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Amazing update!👏I loved how you can portray each characters feeling down to every last detail, especially the part when Arnav was waiting for Khushi to come out and Khushi's thoughts in the car.
Sorry! I was gonna update sooner but my internet just got fixed today! So I can stay online long enough to post and PM...hope you didn't mind the wait:)
Chapter Twenty Two
'You and the baby are perfectly fine, Mrs. Jha. There is absolutely nothing to worry about.'
Anjali glowed with iridescent joy at the gynaecologist as she seated herself opposite Anjali and Khushi, behind her desk. She smiled her professional-cum-maternal smile at the former, whose childish excitement did not keep her from bombarding the doctor with a tumult of questions before she could even sit down properly. Was her diet all right? Did she need to do any specific exercises? What type of exercises should she not do? Where any medicines she was taking likely to have bad side-effects?
The gynaecologist laughed a pleasant, humouring laugh.
'Calm down, Mrs. Jha...if you end up asking all the questions, I won't have a job anymore! But it is great to see someone this excited about welcoming a baby!'
'Oh, yes!' Anjali exclaimed enthusiastically, a wide smile stretching across her sweet little face, the corners of her eyes crinkled with the same ecstatic exultation that was evident in her sparkling eyes as she barely managed to sit still, 'I can't wait to welcome my baby...my little jaan will flood my world in colour all over again!'
She did not notice, drowned in oblivion from excitement, no different from a little child on a carnival carousel, a pair of eyes turn sharply towards her. Did not notice them cloud over first with confusion, then doubt, then worry.
'Are you expecting a girl or a boy?' the doctor asked conversationally, her motherly eyes twinkling at the exuberant, expecting mother, clearly beside herself while just barely a month into her pregnancy.
'I don't mind whether it is a boy or a girl,' Anjali babbled on eagerly, 'All I want is for my baby to be as healthy and happy as can be! And to raise my baby to become the best human being they can possibly become-'
The doctor laughed. 'I can see that you've thought far into the future Mrs. Jha. I'm sure your husband must be as thrilled as you are. You really should bring him over for these check-ups and things...it is always encouraging to have your husband's support and extra care. I'm sure he is doting after you at home right?'
Khushi was almost holding her breath as she swivelled in her chair to scrutinise Anjali's response to that, intently. A niggling doubt needled away at her as she attempted to catch the wild little wisps of reasoning that sparked haphazardly within her. There was something here that was not- right.
'Oh, he is very caring,' Anjali acquiesced affably, and something coiled in Khushi's stomach in strenuous disagreement. Was it just her, or did Anjali's previous enthusiasm seem somewhat stunted? Somewhat...vague? Khushi could not put her finger on it. 'But he's always so busy...I don't like disturbing him usually...and of course, I would know better than him in these matters. I'm the mother after all...and then, Khushi is here too! With Khushi around, I don't need anyone else to look after me!'
She turned to beam joyously, gratefully, affectionately at Khushi.
Khushi tried, tried hard, to smile back at her. While disquiet nestled into her heart like a spider crawling into a dark alcove to settle there. Silently. Undetected and unabated. But ever vigilant, ever deadly. For some reason completely escaping her, Khushi felt an ice-cold chill run down her spine.
The doctor's mildly stern rejoinder tumbled into her unease, thoughts scattering hither and thither like a school of fish flitting away as a pebble hits the smooth glass surface of a pond, the ringlets of water her thoughts turned awry.
'Ah, but Mrs. Jha you have to remember this is not just your baby...a child needs a father's care and presence whether it is during pregnancy, delivery or later life. If Mr. Jha is present at more of these sessions, then he'll build a stronger sense of duty, responsibility towards both you and the child, a deeper connection...you should not try to take up your child's responsibility all on your-'
'But I can!' Anjali insisted. Khushi felt the uncomfortable knots in her stomach unfurl even more insistently, demanding that she heed the dissonance she could hear ever so faintly in the distance.
***
'Shouldn't you call...uh- Sh-yamji? To update him on what the doctor just said?' Khushi had difficulty biting down the viscous revulsion threatening to coat the name of that two-timing lowlife. The gall rose up her throat, bitter, from the mere effort of saying his name civilly.
Anjali looked up at her doubtfully. 'Do you think I should?' she wondered aloud as she flipped through the pages of her medical file, 'He might be busy.'
Khushi tried to force her expression into a reassuring smile. The result was more of a pained grimace. 'He can't be too busy to hear about his own child! Call him, he hasn't spoken to you in two days.'
Anjali's expression of concentration gave way to faint concern. 'You think he might be worried?' she inquired, looking a little bit guilty. Khushi felt the bitterness in her mouth intensify. Not trusting herself to speak without betraying what she really thought, she merely nodded tersely. Anjali fished about in her handbag for her phone. Khushi waited tensely.
Something was definitely wrong here.
Anjali dialled a number, holding the phone expectantly to her ear. Khushi was standing close enough to know that there was barely even a dial tone on the line before a recorded voice droned monotonously, 'The number you have dialled is either switched off or out of coverage area. Please try again later.'
Hitching her handbag more securely onto her shoulder, Anjali pulled out a sheet of paper from the file she held- the doctor's prescription.
'He's probably in a meeting right now,' she informed Khushi cheerfully, 'I'll call him again later. Khushi, do you think we should go and get the medicine now, or we should get it just before Akash comes back? Oh, and do you think the painkillers I took for my leg would have a reaction with this medication? I completely forgot to ask...maybe I should go back...'
Khushi's head, her eyes, her ears, was surrounded by fuzz.
***
Clutching a paper bag in one hand, and a medical file in the other, Khushi picked out a red plastic chair inside the pharmacy, just off the lobby of the hospital. She had offered to fetch the medication the doctor had prescribed for Anjaliji, and had more or less seized the file out of her hands and hurried off without awaiting any debates. She needed somewhere where she could sit down, without running the risk of being interrupted, without having to justify, make up cock-and-bull stories on the spur of the moment, to cover what she was thinking, why she was so quiet, why she looked so worried.
Because she was worried. She had been worried since last night, although then, the sensation had been a mere prick against her conscience. With every passing minute however, what she was seeing, hearing, noticing for the first time made clean incisions upon her being, waiting to be stitched back together with patience, with understanding. It was high time she mulled some things over.
All these days, when she had practically shadowed Anjaliji, her sole focus had been on capsizing each and every malignant act Shyam Manohar Jha could formulate against his wife. She had observed, eagle-eyed and guarded, whenever he had moved too close to her. Hung on every word he would say to her to detect even the whisper of subterfuge. Breathed a sigh of relief whenever he was not around. But in those instances, her respite never lasted longer than a couple of hours, a day at most. His insidious presence hung like murky, smoke-ridden fog in the Raizada house, his revolting smiles and knowing sneers an unavoidable part of life there, which she could never hope to escape for too long. His presence transformed the airy passages and brightly-lit hallways of that house into cramped, airless, lightless cages, where the air was so cloying Khushi found it hard to breathe.
Khushi's eyelids, heavy with fatigue, began to lower their curtain on stage. The performance was drawing to a close but the critique had just begun. She had barely slept a wink last night.
This was the first time since she had been married into the family that Shyam had been absent for such a prolonged period of time. The first time Khushi had had the breathing space of three whole days when she did not have to push herself to the brink on her constant watch over his every move. And in these three days, she had discovered something so thoroughly incongruous, she wondered whether she had really been as vigilant as she had led herself to believe in that past month.
Anjaliji's complete, blatant, absolute lack of concern about the fact that her husband had not made any contact with her whatsoever for over forty eight hours was so unorthodox, Khushi would never believe it if she hadn't witnessed it with her own eyes. Even now, she was having trouble wrapping her mind around it. The same woman whose husband was equitable to her life, who burst into tears of distress at the mere mention of suffering by the man she had married, was brushing off each legitimate concern she voiced over his bizarre, unexplained absence.
And it was not only that.
Anjaliji's life used to begin and end with Shyam's name. Yet, throughout that whole consultation with the gynaecologist, something had sat in the air awkwardly, an uneasy presence that rose and fell, rose and fell, palpable and unsettling. Her enthusiasm, her eagerness, Khushi could understand- after all, she had been married for three years, and everyone would undoubtedly have expectations of a child. And more than that, Anjaliji had always been ever ready to love. She showered it on anyone and everyone who got close to her, and Khushi counted herself as fortunate enough to have been among that number. That vivacity, that childish charm, that bubbly nature was easily associable with Anjaliji.
Yet, what struck all the wrong cords, what toppled the music out of harmony, was the almost imperceptible change in her manner whenever her beloved husband's name cropped up. The sudden vagueness, almost absent-mindedness that set in when she spoke about him, blaringly contrasted the sheer zeal with which she used to recount his virtues before.
It was almost as though she could no longer be concerned.
And as much as Khushi believed, ardently so, that no one in the world should give a damn about that ingratiating, deceptive creature, the reversal in her behaviour was downright odd. It did not make sense. There were suddenly nuances to her behaviour that were standing out distinctly, like lurid splashes of colour on a dull canvas. Khushi, staring into the blackness behind her eyelids, remembered Anjaliji's innocent query, 'You think he might be worried?' Was she simply being fanciful, judgment soiled by her own prejudice, or was there something that sounded wrong about that question, about the tone in which it was asked? Anjaliji had sounded mildly alarmed, but what jarred against the senses was that her alarm was not because she was concerned that her husband had basically vanished without trace for longer than two days. Her alarm had more to do with her regret that she not speaking to him would have him worried. And that was totally wrong. It was not unusual that she would worry about causing someone else distress on her account. But why was she not distressed in a situation like that, not knowing where her husband was, whether he was all right, why his phone was switched off- that was disturbing on many different levels.
And she had said something else today, something else which shook Khushi up the wrong way.
... my little jaan will flood my world in colour all over again...
Was she reading too much into that, or were those words as suggestive as they sounded to her? That tone of voice, the expectancy, the hope, echoed and re-echoed inside her skull, ringing out hollowly as her mind tried to grasp something concrete she could attribute it to.
Why would Anjali Jha, who had every possible reason to be happy, had every possible appearance of being so, whose life was nothing but a multitude of colour...
...suddenly sound like she was waiting for happiness to come round the corner, rather than embracing what was already hers?
Khushi felt a particularly vehement ripple of pain shudder through her. It was to preserve her happiness that she had found herself in this marriage, tossed about in the dark, fathomless depths of the cruel, stormy sea, for so many days. So why did it seem, all of a sudden, that Anjaliji was not as happy as she let out she was?
And without warning, something struck Khushi that knocked the wind out of her.
Did she know?
***
When Arnav saw the name flashing on the screen of his Blackberry, he had to blink twice to convince himself he was not seeing things.
Khushi.
He had never imagined that staying away from her would be this difficult. He had not been lying when he had told Di about the series of meetings he had scheduled for today. But in each and every one of them so far, Arnav had to fight to keep himself in check, to stick to business details and statistics and presentations and paperwork. It had been this language that he was used to, this jargon the only one he knew whenever he engaged in conversation before, which was not all that often. And now, it took every ounce of control he could muster to keep from calling Khushi, stopping by at the hospital to get a glimpse of her, or simply allowing himself to slip in to thoughts revolving her, memories embellished by her.
And now she was calling him.
She was calling him. She wanted to talk to him.
For a moment he simply sat behind his desk in his office, clutching the phone, listening to his heart's arduous attempts to splinter his ribs as it attempted to leap out of his chest, completely at a loss for what to do. Then mind intervened, reminding him urgently that if he did not pick up soon, the call would disconnect, and Khushi might conclude that he did not wish to speak to her and not call back. That possibility caused him to almost drop his phone as he fumbled for the right button.
'Hello?' he managed, his voice hoarse.
'Um...h-hello?' a timid little voice stammered on the other end. As soon as he heard that voice, sweet and soft, unendurably hesitant, a strange calm descended upon Arnav's highstrung nerves, soothing him, 'A-Arnavji?'
'Yes, Khushi?' he whispered back, half his mind wondering exactly why he was whispering, the other half barely breathing as it waited to hear what she might have to say to him.
'I don't want to disturb or anything,' she continued on the other end, uncertainty ringing clearly in her tone. But before he could protest to dispel such an outrageous notion, she continued, in a rush, as though plucking up the courage to get whatever it was over with, 'but I was wondering if I could talk to you about something?'
His heartbeat picked up an even louder staccato.
'Yes?'
There was a slight pause on the other side. Arnav briefly worried that she might have lost her nerve and decided not to go through with what she had wanted. Caught halfway on the road to mourning though, he heard her draw in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Whatever it was that she wanted to say, it was undoubtedly not easy for her. Suddenly, he felt himself sit up, alert. What could be bothering her? She had been very thoughtful, almost anxious, earlier that morning as well. He had noted that at one point during their drive to the hospital she had simply relapsed into silence, her forehead creased as she cloaked herself in meditation, treading through alleys he could not see. Concern began to replace the odd expectation, the thrill that had charged through him when he had realised she was calling him.
'Is something wrong, Khushi?' Arnav's voice was urgent, probing.
A slight note of hesitation, and then her voice, 'N-no, nothing is wrong, I suppose. I just...I just wanted to talk to you about-' she broke off abruptly.
Arnav was now more troubled than ever. But before he could prod her further, she began to speak again, at such rapid-fire pace that he had his work cut out for him keeping up.
'It's nothing to worry about actually. I mean, I'm a bit worried, but it might not be a reason to worry. I mean, there's nothing exactly wrong. I mean she's fine, we just saw the doctor, both she and the baby are absolutely fine and there is no reason to worry but I-'
'Khushi!' Arnav interrupted. Her rambled speech made next to no sense as she tripped over from one track to the next without any sense of direction. But this much he could glean from her incoherent chatter- she was talking about Di. The pails of ice that had been suspended, poised on the edge of the pit of his stomach, slipped a little, and a few dry, biting cold ice cubes sliding down into his abdomen, spreading a dreadful chill that crept through his veins. 'Has- has something happened to Di? Is she ok?'
'Yes, yes,' her voice sounded desperate to assure him, 'yes, she's perfectly fine. And she's really happy too. Because the doctor said the baby is doing great- Anjaliji is over the moon. She's totally fine.'
He did not question that claim. There was no reason to. He believed her completely. 'Then- what are you saying?'
There was a heavy sigh on the other side.
'I don't know how to put this,' she muttered disconsolately. Arnav felt the drumbeats twang at that; he could almost picture her frowning in displeasure, chewing away at her lower lip in consternation. How he wished he could witness the scene for himself. He heard another sigh, and then, 'What I'm trying to say is...I'm feeling a little bit uneasy. About Anjaliji and Sh-Sh- ugh. Her husband. There's something a bit weird going on and I was wondering whether- whether- I mean, if you don't mind, if we could- talk about it?'
***
'I'm coming over right now.'
Khushi's eyes widened in alarm. What?! She had not expected him to respond like that.
'But- but- your meetings-'
'I'll cancel them. I'll call you when I get there.'
'Wait, wait!' she protested, thrown off completely, 'I promise, there is nothing to worry about! Di is completely fine, you can talk to her if you want to- it's just me, I'm the one feeling uneasy...she's totally happy-'
'Khushi,' the words dried up in her throat as she heard his voice. Warm, comforting. 'I know that Di is fine. I know you won't let anything happen to her. I believe you- I'm coming because...'
Khushi's hushed voice was breathless. 'Because?'
'Because you said you want to talk to me. And I don't like seeing you worried.'
The call disconnected and Khushi stood for five whole seconds holding the phone to her ear, her mouth hanging slightly open. She had not bargained on seeing him again so soon. It was bad enough when, before he had left he had...
'Hai Devi Maiyya!' Khushi's palms flew up to press themselves against her eyes, shutting out the memory of what had happened that morning. She was not going to think about that now, not yet. There were more pressing matters to deal with and that- would have to wait. A part of her accepted, wryly, that she would not be able to keep herself at bay for much longer. Heart and mind had reached a ceasefire alright. But the peace negotiations were bound to start sometime. And then she would not be able to keep herself from thinking, examining, studying, all his words, all his actions, everything that had had appeared immutable but had taken less than a moment to transform forever.
But for the time being, Khushi stood befuddled somewhere in limbo, her thoughts co-existing peacefully with her feelings, but not making any attempts to reconcile.
She began to pace up and down the white tiled passage outside her father's ward, biting her lower lip. She wondered whether she had done the right thing in calling Arnav.
Yes. The grave little voice in the crevices of her head informed her resolutely. You can't afford to let what happened last time happen again.
Grim agreement slowly drenched its way down Khushi's self. No, she could not let what had happened last time happen again. Her decision to withhold what she had discovered before had resulted in so many things going so horribly, horribly wrong...Khushi did not have the courage to face such pandemonium all over again: she could detect a storm, brooding and rumbling, brewing in the distance. Especially as this time, she feared, in the very marrow of her bones, this time Anjaliji would be right in the centre of whatever happened next.
Even if her doubts were unfounded, even if she was completely misreading what was happening, even if she was overreacting...she was not going to wait this time.
She sank into a bench outside the wardroom. All she could do now was wait. Restless, she began to fiddle with the hem of her pallu, her eyes straying to the windows facing her, stretching across the length of the corridor. It took her a little while to notice that the skies outside, powdery blue earlier that morning, were now an almost granite grey. She could see the tops of trees bend and sway outside, dancing to the melody of the jousting winds, toppling over each other playfully.
Yet, despite the promise of the imminent downpour manifesting itself beyond the window, Khushi felt strangely at peace with herself. Regardless of her perplexity, her anxiousness, Khushi felt unusually relieved. The unusual calm bounced along stridently in the place of the restless apprehension Khushi expected herself to feel instead.
Maybe, the cheeky little voice, which had not had a chance to nag her for a while, piped up, that's because he'll be with you soon. To share in your-
'Oh, keep quiet!' Khushi muttered out loud in frustration.
Pleeease, please, please comment and like:) And for those of you who wanted to read about Khushi's reaction after the goodbye peck...yeah I WILL go into that, don't worry. I'm saving it for a more appropriate time:p
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