“Sonu!”

“Dada, you are back? How was your trip?”

“It was fine. Why is Kirti with you? Where is Karishma?” She hadn’t been picking up her phone.

“Umm… At the apartment I think. She said she had to meet some people there. And she couldn’t take Kirti with her. So, she asked me to mind her for a few hours.”

“Where is Mommy?” Kirti asked Siddhartha. She had figured out by now that her mother was usually with Siddhartha and hence he was the person to ask.

He smiled at the child and replied reassuringly. “She will be back soon.” Then he turned his attention back to his brother, “She didn’t say anything else?”

“That she would call me once she was done.”

Siddhartha considered taking Kirti to the apartment himself. But the situation was weird. Since she had deliberately left the child behind, he decided to let it be.

—

Siddhartha could hear her voice from even behind the closed door.

“Just leave. Leave this place right now. Otherwise I will call the security.”

The voices that responded to her were not audible.

He used his key to open the door without making any sound and let himself in.

Karishma noticed him first as she was standing facing the door. She fell silent as she stared at him.

It was her reaction that made the man and the woman sitting on the sofa turn towards him.

“Who are you? How did you get in?” The man jumped off the sofa and came to him threateningly.

“I am the landlord and the door was open.” Siddhartha smoothly told this partial lie.

“That doesn’t mean–”

“Vikram. Leave him alone,” Karishma found her voice back. The other woman was older and she looked terrified and confused.

Vikram was her husband, Siddhartha figured that out. So, this lady was most likely her mother-in-law. He looked calmly into Vikram’s eyes, “I think she was asking you to leave. So, you should.”

“She is my wife. She can’t ask me to leave.”

“Actually, she can. This is my property. So, you have to leave. Otherwise I will call not only the security, but also the police.”

Vikram turned back towards Karishma and hissed, “You whore! What is he to you that–”

“Enough!” Siddhartha’s voice boomed and even Karishma flinched at it. “I am reminding you again that it is my property and now, I am asking you to leave. If you take even a second more, I am going to call the security first, and then the police.”

He moved towards the intercom, then saw the elderly woman pleading with Vikram and dragging him out.

“And what do you mean by staying behind with my wife?” he screamed at the door.

“I am not answerable to you.” Siddhartha took a few long strides to the door and pushed him out. Then he waited for the woman to follow him, before locking the door behind them.

Karishma stood frozen at the same place she was in when Siddhartha had entered. The look of hopelessness on her pale face triggered almost a physical pain in him. As if he had been punched in the gut. He walked up to her and pulled her in an embrace. At first stiff, she relaxed slowly. He made her sit on the sofa and fetched her a glass of water. She gulped the entire glass down.

He sat down next to her. Once some color had returned to her face, he asked, “What was he doing here?”

“He went berserk when he realized that I had moved out of my parents’ house too. He called my mother several times. So, I thought I would meet him and ask for divorce.”

“And that didn’t go well?”

“Obviously. You saw him,” she sounded bitter.

“The lady with him was–”

“My mother.”

“Your mother? With him?”

She fell silent.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“Divorce isn’t going to be easy.”

“I never thought it would be. But you don’t have to worry about it alone. Why did you let him come here though?”

She looked at him confused, then seemed to understand. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have called him here without your permission–”

“My permission? What are you—oh!” he smiled indulgently, “No, Karishma. I am not so possessive about this place that your husband coming here would bother me. I only meant that he is an abusive and dangerous man. It would have been better if  he didn’t know where you live.”

“Oh!”

“It’s okay. We will ensure that security doesn’t let him in.”

“I don’t think he is dangerous that way. He knew all this while where I was. I thought it was best if I confronted him on my grounds. His home or my parents’ – both would have been his territory.”

That made him smile again, “Yes. This is your territory.”

“It didn’t do much, unfortunately.”

“You don’t know that yet.”

She flung her head on the back of the sofa and said, “Kirti is with Soumen. I should get back to the office and bring her.”

“I will call Soumen. If he is free, he can bring her.”

Soumen was happy to drive Kirti over. Karishma looked exhausted and didn’t object to the arrangement.

After a few moments of silence, he edged closer to her and took her hand in his own. “Hey!” he called her softly.

She gave him a long look, then suddenly started talking, as if unable to keep it inside her, “Do you know who hurts me the most? Who makes my life most miserable? It’s not Vikram. It’s my parents. My mother, especially. She is disappointed in me. And she makes no bones about it. All my life I have been this ideal daughter she has been proud to show off. She seems to have brought me up not for myself, not even for herself, but for the relatives and the neighbors. So, I have been doing just what was expected of me. Dreaming just as much as she wanted me to dream and no more. Being intelligent, but not ambitious. Speaking fluent English but toeing the lines of tradition. It didn’t pay off. The woman I was raised to be was supposed to have a happy family. She was supposed to have a husband who took care of her and who, in turn, received her complete devotion. But the husband she found me was not that. Now, as a woman who has left her husband, she can’t show me off. That is what the problem has boiled down to for her. How to win her medal back? And she is convinced that she is doing the right thing in not accepting my problem, in trying to force me to go back. She self-righteously scorns me. And I?” She seemed to choke on her words here and stopped talking. Siddhartha continued holding her hand and looked at her in anticipation. He was ready to hear whatever she had to say. He wasn’t judging or interrupting. She overcame the tears that had threatened her and spoke again, “It’s her that I can’t confront. The little girl who was overcome with guilt every time she disappointed her mother refuses to leave me. The teenager who never dared speak anything inappropriate before her mother stays on stubbornly too. When I am in front of her, somehow, it is me who becomes the villain and she the victim. I know that it shouldn’t happen this way. I tried breaking free of it while I was there. But it didn’t work. I tried explaining, I tried retorting, but in the end I just– I just ended up staying silent. She continues to define the rules of the game. And since I am no longer obeying them, I am the villain. But not strong enough to challenge her rules.”

Siddhartha reached out and she willingly came into his embrace. She rested her head on his chest.

“People don’t change much, Karishma. When people in your life become toxic, there isn’t any point trying to fix them. It only makes you more miserable. All you can do is to make them irrelevant to your life. You have already taken a step towards that for Vikram. By leaving him. Divorce will see you through the process. There is, of course, no divorcing parents,” he chuckled, then added somberly, “But I am so proud of the woman you are today. Could that, perhaps, help you ignore that your mother is, unjustifiably, disappointed?”

She raised her head and looked up at him. Then she smiled. “Only you could have done something like that.”

“Like what?”

“You didn’t make a sentimental, meaningless declaration that everything will be all right. You pointed out exactly what can be set right.”

“If that good or bad?”

“Obviously, it is good. So good that–”

“That?”

“Nothing,” she stood up, “I should start cooking. Do you think Soumen would like to stay for dinner?”

“We could order something. You don’t need to cook–”

“I want to. I actually like cooking. We had ordered yesterday too. It’s not particularly healthy, is it? So, I bought some grocery this morning. And I am not a bad cook, trust me. But can you and Soumen make do with vegetarian food?”

“Yes. Yes. We are not such staunch non-vegetarians. Do you need help?”

“No. I don’t suppose you got time to even look at your work before you came here. Don’t you want to catch up on your e-mails and with Mrinal?”

“I do, indeed. And only you could have guessed that.”

She grinned and went to the kitchen, while Siddhartha called Mrinal up.

—

To be continued