My throat tightens, the kind of shock that doesn’t show but stays.
‘Are these questions the reason you haven’t shaved?’ Father asks. He is on his feet now.
My fingers are on my chin, sticking into my stubble.
‘It doesn’t suit you, Veer!’
I’m nodding, though I don’t know at what exactly.
Father continues to speak, but my senses are shutting down. I can see him; his mouth is moving, but I no longer hear him.
What have I done? The insults I hurled at Aaditha come back in a steady stream.
I know what exactly you and your father are up to.
Co-conspirator and all…?
Ranibagh is mine; it’s the home of the Rathores, and that’s how it will stay.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had some especially tardy ones, too.
Is that your uniform?
The worst, and the one that comes strongest at me, a left hook, is that she tried to make me understand.
No, Vedveer. I’ll say this just once – you have got it all wrong.
It’s not maths. It’s not even logic. I wasn’t thinking straight. Of course, I wasn’t. Why?
When I walked into her office that morning, she was surprised to see me, as anyone would be when the person you’re engaged to shows up unannounced. That’s how she was seeing things. Yes, I had called her, but the call didn’t go through, and she hadn’t checked notifications, which, for me, was the final straw that morning.
Aaditha held up her phone and showed me that she hadn’t checked the notifications that were right there.
She was being transparent; she was apologizing. I was bleeding. I was blind with fury.
Looking back at that morning now, she probably thought I was there because of the newspaper article.
When I launched into her – insults flying one after another – she was taken aback. I saw it play on her face then, but I thought she was pretending, manipulating the situation.
We are done here.
Those words have sat heavily on me these last weeks because I can’t do anything about them.
I can’t delete, I can’t proceed.
I signed the lease papers and ploughed ahead with our Green Dream.
The wedding plans are in place, and fortunately for me, there is no move from the Gowdas to end things.
In quieter moments, I have asked myself whether I really couldn’t do anything about breaking this alliance or was it that I did not want to do anything?
The truth is, I didn’t want to follow up on my words, even when I felt that she was in cahoots with her father.
‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ Father asks, clapping his hands, reminding me that he is in the room.
‘I should be in the know of details?’
‘Fair enough,’ he says, turning away from me.
