Every word of hers hit me like a body blow, and I wrapped my arms around my body to brace myself.
“Wow,” I whispered. “That’s what you really think of me.”
Nausea roiled in my stomach, and I began to shiver. Not with cold, but with grief. My mother had said a lot of things over the years, but she had never come out and outright said she believed Sanjay’s narrative. I had suspected it, but we’d never discussed it because Baba Sa had banned her from talking about it after the first few days of constant recrimination. Was this what everyone believed? Even Baba Sa and Shaurya? I had assumed they all knew I was innocent, but maybe they believed Sanjay.
“What else are we supposed to think, beta? We asked you what happened…”
“And I told you! I told you, Ma, that I don’t know how I got there.”
“How the hell can you not know?”
“Because I was asleep! I was fast asleep, Ma! And I woke up when Nilanjana screamed and created that big scene. I had no idea why I was suddenly in Sanjay’s bed instead of mine, and why half the guests in the palace suddenly turned up outside that room. You all just assumed I’d slept with Sanjay, and nobody cared to hear my side of the story.”
“Meher, I asked you if he forced himself on you,” said Ma. “And you said no! I heard you loud and clear. I asked you over and over again. If you’d said yes, we could have salvaged the situation. But you insisted there was no rape.”
“Because there wasn’t,” I yelled. “Sanjay did not rape me, Ma. He didn’t even touch me!”
“Hain? Then what the hell were you doing in his bed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how I got there. I know he said we slept together, but we didn’t. He lied. And you chose to believe him over me. I will never forget that. Never,” I whispered before I ran upstairs to my bedroom and slammed the door as hard as I could.
I hadn’t cried about my past for a long time because I refused to cry over a relationship so fickle that it fizzled out in complete silence, without so much as a whimper. But now, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I sank to the ground and leaned against the door as the tears flowed down my face, my body wracked with sobs. I didn’t know why I was crying. Or for whom I was crying. Maybe I was crying because for the first time in my life, I felt completely alone. If even my family was ready to believe the worst about me, and had believed it for years, then who did I have on my side?
As I cried, I relived the morning that changed the course of my life all over again. It was still etched clearly in my mind even though it had happened eight years ago.
I’d been fast asleep when Nilanjana started screeching, and for some reason, I found it very difficult to pry my eyes open. When I did, I was very confused to see her standing by my bed. But then, my eyes went to Samrat, who was standing just beside her as if turned to stone.
“What are you doing in this room?” Nilanjana demanded..
“What’s going on?” I mumbled sleepily, but Samrat’s eyes were fixed just behind me.
That’s when I became aware of a presence in my bed. A large, malevolent, unwelcome presence that wrapped its arm around my waist and pulled me closer.
With a little shriek, I jumped out of bed and saw that it was Sanjay, the only man I had dated for a bit before Samrat, whowas also Nilanjana’s brother. And then, it struck me that this wasn’t my room!
“It’s just me, babe. Relax,” he said, with that creepy laugh. “You weren’t so jumpy last night.”
I could hear him clearly, but for some reason, it felt like his words were swimming through thick, wet mud before they reached my ears. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. But I figured out that I was in his room, for some strange reason.
“What?” I asked in confusion, and swayed a little as I turned to face Samrat.
The grim expression on his face scared me, and I knew something was seriously wrong. Why was I sleeping in Sanjay’s bed? And why did I want to throw up all of a sudden?
Samrat took one step closer to me, but just then, my mother burst into the room and slammed the door shut.
“Meher, what have you done, you little idiot?” she asked.
I shook my head and tried to speak, but the words just vanished on their way from my brain to my lips.
“Ma…I…I…”
She grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.
“You look terrible, beta. Did this monster force himself on you?” she demanded.
I did my best to focus on her words. She was asking if…if Sanjay had raped me. Why was she asking that?
“What?”
