Fear and Lovely

Chapter 2

Mallika: A red shroud

1975–1976

After Randhir’s party, I went back to my uneventful life of studying, spending time with my friends, and tutoring. For the last two years, I had been tutoring a slum girl, Jalpari, daughter of Gopal, our colony scooterwalla. She was twelve now, sharp as a knife, cheeky, and full of backchat. When she was ten years old, she had come home, asking me to tutor her in English. She would work in an office when she grew up, she had said, with an irrepressible smile, and how to do that without knowing English? Then she had produced five rupees from her frock and asked if it was enough.

‘No need,’ I had said, ‘I’ll tutor you.’

‘My father said I have to give you money,’ Jalpari said firmly.

I hesitated before replying. ‘Alright, you give me one rupee every month, and when you get an office job, then you can give me the rest.’

Jalpari’s eyes lit up, and she nodded.

She was very quick to learn, full of questions, and hard-working. She told me that her mother didn’t want her to learn English; her mother wanted her to sweep and swab at people’s houses after school hours and earn money for them. But her father, Gopal, had overridden her mother. I had been tutoring Jalpari for two years. She sat at the dining table with the other children I tutored. But just recently, the mother of a new tuition boy, Himanshu, had asked me, ‘Isn’t this girl a Harijan?’ I looked at her, disconcerted. I’d never encountered such a question before. Another mother who had come to pick up her son said reassuringly, ‘This is the daughter of our scooterwalla, Gopal.’

‘This slum girl shouldn’t sit with our children,’ the first mother said, and left.

‘I’m not going to make her sit separately,’ I said to Ma and Shantamama later, when we were alone.

Ma nodded, looking troubled.

‘Just know that you’re going to lose this student,’ Shantamama said. ‘And maybe others.’

‘I’ve never lost a student these two years that Jalpari’s been here,’ I said.

My mothers looked at each other and said nothing.

A few days later, Himanshu came with half a month’s fees in an envelope and said, ‘Mallika Miss, my mother says I can’t come because this slum girl also sits here, and you give her water from the same glasses we drink from.’

I nodded. ‘Tell your mother I don’t want this,’ I said, not taking the envelope.

The next day I went to the market and bought two beautiful oval-shaped steel glasses, and had them engraved. ‘For Jalpari to drink water from,’ I told my mothers, showing them both glasses.

‘But why two glasses?’ Ma asked.

‘One for her, one for me. I’ve had our names engraved on them, see? Now Jalpari will see that I’m drinking from the same kind of glass as her. And the other children and their mothers will see that Jalpari isn’t drinking from their glasses.’

After that, I made Jalpari sit at the head of the table so that none of the other children’s mothers could complain about them having to sit next to her. Jalpari was thrilled with her new steel glass, the only one that looked like mine.

I lost another student, but immediately got two more. Shantamama, who was always worried about our precarious finances, was very relieved. Before she went back to Bangalore, she said, ‘You’re very oblivious, Mallika. Don’t you know that your two students, Rajni and Mohit, never drink water in our house because Ayah-ji is a Muslim?’ She saw my shock and nodded. ‘Yes. Exactly. Your mother tries to protect you from these things. I don’t see why. You should know these things happen.’

But there was no time to brood about this incident or ask my friends what they thought because two days later, Mahima got engaged. Shekhar, Mahima’s fiancé, was out of a Mills & Boon romance – tall and handsome with a deep voice and a gorgeous whiff of foreign aftershave. Gauri and I fell head over heels in love with Mahima’s fairy tale story. How could we not? Mahima, who had always had everything, now had the ultimate everything.

The only fly in the ointment was Shekhar’s sister, Renu.

‘That Renu, total battameez she is,’ Madhu Aunty said disapprovingly.

We were thrilled with Renu’s battameezi. We had never seen anything like it. Renu’s saree blouses and kameezes were cut so low that when she bent down, we could see her n*****s (she applied rouge on them, she told us once). She would go into a tizzy at the sight of Arnav and Vineet. ‘That too, she’s a married woman,’ Mahima hissed to us. Once, she arrived at Mahima’s house in a red shirt with a neck so precariously low that Madhu Aunty tossed her a chunni, saying peremptorily ‘Wear this, there are boys in this house.’

Of course, Renu knew there were boys in the house. That was the point.

We had never seen anything like it. It demanded a regular viewing.

Whenever we saw Renu’s car parked outside Madhu Aunty’s house, the three of us would drop in and plonk ourselves in the sitting room. There, we would eat the offerings laid out for Renu – badaam, cashews, and kaju ki barfis, all the things our mothers could never afford – and watch her flirting and giggling with the boys. Sometimes she’d follow Vineet and Arnav to Randhir’s room and drape herself on Randhir’s bed with her saree palla falling off her shoulders; we could see her from the sitting room. Then Madhu Aunty would say frantically, ‘Come and have tea, Renu,’ and Renu would come outside, pick up her cup and saucer, and go back to Randhir’s room. ‘Bilkul besharam,’ Madhu Aunty would say. After Renu’s first few visits, whenever she arrived, Madhu Aunty ordered the boys out of Randhir’s room, and they’d troop out and escape on their bikes. Once, as they left, Renu followed them, perched herself on the back of Vineet’s motorcycle, put her arms tightly around him, and went off with them. It was a sight to behold: Vineet’s gritted teeth, and Renu’s joy.

When the boys weren’t around, Renu took to dropping in at my house. She regularly told me all about her husband’s passionate lovemaking. I gave my friends a blow-by-blow account of all Renu’s stories. ‘Have you heard of the bud of pleasure?’ Renu asked me. ‘No,’ I said, and she told me how women had orgasms. I promptly told my friends. Our s*x education grew in leaps and bounds.

Of course, I knew Renu lied. But so what? There was nothing malicious about her lies. As soon as she uttered them, they became her reality. Asking if the things she said were true or not was like asking if a book were true or not. What mattered was being swept away, and swept away I was. And the more I got to know her, the more I felt that there was another, almost-invisible Renu who was obscured by the all-too-visible one. She read voraciously. She quoted Shakespeare’s love sonnets – not to show off, but because she loved them so much. When I told Renu about my constant quest for books, she promptly lent me several from her collection. On one occasion, when I had a cold, Renu came home with a huge bowl of soup that she had made for me.

‘The strangest of people like you,’ Ma said. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘Why her?’ Randhir asked, astonished when he found out that Renu was visiting me.

‘Why not?’ I responded. Randhir gave a snort of laughter and went off, leaving me smarting and ashamed for not having defended Renu.

By this time it was no longer entertaining to watch Renu in Mahima’s living room, making such a fool of herself over the boys. I saw how they rolled their eyes, exchanged glances, laughed. I stopped going next door to watch the Renu drama. But if I happened to be there, I couldn’t avoid it.

One day, when the boys were laughing at an oblivious Renu, Arnav caught me looking at them, and his laughter faded. Ten minutes later, as I was leaving from the back door of Madhu Aunty’s house, he entered the kitchen with his empty tea mug and said, ‘Mallika, how come that look was for us and not for her?’

It was the first time he had spoken to me in many weeks, after that party.

Now, as he asked me this question, my tongue was tied in its usual knots.

At last I said, ‘You and Vineet were laughing at Renu.’

‘And you girls don’t?’

Not any longer. Well, I didn’t.

‘Eating badaams and kajus like there’s no tomorrow and watching her shenanigans as though you’re watching Chitrahaar!’ he said teasingly.

Shame filled me.

‘We don’t… I don’t laugh at her now,’ I muttered. ‘Got to go. Bye.’ I rushed back home.

He hadn’t even bothered to talk to me after that party, and when he did it was about this?

Had I really been that deluded at the party? He’d seemed so relaxed and happy talking to me. In fact, he’d shown no inclination to leave my side. More than an hour later, Mahima, Randhir, and Vineet had joined us at the back veranda. The boys began cracking jokes. Keeping my friends’ lectures in mind, I’d laughed – even at the ones I didn’t understand. The next day, Mahima had said, ‘At least now they don’t think you’re a snob.’ I had replied indignantly that Arnav wouldn’t have talked to me if he thought I was a snob. Mahima snorted that Arnav was doped out, that was why he was talking to me.

That had hit me hard. ‘Well, better to be a snob than boring,’ I had said, trying to shrug it off.

My three friends stared at me.

‘Who said you were boring?’

‘Randhir would never say such a thing about her.’

‘It was either Arnav or Vineet.’

‘Probably both.’

They got it out of me, the conversation that Arnav and Vineet had been having on the terrace a year and a half ago.

They were furious. They raved and ranted about the stupidity of boys. It was very comforting. Then Gauri had said, ‘Mallika, I’ll tell you why you’re not boring.’ I had looked at Gauri, full of hope. ‘You’re not boring because you find everyone interesting,’ Gauri said triumphantly. She saw our blank faces and exclaimed, ‘Oho! Can’t you see – boring people aren’t interested in others. They’re only interested in themselves.’

How reassured I was to hear that!

But I knew Gauri was wrong. As I walked to the market to borrow books from the lending library a few weeks later, I was trying to digest the fact that something that had meant so much to me had meant nothing to Arnav. Mahima was right. He’d only talked to me because he’d been smoking pot. After the party, he’d got involved in a play produced by the Delhi Theatre Group, in which he – as usual – had the leading role. Randhir had taken me for it. In it, Arnav had transformed into a high-strung, neurotic, obsessive middle-aged government employee, in love with an oblivious colleague. He was so funny in his role that Randhir and I, along with the rest of the audience, were laughing almost non-stop. Why would someone so talented, popular, and vibrant be the least interested in talking to me?

I was jerked out of my reverie by the sound of a puppy howling in pain. I looked up to see Chotu, Mrs Mittal’s son, in his veranda, kicking his puppy, while his mother – the unforgotten and unforgiven woman whose scooter tyres I had slashed four years prior – also sat at the veranda, filing her nails.

‘Chotu, don’t do that,’ I shouted.

Mother and son looked at me. ‘It is his puppy,’ Mrs Mittal said, and went back to filing her nails. She had disliked me ever since that long-ago day when I had been rude to her. Chotu gave the puppy another kick, and it howled and howled. I walked on to the sound of the howling puppy, feeling I’d burst. A few minutes later, a scooter whizzed past me. Mother and son were on the scooter, probably on their way to the market.

I immediately turned and walked back. Then, hitching up my saree, I ran.

The poor three-month-old puppy was tied to a chair in the veranda, looking miserable. I went to it, knelt, and tried to take the chain off its collar. It cringed in anticipation of my hitting it. I stroked it, and it whined and licked my hand. ‘Don’t cry, my baby,’ I whispered. I looked over my shoulder. No one. But the chain wasn’t coming off the collar. And I was so frightened at what I was doing that my hands were shaking. Finally, I unbuckled the collar, left it and the chain lying on the veranda, picked up the little puppy, and put it in my cloth bag.

What to do? Where to go? Ayah-ji wouldn’t let me bring it into the house; she hated dogs. I emerged from their veranda to cross the street that ran between our houses when I saw mother and son returning on the scooter. Looking straight ahead, I crossed the street and walked towards my house. I went inside, walked through the sitting and dining rooms, and stepped out of the back door. Arnav came out of Madhu Aunty’s back door at the same moment, waved, and went towards his bike. He was putting on his helmet when I reached him and asked him for a lift; he said ‘sure,’ as though this was the kind of thing we did often together. As usual, he drove like a maniac, almost hit a bus, apologized profusely, and continued driving like a maniac, while I hung on, side-saddle in my saree, desperately holding him with one hand and keeping my cloth bag firmly on my lap with the other.

Thank goodness he didn’t find it strange when I asked him to stop at India Gate. What else to do? How could I go back home with the stolen puppy? So there we sat on the lawns: I, overcome by his kindness in giving me his jacket in this freezing cold, enveloped in his smell; he, looking like a beautiful gypsy with my shawl around him, totally at ease and thankfully oblivious. What to do with the puppy? What to tell him? The truth would implicate him in my crime. Yes, I’d committed a crime.

‘You didn’t know Mahima and the others were going shopping?’ Arnav asked, lighting a cigarette.

He was making pc, of course.

Still. I had to answer. Meaning I had to lie.

This was the problem with lies. You could never stop with one. Which was fine if you were Madhu Aunty and Mahima. Lies tripped off their tongues with ease. Not a vestige of guilt did they struggle with. Which wasn’t to say I didn’t lie. Of course, I did. The very story of my life was a lie. It was a lie that Ma, Shantamama, and I had lived and maintained with such fidelity that it had become the truth along with all the other subsequent lies about my father. Ours was the Big Lie. Big Lies had a place in life because without them there was no place in life. Small lies had a place in life too, but Ma and I had little talent for those, much to Shantamama’s exasperation.

So Arnav’s innocuous question, followed by another innocuous question – didn’t the four of us do everything together? – paralyzed me. In other words, he was asking how come I hadn’t gone with them.

What to say? Even pc requires an answer, no?

I hadn’t gone with them because I was drowning in an ocean of longing. Not going was the only way to keep myself afloat. It was too much – Mahima’s beautiful trousseau, all those gorgeous foreign underclothes, perfumes, lipsticks, sarees, jewellery, gold payals, and… everything. Not because I wanted a beautiful trousseau, or a big wedding, or gold payals, far from it. But because, once in a while, I longed for beautiful new things too, and they were always, always, always beyond my reach. There were times when my squashed longings became unsquashed and shot up, shrieking: ‘look at me, here I am!’ This was one such occasion. So I told my friends I didn’t feel like going shopping with them.

‘So damn obstinate,’ Prabha had said. Mahima and Gauri had concurred.

‘Why do you have to do everything that you feel like doing?’ Mahima had said. ‘Sometimes it’s good to do things you don’t feel like doing if it makes other people happy.’

I do that a lot, I wanted to shriek.

This was the long and truthful answer to Arnav’s short and idle questions.

I said that we didn’t always do things together, which he seemed to find amusing. His laughter made it easy to take the puppy out of the bag and give it to him.

His amusement disappeared completely. He held the puppy to his cheek for a few seconds and then, to my surprise, gave it back to me.

Thankfully he believed me when I said I’d found it on the road. But I shouldn’t have asked him if he could keep it. His mood changed. He refused so abruptly that I felt a little sick in my stomach. That familiar feeling of rejection and humiliation returned. And worry.

Then, out of the blue, he said his mother would find it a home. The relief, oh, the relief!

He was making pc again as we walked back to the bike. I wish he hadn’t bothered. Because, unwittingly and carelessly, he crushed me. He confirmed what Mahima had suspected – that he’d talked too much to me at Randhir’s party because he’d smoked too much that night. I felt it like a punch in the stomach. Here was the proof, finally. I managed to give Arnav a light and amused response. It took a lot out of me.

But when he told me that Randhir had been writing obsessively all his life, I couldn’t even nod, so sharp was my anguish. How to pretend that it didn’t matter that Randhir had never told me?

To my great relief, Arnav’s mother immediately found the puppy a home, but after that I didn’t have the energy to tell her that I didn’t want to have lunch with them. I phoned Madhu Aunty and asked her to please tell Ma.

‘But why you are in Arnav’s house?’ she asked sharply.

She knew very well that Arnav and I were not friends.

‘I asked him for a lift, Aunty, to go to JNU to see Gauri.’

‘Arre! But you know Gauri she has gone shopping with the other two.’

‘Yes, Aunty, I forgot, and when we were halfway there Arnav told me, and… he had to give something to his mother, so we came here, and then his mother said we must have lunch.’

‘But why you asked Arnav for lift?’

‘Aunty, I… I thought he was going to IIT. And you know JNU is right next door to IIT. I’ll come home after lunch, Aunty. Please tell Ma.’

I said bye before she could ask me more questions.

His mother was hospitable, warm, and talked a lot. It took a huge effort to respond to her, but I did, even though all I could think about was the fact that Arnav had only chatted with me at the party because he was stoned, and the fact that Randhir had hidden his writing from me ever since I’d known him. As I chatted with Arnav’s mother, I was thinking, everyone has secrets. And of course, Randhir has the right to his. But why was his writing a secret? That too, from me? All the while I was smiling and nodding at what Arnav’s mother was saying, I was thinking, stupid me, imagining all these years that Randhir and I were kindred spirits! First, Charu had proved me wrong. Now, Arnav had proved me wrong again.

Then out popped another thought. How would I brazen it out if Mrs Mittal came home and accused me of stealing the puppy?

By the time Arnav drove me back home, yet another worry was jostling with the rest. Now Arnav was complicit in my crime; if I was discovered, he would get into trouble too.

‘Ice cream?’ Arnav said as we passed India Gate.

It was as though the gates of heaven had briefly opened to give me some respite from my non-stop thoughts.

So we sat at the India Gate lawns and ate ice cream, and my cassata was like a shot in the arm.

Afloat on my ice cream sea of joy, my thoughts retreated. I asked Arnav not to tell anyone, including Randhir, about the puppy. He nodded indifferently. Boys were wonderful about these things. They just weren’t interested. If I’d told any girl such a thing, she’d never have let it go.

I finished the ice cream, and when I looked up, Arnav was looking at me, his eyes smiling, and my cheeks began to burn. He laughed and said he’d never seen anyone eating ice cream with such relish. Then he told me another one of his stories – or rather, he acted it out – about the time he entered the famously very strict LSR hostel. What do you expect? I fell headlong into this story too.

I was still afloat on this story as we drove back home. It was likely that he would forget this time with me too, because storytelling was what he did with everyone, not just me. He was a natural. He could never know that, each time, he stole a bit of my heart.

When we arrived, Madhu Aunty, Ma, and Anu Aunty were sitting in the veranda of Madhu Aunty’s house. And down the street to my right were my Consequences, rolling inexorably towards us like tanks at the Republic Day parade, with a policeman leading the march, swinging his baton, and Mrs Mittal and her son following behind him. My thoughts, which had subsided so beautifully after the ice cream, flew into my head like a swarm of locusts.

The drama that followed was witnessed by half the colony, and people talked about it for months. That it ended well was, of course, thanks to Sampat Bhaiyya. The constable had been determined his sons get admitted into a top English medium school and had come to Ma and me a year ago to ask if we would tutor them. Ma and I had decided to subsidize his fees, but when we told Madhu Aunty this, she said, ‘Why you should subsidize? Arre, Padma, under the table he is earning ten times as much as you!’ Later, Sampat Bhaiyya had confirmed this in as many words.

Over breakfast, as I was thinking dreamily about Arnav’s laughter-filled eyes when he’d said he’d be my partner in crime any time, I saw Ma staring at me.

‘You did steal the puppy,’ she whispered.

The toast became sawdust in my mouth.

‘Tell me the entire truth, from beginning to end,’ she commanded.

And so I did.

‘Deva,’ Ma moaned after I told her what I’d done. ‘Finish that toast. Don’t waste food. Why didn’t you tell me the truth earlier?’

‘I didn’t want to implicate you, Ma.’

‘Implicate? I’m your mother. What rubbish are you talking?’

Ma took a sip of her coffee and then gasped. ‘You were the one who slashed Mrs Mittal’s scooter tyres four-and-a-half years ago!’

I choked over my coffee.

‘What kind of a mother am I? I don’t even know my own child!’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘What would you have done if Arnav hadn’t been there? Or if we hadn’t known Sampat Bhaiyya?’

There was no answer to that.

‘Never again, do you hear me? And finish the toast. Don’t waste food.’

The next time Arnav came home, Randhir and my friends ordered him to tell them the story. He did. He surpassed himself as Tragedy Queen Mallika; enraged Madhu Aunty; hysterical Mrs Mittal; bawling Chotu; and the abject, ecstatic policeman throwing himself at the feet of Ma and me. He even took on the role of the audience. It was a stellar performance, and everyone howled with laughter.

Later, in the privacy of my room, I performed my version of the entire story for my three friends. They were hysterical with laughter at my imitation of Arnav.

Afterwards it was the happiest time I could remember.

Then Shantamama’s letter came, telling us that she had a tumour in her uterus and had to have a hysterectomy. She’d said the doctor believed it was most likely benign, but could Ma come? The date for the operation was fixed for the week after Mahima’s wedding.

‘Don’t worry, a hysterectomy is not a dangerous operation,’ Ma assured me. I knew that this was true – at least five women we knew in our colony had had one and recovered – but I began to worry.

Mahima’s sangeet was held two days before the wedding. It was an ebullient affair, and the house was full of laughter. Mahima looked lovely in her pink ghaghra, and all the women danced, Renu being the most enthusiastic. Prabha and Gauri and I helped with the serving of the food and drinks. Then I went and sat on the veranda for a breather. Renu joined me a minute later and sighed, ‘I wish you were marrying my brother; then I would have you as my sister.’

I smiled at her. She always said things like this to me.

But after a couple of seconds, she seemed to change her mind. ‘No, I’m glad you’re not. You deserve to be happy.’

‘What d’you mean, Renu?’

She leaned towards me. ‘Do you like my perfume? My husband goes mad when I put it on!’

‘It’s very nice. But, Renu, why did you say you’re glad I’m not marrying your brother because I deserve to be happy?’

Renu laughed. It was her familiar, loud, slightly coarse laughter. ‘Mahima shouldn’t get married to my brother.’

My heart plunged. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t know why I’m telling you. I think it’s that whiskey I had before I came.’

I could hear the sounds of singing drifting happily out of the living room.

‘Renu –’

‘My husband, he says, “I like a modern wife,” so I drink with him when we go for parties and all. But I just don’t like drinking. He drinks a lot, and then he beats me. A real thrashing he gave me today. See?’

Even in the darkness, I could see the marks on Renu’s upper arm as she pulled up her kurta sleeve. I gasped.

‘He cries afterwards, he says he can’t live without me. Every time, he begs forgiveness; he literally touches my feet. Can you imagine, a husband touching his wife’s feet? That much love he feels for me. My brother, he is not capable of that kind of love.’

That kind of love?

‘The only reason my husband beats me is because he is possessive about me – he doesn’t want me to talk to anyone, smile at anyone. That much he loves me.’

‘Renu, what were you saying about your brother?’

‘I was saying that he isn’t capable of such love. My brother, he is a p*****t, Mallika.’

Laughter spilled out from inside the house, and someone began playing the tabla.

‘A – what?’

‘A p*****t. About s*x. He is abnormal about s*x. He is sick.’

I looked at her without comprehension.

My friends and I had never discussed perversion. None of the women who poured out their stories to me had spoken of it. My books had nothing to say about it.

‘Everyone in my family knows, and they all pretend they don’t know,’ Renu added.

‘What’s a p*****t?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘A p*****t is a p*****t, what else!’

‘Renu, Mahima’s like my sister.’

‘I know, I know. I’m so sick of life, Mallika, I’m so sick of life.’

‘Renu, tell me.’

Renu burst into tears. ‘Mallika, don’t stop being my friend.’

‘Renu, if you can’t tell me, then tell Madhu Aunty.’

She wiped her tears with the palm of her hand. ‘Are you mad?’

‘The marriage has to be stopped.’

‘It can’t be stopped.’

‘It can. It can.’

‘What are you going to do? Tell people “Renu said her brother is a p*****t?” When the wedding is in two days? What do you think people will say? They’ll say, “Oh, Renu, she’s a big, fat liar, how can you believe her?” You think I don’t know what they say about me? You believed what I said? Huh? How can you believe me? Huh? Even I can’t believe me!’

‘I do believe you, Renu!’

‘Then you shouldn’t believe me. It’s stupid of you to believe me.’

‘It has to be stopped.’

‘What do you mean, “it has to be stopped, it has to be stopped.” Don’t go on like a broken record. It can’t be stopped, and don’t bring me into it, OK? I’ll deny it if you do.’

Renu flounced inside, leaving me in the veranda.

‘Mallika, Beta,’ called Madhu Aunty. ‘Come, we need help with serving the sweet dish.’

I went to the kitchen. Prabha and Gauri were alone, filling bowls with khir.

‘Prabha, Gauri,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Renu said Shekhar’s a pervert.’

They looked at me, astounded.

‘Mallika,’ said Prabha. ‘How can you believe Renu’s rubbish?’

‘Mallika, she’ll say anything for attention,’ said Gauri. ‘Don’t believe her.’

‘Mallika,’ Prabha continued. ‘Please don’t let Renu’s lies become another Charu story.’

They were right.

But what was a s****l p*****t? I wondered this that night as I tossed and turned in bed. I knew the adjective, perverse, but the noun, p*****t? Once, Gauri had informed us that there were men who burnt their wives with cigarettes. ‘Why?’ I had asked, and Gauri said, ‘They like to do such things.’ Was that what Renu had meant? Or did she mean Shekhar would be a wife beater? But how would she know either of these things?

And that was the other thing I didn’t understand, the thing that was submerged beneath my worry for Mahima. Renu’s husband beat her. And she said it was proof of his love that he begged for forgiveness every time after he did it. She thought this was love?

The next morning, I awoke with the certainty that Renu had taken back her words about Shekhar not because they were untrue, but because she had regretted saying them.

I had to tell Randhir. With one day left before the wedding, only he could prevail upon his parents to stop it.

I went next door several times, but Randhir was nowhere around.

In the evening, he dropped in at my house, looking exhausted, and said, ‘Feel like going for ice cream at India Gate?’

And so we did. It was a beautiful winter evening, and I could tell he was so happy to be with me.

Then I told him.

And he exploded.

There was no Randhir; there was only his anger. So great was his rage that it was like a red shroud around me. I was suffocating in it. In my whole life, I had never encountered such fury. Ma, Shantamama, my grandmother, and my Ayah-ji nagged and scolded. My three friends and I got irritated with one another and frequently argued. There was nothing frightening about any of this. And Karan had never raised his voice at me. His anger was only for my mother; a frigid, tightly controlled anger. But Randhir’s anger choked me. Even as I tried to breathe, I knew that no one had ever looked at me the way Randhir was looking at me: his face twisted, his hands clenched, his body rigid. I could not recall his words any more than you can remember every stone flung at you, but I felt every one of them, physically, on my body. And then he was done. He was no longer twisted and rigid. He was leaning against the jamun tree, looking upwards, as if in prayer, as if I didn’t exist. I stood shivering where I was, with green grass and tall, strong trees all around me, not understanding why, not knowing what I had said wrong, not comprehending his terrible rage.

I still cannot remember his words. But I will never forget that anger and disgust. Yes, disgust. At me. Until that moment, I had not known that it was possible for someone who held your heart, someone whose very heart was in yours, to speak to you like this.