She sat on the day bed close to the window and her feet lay folded to her side, her brows slightly drawn together as if in contemplation of the matter at hand. Her Naanaji was stretched in his bed, his palm resting over his chest, while he drew slow, deep breaths to relieve himself of the vertigo he'd come under after the lady reporter had been bent on unveiling the string of last night's events.
Maira maasi and Keerthi had each taken a chair besides Naanaji and the room filled with a disquiet that was natural in those circumstances that awaited an impending decision. Well, if there was one that needed taking.
In the light of the catastrophe that had manifested in the form of the reporter, she'd told them why she'd kissed Rishabh. That he'd proposed marriage to her, invoking shocked gasps from the female lot of the audience, Keerthi including.
"She is after all her mother's daughter - going down the same winded road of unrequited love," Maira maasi said smoothing Naanaji's hand that slid to the bed and Madhu couldn't tell if she heard disappointment or wonder in her maasi's voice. "A lifetime of regrets. Soon, we will be left second guessing what fuels your actions." For a moment, Maira maasi twisted on the chair to gaze at Madhu and averted her eyes back to Keerthi. Nodding, she said, "Whether its her love or her hate for that one man drives her forward."
"It is impossible to attach such significance to any one person in life," Keerthi said, speaking on behalf of her, "I'm not even sure he qualifies to be in that league when she knows so little of him."
This time, it was Keerthi's turn to look back at her and she was unsure how to emote to that response. In reality, her situation with Rishabh was an uncomplicated one that morphed itself into an equally intricate web of snafu when others got involved.
"And may be you should." Maira Maasi said shifting all her attention to her, "What else is there in life if you can't achieve that. Its a sad thing if no one could gain your trust. If you think you have not come across anyone in life to give that special place in your life."
Finally, Maira maasi had come out with her stand on her wedding. If Rishabh hadn't won Maira maasi over, her own slip the previous night had been enough to make them rethink their positions in their combined hatred for him.
"You don't know Naanaji. He is irrational. You don't know half the things he's capable of or done in the past." Keerthi said - cursory in her assumptions. There was a mild disgust showing in her tone which Madhu couldn't tell was for real or fake.
It was starting to seem as if the bad cop, good cop routine was at play there.
"Would I be so wrong to say, that he is irrational only when it comes to you?" Maira maasi countered, addressing Madhu, instead of Keerthi and that confirmed her former doubt. "You think, I'm not able to see through this media storming at our gates. It's a smoke screen."
Maira maasi sighed and her gaze lowered wistfully to the ground. "Somewhere I also see your mother in him. And RK is a man that Dalip never was. Well, perhaps their situations can never be compared."
"RK in his desperation to deal with your silence and stubbornness, also shows his stupidity." Keerthi said, her eyes suddenly softening to a pleading, while her voice rose with an understood ire,"But, as much as I like to set up a supari for him with the Mumbai goons, I can't help but see his helplessness that is driving him blind and pushing him to these last measures that will take you away from him forever."
Judas!
It was also then Naanaji spoke for the first time after having lain on the bed. "Will you two leave us for some time?"
His frail voice was surprisingly firm in its insistence and with long faces Keerthi and her maasi soon left the room, worried even that they could not continue offering their assistance to help change her opinion, knowing little that she was far from it all.
"Maira was right." Her Naanaji said in a whisper and though she could hear him clearly from where she'd been seated, she moved to sit next to him. "You and your mother are alike in how you love another person, but, just as different in how you show them. Its also best if the madness that remains in both your lives, is not discussed. Only you mask it with your indifference."
Its called being pragmatic, she wanted tell him, but, instead resolved to take his hand in hers.
"But, it is also true that somewhere along the way, I was one of the factors that pushed you in the directions that you went." He wheezed catching his breath and his eyes mellowed with a guilt she hadn't seen there earlier. "And I would like for it not to be too late to right those many wrongs, I had done."
Her thumb smoothed over his veins that stood out in prominence as he clasped it around her palm. "My destiny is not your mistake and so, neither are my decisions, Naanaji. Stop blaming yourself for my past or for my future." She said and remained next to him for a while.
When she removed herself from his bedside to his desk, her Naanaji reckoned she had already made up her mind and in his own mind, he had little doubt that she'd needed convincing from either Maira maasi or Keerthi, for that matter. However, the same could not be said of her motives. As Maira had said, he had no clue what had influenced that move of hers.
There was no element surprise to her folks, when she handed an envelope to Keerthi and asked that it be taken to Rishabh, instead of Binoy.
In the few moments of respite she'd had with her Naanaji, she looked almost weary, as if she'd already lived her entire life in her thoughts.
"I will speak to Binoy." She said walking out into the hallway and heading towards her room, leaving them all skeptical, sullen and vague in their expressions.
*
Back at Rishabh's place, Bittuji still had a shake in his movements as he went through the numerous calls he was ordered to make.
"I want all of the news to be bought," he growled in the background, "Not a word about last night gets out. Call all the editors and ask them to name a price," he said pacing behind his desk.
Mindless, he swiped his car keys from the table and made his way to the front of the house when Bittuji mustered to inquire where he was going.
"I didn't expect this, Bittuji." He sounded regretful, "I did not foresee the events to go down the way it had. I have to be with her; to help get the situation in control."
If not for the pressure Bittuji was under, he might have noticed the heavy tone of self-reproach in his words, but, there was too much damage control that needed to be handled by one person to pay attention to his woes.
He spun around and called out to Bittuji again, his voice having shifted to his former tone of restrained anger, "Call Ismail bhai if the editors are not cooperating. I want all of this to be under the carpet and forgotten in another hour."
Shutting the car door, he'd turned on the ignition when a car entered through the gates. Despite the distance, he could see her Maira maasi in the back seat, as the car circled through the garden. He recognized Trishna as the driver and there was one other woman in the passenger side he'd seen the night before at the Mehendi. Even with all the ill-will he imagined Madhu to harbor for him, he was disappointed that she hadn't come to confront him on her own.
"Hi! hero." The passenger side woman said getting down from the car and he received them leaning on his bonnet, chewing a bubble gum to help keep up a stoic look on his face.
As expected, Mairaji did not alight from the car and looked straight ahead when the nameless woman handed him an envelope. "Just don't cry. I don't have tissues," she said and folded her arms, truly playing messenger and keeping it brief; her feet tapping an annoying tune on the concrete garden path.
He straightened; an unanticipated energy buzzed in his ears as he opened the letter and he cast a quick glance at the woman who refused to given him any privacy and instead, chose to remain within a few feet from him. She shrugged, gesturing him to get on with the reading.
"Now, you want to play god...
Some might see it as obsession, but I only see it as possession.
You think you want me, but, let me tell you, you are mistaken. You only like the idea of me in your life."
For the life of him, this moment wasn't happening under the scrutiny of a person he had no intimate knowledge of.
"Alas! its too late for amendments. And I'm tired of having let my inactions shape my life.
3.00 PM at The Club, Banquet Hall - Nikah is after the Asr prayers.
This way you get a wife and I get to be Me."
Wife! His eyes retraced her writing, in his attempts to ascertain he'd read it right.
Shit! It was difficult to tell, if he'd expected this turn of events. Fury and screaming - sure, he'd been prepared for that and a lot of persuading once the reporters would have bought him the time he'd hoped they would. However, her easy acceptance left him speechless.
The beginnings of a smile kicked at his lips while he raised his gaze at the woman again and ran a hand through his hair in disbelief.
Pinch me, he wanted to ask her. But, then again, he couldn't be certain if any amount of whipping would making him a believer, until the second they would be irrevocably pronounced 'man and wife'.
She'd evaded him for too long and when everything had appeared bleak and despairing until that minute, they was a blinding ray of hope with that arrival of her letter. Blinding him nearly to all else that must have transpired in her head before she'd given in to marry him.
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