Yes, she was a bad person. A stupid girl, afraid of a silly colour, a shame to her parents, someone to be mocked and despised and left friendless. And worse, she was … no, she couldn’t put it into words. It was unnatural and dirty and abnormal. Yes, that was the word. She was abnormal!
Aisha had stared at her while she said all this. And then, without saying a word, she had hugged her tight. They’d just sat there, in each other’s arms, for what felt like ages. When they broke apart, she’d seen the tears on Aisha’s cheeks. Her friend had held her face in her hands and slowly, clearly told her that she loved her. Not just as a friend, but as a lost part of her soul. Apparently, she had felt this way for a while, but had been too scared to say anything. ‘You don’t need to feel the same way about me,’ Aisha had said, ‘but you need to stop hurting yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect. How can you not see that?’
It was as if she had been holding her breath her entire life and she had just been told it was okay to exhale. She threw away the blade that night. She didn’t need it anymore. She had something infinitely better: someone who accepted her and loved her, without expectation. And over the next few weeks, she felt her own bullied heart respond to the warmth and love Aisha showered on her. Shyly at first, and then, when her awkward feelings were greeted with enthusiasm, with more confidence, she delved deeper into this unfamiliar yet enchanting new adventure. It didn’t seem wrong. It felt … wonderful.
Days turned to months. Months turned to years. Around her, friends found lovers, and then, in what seemed like hardly any time at all, lost them to others and found new ones for themselves. But Aisha stayed. Their relationship blossomed as they discovered more about each other, things they never knew as friends. She told Aisha about the time a cousin had tried to play doctor with her, only to have his hair pulled till he screamed. Aisha had told her how her father had actually wanted a second son instead of a daughter, and how all her life she had tried not to disappoint him a second time. They spend hours just lying together talking, caressing each other’s hands. And then one day, mere hands didn’t feel enough. She’d heard that the first time wasn’t that great for most women. Hers had been … indescribably lovely. There was no stopping after that. And why should it have stopped? Everything was perfect.
Till that dark day, two months ago, when Amma had gone to visit her sister. Laxmi’d called Aisha over, confident that Appa wouldn’t be home before evening. Except he had come home for some reason and found her and Aisha together, cuddling and kissing on the bed.
She had never thought him capable of saying the things he did. She had seen him angry before, but never in the grasp of a fury like this. He was beyond reason, beyond explanations. And there was nobody to calm him, not even Amma with her well-meaning, but eventually futile murmurs. He warned her to not tell her mother, threatened her, told her to never indulge in such filthy, sinful behaviour again or else he’d take her to someone who’d beat it out of her, someone who would cure her of this abnormal tendency using any means possible. She’d argued and cried, but he had silenced her with a ringing slap across the face.
‘If you don’t forget about this … this … sick nonsense, you will be dead to me, do you understand? It would be better to have a dead daughter than one who brings this kind of shame to my family!’
She had looked mutely at him, tears exhausted, heart sore, and nodded. How could she not? Obedience was a habit that was ingrained in her since she was a child. But it was different now. She wasn’t a child anymore. And she wasn’t alone either. She didn’t have to take this. She didn’t have to be bullied into doing anything she didn’t want to do.
When she told Aisha her plan to elope, she’d tried to convince her against it. ‘Be reasonable, Mimi,’ she’d said. ‘He’ll know whom you’ve run away to. He’ll rage and rave and make your mom cry and she’ll call you and cry to you. Do you want to go through all that? They’ll go to the police. He’ll find you, whatever it takes. He won’t put up with the shame of a daughter who has run away from home. I’m with you, whatever you decide, but think it through first. Please.’
And she’d thought, they won’t try to find me, if they think I’m beyond finding. He’d have preferred a dead daughter, he’d said. Well, she’d give him one.
They’d called Shweta the next day and told her the plan.
Nineteen
The sky was fading from black to deep purple outside. A few chirps from the proverbial early birds could be heard. Inside, silence reigned. At some point in the last half an hour, Dhruv and Aisha had finished their spat and were now sitting on opposing ends of the couch, fuming. Laxmi planted herself next to Aisha, rubbing her shoulder in a conciliatory way. All three were looking at Avantika, as if waiting for her to say something.
She didn’t know what to say. Should she feel sorry for Laxmi? She’d been through hell, for sure. But did that justify the hell she was putting her parents through? And why was she, Avantika, in any place to judge any of them? About Aisha, her feelings were less vague. Yes, she’d been desperate, but to even consider, let alone actually go ahead with, contacting a killer…
She could cry ‘misunderstanding’ all she wanted, but Avantika couldn’t bring herself to forgive her, her intentions and motivations notwithstanding. She could’ve died. And while poets and romantic teenagers might consider love a noble enough cause to die for, she certainly didn’t believe in kicking the bucket, that too as an extra in someone else’s love story. She’d always felt Mercutio was a bit of a twit, in that respect.
‘I’d like to go home now,’ she said, looking at Dhruv.
He looked at Aisha, but she was gaping at Avantika.
‘That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?’ she asked, eyebrows raised.
‘It doesn’t matter what she says,’ Laxmi said, ‘all that matters is whether she will tell anyone.’
Good point, Avantika thought. It was a pretty insane story. A scoop, as the tabloids would put it. But what would she achieve by going public with it? Realistically, she didn’t have any solid proof, just a bunch of verbal confessions, which could be denied easily. And then, there was her hate-hate relationship with Aisha. That would take away any credibility she might’ve had as a neutral commentator. And then, she thought with a sudden stab of guilt, there was the question of whether she’d ever want to wilfully screw up a friend’s life. If you could call her that. No, there was only one option left to her.
‘Well?’ Aisha demanded, ‘are you?’
‘Depends,’ Avantika said.
‘Depends? On what?’
‘Tell me why you sent that man after me. I want to hear it from you. No drama, no attitude. Just … the truth.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yep.’
Aisha looked at her suspiciously, then turned to Dhruv and Laxmi, who nodded. Aisha gave a resigned sigh.
‘It’s … well … it’s…’ she faltered.
‘Yes?’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Aisha asked, shoulders slumped. ‘I have only ever loved one person my whole life. She means everything to me. And there was a very real possibility that she would be separated from me. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough to drive someone to do something stupid, something desperate?’
When Avantika didn’t reply, she continued. Her voice was almost plaintive now.
‘I didn’t … I never wanted you dead. I just wanted you out of the picture for some time. A week or two till everything got sorted.’ She stole a look at Laxmi. ‘We’re going to the U.S. next week. San Francisco. Same sex marriage is legal there. We’ll get married and settle down. I want to be with her for the rest of my life and I don’t want some fucking politician with stone-age thinking to tell me if I can or not!’
Avantika looked from Aisha to Laxmi. There were tears in Laxmi’s eyes, but Aisha looked resolute, her chin sticking out, the familiar arrogant expression back on her face. She looked like a woman who meant every word she’d just said
and Avantika believed she could easily do what she meant to do. This was an unstoppable woman. She could imagine her walking into the morgue, imperious and grief-stricken in turn, pleading, cajoling, threatening, commanding till people bent to her will. If she could pay a killer without batting an eyelid, how difficult was it for her to bribe a couple of cops so they’d forget about the paperwork?
‘Must be nice, not having to worry about money,’ she muttered.
If Aisha heard her, it didn’t show. ‘I should’ve been more specific with my instructions to Manek and I’m really, really sorry you got hurt,’ she said, and this time Avantika could almost make out the sincerity in her voice, ‘but I’m not sorry about anything else. If that makes me a bitch, well … ’, she shrugged.
‘It does make you a bitch,’ Avantika said. ‘It’s one thing crossing a line for love. It’s a whole different ball game attempting murder for it.’
She stood up. ‘I wish I could wish you well. I do, but I can’t. All I can do is promise not to print any of it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m not doing this for you.’
‘Thank you, Avanti,’ Laxmi said, squeezing Aisha’s hand, ‘This means so m—’
‘Or you.’
She picked up her backpack and pulled out Laxmi’s diary from it. Handing it to the surprised woman, she said, ‘Sorry I read some of it. In my defence, I thought you were dead.’
As Laxmi and Aisha turned the pages together, identical smiles on their lips, Avantika turned to Dhruv and raised her eyebrows. ‘Well?’, she said, ‘are you going to take me away from all this or what?’
The BMW pulled out of the driveway and sped towards the Pune–Mumbai Expressway. Behind them, the first rays of the sun peeped over the hills. Deep purple clouds mottled the skies, clashing vividly against the orange-rimmed outlines of the hills. It was quite a stunning view. Avantika looked out of the window of the front seat and stared at nothing.
Aisha had won. Again. She was going to get away with almost-murder and there was nothing anyone could do about it. She had done it for love, she’d said, as if it was something that was supposed to make people nod sagely and go, ‘Ah, for love, is it? That’s all right then.’
Love, Avantika thought bitterly. It was almost as bad as religion. People gave and took lives for it that weren’t theirs to take in the first place. They lied, cheated, used and abused others for love’s sake. And you were supposed to understand and get on with life because, hey, it’s love after all.
Before leaving, she’d asked Aisha and Laxmi a question that had bothered her for some time.
‘Whose body was it? The one y’all burned?’
The two women had looked at her as if she was nuts. Then Laxmi had shrugged casually in the universal ‘who-knows’ gesture and Aisha, with her usual air of condescension had replied, ‘It was just a body, who knows?’
That irritated her. She had tons of things to be really annoyed about today, but this one was rapidly rising to the top of the pile. They may call it the city of dreams, but Mumbai was a hard place. A land with edges of flint, against which the brittle and the fragile broke, like so many shards of glass. But for someone to die unreported, unclaimed and then be used in this manner—
She must’ve been someone’s daughter, perhaps someone’s sister or wife or mother. She must’ve meant something to someone. And that someone would never know what happened to her. She’d just be one missing person among the hundreds that fall through the cracks of Mumbai every day, never to be seen or heard from again.
She shuddered and rubbed her arms unconsciously.
‘Should I turn down the AC?’ Dhruv asked.
‘No, it’s fine.’
She glanced at him sideways. There were shadows under his eyes and the beginnings of a salt-and-pepper stubble along his jawline. What would’ve made a lesser man look like an escaped convict, made this one look like a Mills and Boons hero. Some killer genes this family has, she thought and smiled wryly to herself.
She’d seen a different side of him last night, a side she was still trying to process. They’d barely spoken after leaving the bungalow, and he didn’t seem to mind much. Perhaps the night’s revelations had exhausted his quota for conversation. It certainly had exhausted hers. But inner monologues, on the other hand, seemed to be there for the asking, and so hers went on, taking a small moment to remind her that the only time she’d actually gone out of town with an absolutely ravishing man, was to discover that his sister had taken out a contract on her life.
She had just about finished asking her mind to zip it, when her phone pinged. And pinged again. And again. And again. It was a string of Whatsapp messages from Uday, each with a growing sense of panic, till the final one, which was typed out in all caps and urged her to call him, before he called the police. She pressed ‘dial’ immediately.
‘Hello?’
‘Thank God! Are you okay? I couldn’t get through! Why didn’t—’
‘Uday, Uday, Uday … I’m fine. I’m on my way back—’
‘From where? I’ve been messaging you all night, why didn’t you reply?’
He wasn’t yelling, but in the air-conditioned soundlessness of the car, he may as well have been. ‘I didn’t get any of the messages, I think the network must’ve been crap—’
After a few well-chosen words about telecom companies, Uday seemed to calm down. She could imagine him pacing the room, running his hand through his hair, forcing himself to be cool. ‘Okay, so I’m just going to wait here at your place till you get back, yes?’
‘No, listen, why don’t you head home and get some sleep? Or sleep at my place, whatever—’
He told her he’d crash at her place for the night and hung up. She did likewise, only to look up from her phone and see an amused smile on Dhruv’s face.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You smile creepily for nothing, do you?’
He shrugged, still smiling in that irritating fashion. ‘I could stop if you like.’
‘How accommodating of you. Now only if you accept that a lot of crap would’ve been avoided if you’d opened your mouth at the right time—’
He frowned. ‘You don’t … let up, do you?’
He gave her a quick look and turned his eyes back on the road. ‘Okay, let’s go with that. Maybe I should’ve said something when I saw Manek—’
‘Maybe?’
‘Fine, definitely. I should’ve told you what I suspected right then. But tell me this, would you have believed me?’
Avantika blinked. Would she have? It was a bit of a stretch, believing that an ex-classmate, even one who’d been as vile as Aisha, would actually pay someone to kill you. And Dhruv was Aisha’s brother. She’d have wondered why he was telling her instead of covering up for his sister. Come to think of it, why had he bothered to go through the trouble of taking her to Lonavala (or possibly Khandala) and spilling the beans? A strong sense of right and wrong?
If Aisha was to be believed … but no, that was daft. Maybe he was just scared of what it’d do to his family’s reputation if she found out from someone else. But how could he have been sure that she wouldn’t want to make the whole affair public? She had no idea. So she asked him.
He pursed his lips. Then, with the air of someone saying something they really didn’t want to, he replied, ‘All my life, I’ve tried not to be like Dad. He was a good man in many ways. But I was scared I’d turn out like him with the … you know. If Manek had succeeded, it’d mean that Aisha had stepped into his shoes and I really didn’t want murder to run in the family. I had to make her accountable to someone. She had to be pulled up and made to answer, if not to the cops, then to us.’
‘But you didn’t need me. You could’ve thrown your elder brother weight a bit and—’
‘Yes, but I thought you’d want to know that Laxmi was fine, see it for yourself.’
She still wasn’t convinced and he must’ve sensed that because he added in a softe
r voice, ‘I also wanted you to know that I wasn’t involved. That I’d never wish you harm.’
She gulped. There was something in his voice—
‘Wasn’t it a bit of a risk? What if I’d decided to go to the cops even after hearing the whole thing?’
His face turned grim. ‘You have every right to,’ he said. ‘I guess I just hoped you’d be … kind. And you are.’
She looked out of the window again. Kind, yes. Kind of a sap. She tried to not feel bad about it and failed. Was she just like everyone else? A sucker for a good sob-story, especially one that involved the L word. Well, at least she wasn’t totally deranged when it came to relationships. She’d never go to the lengths Aisha and Laxmi did, just to be with someone. She had more spine than that, she hoped. If push came to shove, she’d stand and fight, instead of running away and playing dead. But then again, who really knew how one would react in a corner? She clicked her tongue in exasperation. Thinking. What a perfectly good waste of brain cells.
‘Something wrong?’ Dhruv asked.
‘No … well, actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.’
‘Oh good. More questions.’
‘There was a rumour in school back then, that you and Laxmi were … you know, dating or whatever.’ She looked closely at his face. ‘I’m guessing it wasn’t true?’
‘Obviously not. But I can see why people thought that. She used to be at our place an awful lot. We used to hang out so we were quite comfortable around each other. I think the other girls noticed that, Shweta and Mahira. Laxmi and I would be talking casually and they’d stand in the corner, whispering and giggling. I think they thought there was only one way a girl could be that friendly with a boy.’
Avantika rolled her eyes. Typical. But sadly, not unexpected. Not feeling entirely at home around the opposite sex came with the territory of being a girl in a girl’s school. Boys were a strange new species, unknown and exciting. You didn’t know what to do about them. What if they sprouted horns or something when provoked? You had to watch from a distance and proceed with extreme caution. Unless over time, you established some kind of relationship with one of them, through non-aggressive body language and small offerings of food1. Only then perhaps, were you privy to the secret workings of the male mind2 and could afford to let your guard down. Hah.
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