Beyond Lies

by Alka Dimri Saklani

  My grip tightened until it suffocated her. Wasn’t that the way she loved?

  “Samar, you are hurting me.” Her voice pierced the fog of my thoughts.

  I left her, pushed her at an arm’s length, and no words were needed, she saw the shift in my eyes, the shift from love to something so deadly that there were no words for it. My love for her was infinite and when it was painted black, my hatred matched its intensity.

  “Samar!” She panicked. “Samar, listen to me once.”

  The time we could have conversed was gone. I pulled out my engagement ring, shoved it into her hand, and closed her fist. She opened her fist, stared at the ring nervously, flipped it in her palm before pushing it in her thumb.

  She raised her hand in surrender. “Samar…” but words died on her lips when my hands curled around her neck. Slowly and gradually the grip tightened until her face turned blue…but my logical mind kicked in the moment, and I pushed her back, making a mental note of sending her behind the bars.

  “Loving you was a sin.” I couldn’t make it any more than whisper, and despite all that happened, the end of us pushed me to a low I didn’t know existed.

  I left her with a jerk, and she stumbled, lost her balance, and slipped down the broken edge of the bridge. Panicked, I had tried to hold her hand and pull her up.

  But she wasn’t holding tight. She wanted to let go.

  And…and…after a while I lost my grip…and…and she was gone…into the hungry river raging below…the look in her eyes just before the fall shook my interiors. For years that moment haunted me; her hands leaving mine, her free fall, hands floating in the air trying to clutch anything, her red dupatta flowing freely in the air and her disappearance in the deep waters. My identity transformed yet again.

  I was a murderer…

  A murderer…An identity that could never be rewritten.

  There was no way she could have survived that fall. Could she?

  Could she?

  And then like a bolt it hit me. Damn.

  Kiara is Simran.

  She didn’t die

  The revelation disorients me, and at the same time fills me with so much relief, the weight of the unbearable guilt is gone. I am not a murderer. I didn’t kill anyone, but before that relief could even breathe, panic conquers me. What does Simran wants? Revenge? But why Tia? Why not me?

  How could I be such a fool? I should have known. That day over the video call I saw uncanny similarities, but the colour of her eyes was different, so was her accent, her hair, her dressing and the light was dim. Her face haunted me for many nights, but Tia talked so much about Kiara and she didn’t’ sound like Simran at all. I had convinced myself I was being obsessed. But looking back I realise why Kiara never came face to face with me. I would recognize her if I met her in person even for a minute. At the party she lied about an asthma attack, during the engagement she lied about her mother’s health and even during that video call she dimmed the lights and disconnected quickly, abruptly, before I could even see her properly.

  Cold sweats break through me when I imagine what she might do to Tia. And I am not sure anymore if I am relieved that she survived that night.

  60. Kiara

  Bloody ring, it spoilt it all. Why the hell didn’t I throw it away? Wasn’t it useless?

  No. It wasn’t; it fuelled my revenge. It was so satisfying seeing Tia and the ring in the same frame. Every time I saw Tia struggling in pain, I imagined Samar in jail for kidnapping his second fiancé. Damnit, I slipped it in the room. How frantically I had searched for it. Why didn’t’ it occur to me that Tia might have found it?

  Tia is silent. Silent like a statue. No, silent like a corpse.

  “You have too many questions. I know, so many that you don’t even know where to start. Right?”

  She stares at me, too tired to learn the truth. But I let her make her own theories. She must be wondering why Samar didn’t recognize me. Samar’s Simran was an innocent desi girl, who used to wear churidars, bindi and bangles, not a modern sophisticated woman. I raise my hands and look at my wrist, remembering the colourful bangles Samar loved, the long earrings dangling down my ears, the small maroon bindi on my forehead, he loved it all. Wasn’t that why I fell for him? He never tried to change me.

  Samar…

  It surprises me how his name still stirs so many emotions. I look at my straight shoulder length hair and for moment I feel they are wavy and long. “Untamed, wavy and wild, just like you,” Samar’s whisper almost brushes through my ears and I feel goose bumps all over. Wasn’t it the same way he touched Tia’s hair the day I saw him at Juhu beach? I knew it then; he had fallen for her. Natural, wild beauty had always been his weakness.

  Samar.

  I am not sure when my thoughts gain voice. I am speaking his name aloud, almost half a decade later. And his name leaves a sweet taste in my mouth, and a longing so deep that it deranges me. But then I divert my focus.

  Tia…

  She reminds me of me. Before and after the devastation.

  She was like Simran and now she is like Kiara.

  Who can better understand her than me? Samar? No way. His love will fade away, mine will stay. Forever. I walk up to her and she cringes in the corner. What’s in her eyes? Anger? Pity? Hatred? Fear? I could have tolerated it all, but there is something else too.

  Disgust.

  “Tia, I love you, believe me. Nobody in this world can love you the way I love you.” Why is she looking at me like I am a maniac? “We will leave them all and go away from here. To some place where no one can reach us.”

  She can’t move back anymore as she has hit the wall, so finally my fingers brush her chin and she scream at the touch. I jolt back, but she doesn’t stop screaming. I let her scream. To come out of denial she needs to let it out. I understand her. Of course, I understand her. Nobody can understand her the way I do. And one day, she will realise all that I did was because I couldn’t share her, because I love her so much. She just needs some time.

  Samar must have read the message in Tia’s mobile since this stupid girl forgot her mobile at his home and with his intellect, he must have solved the puzzle. How long could I fool him? I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes over the video call at their engagement. I feared he might reach me, but my drastic transformation and the dim light saved me. But now, after reading Tia’s message to me, he must have learned the truth. I must plan something, fast. I walk to the kitchen and thankfully I have one injection left. I fill it with sedatives and walk to Tia. She is drained, tears are rushing down her closed eyes and her head is resting on the wall. It’s late before she opens her eyes, she struggles but she is weak, and I prick her. She turns limp but is still awake. With her lost weight it must be easier to carry her this time, not like last time when I needed help of the professional kidnapper, but, I can’t take my car. Samar might have noted the number, so I need to hire a taxi and leave the city as soon as possible, before Samar finds us, before Tia’s parents find us. It will take some time for the sedative to work, in the meantime I book a cab. I can tell the cabdriver that she is my friend and is unwell.

  “Simran.”

  A voice echoes in the air and every particle of my body reacts to it, my hand instantly reaches to my chest that’s drumming so hard that it might explode any moment.

  “Simran!” Samar’s scream fills the air once again, only this time I hear the hatred in his tone. And my heart misses a beat. And the sudden shift of my heart from drumming high and to going still unbalances me and I almost stumble, and only once my surge of emotions linked with him subsides, do I panic…I feel my body numbing…no…no…no…it’s not possible, he can’t track me…he can’t…how could he know? How? This place, this godforsaken place, how could he ever reach here?

  “Simran, open the door or I will break it!” The bangs on the door echoes along with his screams. Why the hell has my mind gone blank in this hour of need?

  The door crashes down with a bang and I es
cape by just a few centimetres. Samar is standing in front of me…and…the world has stopped…. There is an eerie silence and all I can hear is his breathing, and well mine too…Hell… I hate the longing that’s surging through me, my gaze travels from his arms where I belonged one day, to his eyes….and the hatred in them punches me straight in the gut. I almost stumble… almost. But, no, this is not the time to falter…no…I want my revenge, from Samar, and I want Tia, this time for once in my life I am going to get what I want. I was so close. She had begun to hate Samar; she was distant from her mother too. And kids? I killed her motherly instincts long back when I passed those messages in kids voice and I even proved it to Samar when I sent Ria and Rima to her room when he was feeding her. He should have left her then. My wait shouldn’t have been so long. But now she can connect to no one other than me. She is angry now, but one day she will understand.

  I pull out the gun from my pocket and point it towards Samar. The hatred in his eyes transforms to shock.

  “Wait…just wait there, Samar.” I make a futile attempt to control the tremble in my voice, but I am shaking, shivering, unable to control the emotions surging through my body.

  He believes I might pull the trigger. Does he remember what I told him about my gun? In this moment I hope not. He never understood that my every lie was to win his love. Everything I did, good or bad was to keep him close, so close that nobody could take him away from me. But what he did? Tried to kill me? What does it matter if it was an accident? Damn those people who pulled me out and gave me a second life. What purpose did I have, other than revenge? How could Samar so conveniently leave town after spreading the news of my accidental drowning? Well, I never returned to the life I knew. I wanted my revenge and it was best if he considered me dead. But where was he? All his social media profiles were deleted and there was no trace of him left. I knew god supported my decision when I saw his photo in the Young Achievers section in a business magazine, when I finally got hold of him after a lot of wasted years.

  “Simran.” I like that his voice falters, finally he feels something other than hatred.

  And when I look back at him, I can’t stop falling in love with him all over again. He looks more attractive with the matured rugged look that borders more on the scary side. We stand like that for a moment, or an eternity, I can’t say, and I have no idea how it’s going to end.

  AAAAARGG….

  A gut-wrenching pain shoots through my head. I touch the back of my head and when I bring my wet hand in front of my face, it’s filled with blood. I turn around and see Tia’s horrified eyes glaring at me and then the bamboo stick in her hand she probably got from the kitchen.

  The last thing I see before closing my eyes is hatred in the eyes of two people I loved the most in my life, and in a blur, I see Tia falling down along with me. Sedatives finally claimed her.

  A little too late.

  61. Kiara

  My head throbs when I open my eyes and it takes a while before my surrounding comes to focus. Where am I? It’s a small room and I am lying on a bed; some tubes are running through my veins and an oxygen mask covers my face.

  The memories come in a blur and soon transforms to shards of broken glass cutting me deep. Two people I loved the most, one stood in front of me, and the other at my back, and the hatred in their eyes consumed me, burned me alive, ripped me into so many pieces that could never be gathered again in this lifetime.

  They have seen me without the mask, and as sad that can be, nobody ever loved me without the mask. I can never undo the hatred in their eyes, I can’t explain my love to them. Nobody every understood the way I loved. Not a single soul in this damn huge world.

  My arms are aching to be held. I want a hug, a kiss on my forehead and the craving to be loved is so strong that it gnaws on me. I miss my mother like never before, but she was never there for me. For her I died long back in the drowning accident. No, I never tried to contact her, but I did follow her for a time, and she didn’t seem to miss me much.

  “Mom.” I cry out loud, I can’t help that I am yearning like a toddler for my mother, one who never cared for me, never loved me, for whom my existence was nothing more than hindrance for her free spirited life style.

  In the past few years I have seen the world from a dead woman’s view, a woman whose death nobody mourned, a woman whom nobody missed. Not a single soul. The world had receded far out of my reach, loneliness followed me like a shadow until Tia walked in with her nonsensical talks and useless theories of trust. She made me fall in love with life once again, she made me fall in love with her too. And the more I fell in love, the more I feared losing her to the selfish world out there, the more I wanted to protect her from everyone…from Samar’s fleeting love.

  Even without her, her family had three members who were there for each other, but for me it was only Tia. How could I let her go? I didn’t want bits and pieces, but in a quest to have all of her I lost all of her.

  I crave for her presence by my side. I long to hear her never ending talks, I miss her caring, her loving me like nobody ever loved me; not my mother, not even Samar, but I know…I have lost her…

  I don’t have any strength to face her hatred. I don’t have any strength to fight anybody’s hatred anymore. I am tired. I am tired of waiting for love that now feels more like an illusion than a reality.

  Maybe I was destined to be unloved in this life.

  I check on the side table and I find it there, my mobile. I pull it to my face; with unsteady hands I pull out my oxygen mask and click record.

  I am not trying to wipe out my tears, I like their company. At least I have someone in my last moments to share my pain.

  62. Tia

  “Where is Kiara?”

  The first thing I ask after I wake up. I am at home in bed.

  Amongst the four people standing in front of me, Samar looks most in control and that too when he is drained, withered and lost. Mom, dad and Avinash are in some undeniable shock. They don’t even try to speak as if their lips are sealed. My eyes drift to the wall clock, it has been almost eight hours since I…I…

  “She is in ICU,” Samar’s voice is hoarse, and his eyes are red.

  “ICU?”

  No…I close my eyes, I had hit her with full force, as much force as my sedated body could muster. She was about to shoot Samar and…and… I didn’t mean to hurt her like that…but hatred had consumed me.

  “I want to see her.”

  They glance at each other and I can see them communicating in silence.

  “We can’t see her right now.” Samar sits beside me.

  “I WANT TO SEE HER RIGHT NOW!” I scream at the top of my voice.

  “Tia, you need to rest.” It was dad who spoke this time.

  “I am not sick for god’s sake; it was just the sedatives and I know them too well.” My voice is bitter but that’s the least of my concerns.

  “Tia…Tia…She is…under intensive care…doctors aren’t allowing anyone…”

  “She is dead.” Samar’s steely emotionless voice cuts through mom’s voice and through my soul. I heard it wrong, I definitely heard it wrong. I look at Samar’s face and no words are needed. His face disappears behind the mist that envelops me, nothing exists in this mist, excepts the words that are playing in a loop in my mind…SHE IS DEAD…my mind shuts down and then it escapes the present, it escapes the sorrow that will engulf it someday, but for now it flees to happier times; we are sitting on her balcony under a star lit sky and laughing madly at her stupid joke, Tia and Kia, doesn’t that rhyme? The memory jumps from one to another without warning; “Who can stay angry with you? You fool.” And suddenly her laughter turns sad. ‘I can’t walk past people and places,’ her voice comes muffled to my ears… I will never leave you…my promise to her…my fake promise.

  And then out of nowhere she is sitting next to me, staring at me with a longing so deep, so intense that the accusation in them doesn’t seem to belong there. Her big expressive eyes a
re heavy with misplaced trust, and she asks with a hope hard to put down.

  “Friends forever?”

  63. Kiara’s Re

  corded Audio Clip

  Samar and Tia,

  You have seen two sides of me, the good and the bad, but you haven’t yet seen the real me, you need to meet the real Simran before I leave.

  As a child I never experienced my parent’s protective embrace around me. I am not good with words, so I won’t be able to explain what it feels like to be invisible, like your presence doesn’t matter to anyone, like even if you don’t exist anymore no one would even notice.

  After all that happened, I can’t expect you to trust me, but you can find the clipping of the paper in my drawer that screams about the negligence of parents who forgot their little girl in a burning house. You can see a little girl in the photo. You can’t recognize her though, because she is me, the real me, insecure, lonely, unloved, and well, invisible Simran.

  Somewhere deep down, the incident forced me to believe I wasn’t born to be loved, but it never eased my craving for affection, it never eased my longing to feel a sense of belonging.

  Children who grow up unloved see the world through the lens of insecurity. They believe they aren’t destined to be loved, so when they are, they hold on too tight, too scared the world will snatch away what belongs to them. Their loneliness scares them more once they experience love because then they know what they have been missing out on, they know the vast difference between living a life and merely passing through it.