‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re not going to do anything of that sort. You also know that. Because the list of things you do is long, Bhaiya. Eating non-veg. Those paid girls. I have proof of everything,’ Isay.
He laughs. ‘And yet you’re here. No matter where you go,behen, you will miss us. You will always be incomplete. Like achor, you will keep looking at us.’
‘You think I’m here because I miss you?’ I smile, and though it’s wrapped up in hate and loathing, I do miss him. What do they say about Stockholm syndrome?
‘Why are you here for—’
‘I’m here—’
He cuts me. ‘Did he have enough of paying for you? Had fun and left you?’
I fumble for a bit, my rage taking over. ‘1.8, Bhaiya.’
‘What?’
‘Aman’s compensation,’ I growl. My teeth grind together. ‘It’s 1.8 crore. Not everything is about money. But I do have itnow.’
There’s silence on the other side. I know it’s going to pinch. Money’s everything to him. The speaker crackles with his rage. ‘You think that money will buy you happiness?’
It’s cute that he goes there. He knows that money can buyhimhappiness.
‘It’s better than sitting in this shop with all these dusty cards and haggling for five hundred rupees,’ I tell him. ‘While you spend the rest of your life as a shadow, a puppet waiting for Papa’s approval, I’ll be enjoying my money. Whose approval? Papa. Who himself is a bit of a failure, is he not? Think about it.’
Now, I hear my father’s voice. ‘We should have killed you,’ he grumbles.
‘HaanPapa, that’s more your thing. The kind of person you are, female infanticide is right up your alley,’ I tell him. The words are painful to say, but it’s needed. It’s like cauterizing a wound. ‘Where was I, Papa? That you’re a loser too. Losersamajhte ho? Good for nothing.’
‘I can’t believe she’s our daughter,’ he says.
‘Neither can I, Papa,’ I say. ‘Neither can I. All Aman wanted was to love me. And you couldn’t allow that. Because why... you’re a proud fuckingbaniya...’ I let out a bitter laugh, and pure rage flows through me. ‘What’s there to be proud of... Some day... some day... I want you to look in the mirror, rub your hand on your bulging stomach, look at your daughter whom you got married to a cheating, abusive husband... and also... look at your wife whom you never loved, and ask yourself what’s there to be proud of? Nothing... You’renothing, Papa... listening to me? Nothing... You deserve nothing. You don’t deserve life. Aman did. Aman would have been the thing you could have been proud of. But you told him Bhaiya would cut him to pieces?’ I let out a laugh. ‘Fucking losers both of you. A lineage of filth.’ I look straight into the camera’s unblinking eye, a conduit for all my rage. ‘You guys only deserve hate.’
Then, I turn and spit on the family picture.
And with that, I turn and walk out of the shop.
The victory, if you can call it that, feels hollow. The caustic energy drains slowly away. I feel empty, my fingers tremble.
And finally, I walk home.
19
Raghav
When I get to the office, it’s already busier than usual. People have read the mail and they’re getting used to it. From where I sit, I can see the coffee machine has a line. People milling about, waiting for their turn. So much for productivity. The seniors can’t digest that work can be done in a torn Under Armour T-shirt, boxers, with laptops balanced on bellies. Or maybe people like coming to office. Not everyone’s house is a shrine. I open my laptop and the project file. A familiar thought creeps up. What’s the point of what I’m doing? How the fuck am I contributing to the world? Is anyone contributing to the world? But what’s the point of thinking in terms of contributions? Then only farmers and doctors and scientists will have value in the world. Maybe that’s how it should be. But what will I do if not this? We can’t sit around doing nothing. We need purpose in our lives. We need to invent it. That’s why I envy Aditi. Her grief was purely paralysing. Yeah, true, she did help everyone with the paperwork that came after the crash, but even that was grief manifesting itself. With every person who died, she could relive Aman’s death again. She’s the perfect widow. Sad, paralysed, eating around bread infested with fungus, wearing T-shirts with gaping holes in them, railing madly at her family. While I’m working on datasheets.
But is this my purpose?
My current task is to analyse why students are dropping out of our ‘Class 11 Commerce – Core Concepts’ module. Thenumbers have tanked in the past three weeks. My job is to figure out whether it’s because of content fatigue, UI friction or pure teenage disinterest. I want to write ‘all of the above’ and send across an email. But, of course, I need to dig deeper. Because how will I justify my job otherwise? They pay me a lot now. Of course, I work twelve hours a day for them. So now I am clicking through raw usage data. Heatmaps. Time stamps. Login/logout rates. The same numbers I’ve been staring at for days. Finding my purpose. Is this why people find purpose in love? Because finding it in other places is too dreary?
At 2.30 p.m., we have a product sync meeting. Six of us sit in a circle. It’s a misnomer that everyone in offices hates meetings. Some people like them and think of them as the only way out of getting into mail trails that go on for hundreds of mails and for months. For them, this is a shortcut. I used to like meetings too, sometimes. I won’t lie. It was fun to be in them, give insightful points, shut a few people up, raise biting questions and see people get uncomfortable. It used to be nice—not any more though. Now they are a drag.
I look at everyone and think of them as inferior beings. Do they know pain? No? Then, of course, they think an Excel sheet is the be-all and end-all of everything.
Richa from Product is saying, ‘We need to make it more snackable. Like five-minute knowledge shots.’
Vikas from Design says, ‘Maybe every lesson ends with a badge or sticker. Kids love that dopamine hit.’
They all say this like it hasn’t been said before.
