The beach at the Atlantis would have once been serene and peaceful, but that’s not what you can expect during peak tourist season when they descend like locusts with their swimsuits and floral shirts. But I’m glad there are people around so I can pretend to look somewhere than into the sad and bewildered eyes of Aanchal’s father.
I make a mental note of not letting Gaurav ever drink again.
‘You kids think you know everything,’ he mumbles softly, his voice thick with emotion. When he turns to catch my gaze again, it feels like his wrinkles have become deeper, like someone has taken a knife to it. ‘What kind of career is this that she couldn’t take out a few months? Wouldn’t we have raised the child? She could have gone to office! Who would have stopped her?!’
‘Uncle,’ I respond with as much calmness as I can muster. ‘It was three years ago.’
The disappointment in his voice is palpable. I can feel it in my bones. I have felt it too.
The first time Aanchal called me, it was from a clinic. She had already decided on the course of action. She knew how I was going to react, so she didn’t even bother telling me. The next week, she was going to take two pills and fix her ‘mistake’ in just twelve hours. She asked me to come to Delhi and be by her side, saying the process wouldn’t be painful but it would be comforting to have me there. Her words hit me like a freight train, two bombshells dropped in rapid succession. In one moment, she told me I was going to be a father, and in the next, she had decided that there couldn’t be anything worse than raising a child at this age. She had made her decision. And she demanded support. I had begged her, grovelled, pleaded with her to think about it.
‘This is not the right time for me to be a mother,’ she kept telling me.
I pleaded with her not to take the pills. She kept sending me flight options to Delhi. I promised that I would stay at home, take care of the child, and she could chase her dreams.
‘The child would be my responsibility,’ I told her.
‘It’s been barely a month since Vicky,’ she reminded me coldly.
For a week, we shouted and screamed and called each other cold, heartless and selfish. On the seventh day, she took the pills in the presence of Rajat.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ I had told her when she informed me it was done.
‘Why did you not come to stop me? You just stayed in Mumbai and kept shouting on the phone!’ she screamed.
‘You know why!’ I screamed back. ‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you it was Baba’s prosthetic—’
She interrupted me with a long sigh. ‘I didn’t want you to stop me,’ she said forcefully.
‘Make up your mind, Aanchal.’
‘That’s what you’re not getting. Things are important. Baba, Rabbani, my career! This pregnancy wasn’t important. Is this the time for us to get married and be a family? No! There are other important things!’
‘What’s the problem in having everything?!’
‘You’re just another . . . guy who wants things his way. You know what you should have done, Daksh? You should have supported my decision. If you truly loved me, na, that’s what you would have done!’
I still feel a knot of pain when I think of it. I feel heat radiating from the pit of my stomach. I push the thoughts out of my head.
‘Uncle, she didn’t want to be a mother who gives birth and then goes off to work,’ I lie to placate him. ‘I think we should also look at her perspective.’
The pain in the bottom of my stomach rises.
Uncle shakes his head. ‘Maybe it’s our fault. We pushed her too hard to be successful and now that’s the only thing she knows.’
‘This is no one’s fault,’ I tell him. ‘There’s nothing right or wrong about this. It is what it is.’
‘One day, beta, she’s going to look back and regret this decision. You mark my words. She will miss a family and then all this career growth will count for nothing.’
‘But she has a family, Uncle. You, Gaurav, Aunty . . . what else does she need?’
‘Her own family,’ cuts in Uncle.
‘But things have changed, Uncle. You also know that. She has worked so hard in her life. Why shouldn’t she want success? Hai na? And I’ve known for very long that everything she does, she also does for you. She wants to give you rest. But if you start scolding her for this, not talking to her, then she will lose all her strength. Please don’t do that. We will see what the future holds. For now, don’t break her hope.’
Her father exhales deeply. ‘And you were okay with what she did?’
Some lies are better than truths. There’s no place for idealism in happiness. If there was, Aanchal would have not done what she had done for her happiness.
