‘You can’t go!’ I shout, moving to block his path to the bedroom.
‘Why the fuck can’t I? I will do whatever I want to do,’ he says, his voice rising.
‘And yet, when I do what I want to do, you throw guilt and whatnot in my face. You are holding me hostage with your grief, Raghav!’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ he yells, his false calm shattering. ‘You’re the one who came storming in here, rubbing your guilt in my face! I was fine! Please, go back to your little party and your new boyfriend and leave me alone!’
The words screw me up.
‘That’s not . . . that’s not fair . . .’
‘Fair?’ He screams, his voice finally breaking. ‘What about this—’
‘Don’t scream at me!’
But soon, we’re screaming at each other now. All the pain and resentment and grief of the past six months erupting in waves of cruel, unforgivable words. Again. Like a ritual. We are stuck in a time loop of hate. And we can’t leave. I can’t leave. And he wants to stay here.
‘You’re the fucking worst friend!’ I say when I’m done.
‘SO ARE YOU!’ he roars back.
In the middle of the screaming, a frantic, desperate ringing cuts through the noise. It doesn’t even register the first couple of times. The doorbell. It rings again and again.
Finally, I march to the door and yank it open.
I don’t recognize her at first. And then I do. It’s her, Raghav’s sister. A spitting image of him, just softer, younger, prettier. Shilpi stands on the welcome mat, a small duffel bag at her feet, her face streaked with tears. She looks from my face to Raghav’s.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobs, her voice trembling. ‘I . . . I had a fight with them. They want me to . . . I can’t . . . I can’t do it, Bhaiya . . . non-medical, it’s not . . . I can’t . . . I didn’t know where else to go.’
Raghav rushes past me and holds her and gets her inside.
‘Hey,’ he says to her, his voice suddenly gentle. ‘Stop crying... you’re home now.’
Home. Such a strange word now.
31
Raghav
I walk out of my room and find that the apartment’s geography is settling into its new configuration.
Aditi is at the dining table, which for the past six months has been less a dining table and more a haphazard clump of laptop, tangled chargers, stacks of paper and coffee cups.
It’s her territory now. You move anything and she loses hershit.
Her spectacles are resting on the edge of her nose, which is what she does when she’s concentrating. Her shoulders are hunched, her focus absolute on the screen. I want to tell her to straighten up, but who am I to say anything? She thinks she knows everything now. She can be a hunchback for all I care.
She’s working herself to death. She’s letting new people into her life and calling it moving on. She’s calling this healing. Such a joke. I know that game because I did the same thing. Work can’t replace people. Even people can’t replace people. When someone’s gone, remembering becomes an act of love. A quiet rebellion against forgetting. I wish she understood it.
On the sofa, curled into the corner with her knees pulled up to her chest, is Shilpi. She holds a textbook up high, but I can tell from the way her eyes are fixed on a single point on the wall that she isn’t reading. She’s trying to be invisible. Every now and then, her eyes dart to her phone, likely checking to see if Maa is calling. She wants them to call, and it’s pathetic how much she still loves them. But it’s good that she loves them.You need people to truly call your own. And sometimes they are imperfect in the most terrible ways. You still need to hold on to them before you can chart a life without them. They may be the thorns, but they’re also the roots. And you can’t survive without either.
But thanks to Shilpi, Aditi and I haven’t fought. I have tiptoed around Aditi, tried to not get into conversations and pasted a happy smile on my face. I can’t let Shilpi see how much of a wreck I am, how terribly broken I feel. My brokenness can’t be the reason she goes back.
I go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Aditi doesn’t look up, but I see her posture stiffen as I walk past. I open the fridge, stare into it and close it again.
‘The geyser is still on,’ she says to her laptop screen. ‘Switch it off once you’re done.’
‘Okay,’ I reply to the fridge.
