much in love and are trying, unsuccessfully, to be subtle about it.

Angad and Vrinda were sitting close. Not demonstratively — just in the specific way of two people who have woken up on Valentine’s Day morning inside a functioning marriage and cannot entirely contain it. Vrinda’s dupatta arranged with slightly more care than usual. Angad’s hand finding the back of her chair as he sat. Small things. Visible things.

Shobha saw it first.

Shobha: Arre wah. Aaj kuch special hai kya?

Angad looked up with the expression of a man who knows exactly what is happening and intends to deny it entirely.

Angad: Nahi toh. Kya special.

Vrinda, not looking up from her plate:

Vrinda: Haan. Kuch nahi.

Ritik, not even looking up from his chai, the specific flatness of someone who has been waiting for this moment:

Ritik: Bhai. Valentine’s Day hai aaj.

Angad: Toh?

Ritik: Toh kuch nahi. Bas — *toh.*

He took a sip. The picture of innocence.

Shobha, leaning slightly toward Vrinda with the conspiratorial warmth of an elder sister-in-law who has been waiting years for exactly such moments:

Shobha: Vrinda — kuch mila? Bata na.

Vrinda (trying to hide her embarrassment): Didi—

Shobha: Bata na bata na—

Angad: Shobha Didi please—

Madhvi, who had been watching her parents with the focused attention of a child taking careful notes, looked up from her paratha.

Madhvi: Mumma ke gale pe ek funny nishaan hai. Maine subah dekha. Maine poochha toh Mumma ne kaha mosquito ne kaata.

The table went very still.

Ritik set down his cup.

Angad closed his eyes and face palmed.

Vrinda, with the practiced speed of a woman acting on instinct, reached up and pulled her dupatta over her neck.

The dupatta went up.

The wrist came into view.

A delicate gold bracelet. Small. On the inside face of it — *V & A.*

Ritik saw it in the same second.

Ritik: Bhabhi—

He stopped. Looked at the bracelet. Looked at Angad. Back at the bracelet.

Ritik: Yeh toh—

Shobha had already leaned forward.

Shobha: *V aur A.*

She said it with the specific delight of someone who has just received two gifts instead of one.

Angad: Shobha Didi—

Shobha: Vrinda aur Angad.

Vrinda had given up entirely. She set her hands in her lap, bracelet visible, dupatta still hopefully arranged over her neck, and simply sat with a smile she was no longer trying to hide.

Ritik was laughing now — the real kind, the kind that arrived without permission. It changed his face entirely, the particular joy of a younger brother catching his elder brother completely.

Ritik (in an exaggerated tone): Bhai. So romantic! Kya baat hai! Sahi jaa rahe ho!!

Angad: Chup Ritik. Ab maar khaayega tu.

Ritik: Bracelet bhi aur —

Angad: Main keh raha hoon chup—

Ritik was laughing too hard to stop.

At her end of the table, Gayatri Chachi watched with the mild smile of a woman of her generation who has seen enough Valentine’s Days to find this quietly charming and young enough in spirit to enjoy it. Daksha Chachi beside her smiled more openly — something of her earlier liveliness in it, the specific warmth of a woman who had been frozen for six years and was slowly, carefully thawing.

Timsy and Garima had stopped eating entirely and were watching the adults with the focused attention of children who know something funny is happening and are waiting to understand what.

Akshay was making his spoon into a small train along the edge of his plate. He had not looked up once.

-----

At his end of the table Mihir watched his young son laugh.

Then his eyes moved — inevitably, the way they always moved — to Angad and Vrinda. The bracelet. The dupatta. The specific helpless quality of two people too much in love to hide it properly.

Something moved through him — briefly, without permission. Not grief exactly. The specific ache of a man looking at something he once had and recognising it completely. The newly wed mornings. The particular quality of those early years when everything between them had been new and unguarded and neither of them had yet learned to be careful with it.

*Tulsi.*

The thought arrived with her name and he felt it on his face before he could stop it — just for a moment, a microsecond, the memory flickering through.

He looked down at his plate.

But not before Tulsi had seen it.

She had been watching the children. Then, at some point — the specific peripheral awareness of thirty-eight years — she had looked at him. And caught it. The exact moment before it was gone.

She went still.

Not visibly — to the table she was exactly as she had been, present, composed. But still. The specific internal stillness of a woman who has been caught off guard by something she was not braced for at a breakfast table on a Saturday morning.

She looked away.

But not before he looked up.

And caught her catching him.

Three beats. No words. The whole history of their marriage in one second across a breakfast table while their children laughed around them.

Then —

The door opened.

Mitali stood at the entrance.

She had dressed carefully — not elaborately, simply carefully. She took in the table — Ritik still laughing, the warmth of it still in the air, the particular glow of a household mid-happiness.

She stepped in.

Mitali: Good morning.

The table shifted.

Not dramatically. Just — the warmth recalibrating around her arrival the way a room recalibrates around a draft.

Gayatri Chachi looked up briefly. Returned to her chai.

Shobha gave a small nod. Her eyes moving back to her plate.

Angad let his sentence trail off. Vrinda found something to look at on the table.

Ritik’s laughter did not stop immediately — it was already going, had its own momentum — but it quieted. He reached for his chai without looking up.

Daksha Chachi looked at her. Nodded. A small, genuine acknowledgment.

Timsy: Good morning Mamma!

She had already slid off her chair — quickly, the way five year olds move when they have spotted the person they wanted. She held up her arms. Mitali picked her up. Something in her face — just briefly — before she set it back to neutral.

Tulsi: Good morning Mitali. Aao baitho. Chai logi?

Said in the same register as everything else at the table — warm, ordinary. No performance. Simply normal.

Mitali looked at her for a fraction of a second.

Mitali: Ji

Then sat.

At his end of the table Mihir had watched Tulsi greet her. He looked at Mitali.

Mihir: Morning.

Said into his chai. Flat, unhurried. Not warm. But said — because he had seen Tulsi greet her, and he trusted Tulsi’s judgment, even if he did not yet trust Mitali.

Mitali looked at her plate.

The table continued — the children, the paratha, Kamla appearing briefly with more chai. The conversation finding its way around Mitali the way water finds its way around a stone. Not excluding her exactly. Simply not yet including her.

She sat with Timsy in her lap and ate and did not ask for anything.

Tulsi watched. As she had watched last 2-3 days. Said nothing.

There were things that could not be hurried.

-----

It was Ritik who moved first — pushing back his chair, the particular efficiency of a man who has done the school run enough times that it has its own rhythm. He looked at Timsy.

Ritik: chalo beta. Bag uthao.

Timsy slid off Mitali’s lap immediately. Garima was already at the door — she had been ready for ten minutes, the specific readiness of a child who takes school seriously.

Ritik collected his keys from the side table. Checked his phone. The practiced sequence of a man leaving the house.

Mitali looked up.

Mitali: Main chhod doon? Agar tum—

Ritik stopped.

The room did not move.

He looked at her — the first time all morning, the careful control of a man managing something that would be ugly if it were not managed.

Ritik (quietly, evenly): Main kar leta hoon.

Mitali: Main sirf soch rahi thi—

Ritik (same quiet, not raising his voice, not needing to): Main kar leta hoon.

A beat. Then, the thing he had been not-saying all morning arriving despite himself — still quiet, still controlled, but with an edge that had nowhere else to go:

Ritik: Timsy ko leke bhi main tum par mushkil se trust kar sakta hoon. Garima ko leke toh sawaal hi nahi hai. Woh Pari ki beti hai. Uski poori responsibility meri hai aur main hi sambhalunga.

He held out his hand for Timsy without looking at Mitali again.

Timsy: Bye Mamma.

She took his hand. They left. Garima already ahead of them, her bag bouncing.

The door settled.

-----

The table did not quite resume. The particular silence of a room that has witnessed something and is deciding how to move past it.

Mitali sat with her hands around her chai cup. Looking at the door.

Tulsi waited. Let the table find its breath — Shobha saying something to Daksha Chachi, the remaining children redirected, the morning slowly resuming its shape.

Then she looked across at Mitali.

Tulsi: Bandhej ja rahi hoon. Saade nau baje. Agar free ho toh drop kar dogi mujhe?

Mitali looked up. The specific expression of someone who has been bracing for one thing and has received another entirely.

Mitali: Ji. Kar doongi.

Mihir from his end of the table watched this exchange with growing alarm. Then took his phone and messaged his office: Will reach late today - reschedule the 10 am meeting to 11 am.

-----

The car pulled out of Shantiniketan’s gate at nine thirty-five.

Mitali drove the way she did most things these days — carefully, with the particular attention of someone who is aware of being observed even when no one is watching. The morning traffic finding its shape around them. Mumbai doing what Mumbai did.

Tulsi sat in the passenger seat and looked at the road ahead.

They had been driving for perhaps ten minutes — the silence between them not uncomfortable exactly, but not yet settled — when Tulsi asked it. Not turning to look at her. Just — into the road ahead.

Tulsi: Ritik ke liye — sach mein kuch feel hota hai tumhe? Pyaar? Kabhi bhi?

Mitali’s hands stayed where they were on the wheel.

She did not answer immediately. Tulsi did not press. The traffic signal ahead turning amber, then red. Mitali brought the car to a stop.

Outside, the city doing its Saturday morning things — a chai stall, a man with a newspaper, two children on a cycle. Ordinary.

Then, without looking at her:

Mitali: Nahi jaanti.

A beat.

Mitali: Matlab — honestly? Nahi jaanti. Main ne kabhi kisi se pyaar nahi kiya. Sirf apne aap se kiya — woh bhi zyaada nahi. Aur ab — Timsy se kuch hone laga hai. Bas.

She said it the way you say things when you have stopped rehearsing them — flat, without decoration, the specific honesty of someone who has run out of the energy required for anything else.

Mitali: Meri mom aur Maasi ne kabhi sikhaya hi nahi. Kisi se kaise pyaar karte hain. Kuch bhi nahi sikhaya — bas yeh ki kya haasil hai, kaise karna hai, kis se karna hai.

The signal still red. The city outside still moving.

Tulsi: Koi baat nahi.

Said quietly. Not as comfort exactly — not the hollow reassurance of someone filling silence. Just — as fact. The way you acknowledge something real without making it larger than it needs to be.

Tulsi: Waqt sab theek kar deta hai. Jo nahi seekha — seekha jaa sakta hai. Agar seekhna ho.

Mitali said nothing. But something in her hands on the wheel shifted — fractionally, the specific release of a person who has said a true thing and has not been punished for it.

The signal turned green.

-----

They were perhaps five minutes from Bandhej when the car slowed at another signal. Outside, between the stopped vehicles, a girl was moving — twelve, perhaps thirteen, a basket over one arm, single roses wrapped in newspaper. She stopped at each window with the particular patience of a child who has learned not to expect yes.

She reached their window.

Tulsi looked at the roses. Then at the girl. Then she rolled down the glass and took one. Handed the girl the money without counting it — more than asked, she did not check.

She held the rose for a moment.

Then turned and held it out to Mitali.

Tulsi: Happy Valentine’s Day.

Mitali looked at it.

For a moment she simply looked at it — the rose in Tulsi’s hand, held out without ceremony, without the particular weight of meaning that could have been attached to it and had not been. Just a rose. Just the day.

She took it.

Then — before the signal changed, before the moment could close — she turned to the girl who was still at the window, still hoping. Held out her hand. The girl gave her a rose. Mitali gave her money.

She held the rose.

Then held it out to Tulsi.

Mitali: Happy Valentine’s Day.

A beat. Then, quietly — testing the word, the way you test ground you are not sure will hold:

Mitali: Maa. Bol sakti hoon?

Tulsi looked at her.

Mitali: Aapko — maa bol sakti hoon?

Tulsi: Bilkul.

Simple. No ceremony. The word given the way it should be given — without making the asking feel too large, without diminishing it either.

A moment.

Then Tulsi, almost to herself, looking back at the road:

Tulsi: Waise — yeh jo saas bahu ka rishta hota hai na. Woh kai baar — kai baar couple ke pyaar se bhi gehra hota hai. Apne experience se keh rahi hoon.

She was not looking at Mitali when she said it. She was looking at the road, at the city moving around them, at the ordinary Saturday morning doing its ordinary things. Her mind replaying the memories of her changing relationship with Savita.

Mitali sat with the rose in her hand and the word *maa* still warm in her mouth and did not say anything.

The signal changed.

The car moved forward.

-----

Ritik was quiet for most of the drive back.

Not the quiet of someone who had nothing to say — the opposite. The particular quiet of someone who has too much and is managing it carefully, the way he had been managing most things for the past two years. He drove the way he always drove — steady, unhurried, the city thinning out as they moved toward Shantiniketan.

Tulsi watched the road.

She had learned, over twenty-six years of being his mother, when to speak and when to wait. She waited.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes in when she asked.

Tulsi: Ritik — Mitali ke baare mein kya sochta hai tu?

His jaw tightened. Fractionally. She saw it.

Ritik: Kya sochna hai.

Tulsi: Yeh nahi pooch rahi. Yeh pooch rahi hoon ki — kuch feel hota hai? Kabhi bhi?

A long pause.

Ritik: Nahi, Maa. Kuch nahi. Kabhi nahi tha. Aaj bhi nahi hai.

He said it without anger — just the flat exhaustion of a man stating something he has known for a long time and has stopped hoping will change.

Tulsi: Toh phir — Timsy?

Something crossed his face. A complicated thing — not quite grief, not quite anger. The expression of a man recounting something he would prefer not to recount.

Ritik: Woh uska drama tha. Usne mujhe feel karaaya ki main kuch hoon. Shuru mein — ek baar ek insaan ki tarah treat kiya usne mujhe. Toh main — main samjha ki shayad kuch hai. Phir Timsy aayi aur phir woh wapas pahle jaise ho gayi. Apni asli wali.

He stopped.

Ritik: Woh poora plan tha. Uska aur uski uss Noina Maasi ka. Ghar mein permanent jagah chahiye thi — toh bachcha karo. Zyaada safe. Zyaada pakka.

The city outside. The evening light settling over Mumbai the way it did — the particular gold of a February Saturday coming to a close.

Tulsi: Koi aur hai? Teri life me? Kisi ko like karta hai?

He was quiet for a moment.

In the silence, a face arrived — briefly, the way things arrive when they have not been summoned. Munni. Not Munni anymore — IAS - Collector Manjuri Sinha, the woman who sat across government tables from him now with the specific composure of someone who has built herself from the ground up. He had not looked for her. She had simply been there, where his work took him, and he had sat across from her and felt — something. The specific something he had not felt in his own house in years.

He had not done anything with it. He did not intend to.

Ritik: Nahi.

Flat. Final.

Tulsi accepted this without pressing.

Then, after a moment:

Tulsi: Toh kya — Mitali ko ek mauka nahi de sakta?

The jaw tightened again. This time it stayed.

Ritik: Maa. Mauka diya tha. Usne kya kiya mauke ka — woh pata hai na aapko. Yeh sab strategy thi. Uski aur Noina ki. Aur ab aap mujhe bol rahe ho ki—

Tulsi: Maine usse ek choice di thi, Ritik. Kuch din pahle. Usne family member ki tarah rehna chuna. Khud se chuna — koi pressure nahi tha.

Ritik: Toh? Iska matlab kya hai? Ki mujhe choice nahi? Ki main bhi —

He stopped himself. Took a breath.

Ritik (quieter, but with an edge that had been building all day): Maa — aap mujhpe apna decision kyun thop rahi hain? Mujhe choice kyun nahi hai ki main rehna chahta hoon uske saath ya nahi?

Tulsi: Main decision nahi thop rahi—

Ritik: Toh kya kar rahi hain? Main seedha pooch raha hoon.

Tulsi: Main sirf request kar rahi hoon ki uss ghar mein uske saath co-exist kar le. Bas. Koi rishta nahi, koi—

Ritik: Maa woh Noina ka mohra hai. Thi. Rahegi.

Tulsi: Mera Vishwas kar — ab nahi hai.

Ritik: Main nahi maanta. Aur agar phir usne kuch kiya toh? Agar phir—

Tulsi: Agar tujhe aisa kuch dikhta hai — bina kisi doubt ke — toh mujhe bata dena. Main vaada karti hoon — usi kshan use jaana hoga. Lekin jab tak aisa kuch nahi hai—

Ritik: Toh jab tak aisa kuch nahi hai main usse cordially treat karun? Yeh keh rahi hain aap?

Tulsi: Haan. Bas itna.

He was quiet for a moment. Then, with the particular difficulty of someone about to say something he had not wanted to say:

Ritik: Maa. Aap mujhe woh kehne pe majboor kar rahe ho jo main nahi kehna chahta tha.

Tulsi: Toh bejijhak keh. Jo bhi kehna hai.

He drove for a moment in silence. The Shantiniketan gates visible now in the distance.

Then:

Ritik: Tulsi and Mihir Virani. The iconic couple. Forever in love couple. Sab jaante hain. Sabne dekha hai. Sabne example diya hai. Aap dono mein jo tha — woh real tha. Poori duniya ne dekha. Aur aaj bhi hai — woh bhi poori duniya dekh sakti hai, agar dekhna chahe.

He paused.

Ritik: Lekin pair bhi aap nahi kar paa rahi. Maafi nahi de paa rahi. Ya jo bhi hai — jo bhi roke hue hai aapko - I know I’m not in a position to understand it. Aur main nahi keh raha aap galat hain, Maa. Main sach mein nahi keh raha.

He pulled into the gate. Stopped the car.

Ritik: Bas yeh soch raha hoon — agar itna pyaar hone ke baad bhi yeh itna mushkil hai — toh main kahan se shuru karun? Jahan se kuch tha hi nahi?

He turned off the engine.

The gate. The garden. Shantiniketan in the evening light.

Tulsi sat with it.

She said nothing.

After a moment she opened the door. Got out. Walked to the entrance without looking back.

-----

She did not speak to anyone.

She passed through the living room — Shobha saying something, the children somewhere above, the usual evening sounds of the house finding its end-of-day shape — and she went to Baa’s room and closed the door.

She sat.

He had not said she was wrong. He had been careful about that, her youngest — had held that boundary even while saying the rest of it. *Main nahi keh raha aap galat hain.* And yet.

The thing about a true thing said by someone who loves you is that it arrives differently than the same thing said by anyone else. It does not bounce off. It simply — lands. And stays where it lands.

She sat with it staying.

-----

Dinner was quiet.

Not uncomfortably — just the particular quiet of a Saturday evening after a full day, the children tired, the adults finding their plates with the efficient attention of people who have been going since morning.

Mitali had set the table. Tulsi had noticed this without commenting on it.

She ate. Answered what was asked of her. Passed what needed passing.

Ritik sat beside her — had chosen the seat himself, which she noted. He ate for a few minutes in silence. Then, very quietly, so only she could hear:

Ritik: Maa. Sorry. Zyaada bol diya.

She looked at him.

Tulsi (equally quiet): Nahi bola. Sach bola.

He looked at her. Something in his face — the specific relief of a child who has said a hard thing to his mother and has not lost her.

Tulsi: Mujhse naraaz mat ho. Main tujhse naraaz nahi hoon.

He nodded. Once.

They finished dinner.

-----

The house settled slowly.

The children first — Akshay already half asleep at the table, carried up by Angad. Madhvi and the girls following with the particular reluctance of five year olds who have decided they are not tired and are visibly wrong. Then the adults in ones and twos, the familiar nightly unwinding. Doors closing. The house finding its quiet.

She sat at the desk in Baa’s room.

Ritik’s words were still there — not painfully, just present, the way true things stay present after they have been said. *Agar itna pyaar hone ke baad bhi yeh itna mushkil hai.* She was not running from it. She was sitting with it, the way she had learned to sit with difficult things — directly, without the managed distance she used to maintain.

She looked at the planner. The petal inside it.

Tomorrow was Sunday.

She had not planned it this way — or had planned it the way she planned most things she did not want to examine too closely, the practical layer arriving first and the real reason underneath it. Saturday night. No Bandhej for her tomorrow. No office for him tomorrow. No reason to be anywhere at any particular hour. No reason to leave early if the evening ran long. Enough time tomorrow to process the talk if she could survive it in the first place. If she couldn’t? Well, so be it!

No more procrastinating.

She looked at the time.

Then she got up. Left her files on the desk. All of them.

And went to the balcony.

-----

He was already there.

She had not expected otherwise — he was always there before her, the particular punctuality of a man who had decided that waiting was the one thing he was entitled to do and intended to do it properly. The kettle. The cups. The small lamp casting its usual circle of light.

He reached for the kettle when he heard her at the door.

Tulsi: Thodi der baad.

He set the kettle down.

She came in. Sat. The lamp between them, the garden below, the February night doing what it did. No files. He had noticed — she saw him notice, the fractional shift of attention, and then the careful return to neutral.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Then she looked at him.

Tulsi: Mitali par bharosa kiya ja sakta hai. Ab. Jo khatra tha — woh nahi hai. Toh jab main uske saath hoon — peeche aane ki zaroorat nahi hai.

He went still.

Not guiltily — just with the specific stillness of a man who has been seen doing something he had not announced and is now deciding how to respond to being seen.

Mihir: Tumhe pata tha.

Not a question.

Tulsi: Haan.

A beat. He looked at the garden.

Mihir: Mitali par itna bharosa kaise kar sakti ho? Noina ki—

Tulsi: Main jaanti hoon jo jaanti hoon. Aur mera Vishwas karo — ab woh Noina ka mohra nahi hai.

He looked at her. The particular look of a man who wants to push back and is weighing whether he has earned the right to.

He had not. And he knew it.

-----

He was quiet for a moment. Then:

Mihir: Theek hai. Tumhara judgment — tumhara judgment kabhi galat nahi raha. Pehle bhi nahi tha.

He said it simply. Not as a compliment. As a fact he was acknowledging, the way you acknowledge a debt that has been outstanding for a long time.

He looked at the garden.

Mihir: Angad aur Mitali ki shaadi ke waqt — jab woh bhaag gaya tha. Main bahut gusse mein tha. Tumne kuch kehna chahaa tha. Mitali ke baare mein. Aur main — main nahi suna.

He stopped.

Mihir: Sab kuch tha mere paas us waqt — gussa, impulsiveness, Mitali, Suchitra aur Noina ki chinta, Virani khaandan ki izzat ke liye parwah — sab. Sirf woh nahi tha jo hona chahiye tha. Sunne ki akkal nahi thi.

A beat.

Mihir: I know it comes at least six and a half years too late. Lekin phir bhi. Agar ab bhi tum— agar batana chahti ho — toh bata sakti ho. Main sunuunga. Poori tarah.

She looked at him for a moment.

Tulsi: Ab baat mere chaahne aur naa chaahne ki nahi hai.

He waited.

Tulsi: Maine Mitali ko ek choice di thi. Kuch din pahle. Do options — ya toh iss ghar se chali jaao, apni aur Timsy ki security ke saath. Ya phir ruko — aur is family ka sach mein hissa bano. Usne rehna chuna. Khud se. Bina kisi dabaav ke.

He was listening. Fully.

Tulsi: Agar woh jaane ka faisla karti — toh main tumhe sab kuch bata deti. Jo jaanti hoon, jo dekha hai, jo samjha hai — sab. Lekin ab — ab jo woh reh rahi hai, is ghar mein, is family mein —

She paused.

Tulsi: Toh jo main jaanti hoon — woh mera haq nahi hai batane ka. Woh uski zindagi hai. Aur agar woh badal rahi hai toh uss badlaav ko mauka milna chahiye. Purani baaten khol ke nahi.

He sat with this for a moment.

Then, quietly:

Mihir: Theek hai.

Just that. No argument. No further question. The complete acceptance of a man who had once not listened and had learned — at considerable cost — what not listening looked like from the other side.

The silence settled.

The silence held for a moment longer.

Then she looked at him directly.

Tulsi: Kaho jo kehna hai. Main sun rahi hoon.

He received it without moving. The specific stillness of a man who has been waiting for these words for thirty-three days — longer, six years, longer than that — and now that they have arrived is sitting with the weight of them.

He looked at the garden.

Then back at her.

Then at the lamp.

She watched him — the particular quality of his discomfort, not weakness, just the specific difficulty of a man who has lived inside silence for so long that the invitation to speak has become almost harder than the silence itself. She knew this about him. Had always known it. Mihir Virani who could run boardrooms and manage crises and reduce opponents to silence with a single sentence — and who had never, in thirty-eight years of marriage, found it easy to say the true thing to her directly.

She reached over.

Turned off the lamp.

The balcony went dark — the garden below still visible in the ambient light of the city, the February night around them, but the specific exposure of the lamp gone. His face no longer fully visible. Hers no longer fully visible.

She heard him exhale. Fractionally. The specific release of a man who has been handed an easier path.

A moment.

Then — the sound of the lamp clicking back on.

She turned.

He had switched it back on himself. The light returning. And he had adjusted it — angled it, the way he had learned to angle things on this balcony, so that it fell fully on his face. His side. Directly, without apology.

Her side in the relative dark.

She looked at him.

He looked back.

The specific honesty of a man who had taken the easier path she had offered and then put it down. *I will not hide. You do not have to be visible while I am. But I will not hide.*

Something in her chest — the door, the one she had been sitting with all day, all thirty-three days — registered the weight of the hand on the other side of it.

She waited.

The lamp was on.

His face fully in the light. Hers in the relative dark.

She waited.

He looked at her for a moment — the specific look of a man who has arrived at the place he has been moving toward for a very long time and is now simply here, in it, with nowhere left to go but through.

Mihir: Mandira ke baad — jab tumne mujhe maaf kiya—

She drew a sharp breath.

Of everything she had prepared herself for — and she had prepared herself, had been preparing since she turned off the lamp and he turned it back on — she had not prepared for this. Not Mandira. Not that name, not that wound, not forty years ago. She had thought he would begin with Noina. With six years ago. With the photographs, the silence, the failures she could enumerate in her sleep.

Not Mandira.

And the breath she drew told her something she had not known until this moment — that the wound was still there. Forty years old and still there, somewhere beneath everything she had built on top of it, beneath thirty-eight years of marriage and children and Bandhej and the life she had made. Still there. Raw. The way old wounds are raw when they are pressed unexpectedly.

She had promised herself she would not speak. Would sit and listen and let him have his say — the full accounting, whatever it was, however long it took. She had made this promise to herself in Baa’s room and again on the way to the balcony and again when she sat down.

She broke it.

Tulsi: Tumhe lagta hai mere liye aasan tha?

The words arriving before she could stop them. Not angry — just the specific rawness of something that has been kept carefully and has slipped its keeping.

He did not answer immediately.

The silence held.

Then she heard herself continue — the words coming the way words come when a door has been opened and things have been waiting behind it for forty years:

Tulsi: Tumhe maaf karna? Tumhare saath phir se rishta shuru karna?

A pause. One second. The garden below. The February night.

Then — her voice different now, something underneath the composure giving way — raw, the specific rawness of a woman saying out loud for the first time something she has never said out loud:

Tulsi: Tumhare saath phir se bed share karna? Tumhare saath —

A second of a pause.

Tulsi: Yeh jaante hue ki tum kisi doosri aurat ke saath—

The sentence did not finish.

Her voice did not break dramatically — not a sob, not anything that announced itself. Just — the words stopped. The way words stop when the thing they are trying to say is still too large to be fully spoken after forty years.

The silence filled with what had not been said.

He did not look away.

She was not looking at him — her eyes somewhere on the garden, on the dark, on the middle distance where you look when you are trying to hold yourself together without appearing to hold yourself together.

But he was looking at her.

And what was in his eyes — she would have seen it if she had looked. She did not look. But it was there: the specific mirror of her breaking voice. Not pity. Not guilt exactly — though guilt was there too, the deep accumulated guilt of a man who has known for forty years what he cost her and has never been able to say it adequately. Something more than guilt. The specific pain of a man watching the woman he loves show him, for the first time, the exact shape of what forgiving him had meant. What it had taken from her. What she had carried, alone and quietly, for four decades and had never once made him carry with her.

He received it.

Did not flinch. Did not look at the garden. Did not reach for her.

Just — let it land. The way it should have landed forty years ago.

The silence held for a long moment.

Then:

Mihir: Tulsi — yeh mat samajhna ki main yeh impulsively keh raha hoon. Ya bina soche samjhe.

His voice quiet. Steady — not with the steadiness of someone suppressing emotion, but with the steadiness of someone who has done a great deal of thinking and has arrived somewhere firm.

Mihir: Yeh un cheezon mein se ek hai — jinke baare mein pichle chhe saalon mein, aur kuch mahino mein — maine baar baar socha hai. Baar baar.

A pause.

Then he continued — and what came now was not a speech, not a prepared thing, just the considered conclusion of six years of sitting alone with the truth of what he had done:

Mihir: Agar main tumhari jagah hota — aur tum meri — toh main tumhe maaf nahi kar paata. Itna zyaada pyaar karne ke bawajood bhi nahi. Main yeh clearly jaanta hoon apne baare mein.

He paused.

Mihir: Aur shayad — shayad agar tum ek do saal regret karti, toh main accept kar leta. Family ke liye. Pressure mein. Lekin maaf? Nahi. Aur taane — tumne mujhe ek baar bhi taana nahi maara. Ek baar bhi nahi. Main tumhari jagah hota toh ek mauka nahi chhodta. Ek bhi nahi.

Another pause. Longer.

Mihir: Aur Karan — tumne Karan ko apna beta maana. Apnaaya. Usse pyaar diya. Main tumhari jagah hota toh — tumhe usse milne tak nahi deta. Shaayad kabhi bhi nahi.

He stopped.

The garden below. The lamp. The February night fully arrived around them now.

Mihir: Toh mujhe kabhi andaza bhi nahi aayega. Main imagine bhi nahi kar sakta — ki tumhare liye kitna mushkil raha hoga. Kitna.

The last word said quietly. Not as punctuation. As the honest acknowledgment of a man who has reached the limit of his own comprehension and is naming that limit rather than pretending it isn’t there.

The silence after was different from all the silences before it.

She sat with it.

Then — without speaking, without looking at him — she reached for the kettle. Poured the chamomile into her cup. Both hands around it. Took it.

He watched her hands find the cup.

He stood.

Mihir: Abhi aaya.

He went inside.

She sat with the cup and the dark and the garden and the things that had just been said — the things that had been waiting forty years to be said and had finally, on a February night on a balcony in Shantiniketan, been said.

He came back.

A water jug. Two glasses. He set them on the tray quietly, without ceremony. Sat back down.

Poured a glass. Set it within her reach.

Did not speak.

The lamp between them. The garden below. The night doing what nights do when something significant has happened inside them — simply continuing, indifferent, steady.

-----

Note: A lot of thought goes into every written word so I request my readers to please tell me what actually works and what doesn’t! Please encourage me by posting reviews, feedback and comments - nothing can motivate me more that that. Thank you 🙏🏻

This song::

लफ़्ज़ों से जो था परे

खालीपन को जो भरे

कुछ तो था तेरे मेरे

दरमियाँ

रिश्ते को क्या मोड़ दूं

नाता ये अब तोड़ दूं

या फ़िर यूँ ही छोड़ दूं

दरमियाँ

बेनाम रिश्ता वो

बेचैन करता जो

हो ना सके जो बयां

दरमियाँ

दरमियाँ दरमियाँ दरमियाँ दरमियाँ

कुछ तो था तेरे मेरे

दरमियाँ दरमियाँ दरमियाँ कुछ तो था तेरे मेरे दरमियाँ