Chapter 38: Kiska Haq?
“Haan,” he said finally, his voice sternly even. “Aur mujhe nahi lagta maine kuch galat kiya.”
For a moment, Tulsi just looked at him — the flatness of his voice more infuriating than anger would have been, because anger she could have met. This calm certainty gave her nothing to push against.
“Nahi laga tumhe kuch galat kiya?”
Mihir didn’t quite seem to hear the edge in it. He was still somewhere inside his own reasoning, working it forward rather than back. “Jab Ritik ko sabse pehle collector office bheja tha,” he said, “tab Munni collector thi, mujhe pata bhi nahi tha. Aur Ritik aur Munni ke beech jo kuch pehle hua tha — woh toh kal hi pata chala mujhe.” He shook his head slightly, more at himself than at her. “Agar dono baatein pehle pata hoti, toh main woh kaam hi shuru mein Ritik ko nahi deta.”
Tulsi said nothing, watching him, not yet sure what she was watching build.
“Ab jab pata chal gaya hai,” Mihir went on, “toh jitni jaldi ho sake utni jaldi isse peeche hatna hi sahi hai. Woh dono zyaada nahi milen usi mein bhalaai hai.” A pause, and then, as if it were the most reasonable addendum in the world: “Aur jab woh ghar aaye, toh tum bhi dhyaan rakhna ki woh Ritik ke saath zyada time spend na kar paaye.”
Something in Tulsi went taut.
“Doodh peete bachche hain kya dono,” she said, “jo hum unhe haath pakad ke ek doosre se door kheench lenge?”
Mihir blinked, something in him catching up late to the size of what he’d just triggered. “Tulsi?”
“Aur na hi jab woh milte hain tab koi limit cross karte hain,” she went on, not slowing for him. “Toh kis basis par tum yeh keh rahe ho ki unhe door rakha jaaye?”
“Humne pichle saat saalon mein dekha hai,” Mihir said, “limits kab cross ho jaati hain, iska pata hi nahi chalta.”
A pause.
“Naa hi humari family ek aur upheaval seh sakti hai,” he said. “Let’s try our best not to rock the boat.”
“Fine,” Tulsi said. “Mat hone do boat ko rock. Chahe iske liye tumhe apne bete ko hi kyun na samundar mein fenkna pade — doobne do use.”
Mihir flinched, something in his face genuinely rattled for a second before he could gather it back. “Yeh — yeh kya keh rahi ho tum?” he said, the words coming out less certain than he wanted them to. “Itna extreme kyun ho rahi ho?”
“Main extreme ho rahi hoon?” Tulsi said. “Woh abhi depression se bahar nikla hai, Mihir. Aur tumhare ek unilateral faisle se tum use wapas usi jagah dhakel sakte the. Socho zara — agar usne phir se koi extreme step le liya toh?”
Mihir was still somewhere else entirely, still working through his own logic rather than hers. “Pehle uske paas bahut saari wajah thi aisa karne ki,” he said. “Sabse badi wajah — tum yahan nahi thi. Main yahan hoke bhi nahi tha. Mitali aur Ranvijay ke saath roz roz ke jhagde.” He shook his head, like he was reassuring himself as much as her. “Ab hum sambhal lenge.”
“Hum sambhal lenge?” Tulsi repeated, something incredulous cutting through her anger now. “Tumne unilaterally act karne se pehle sochne ya mere saath discuss karne ki zaroorat nahi samjhi, aur ab keh rahe ho hum sambhal lenge?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
“Isi liye toh maine pehle tumse yeh sab share hi nahi karti thi,” she said. “Isi liye main akele hi family ki mushkilein sambhalna seekh gayi thi. Lekin inn saalon mein Anjaar mein baar baar mann mein ye khayal aaya — shayad isi wajah se hum ek doosre se door hote gaye the, uss external factor ke humein alag karne se bhi pehle. Kyunki maine tumse kabhi kuch share nahi kiya, kyunki maine sab akele hi handle kiya.”
He looked at her helplessly, taken aback, as she continued, “Bangalore mein bhi tumne mujhse yehi kaha tha na — akele kuch mat uthana.”
A pause, and when she spoke again, something in her voice had gone quieter, and somehow that was worse than the shouting had been.
“Kal socha tha — agar tumhe bataoon, toh shayad hum saath milkar iska rasta nikalenge. Socha tha tum samjhoge baat ki gehrai ko.”
She looked at him. “Galat thi main. Hamari baat bhi poori nahi hui thi kal — na humne discuss kiya ki ise kaise handle karna hai, kuch bhi nahi — aur tumne phir bhi—”
“Tulsi, please yaar—”
“Pata hai sabse zyaada dukh kis baat ka hai?” she said, and something in her tone had shifted, gone somewhere colder and more precise, the words arriving slow like she was choosing each one against her better judgment. “Ki maine socha tum badal gaye ho. Ki ab tum—”
She stopped.
Whatever had been sitting at the end of that sentence, she didn’t let it out. She looked at him a moment longer, something unreadable passing over her face, and then she said, flat, final, “Iss waqt main kuch bhi kahoon, tum samjhoge nahi. Isliye behtar hai abhi aur baat hi na karein.”
She turned and went inside before he could answer, her footsteps quick and even on the balcony tiles, and did not look back.
He sat there a long time after she’d gone, the garden dark and unbothered below him, the house behind him gone quiet in the particular way it goes quiet when someone has just walked through it upset and everyone else has had the sense not to ask why.
It was only when he finally reached for his own cup, some automatic gesture from months of these nights, that he noticed hers.
Half-empty.
He didn’t remember her drinking it. He’d have sworn, if asked, that the cup had sat there the whole time, untouched, same as the rest of the evening had sat between them — abandoned the moment the fight began. But there it was, the level unmistakably lower than when he had set it down, and he understood, with a kind of ache that had nowhere to go, that at some point in the middle of all of it — the shouting, the anguish in her voice he still couldn’t understand the reason for, and the sentence she’d swallowed rather than say — her hand had found the cup anyway, and lifted it, and drunk, without her ever once deciding to.
Some habits, apparently, belonged to their relationship even when she didn’t.
His own cup sat exactly where it had been placed, chamomile gone flat and cold, a thin film settling on its surface. He looked at it for a while, and did not drink it, and did not know, entirely, why not — only that some nights the body kept faith when the rest of a man couldn’t, and other nights, like tonight, it simply didn’t have it in it to.
He carried both cups inside himself, later, rinsed them, and set them upside down on the rack to dry, and did not pause outside her room as he passed it to ascend the stairs.
-----
She was almost done with the kaada and tea when she heard him — the quiet, familiar weight of his footsteps on the stairs, then crossing toward the balcony, and something in her chest loosened before she’d even decided to let it.
She hadn’t been sure he’d come.
Some part of her — ten percent, maybe twenty, she couldn’t have said exactly — had spent the last hour bracing for an empty balcony instead. For silence stretched out over days instead of just one night. He’d come anyway, and she didn’t know yet whether that was a good sign or simply habit too old to break even now.
She finished pouring the kaada and tea, then carried the cups out on a tray.
He was already there, standing at the railing, not quite looking at the garden and not quite looking at her either. When their eyes met, neither of them reached for it — the *Jai Shree Krishna* that had become theirs these past weeks, small and automatic as breathing. Neither trusted their voice with even that much this morning. They only nodded, the barest acknowledgment, and sat.
They drank in silence. It sat between them differently than their usual silences did — not comfortable, not companionable, but not entirely hostile either. Somewhere underneath the unspoken anger, each of them was doing the same private arithmetic, looking at the other and reading, in the particular heaviness around the eyes, in the stiffness of how they held their cups, that neither of them had slept. And each of them, seeing it in the other, felt the small, specific guilt of knowing they’d caused at least some part of it.
It was Tulsi who finally spoke, her voice low, unsteady in a way that had nothing left of last night’s fire in it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Kal main shayad zyaada hi gusse mein thi.” A pause, her hands tightening slightly around her cup. “Lekin main bahut dari hui hoon, Mihir.”
He looked at her properly for the first time that morning.
“Jab exhibition mein Ritik ne apni nas kaat li thi,” she said, “tab main wahan akeli thi.”
It came slower than her words usually did, each piece of it costing her something to hand over.
“Venue khaali ho chuka tha tab tak. Sab log ja chuke the. Aur main — main chillati rahi, madad ke liye, aur der tak koi aaya hi nahi.” Her voice caught. “Mujhe samajh hi nahi aa raha tha kya karoon. Uska haath — itna khoon tha, Mihir, aur koi tha hi nahi wahan jo help kar sake use hospital le jaane mein. Main akeli thi. Bahut der baad koi aaya.”
The rest came apart on her before she could hold it together — the specific terror of that hour returning to her whole, undiminished by the months between then and now, and Mihir was across the small space between their chairs before she’d finished the sentence, pulling her into him, her kaada cup set aside forgotten as she broke against his shoulder in a way she hadn’t let herself break in front of anyone in a long time.
He held her, and for a while neither of them said anything at all. Her crying eased slowly, in stages, the way it does — a shudder, a stillness, another smaller shudder — until she was simply leaning into him, spent, listening to nothing more than his breathing and the garden waking up below them, ordinary and indifferent to everything that had just been said.
It was Tulsi who broke the quiet, her voice still thick, muffled slightly against his shoulder.
“Ek aur baat hai jo tumhe pata honi chahiye,” she said. “Kal shaam, jab Ritik mujhe ghar leke aa raha tha — usne kaha ki tumne collector office ka kaam usse leke Angad ko de diya. Aur usse laga ki shayad tumhe lagta hai Angad usse zyaada capable hai.”
She felt him go still beneath her.
“Usne yeh khud kaha?” Mihir asked, something genuinely caught off guard in his voice.
“Haan,” she said. “Uska woh purana inferiority complex wapas aata hua dikh raha hai.”
He didn’t answer that right away.
Something in his face had shifted — not quite guilt, not yet, but the beginning of a man recalculating a decision he’d been so certain of only a day ago.
They sat with that for a while, her still gathered against him, until her breathing had gone fully even again and the last of the morning chill had started to lift off the garden.
Mihir reached for the tray, and without quite thinking about it, picked up her cup of tea first and put it in her hands before he took his own. Then he settled back into his chair.
“Jab tum yahan nahi thi,” he said after a few sips of tea, quiet, “tum imagine bhi nahi kar sakti yeh family kya ban gayi thi, Tulsi.”
Tulsi looked at him, something guarded still sitting in her eyes even now, but underneath it, room enough to listen.
“Pari ka birthday tha,” he said. “Kuch mahine pehle — Ranvijay se ill-treat hone ke baad woh badal gayi thi. Usne socha shayad woh kar sakti hai jo tum kiya karti thi. Sabko bulaya dinner pe. Poori family ko, ek shaam ke liye ikattha karne ki koshish ki.”
Something in his voice had gone distant, the way it does when a man is watching a memory rather than the room around him.
“Kisi ko yaad hi nahi tha uska birthday. Mujhe bhi nahi.” He said it plainly, though it cost him to keep his voice steady. “Jab usne bataya, sabne bas — half-heartedly wish kiya. Aur uske kuch hi minuton mein, dining table ek battlefield ban gaya tha. Kis baat pe, mujhe yaad bhi nahi ab — bas itna yaad hai ki sab ek doosre pe chillane lage the, jaise ghar sirf isi liye bana ho.”
He was quiet a moment, his thumb moving absently along the rim of his cup.
“Maine dekha hai apni aankhon se, Tulsi — jab ghar mein koi center nahi hota, koi aisa jo sabko baandh ke rakhe, toh woh kitni jaldi tootne lagta hai. Kitni jaldi log ek doosre ke dushman ban jaate hain, chhoti chhoti baaton pe.”
He looked at her now, and there was something almost pleading underneath the steadiness he was trying to hold onto.
“Hamari family ko main dobara waise nahi dekh sakta, Tulsi.”
Tulsi’s hand found his on the table, resting there.
“Tum nahi dekhoge, Mihir.”
He looked up, something faintly confused crossing his face.
“Tum nahi dekhoge dobara woh sab,” she said again, steadier this time, meaning it as a promise.
He nodded slowly, something in him settling, accepting it the way a man accepts a hand extended toward an old wound.
“Lekin ab mujhe handle karne do,” she said.
Something in her, even as she said it, registered exactly what she was doing — the same pattern she’d wept over only minutes ago, picked back up and put on again like a coat she knew better than to wear. She said it anyway. Somewhere between last night’s fight and this morning’s kaada, without quite deciding to, she had already decided this much: whatever came next with Ritik, with Munni, with Mitali, she would carry it herself. Not because she didn’t trust him to care. Because she no longer trusted him, not yet, not after last night, to carry it with her without breaking something in the carrying.
Mihir’s hand went very still under hers.
He didn’t say anything. Something had tightened in him the instant the words left her mouth — the shape of them too close to what he’d heard from her last night, *isi liye toh maine pehle tumse yeh sab share hi nahi karti thi* — but she was already moving past it, and he let her, not trusting yet what would come out if he opened his mouth this early in the morning.
“Munni aur Mitali se baat shuru ho gayi hai meri,” she went on. “Aur Ritik se karne hi wali thi, lekin—”
She didn’t finish it. She didn’t need to.
Mihir understood exactly what she’d stopped herself from saying — *lekin kal tumne use upset kar diya, aur mujhe uss mood mein use baat karna theek nahi laga.*
He said nothing to that either. Instead, when he finally spoke, it came out sideways, reaching for something else to stand on rather than the thing actually sitting in his chest.
”Achha,” he said. “Toh isiliye Munni uss din achanak chali gayi thi?” A short, humourless nod. “Achha hai. Woh samajhdaari se khud hi door rahe.”
He was quiet a beat, and then went on, the thought arriving with its own gathering momentum, carrying him further from the thing he wasn’t ready to say. “Aur achha hai tum Ritik aur Mitali ko samjhaao ki unhe apni shaadi pe kaam karna chahiye. Kam se kam Timsy ki khaatir hi sahi.” He looked at her. “Mitali toh ab badal bhi gayi hai. Mujhe samajh nahi aata unki shaadi kyun nahi chal sakti ab.”
“Tum phir shuru ho gaye,” Tulsi said, something sharp coming back into her voice. “Nahi, maine Munni se aisa kuch kaha hi nahi, aur kabhi kahoongi bhi nahi. Hum na use control kar sakte hain, na Ritik ko, na Mitali ko. Main sirf yeh jaanne ki koshish kar rahi hoon ki teeno ke mann mein, khaaskar Ritik ke mann mein, kya hai.”
That was enough to finally break whatever had been holding him back.
“Handle karne do,” Mihir said, drawing his hand back from under hers, something flat and bitter in it now, the words he’d swallowed a minute ago finally out. “Phir wohi.”
He shook his head. “Ek toh meri samajh mein nahi aa raha ki isme handle karna hi kya hai tumhe. Jaise chal raha hai, chalne kyun nahi deti?”
“Aur agar Ritik kahe ki ab bhi Munni ke liye feelings hain toh?” he said, before she could answer that.
“Toh main sochungi,” Tulsi said, the words coming out sharper than she meant them to, almost as if she alone held the final say in it.
The words landed on him very differently than she’d meant them to. This family had survived divorces before — he’d watched more than one of them from close enough to count the scars they left, watched what they did to children, to the shape of a house, to the years after.
He heard, in main sochungi, the door to all of it swinging open again.
“Matlab?” His voice had gone tight. “Tum divorce dilaaogi?”
Tulsi stared at him, thrown — she hadn’t thought that far, hadn’t thought anywhere near that far, and the leap from her uncertain, unfinished sentence to that word sat between them now like something neither of them had put there on purpose.
“Tum—”
“Papa!”
Pari’s voice tore through the house from somewhere inside, sharp with panic, and both of them were on their feet before either had time to decide to move.
They reached the base of the stairs together to find Pari already halfway down them, Garima gathered against her chest, shivering, her small face flushed and miserable, her arms hanging limp around Pari’s neck.
“Papa, Garu ko raat se bukhaar hai,” Pari said, her voice breaking with the effort of half-running down the stairs while holding her. “Doctor ka phone nahi lag raha hai.”
Tulsi reached Garima first, her hand going straight to the child’s forehead, while behind her Mihir was already moving toward the console table for the car keys.
“Raat ko hi bataana tha na humko,” Tulsi said, her voice tight with worry. “Call kar deti mujhe.”
“Raat ko dawai de di thi, aur woh so gayi thi, Mumma,” Pari said, still trying to catch her breath. “Raat ko itna tez bhi nahi tha bukhaar. Maine thandi pattiyaan bhi rakhi thi uske maathe pe.”
Tulsi’s hand was still against Garima’s forehead, and whatever relief she might have found in Pari’s explanation didn’t reach her face.
“Lekin abhi toh bahut tez hai,” she said.
Pari’s face crumpled slightly, guilt sliding into it. “Haan — mujhe ek do ghante ke liye neend aa gayi thi beech mein. Abhi jab ise shivering shuru hui, tab meri aankh khuli.”
Mihir was back by then, keys in hand. “Chalo.”
The hall had filled by then — Vrinda, Shobha, Damini, Angad, Mitali, Gautam, the children rubbing sleep out of their eyes, everyone pulled downstairs by the sound of Pari’s shout some moments earlier, everyone except Ritik.
Tulsi was already moving toward the door behind Mihir and Pari when it caught her — the absence, sharp and sudden, like a missed step.
She turned. “Ritik kahan hai?”
“So raha hoga abhi tak,” Shobha said, glancing toward the stairs.
Tulsi’s eyes swept the hall once more, quick, unsatisfied by that answer, before landing back on the two of them. “Shobha, Damini — tum dono mein se koi ek jao.”
“Main jaati hoon,” Shobha said immediately, already reaching for her dupatta.
The car pulled out of the gate a couple of minutes later — Mihir driving, Pari beside him with Garima wrapped in a shawl against her, Shobha in the back seat already dialing the pediatrician again — and the sound of it faded down the lane, leaving the house behind it strangely hushed.
-----
Tulsi stood in the hall a moment longer than she needed to, the rest of the family drifting back toward the kitchen, toward the day resuming around her, and then she turned and went up the stairs instead.
Ritik’s door was closed. She knocked once, softly, and pushed it open.
He stirred at the small sound, his eyes opening slowly, still heavy with sleep.
“Abhi tak so raha hai?” Tulsi asked, stepping in. “Tabiyat toh theek hai? Headache kaisa hai ab?”
“Hai abhi bhi,” he said, his voice thick. “Raat ko der tak neend nahi aayi, isiliye time pe aankh nahi khuli.”
“Aisa hai toh thodi der aur so le,” she said, softening. “Aaram se uthna, jaldi nahi hai koi.”
He nodded faintly and let his eyes close again, and Tulsi stood there a moment longer, watching him settle back, before she stepped out and pulled the door shut behind her.
She nearly walked straight into Timsy.
“Papa aaj mujhe jagaane nahi aaye?” Timsy said, her small face already gathering toward a pout, Mitali just behind her, one hand on her shoulder, trying gently to steer her back down the corridor.
Tulsi crouched to her level. “Beta, tumhare papa ko headache hai. Unhe thoda aaram karne dete hain, okay?”
Timsy considered this with the grave seriousness only a five-year-old can bring to bad news, then nodded. “Okay, Baa.”
Over her head, a look passed between Tulsi and Mitali — Mitali’s eyes asking, unmistakably, *kya hua Ritik ko?*, and Tulsi’s answering just as silently: *chinta ki baat nahi hai.*
-----
Mihir paced a small stretch of the clinic corridor, his phone loose in his hand, unable to sit still in the row of plastic chairs lined up against the wall.
Pari’s face kept surfacing in his mind — how small she’d looked in the car, Garima gathered against her, her voice cracking over something as simple as a fever. Two marriages, both of them ended badly enough that she still flinched sometimes at things that had nothing to do with either man. And here she was now, a single parent in every sense that mattered, holding a sick child alone in a hospital hallway at seven in the morning.
*Right now*, he thought, *hum yahan hain uske saath. Main hoon, Tulsi hai. Lekin humare baad?* The rest of them have their own children to raise, their own lives pulling them in a dozen directions — who would be left standing where he was standing now, the moment it actually mattered? He didn’t want that for Timsy. Didn’t want her growing up split between two houses, ferried between custody weekends, learning early what it meant to belong fully to neither parent.
And Tulsi seemed unmovable on it.
That was the maddening part — when Tulsi decided something, she simply executed it, and more often than not, whatever she’d decided turned out, months later, to have been exactly right. He couldn’t pretend otherwise; he’d watched it happen too many times to keep believing his own doubts over her instincts. But this — this, he was certain, was the one time she had it wrong.
His phone rang. Tulsi.
“Haan,” he said, the word coming out harder than he meant it to. “Woh andar gaye hain. Doctor examine kar raha hai.”
“Acha,” she said.
A beat.
“Ritik theek hai?” he asked.
“Ab bhi headache ki complain kar raha hai,” Tulsi said. “Raat ko soya nahi theek se.”
She meant nothing by it — a simple update, nothing more — but it landed on him like an accusation anyway, another small weight added to everything already sitting on his chest this morning.
“Doctor bataye toh call karta hoon,” he said, and ended the call before she could say anything else.
-----
He didn’t call her back. It was Shobha, half an hour later, who finally rang to say the doctor had checked Garima over — a viral fever, nothing serious, the shivering more from the fever spiking overnight than anything to worry about — and that they’d be home in twenty minutes with a prescription and a very cranky, overtired child in tow.
By the time they returned, breakfast was already laid out on the table, the household reassembled around it in its usual weekday rush, if a little slower than most Tuesdays. Ritik had come down freshly woken, hair still flat on one side, clearly not having showered, folding himself into his chair with the particular quiet of someone still nursing a headache. Pari settled in beside him a little later with Garima balanced on her lap, the child fussy and clingy in the way overtired, feverish children get, refusing to be put down, refusing, just as firmly, to eat anything anyone offered her.
Tulsi lingered in the kitchen longer than she needed to.
Kamla had already carried out the last of the dishes — the poha, the chutney, the tall glasses of milk for the children — and there was nothing left for Tulsi to do in there except stand near the stove a moment longer, gathering herself for a walk of perhaps fifteen feet that felt, this morning, considerably longer.
She didn’t know which Mihir was waiting at that table.
The one from the balcony, who had held her while she broke apart over a memory she’d never said out loud to anyone. Or the one from twenty minutes later, hand drawn back from under hers, voice gone flat and bitter over a word she hadn’t even finished saying. She had learned, once, a long time ago, to read the weather in him before she ever got close enough to feel it — and this morning she had no reading at all. Only the memory of both Mihirs, sitting inside the same hour, and no way of knowing which one had survived the drive to the doctor and back.
There had been a time, years ago, when Mihir hadn’t seen any reason to keep their fights between the two of them. He’d been openly hostile to her at that very table, in front of whoever happened to be sitting at it — a sharp word flung across breakfast, a cutting remark that left the room quiet and everyone’s eyes carefully on their plates. He had never seemed to feel the need to hold it back until they were alone. And it was always Tulsi who was left afterward to manage what the fight left behind — the children’s questions, the staff’s careful silences, Baa’s worried glances, Maa’s cutting taunts, the whole house recalibrating itself around whatever had just been said out loud. That was the part she dreaded most this morning, more than the fight itself. Not what he might say to her. What he might say in front of everyone, and what she would then have to quietly put back together once he’d said it.
She finally made herself walk out, her steps smaller and more careful than she would have liked to admit.
The table was in its usual late-breakfast disorder — Garima refusing a spoonful of poha with the absolute conviction only a feverish five-year-old can summon, Pari coaxing her without much hope, Ritik hunched slightly over his own plate, eating without much appetite, his hair still uncombed. Mihir was already seated, a newspaper folded beside his plate, untouched.
He looked up as she approached.
Something in her braced without her permission — the old, worn readiness for a sharp word, a pointed silence, anything.
He pulled her chair out.
He didn’t look at her while he did it, didn’t make anything of it at all — it was the same unthinking motion he’d have made on any other morning of the last several weeks, chair angled just enough, timed just right for her to sit without breaking stride. There was still something unyielding sitting behind his eyes, some remnant of the balcony’s unfinished argument that hadn’t gone anywhere. But his hand had pulled the chair out anyway, before whatever was still hard in him had a chance to weigh in on the decision.
Tulsi sat, slowly, something in her chest loosening by a fraction she didn’t examine too closely.
Beside her, Pari was still trying to coax another spoonful into Garima, her voice fraying slightly at the edges. “Beta, thoda sa khaa le, medicine khaali pet nahi de sakte.”
Garima only turned her face further into Pari’s shoulder.
“Garu,” Tulsi tried, leaning toward her, “paratha banaoon tere liye? Khaayegi?”
Garima shook her head, small and stubborn, without even looking up.
“Apple khilaao use, bina poochhe,” Mihir said, not looking up from his tea, his voice perfectly even, perfectly ordinary — the voice of a man commenting on nothing more than a child’s fussiness. “Bukhaar mein apple khaa leti hai, bina kisi fuss ke. Hamesha se hi aisa hai uska.”
To anyone else at the table, it would have sounded like nothing at all — a grandfather’s small, practical observation, offered easily, the kind of thing that passed between two parents or grandparents a hundred times over the years. Nothing in his tone gave away that anything at all sat unresolved between them.
Only Tulsi caught it — the eyes that didn’t quite meet hers as he said it, the faint hardness still sitting behind them, unmoved by whatever ease he’d let into his voice. He could still perform the ordinary. That much, apparently, hadn’t changed. But the ease was only on the surface, and she was sitting close enough to see the difference.
She nodded and reached for the fruit bowl.
Tulsi reached for the knife, pulling the apple toward her, and began to cut, her hands moving through motions too familiar to require thought.
*Bina kisi fuss ke*, he’d said. So easy, so ordinary, like a man simply passing on something useful about his granddaughter. It had genuinely surprised her — that steadiness, when she’d been so sure, walking to this table, that she was walking toward exactly the opposite. But she couldn’t quite let herself believe it yet. Not fully. Some part of her kept waiting for the crack to show — for this calm to be nothing more than the held breath before the old Mihir broke through it, the one who wouldn’t have cared who was sitting at this table when he finally said what he actually meant.
She could already see how it would go, if it went that way. The sudden sharpness in his voice. Vrinda’s eyes dropping to her plate. Mitali and Damini going carefully quiet, the way people do when they’ve decided not to notice something. And her
children — Shobha, Angad, Ritik, Pari, Gautam — looking up with that same old, familiar question sitting unspoken in their eyes: *phir se kya ho gaya Papa aur Maa ke beech?*
She had spent years learning how to walk into the aftermath of exactly that kind of morning, smoothing it over, absorbing the family’s unspoken questions so no one else had to carry them. She didn’t want to do it again today. Yet, she was almost sure, she would have to, any minute now.
The knife slipped.
She didn’t feel it. Her hand kept moving, the apple kept turning, her mind still somewhere back on the balcony, on his hand drawn out from under hers, on the words *phir wohi*— and it was only the sudden, sharp sound of her name that stopped her.
“Tulsi!”
She went completely still.
For one full, suspended second, everything in her braced at once — every year of learning to read this exact tone, every old instinct that had once kept her alert at this very table, told her, with total certainty: This is it. Exactly as she feared.
“Dhyaan kahan hai tumhara?”
The words landed on her before anything else did, sharp enough that for that one suspended second she heard only the old shape of them, the accusation she’d been braced for since she’d walked into the kitchen this morning.
And then she saw where his eyes actually were.
Not on her face. On her hand.
He was already moving before she’d fully registered the blood — a thin, bright line of it along the side of her finger, staining the pale flesh of the apple — his hand closing around her wrist and pulling her hand toward him, and before either of them had decided anything at all, her finger was in his mouth.
There was no thought in it. Not for that first instant. It was simply his body doing the thing it had always done, some old, wordless language of care so deeply worn into him that it moved faster than his mind could follow it there.
And then his mind did catch up.
It arrived in the smallest possible freeze — barely a breath, nothing anyone else at the table would have caught — a flicker of *what did I just*— rising up from somewhere he didn’t examine too closely. And with it, unbidden, the memory of two days ago. That gesture. Noina. The meaning she’d tried to force onto something he’d never understood himself.
But he didn’t pull away.
He looked at her — really looked, finally, the hardness gone out of his eyes so completely and so fast that it left no trace of having been there at all — and whatever confusion had risen in him settled just as quickly, because the answer, staring back at him from her startled, wide eyes, was so obvious it needed no examining. He hadn’t been thinking of anyone. He’d only seen her hurt, and moved.
He drew her finger from his mouth slowly, still holding her hand in his, and turned it gently toward the light to examine the cut.
“Kamla,” he said, his voice rough, not taking his eyes off her hand, “first aid box le aana, jaldi.”
When the box arrived he cleaned the cut himself, unhurried, his fingers steady around hers, dabbing antiseptic against the small wound with a care that had nothing rough left in it at all.
“Dard ho raha hai?” he asked, not looking up, his voice gone soft in a way it hadn’t been all morning.
Tulsi didn’t answer right away.
She only sat there, watching his bent head, his careful hands, and understood, with a kind of ache that had nowhere yet to go, that whatever argument still sat unfinished between them, some other part of him — older, wordless, entirely hers — hadn’t been party to a single word of it.
As he briefly looked up at her face, she realized that he was still waiting for her response on whether it was paining.
“Nahi,” she said, so quietly it was barely more than breath.
Mihir didn’t seem entirely convinced. His hand dived back into the first-aid box properly, sorting through it until he found the strip of bandaids, working one free.
“Bandaid nahi chahiye,” Tulsi said, glancing at the small cut. “Itni si toh kharoch hai.”
“Tum paani mein haath daalna toh avoid karogi nahi,” he said, peeling the wrapper off, not looking up. There was something almost exasperated in it, fond and worn thin at the same time, the tone of a man who had watched her do this — set herself aside, always, for whatever needed doing — more times than he could count. “Kam se kam bandaid toh lagane do.”
It wasn’t a request. She recognized the register even now, even softened as it was — the same certainty he’d carried into last night’s argument, only turned, this once, entirely toward her.
Tulsi didn’t argue. She let her hand stay where it was, watching his fingers work the small strip into place over the cut, smoothing it down with more care than the injury really needed, and said nothing at all.
Around them, the rest of the table had carried on quietly, the small drama at its center absorbed into the ordinary business of breakfast without anyone needing to remark on it. Shobha caught Pari’s eye and gestured, wordless, toward the apple plate still sitting half-cut in front of Tulsi. Pari understood at once, sliding it gently across the table toward her, and Shobha took over the cutting herself, separating out the pieces stained faintly pink and setting them aside.
Garima, worn down at last by hunger or simply the sight of a fresh, unbloodied slice, finally ate without protest. The medicine that followed took considerably more coaxing — a full glass of milk with more chocolate syrup added, several bribes, and Pari’s most persuasive voice — before it went down.
Ritik left for the school run soon after, still unshowered, ferrying the remaining three children out to the car with the particular weary patience of a man doing something entirely by rote. He was back within the half hour, the house settling, by then, into the quieter rhythm of its late morning.
Angad was already by the door, keys in hand, when Ritik walked back in. “Chal, taiyaar ho ja jaldi,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Aaj already thoda late ho gaye hain office ke liye.”
Ritik didn’t move toward the stairs. “Bhai, aap jao,” he said, his voice flat, disillusioned in a way that had nothing to do with tiredness. “Main aaj nahi aa raha.”
Angad paused, looking at him properly.
“Aur waise bhi,” Ritik added, after a beat, not quite meeting his eyes, “kuch khaas kaam bhi hai nahi.”
Mihir, still at the table, had caught both the words and the tone beneath them, and something in him stilled.
“Kaam kaise nahi hai, Ritik?” he said, getting up. “Kal hi batane wala tha tujhe, lekin phir meetings mein reh gaya.” He came around the table. “Agle mahine woh international conference hai na — textile giants ka, bade players sab attend karte hain. Uski taiyaari karni hai tujhe.”
Ritik looked up, surprised despite himself.
“Koi baat nahi,” Mihir went on, “abhi bhi headache hai toh dopahar ko aa jaana.”
He glanced at Angad and gave him a small nod. “Tu nikal, milte hain office mein.”
“Bilkul, Papa,” Angad said easily, already turning for the door, entirely unbothered — if anything, faintly pleased on Ritik’s behalf, the way a man is pleased by news that has nothing to do with him. “Aap sahi keh rahe hain, iss conference ke liye Ritik hi sahi rahega.” And with that he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him, leaving the two of them alone in the hall.
Mihir put a hand on Ritik’s shoulder and steered him gently toward the quieter corner near the staircase, out of earshot of the kitchen.
“Iss baar main soch raha tha tu hi jaaye — akela. Virani Industries ko represent karne.”
Ritik hesitated, something clearly still sitting behind the surprise. “Hum dono kyun nahi jaa rahe, jaise pichle kuch saalon se jaate the?”
Mihir hesitated too, visibly, some of his certainty giving way to something almost sheepish, a man caught out by his own reasoning before he’d even finished offering it. “Itne saalon baad abhi toh teri Maa ka saath mila hai phir se,” he said, not quite meeting his son’s eyes. “Ab das din usse door nahi reh paaunga.”
Ritik almost smiled at that, despite himself.
“Angad bhai ko kyun nahi bhejte, meri jagah?” he asked, still not quite convinced.
“Angad chhe saal se zyaada business se door tha,” Mihir said. “Abhi dhang se business mein settle ho hi raha hai wapas se. Aur tu — pichle kayi saalon se mere saath jaata raha hai iss conference mein. Tujhe pata hai kaise hota hai yeh sab.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped lower, quieter, meant for no one but Ritik. “Waise ek reason aur bhi hai. Angad ke ya kisi aur ke saamne nahi kahunga yeh — lekin teri personality zyaada dynamic hai. Aise conferences mein yehi cheez matter karti hai.”
Ritik didn’t say anything for a moment.
Seventeen hours ago, he’d sat in the car telling his mother that Papa thought Angad more capable than him — that whatever unspoken reason had taken the collector-office work out of his hands, it added up to the same old verdict, the one he’d been carrying since he was young enough to notice it. And now Papa was standing in this same house, quietly, without an audience, telling him the opposite.
“Lekin Papa,” he said, “itni badi responsibility main kaise handle karoonga, woh bhi akele?”
“Kyun nahi kar paayega?” Mihir said. “Mujhe yakeen hai, bahut achhe se kar paayega tu. Aur guidance ke liye main aur Angad toh hain hi.”
Ritik nodded, something in him not fully settled yet, but no longer resisting either.
-----
Tulsi was still in the kitchen, finishing her instructions to Kamla — khichdi for Garima today, along with the usual lunch — when Ritik came in like a breeze, breathless with something that wasn’t headache at all anymore.
“Maa, pata hai,” he said, “papa mujhe international textile conference bhej rahe hain — akele!”
Tulsi, without seeming to think about it at all, took him gently by the arm and steered him a few steps away from where Kamla stood at the counter, out of easy earshot.
Ritik barely noticed, still caught up in his own excitement. “Maine kal kitna galat soch liya tha, Maa,” he went on. “Shayad unhe laga ki main conference ki prep pe dhyaan doon, aur waise bhi jab main yahan nahi hounga tab toh Angad bhai hi collector office se deal karenge — toh shayad isiliye Papa ne abhi se unhe woh kaam de diya.” He shook his head at himself, almost laughing. “Unhe meri capability pe koi doubt hai hi nahi.”
Something in Tulsi eased, watching him like this — lighter than she’d seen him in days, the old heaviness gone out of his shoulders for the moment.
“Ek baat achhe se samajh le, Ritik,” she said, gently but firmly. “Teri capability pe kisi ko doubt nahi hai. Kabhi tha hi nahi. Yeh baat apne mann mein phir kabhi mat laana.”
He nodded, still smiling.
“Achha Maa, main Munni ko bhi bataata hoon,” he said, already reaching for his phone. “Waise pata nahi, do din se woh mera phone nahi le rahi. Ya toh uska phone switched off aa raha hai.”
“Busy hogi,” Tulsi said, keeping her voice light, careful. “Achha sun, tere se ek baat karni thi.”
But he was still riding the high of the morning, and she found she didn’t have the heart to pull him down from it just yet.
Whatever the conversation was, it could wait a few minutes more.
“Ek kaam kar,” she said instead, “tu shower lekar aa. Tab tak main tere room mein teri favorite chai banake aati hoon. Hum dono, Maa-beta, milke peeyenge.”
Ritik grinned, still in his high. “You mean like old times?”
“Bilkul,” Tulsi said, smiling.
-----
Tulsi found Mihir near the door a little later, already reaching for his car keys.
“Mihir, aaj main tumhare saath nahi aa rahi,” she said. “Garu ki tabiyat theek nahi hai — Pari ko shaayad help chahiye ho. Main aaj late nikaloongi, Ritik chhod dega jab woh office jaayega.”
Mihir paused, keys in hand, something faintly questioning in his face, but he didn’t push it. “Theek hai,” he said. “Zaroorat pade toh call kar lena.”
-----
Tulsi carried the tray up to his room a little later — two cups of chai, the way she still made it for him when she had the time, cardamom, cinnamon and a little more sugar than she took for herself, the way he’d liked it since he was a boy. Ritik was already out of the bathroom wearing his undershirt and trousers, hair still damp from the shower, sitting cross-legged on his bed the way he used to as a child, and something about the sight of him like that made her chest go warm before she’d even set the tray down.
“Bahut din ho gaye,” he said, taking his cup from her, “hume aise baithe hue.”
“Haan,” she said, settling onto the edge of the bed beside him. “Bahut din ho gaye.”
For a while they didn’t talk about anything in particular — the conference, some small complaint he had about the office AC, a memory of the two of them doing exactly this years ago, before everything, when he was still small enough that she’d sit him on her lap while he drank his milk. He laughed properly at something, for the first time in days, and the sound of it settled something in her that had been unsettled since Sunday.
It was only once the chai had gone half-finished, the conversation slowing into something easier, more comfortable, that she found herself looking at him properly — really looking, the way a mother looks at a son when she’s finally decided to see what’s actually there instead of what she wants to be there.
“Ritik,” she said, careful, “ek baat poochoon?”
He looked up, still relaxed enough not to brace for it. “Haan, Maa.”
She turned her cup slowly in her hands, choosing the words. “Mitali ke saath — tumhari shaadi ko ek mauka nahi de sakte tum dono?”
Ritik’s whole demeanor shifted, the ease of the last hour draining out of him at once.
“Diya tha na mauka, Maa,” he said, sharper than she’d expected. “Shuru shuru mein.”
He set his cup down, harder than necessary. “Baad mein pata chala — genuine efforts toh sirf meri taraf se the. Uski taraf se toh ek naatak tha. Woh toh sirf ek baby ke liye kar rahi thi.” His jaw tightened. “Aur jaise hi Timsy paida hui—”
He trailed off, the sentence left hanging, as if he didn’t have it in him to walk back through what came after.
“Main samajh rahi hoon, Ritik,” Tulsi said gently, “lekin tab usne jo bhi kiya, tu achhe se jaanta hai kiske kehne pe kiya. Ab woh bahut badal gayi hai. Please, tu soch nahi sakta use ek aur mauka dene ke baare mein?”
“Maa,” Ritik said, and something in his voice had gone raw now, stripped of the careful control he usually kept around this. “Aap — aap nahi jaanti woh paanch saal mere liye kaise the. Din mein bees baar uske muh se ‘loser’ sunna — din raat uska zehar ugalna, kahin bhi, kisi ke bhi saamne.” His hands had curled slightly in his lap. “Aur toh aur, woh toh yeh bhi nahi sochti thi apna muh kholne se pehle ki Timsy bhi sab dekh aur sun rahi hai.”
He paused. Tulsi looked on, helpless, something in her going quiet with the understanding, again, of exactly what those years must have done to him — no wonder, she thought, no wonder it had come to what it came to at that exhibition.
“Aaj meri aankhein dekh rahi hain, Maa,” he went on, quieter now, “mera dimaag samajh raha hai ki aapke saath reh ke, aapki wajah se woh badal rahi hai. Lekin aaj bhi, jaise hi woh apna muh kholti hai — mere kaan aur mera dil instinctively khud ko prepare karne lagte hain, ‘loser’ sunne ke liye.”
Outside the door, in the corridor, Mitali stood frozen, one hand still raised where she’d meant to knock. She hadn’t meant to stay. She hadn’t meant to hear any of it. But the words had come through the door before she could decide to leave, and now they held her there, each one landing somewhere she had no defense left for.
By the time he finished, she had slid slowly down the wall beside the door, her knees drawn up, silent tears running freely down her face, one hand pressed hard against her mouth to keep even her breathing from giving her away.
She stayed like that only a moment longer before she made herself get up, unsteady, and half-walked, half-fled down the corridor toward her own room — the one she shared with Timsy — closing the door softly behind her before whatever was breaking in her chest could make any sound at all.
Meanwhile, back in Ritik’s room, Tulsi sat with what he’d said for a moment, letting the weight of it settle before she spoke again.
“Aur Timsy?” she asked. “Tum dono ka aisa relationship hai— Timsy ka kya?”
Ritik shrugged, some of the rawness from a moment ago folding itself back under a practiced flatness. “Timsy ka kya, Maa? Jaise chal raha hai, bas chal raha hai. Uske paas dono parents hain.”
“Abhi woh chhoti hai,” Tulsi said carefully. “Lekin jaise jaise badi hogi, apne doston ke maa-baap se apne maa-baap ke rishte ko compare karegi hi. Socha hai kabhi, isse woh kitni affect hogi? Unhappy parents, unhappy bachche bana dete hain, Ritik. Kabhi socha hai?”
Something crossed his face, sharp and sudden. “Sochna kya hai, Maa? Main khud hi ek example nahi hoon?” His voice had an edge to it now, something old surfacing. “Yaad kijiye — jab aap yeh ghar chhod ke jaa rahi thi. Aapse maine kitni minnatein ki thi — ki jaa hi rahi hain toh mujhe bhi saath le jaaiye, main nahi reh paaoonga aapke bina.” He looked at her, unflinching. “Aapne dekh hi liya na kya hua mere saath, aapke peeche.”
Tulsi went very still, the guilt landing in her exactly the way it deserved to, whether he’d meant to or not.
“Uss waqt,” she said, quiet, “main khud nahi jaanti thi main kya karoongi, kahaan jaaoongi.” She looked at him, something helpless in her face now. “Ritik, please mujhe maaf—“
“Sorry, Maa,” he said quickly, before she could finish, something softening in him almost as fast as it had hardened. “Maine aapko guilty feel karvaane ke liye nahi kaha. Ab main theek hoon. Aap ho, Timsy hai — bas aur kuch nahi chahiye life se.”
Tulsi looked at him a moment longer, something in her not quite believing that sentence, not fully, not after everything he’d just said before it.
“Aur Munni?” she asked.
Ritik looked up, genuinely thrown. “Munni kahan se beech mein aa gayi iss baat mein?”
“Munni kya lagti hai teri?” Tulsi asked again, steady.
“Dost hai meri,” he said. “Sabse achhi dost.”
“Sirf dost? Ya kuch aur?”
Ritik held her gaze for a moment, something in his face going quiet and tired all at once.
“Kuch aur ka haq hai kya mujhe, Maa?” he said. “Meri shaadi chahe nonexistent hi ho — hoon toh main married. Ek bachchi bhi hai meri.”
Tulsi looked at him for a long moment, something in her chest pulling in two directions at once — a strange, aching mix of pride and sorrow, both fully true, neither cancelling the other out. Pride, that her son had grown into a man who wouldn’t simply take what he wanted regardless of how much it hurt, who held himself to a standard even when no one was watching to enforce it. And sorrow, plain and unadorned, at what that same principle was costing him — a life quietly rationed down to a daughter and a mother, nothing else permitted, nothing else even considered.
She didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t sound smaller than what she was feeling.
Ritik seemed to sense the silence had gone on long enough, and got up, some of his usual briskness returning as he reached for his shirt off the chair.
“Main Garu ko dekh ke aata hoon, kaisi hai ab,” he said. “Aur Pari se poochta hoon kisi cheez ki zaroorat ho toh — koi medicine urgently chahiye ho toh. Phir office ke liye nikalta hoon.”
“Theek hai,” Tulsi said, gathering herself, gathering the tray. “Mujhe drop kar dega? Garu ko dekh ke main bhi nikalna chahti thi.”
He nodded, already halfway to the door, and was gone.
-----
The rest of the day passed uneventfully — Garima’s fever easing by afternoon, the household settling back into its ordinary rhythms. Ritik dropped Tulsi to her factory before leaving for the conference preparations with something lighter in his step than he’d carried in days. By the time evening arrived, the house had gone quiet in its usual way, the day’s small crises folded back into the ordinary business of living.
-----
Mihir came out to the balcony carrying the two cups and found Tulsi already there, waiting.
“Garu kaisi hai ab?” he asked, setting the cups down.
“Bukhaar utar gaya,” Tulsi said. “Ab aaram se so rahi hai.”
Mihir settled into his chair, and for a while they sat in the kind of quiet that had nothing hostile left in it — worn thin by the day, softened by relief.
It was Tulsi who spoke first. “Humari baat ke kaaran tumne Ritik ko conference bhejne ka decide kiya?”
“Nahi, abhi tak decide nahi kiya tha ki kise bhejoon.” He took a sip of his tea. “Main toh har saal jaata hi hoon iss conference mein, yeh tumhe pata hai. Lekin tumhe shaayad pata nahi hoga — pichle kayi saalon se Ritik bhi mere saath jaata raha hai.” A pause. “Iss saal mera mood nahi hai.”
“Kyun?” Tulsi asked.
“Tumse—” he started, and then caught himself, the word shifting mid-sentence into something steadier. “Tumhe toh idea hai kitna tiring hota hai itne din ka travel, back-to-back meetings.” He went on smoothly from there, since what followed was true enough on its own. “Aur Angad ne abhi recently business rejoin kiya hai — usse itni badi responsibility dena theek nahi lagta abhi. Toh Ritik hi obvious choice tha.” He paused. “Shaayad agle hafte tak batata use ki use jaana hai. Achha hua tumne bataya mujhe woh kya feel kar raha tha — toh maine aaj hi bata diya use.”
Tulsi was quiet for a moment, something still sitting unresolved in her. “Woh kar toh paayega na akele handle? I hope woh—”
Mihir saw the exact shape of her fear before she could finish it. “Haan,” he said, steady. “Bahut achhe se kar lega. Main uske peeche hi khada hoon. Use fail nahi hone doonga.”
Something in her eased at that, the last of the day’s tension finally letting go.
For a while neither of them said anything, the tea cooling slowly between them.
Then Tulsi set her cup down.
“Aaj subah,” she said, “tumne divorce ki baat kyun ki? Maine toh aisa kuch socha bhi nahi tha, Mihir.”
Mihir was quiet a moment, something sheepish crossing his face. “Pata hai,” he said finally. “Bas — jab tumne kaha ‘main sochungi’, mujhe laga jaise tum kisi aur hi raaste ki taraf soch rahi ho. Family mein humne itne divorces dekhe hain, itne toote rishte dekhe hain — mera dimaag wahin chala gaya, bina soche samjhe.”
“Main sirf itna keh rahi thi ki mujhe Ritik ke mann ki baat samajhni hai,” Tulsi said. “Kisi decision ki baat nahi thi wahan.”
“Jaanta hoon ab,” Mihir said. “Us waqt bhi shaayad andar se jaanta tha. Lekin gussa aur darr ek saath aa jaaye toh dimaag seedha nahi sochta.”
Tulsi looked at him a moment, something in her softening further at the plain honesty of that, and let it rest there, unpursued.
It was Mihir who spoke again, after a while, something more careful entering his voice this time.
“Ritik se baat hui?” he asked.
Tulsi was quiet for a moment, choosing how to begin.
“Haan,” she said. “Bahut kuch bataya usne mujhe. Aisi baatein jo maine pehle kabhi poori tarah nahi suni thi.”
Mihir looked at her, waiting.
“Mitali ke baare mein poocha maine,” Tulsi said, “ki kya woh dono apne rishte ko ek mauka nahi de sakte.” She paused, her hands tightening slightly around her cup. “Mihir, mujhe nahi pata tha itna sab. Paanch saal tak — Mitali roz usse taane deti rahi, ‘loser’ kehti rahi, aur kabhi yeh bhi nahi socha ki Timsy bhi sun rahi hai, dekh rahi hai sab kuch.”
She stopped there, something in her still catching on the next part, unsure how to say it without it sounding like an accusation aimed at him.
“Aur usne yeh bhi yaad dilaya,” she went on, quieter now, “ki jab main yeh ghar chhod ke ja rahi thi, usne kitni minnatein ki thi mujhse — saath le jaane ke liye. Ki woh nahi reh paayega mere bina.” She stopped, the rest of it sitting heavy in her throat. “Aur phir jo hua uske baad —“ She didn’t say the rest out loud — didn’t need to. Mihir’s face told her he understood exactly what she wasn’t saying.
Mihir didn’t say anything for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice had gone low, and something in it had started to unravel.
“Maine yeh sab apni aankhon ke saamne hote dekha, Tulsi,” he said. “Roz. Saalon tak. Aur maine kya kiya? Bas Timsy ko jitna ho sake unke jhagdo se door rakhne ki koshish ki. Mujhe pata hi nahi chala ki mera beta andar hi andar itna toot raha tha. Maine socha bas — ghar mein tension hai, sab jhel rahe hain, waqt ke saath theek ho jaayega.” He shook his head, something almost stricken crossing his face. “Kitna andha tha main. Apne hi bete ka itna bada dard mujhe dikha hi nahi.”
He was quiet a beat, and then went on, the guilt gathering its own momentum now, the way it does once it starts. “Agar maine dhyaan diya hota, agar maine kuch saal pehle hi—”
“Mihir,” Tulsi said, cutting gently through it before it could go any further. “Uss waqt tum bhi bahut kuch jhel rahe the. Ab pichli baaton ko yaad karke, regret karke, kuch haasil nahi hoga.” She reached over and rested her hand on his arm. “Aaj aur aane wale kal ke baare mein sochte hain na.”
Mihir looked at her, something in his face slowly settling, though not entirely.
“Hmm,” he said after a moment. Then, quieter: “Munni ke baare mein kuch bola usne?”
“Woh dono sirf dost hain,” Tulsi said. “Aisa bola usne.”
She didn’t say anything more than that — didn’t tell him what had come after, the way Ritik had looked when he’d said it, the particular weight of *kuch aur ka haq hai kya mujhe, Maa.* Some things, she’d decided somewhere in that room this late morning, weren’t hers to hand over. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Mihir seemed to relax at her answer, something loosening in his shoulders.
“Shaayad tum theek keh rahi thi,” he said. “Mera unn dono ke milne pe control karna galat tha.” He paused. “Lekin sach mein lagta hai tumhe ki dono kabhi koi limit cross nahi karenge? Hum bharosa kar sakte hain — dono par?”
“Haan,” Tulsi said, “kar sakte hain.” She held his gaze, letting the word carry its own quiet weight. “Dono par.”
Mihir visibly relaxed, something easing all the way through him now, the last of the day’s weight finally setting down
A while later, into the comfortable quiet, he said, “Waise, soch raha tha — kal shaam tum Ritik ke saath mat aana ghar. Main tumhe pick karne aata hoon kal.”
Tulsi glanced at him, already suspecting some mischief sitting behind the casualness of it, and kept her own voice deliberately flat. “Kyun? Ritik toh aata hi hai waise bhi, roz factory infrastructure check karne.”
“Soch raha tha,” Mihir said, “ek naya café khula hai — use explore karte hain. Factory se ghar ke raaste mein hi padta hai. Thodi der wahan hoke ghar aa jaayenge.”
“Ghar ki chai mein kya burai hai?” Tulsi said. “Waise bhi mujhe kahaan pasand hai tumhari yeh favorite cappuccino.”
“Arre nahi, tumhari favorite masala chai bhi milti hai wahan,” Mihir said, undeterred. “Chalo na. Yeh meri treat hai. Just a mini date.”
“Yeh kya roz roz date lagake rakha hai tumne,” Tulsi said, though something in her voice had already started to give. “Umar dekhi hai humari?”
“Yeh kya jab dekho umar umar laga ke rakha hai tumne,” Mihir said, mock-wounded. “We are still in our sweet sixties.”
She had no comeback ready for that, so she went sideways instead, reaching for the higher ground. “Jis umar mein Bhagwan ka naam lena chahiye uss—”
“Bhagwan ka kya,” he cut in smoothly, “main toh Bhaagyawan ka bhi naam leta hoon.”
Tulsi rolled her eyes, but the smile she’d been holding back finally won, spreading despite her best efforts to look unimpressed. “Bahut zyaada dramebaaz ho gaye ho tum aajkal,” she said, though there was no real reproach left in it.
“Toh chalogi na?” Mihir asked, pressing his small advantage.
“Theek hai,” she said, relenting at last, “lekin zyada der nahi rukna. Ghar aana hai time pe.”
“Bilkul,” Mihir said, already looking far too pleased with himself for a man who’d simply gotten his wife to agree to tea.
It was in the small, easy quiet that followed — Mihir still faintly smiling into his cup, satisfied, the evening settled and light around them — that it caught her, unbidden and entirely without warning.
Ritik’s voice, from that afternoon. *Kuch aur ka haq hai mujhe, Maa? Meri shaadi chahe nonexistent hi ho — hoon toh main married.*
Here she was, sixty-some years old, being courted over masala chai by her own husband, laughing at his terrible jokes, agreeing to mini-dates like a woman half her age with her whole life of love still ahead of her. And her own son — younger than her by decades, with decades still ahead of him — had already decided, quietly, entirely on his own, that none of this was his to have.
The smile slipped from her face before she could catch it - as the guilt hit her almost like a physical ache.
Mihir noticed at once. “Kya hua?” he asked, setting his cup down. “Phir kya sochne lagi?”
Tulsi looked at him a moment, and then let it go, unspoken, the way she’d been letting so many things go today.
“Kuch nahi,” she said.
-----
Author’s note:
Kiska Haq?
This chapter is really about that question — who gets to decide what is right for someone else, even when it comes from a place of love?
And sometimes, perhaps, the hardest thing is knowing when to step in… and when to simply trust.
Also, Mihir and his “sweet sixties” & “bhaagyawan”had to make an appearance. 😂❤️
Hope you enjoyed this one. Do tell me what you think the title means to you. I crave for your reviews.
- ElitePerfumer
Edited by ElitePerfumer - 2 days ago
Web Series
Anupamaa
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