CHAPTER FOURTEEN

POV: Arnav

I went into the house, asking Arunima Bhabhi, “hey! Bhabhi, where’s Kriti ji?” as I loosened that choking tie.

“Oh! She must be with Shreya, this is playtime,” she stated, and then she was right back to tease. That disposition—making fun of each other—apparently ran in our family. “Can’t you live without her even for a second, Arnav?”

“Bhabhi, It’s nothing like that,” I defended myself. “I just wanted to know where she is.”

She offered me a glass of water. “Well, then, she must be in Shreya’s room. Should I call her?” she winked at me. Everyone used to do that to me. It was funny that they all seemed to have a story in their heads about my life with Kriti. It was like they thought we were drowning in romance. Only Kriti and I knew the truth. I took a gulp of water and denied, “no, let her be. She’ll come down when she feels like it.”

I approached the staircase shouting, “Chhaya Didi, coffee, in my room.”

I went to the room I shared with Kriti straightaway, but I knew as soon as she found me that she would want to talk to me about Indore. I felt bad. I just never got the chance to tell her about it. I was going to talk to her today and ask her, but then everything happened at the breakfast table itself. We hadn’t really had much time to talk and when we did she always kept a distance from me.

I remembered the face she gave me today when I wished her ‘goodbye’, she didn’t even look at me. But then she had said ‘yes’ to Maa. And, like most of the time, her behavior was confusing. I wanted to see her happy, but she clearly wasn’t happy with the way everything turned out that morning. And seeing her sad just made me feel miserable inside. Why was my wife so unpredictable? I closed the door behind me, changed my heavy clothes, to a light T-shirt and pajama pants, and then came a knock on my door. It was Chhaya Didi, with that perfect coffee of hers. Her coffee was something that made all my exhaustion from the whole day just melt away. I opened the door and she handed me the mug with a smile. I would miss her, too, once I moved to Indore.

I was sipping my coffee and had left the door open knowing Kriti would be coming in anytime now. I searched through payment files and I called my Manager for a follow-up. She barged in a second after I’d hung up the phone and latched the door behind her. “Arnav ji, I need to speak to you.”

“Yes Kriti ji,” I looked at her as she came and leaned on the small desk, resting the weight of her body on her hand. She was already fuming with anger, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes narrowed at me. I knew at once this was about Indore. I said, “Well, I know what you have to talk about.”

She shouted, “Oh! Really, do you? Well then, it won’t be a surprise when I say that I’m not going to any fucking new place. If you think that you being the man in this relationship means you can drag me around the whole country with you, and I’ll act like an obedient little housewife, you’re mistaken. It’s my decision I am not moving anywhere.”

I held my breath. She had said ‘yes’ but if she hadn’t wanted to go she could have said so earlier. I clenched my teeth to control my tone. “Hold on Kriti ji, just hold on, if you don’t want to go, then no one is forcing you.”

She spat out in her frustration, “then when were you planning to tell me about this? Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?” she banged her fist on the table, “what am I to you? A puppet?”

She was being unbelievable, I tried my best to calm her down, “Kriti ji, I didn’t get the opportunity to talk to you, it just happened too fast. And why are you so angry about this? You don’t have to go, it’s fine. But you could have spoken to me in a better way.”

She snarled, “you expect me to behave? It was you who took me away from my life, and it’s again you who’s snatching away everything I am left with. When I finally started bonding with this new family, you had to come up with something new.” She pointed a finger toward me. She yelled, “Arnav ji, just why can’t you let me live?” Tears pricked in the corners of her eyes.

I was shocked to see her like that. I had thought, from the first day, that we’d been bonding. I thought, she’d said ‘yes’ to the marriage. I thought, she had consented, but from the way she spoke, it felt like everything had just fallen apart. As if I had been building a palace of cards and a strong wind has just destroyed everything. I found my voice and spoke to her as normally as I could, advancing my steps toward her so that I could calm her down, “Kriti ji, don’t overreact. No one’s going to snatch anything away from you.”

She backed off immediately and yelled again looking directly into my eyes, ignoring my statements completely.

“Why do you always have to do that Arnav ji? Why?”

I had kept a hold on my temper until that. I’d been trying not to shout at her. But I lost the control, “Kriti! Listen to me damn it.”

She paced backward immediately, and went quite all of a sudden. She covered her mouth with her hand, shrieking with fear, her eyes lost every ounce of rage they had in them a moment ago, and they went wide open with what I could only label as fear. I immediately regretted of raising my voice.

Before I could apologize she broke the eye contact, fixing her gaze at the floor, and started to utter, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please…please don’t get angry…please don’t do that.”

It felt like she was begging me. Her face went pale, her body shivering with fear and her voice broken. She sobbed bitterly in between barely understandable words. She begged, breathed, sobbed, and then begged me more. I could have never imagined her this way. Shit! What had I done? I wanted to punch myself for doing that to her. For making her feel that way. But all my words had abandoned me. I tried to get her attention, “Kriti, I didn’t mean to do that. Listen to me, please. I’m sorry.”

But she didn’t. She shook her head sideways and ignored my presence completely and kept sobbing and breathing, “please, don’t get angry…please…I won’t do that.”

She behaved as if she’d seen a ghost. She refused to even look at me. I hadn’t known I could terrify her like this. Fear was too short of a word for what she’d slipped into, she was traumatized. As if she were in her worst nightmare. But why? It was the worst of Kriti, I’d ever seen. I had no idea how should I behave. Her eyes were wandering the carpet.

I approached her, my voice filled with regret, “Kriti…I won’t do that again, sorry…” and tried to grab her shoulders just so that she would have listened to me. But as soon as I got closer, lifted up my hands, she backed away, closed her eyes, and covered her face with her hands crying, “no, no, please no.”

I was shaken. A moment ago, she had been blaming me, she had been yelling at me, and when I had lost even the slightest control on my tone, she behaved in a completely different manner. Why exactly had she been so scared? Did she think I would have hurt her? I could never do that. I could never even think of that in my wildest dreams. I stopped then and there, I called her name with all the love I could shove into those words, “Kriti, look at me.”

She didn’t remove her hands and trembled with apprehension never daring to look at me, “no, no…don’t…please…don’t.”

I was filled with regret, guilt, sorrow, and also anxiety. It was unsettling for me to see her that way. To see her begging. I took a firm step forward and grabbed her this time by her shoulders, gently but firmly, “Kriti, look at me.”

She finally looked up, and stared blankly for a moment. As if she was only now drawn back to reality, “Arnav!”

I spoke softly, “I’m sorry.” I saw her composing herself before my eyes as she wiped at her tears. I was worried about her. “What’s wrong? Why are you so scared? I didn’t have any idea that it could—”

But before I could complete my sentence she removed my hands from her shoulders and asked, “Arnav, please leave me alone for a while.”

It felt like a sting. She was asking me to leave, she had never done that, ever. I tried to protest and to get her to talk to me. “Kriti, please talk to me.”

She broke away, her voice firm, “Arnav! Please, leave.”

I saw her face, but she looked away. I had to blame myself, I had done that. I had broken everything we’d been building, everything that had grown between us. I protested, “but—”

She pleaded, “Please…leave me alone.”

I could not fight with her. I quietly slipped away, out of the room, closing the door and I could hear her crying as I stood outside. It felt like something had hit me hard. That pain in her voice, the way she asked me to leave, the way she blamed me for snatching away her life, and then she was so frightened. Everything just made me feel despondent. I hated myself for it.

I didn’t know where to go, I had been thrown out of my room. I climbed up the stairs with minimum noise, hardly disturbing anyone, and as soon as I reached the gate, a fresh breeze of air welcomed me. I closed my eyes for a second as I inhaled the air mixed with the fresh scents of the flowers growing on our terrace. It was dark on the terrace when the dim light of my phone came to my rescue. I was occupied by my thoughts, by whatever had happened between us. I fell into the chair with a thump. Her words were still echoing in my head, and I had to blame myself. If I had kept my voice low, if I hadn’t shouted at her, if I had dared to meet her and had asked her out before the wedding then, maybe, she would have been happier. I scrolled through my phone’s gallery absentmindedly and there was a picture from our wedding day. I stared at her face.

She had adjusted to everything. From day one, when this match was fixed, it was all just an adjustment for her. I was a fool that thought that we were actually growing our relationship. I closed my eyes for a second trying to absorb everything. I still had no idea what had terrified her so much. Was she really so scared of me? I had always tried to comfort her, why was she scared of me? That was the first time I’d ever been pissed off in front of her. I didn’t know, that it could wreak so much havoc. I decided I would have to talk to Maa. I would have to tell her that Kriti is not going to Indore with me. I knew exactly how I was going to do that. Hours passed by while I sat on that chair, staring into that blackness.