I watch him shake his head. He turns to look at everyone.
‘Look at all of you! Modern people?Thoo!’ he spits on the ground. ‘No respect for anything. All you guys need is your parents’ money and sex.’
A few people in the crowd giggle. This ticks him off evenmore.
He continues angrily, eyes popping from his sockets, wagging his finger like a mad man, ‘That’s what you are. That’s what this is... coming out to these places... drinking... finding people to go home with... what’s this? This is the lowest point... ALL OF YOU!’ He starts pointing at everyone. ‘All of you are broken... you... you and you...’
He points at Shilpi and Aditi.
‘She’s not broken,’ I roar back. gesturing to Aditi. ‘And Shilpi’s not broken. You’re the one who’s broken. You’re so twisted up in your own pathetic pride. And pride for fucking what? What the fuck have you done?’
‘I do it because I love you!’ he screams, his voice cracking with a sudden, pathetic self-pity.
‘Oh, fuck you.’
‘I sacrificed my whole life for you kids, and this is the respect I get?’
I start to laugh. ‘Fuck your sacrifice. Without you, WE WOULD BE HAPPY! That’s what we would be. Now fucking get out of here.’
He takes a step closer, his face inches from mine. ‘I am yourfather.’
‘And I am your son,’ I spit back. ‘And I am telling you to get the hell away from us.’
He looks from me to Aditi, then to Shilpi, his eyes filled with impotent rage. He’s lost control. He knows it. And then I look past him. At the crowd. At the ones with their phones. A strange calm settles over me.
‘Please,’ I say to the ones with the phones in their hands. ‘Fucking upload this. Upload this. This chutiya who calls himself my father—’
‘OYE!’ he roars. ‘Bandh kar ise!’
‘He thinks he’s right,’ I say to the crowd with a shrug. ‘So upload this. Let’s see how many think he’s right. That he’sright to disown his son because his girlfriend was not of the community. To force his daughter to do what he wants her to do... just upload this...’
‘Haan haan!’ says my father at a girl taking a video. ‘I don’t care!Yeh lo, get a good angle!’
I laugh at my pathetic father. The excuse for a man and say, ‘Show everyone what a real family looks like.’
I turn to Aditi and Shilpi. ‘Let’s go,’ I say quietly.
‘YOU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!’ he shouts.
‘Sir,’ says Kunal, stepping forward again.
I step right up to my father and wind up for a punch. ‘Saale, I will put you down right here.’
He must have seen the rage in my eyes and that I would do it, because he steps back and mumbles angrily. ‘The girls have made you crazy!’
I don’t deign to answer that. I put one arm around Shilpi, who is still shaking, and with the other, I take Aditi’s hand. Her hand is ice-cold in mine. We walk through the crowd of silent, staring faces. We don’t look back. I can hear Kunal’s voice trying to talk my father down.
I hear the man still shouting behind us, and for the first time, I know what I always believed deep down: he’s nothing but a stranger.
34
Aditi
The next morning, the apartment is a tomb. There’s a thick, suffocating silence. Last night, after a very long time, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Raghav’s father... his eyes full of rage, his fingers trembling... and then I started seeing my own father... my own family. And despite everything, I missed them.
What a joke, right? An unfunny one at that. A joke, nonetheless.
I missed Didi, and I missed Bhaiya, and I missed Maa. I had trained my mind not to think of them and of late I had been doing a good job but it came undone yesterday. I was this close to calling them again. This close.
