Links to all chapters here.
Warning: no YuvAni, of course.
Suhani stared at Bhavna, not able to fully take it in. A part of her mind understood the words and began processing them, with questions crowding her consciousness. Married? MARRIED? To Yuvraj Birla? How? When? How long? Why had nobody told her? Why hadn't he, especially when he claimed he loved her? Why had he suggested marriage--then that particular confusion cleared, as she realized he hadn't been suggesting GETTING married, but asking what if she knew they were. How could a man who loved her not be there when she almost died? She remembered Bhavna telling her he hadn't been able to contact her after the accident, and how did that make sense?
As she started asking questions, Bhavna indicated to Yuvraj that he should answer. As fact after fact spilled out, she looked at him as if he were more of a stranger than when she'd met him those weeks ago. She had left him. He had married her because of a combination of circumstances: his mother's mistake, Soumya misleading them, and because her father blackmailed him. What mistake? He'd wanted to marry Soumya, but his mother took the proposal to Suhani's parents. Misleading how? He told her of how Soumya misled both of them. She looked like she would throw up. What blackmail? Bhavna told her, knowing she would find this hardest to believe.
Suhani turned to Yuvraj, though not looking at him, "Why didn't you just refuse?" He explained, but she didn't get it. "Why didn't you come to me? No way I'd have allowed that." It came out that because she'd loved him, he thought she was part of the blackmail. She looked at him with such anger and disgust, that he felt like a bug on the floor.
There was worse to come. To explain why she'd left, he had to tell her they had never gotten physical, he'd taken time to get to liking her, respecting her, but held back from anything more. His earlier beauty-is-all fundas, his reluctance to commit to a girl who was so different from his ideal, wanting more, but not wanting more, their 'friendship'. And the trouble caused by Soumya, whom she brought into her house. "You let me bring the girl you loved into your house? Who ARE you? To think I trusted you!"
He told her the Soumya thing was long dead, of Soumya's pursuit of him, her trickery and her spite. She turned on him like a virago and refused to believe it. Bhavna added what she knew, but Suhani would not listen. Yuvraj pulled out a flash drive and handed it to her. "It's your diary. I copied it from my laptop where you'd backed it up. Read it. It's typical that you should believe in Soumya, trust her over me. If I made many mistakes, Suhani, you made a few too. When I tried to get rid of Soumya, you brought her back. You ignored her bad behavior even when it troubled you. Read it for yourself."
"You had my diary and didn't give it to me, knowing how frustrating it is for me not to have access to parts of my life?"
"I'd forgotten you'd backed it up. I found it a coupla weeks ago, and I could hardly give it to you when you knew nothing of all this."
"You go AWAY. Just go, I don't want to look at you or listen to you."
As he left, she asked Bhavna "I suppose you all deleted my diary from my laptop?" Bhavna nodded. "Suhani," she said. "Don't be so hard on him. He's paid too."
"He should pay. He SHOULD. How can anyone judge someone on looks or colour? How shallow is he? So it was a forced marriage. Then he says he found out I didn't know and softened, and liked me and respected me? But not enough to treat me as any normal man would treat his wife? I was too gross, was I? And why did I not say or do anything through all that?"
"I don't know, Suhani. It was as if you were dimmed in that house. It wasn't just that, it was his dadi and sisters-in-law--she never even called you by your name, that dadi, it was 'aye ladki'. We all hated it. But Yuvraj did try, he did care for you, it showed."
"'Yuvraj cared!'" she mimicked Bhavna. "But not enough. And not enough to stop me leaving. Not enough to try to find me. And papa, how could he?"
"Suhani, you have already fought with papa over this, and forgiven him after a long wait--which, by the way, was Yuvraj's doing. Don't again make him suffer your anger."
"I'm suffering again, aren't I? Di, can I stay here for a few days? I'll find somewhere and move, but. . ."
"Of course, Suhani, as if you need to ask."
She was shaken to the core. It was as if her life had been hijacked, her past rearranged to one she could no longer identify with. She felt ashamed of what she had allowed herself to endure, at her enslavement to the man who now acted like she was important to him. 'I love you!' And she was supposed to trust this? When he had 'loved' Soumya, when she, Suhani, was apparently too lacking for him to accept her; how long before some pretty face turned his attention from her, once he'd satisfied his ego at winning her after she spurned him? Not that she wanted him anyway. She wished, wished, wished she had never let him so much as touch her.
He could understand her anger and her lashing out at him, but he still felt hurt and let down. Bhavna called him and told him Suhani would stay with her for now, and she had no idea what she would do in the future--she had never seen her so furious.
"I'll get her a place," Yuvraj said. "Tell her it's Amit's, tell her she can stay there if she wants."
When Suhani talked of getting a room in some hostel, Bhavna persuaded her to move into the flat Yuvraj had arranged for her, assuring her that it was Amit's friend's place, he was away for a year, and there was no problem if she stayed there. Yuvraj also arranged for Ramesh's aunt, a tough lady called Masabibi for some reason, to live with her and take care of things, and Bhavna told Suhani she was the caretaker. She thought that they were lying again, but she'd take the chance. At least financially Suhani had enough in her account from the time she had worked, including for the Birlas' company.
Suhani settled into the flat, grateful to be on her own, except for Masabi, trying to get hold of the reins of her life again. For a while she didn't want to meet anyone, not even Di, not even her mother.
When she had absorbed all the facts Bhavna and Yuvraj had revealed, she started going through her diary, often unable to continue after reading something that either angered her or disturbed her, but slowly getting some idea of what had happened in that lost year. She pitied the girl who had seen the best in everyone, had ignored the signs that her marriage was no marriage, had refused to realize what Soumya had been up to. How, she wondered. I used to be idealistic, I was sheltered, but I was never stupid. The shock of Soumya's behavior added to her anguish. He had been right in one thing, that Yuvraj, she had made mistakes too. She had given people too much power over her. She had given him too much power.
Despite herself, she could see in that Suhani's words the Yuvraj she had liked. The sweet guy, sometimes babyish, sometimes moody, often sadu, unreasonable or, conversely and in the light of what she now knew, the guy trying to show Suhani truths she blinded herself to. The Yuvraj who tried every now and then, when her doppleganger was upset, to bring back her smile. That was familiar. As were the arguments and blame-games. She read about the Yuvraj who removed the cushions and came close to her, of the Yuvraj who backed away, troubled. Of the Yuvraj who got inveigled in a false murder case after beating up Krishna's brother-in-law for insulting her. And she felt a glimmer of sympathy that she rudely ignored.
When she had been alone enough, she messaged Gautam that she wanted to see him. Anytime, she'd be home. And added her new address.
He came that very evening, confronted at the door by a battleaxe who didn't want to let him in until Suhani told her it was okay. She waited until the old bat went away, then came up to him and, as he hugged her, closed her eyes and said, "Gautam, I've a lot to tell you. I've been such a fool."
"What, my sweet? If you've fallen in love with someone else, I'll kill him."
Note: I didn't want to go into all the snaky reformation plan, the yuvi-snaky wedding, Birla business problems, and Kriya in BH, but you can presume that the diary gives at least the gist of those events too, as hinted by the Radhe fake murder ref. But if there's anything important I've missed, please tell me, and I'll include it.
