“Forget about me,” Ritu cut him off. Nilay turned to her — “I am so sorry…”
“No, no, wait.” She nodded. To his father, she stepped up — “Forget about me. I am here today, won’t be tomorrow. But who do you think you called hopeless? The man who makes women’s dreams come true? Whose clothes are luxury, but dupes of whose clothes run lakhs of households across this country? Do you know, your son’s tarnished reputationhas taken him to a point where just the tag of his name is enough to raise the equivalent of the GDP of a small country? But maybe wealth or professional success does not impress you…”
“Who do you think you are talking to me like that?”
“Dr. Ritu Kapadia. Didn’t your son just introduce me? Maybe you forgot because you were busy spitting out poison,” she smiled. “The man you were spitting it at has been India’s cultural ambassador to three countries. He sways an entire industry on his whims and has earned that right. The things you call ladies time pass have earned him the right to stand tall on a podium and make his voice heard. You? You are unable to make even me, a stranger, listen to you. So I think you should take a U-turn, run a replay, and…”
“Control her, Nilay.”
“Measure the potency of your words to a man who is more man than ten of you put together. Or maybe eleven. I don’t know what you do for a living. Nilay, what does he do?”
“Leases lands.”
“Aah, hard work.”
His father was fuming. He opened his mouth, shut it tight, then opened it again — “Your mother would have been so sorry she raised you like this…”
“Or maybe,” Ritu stepped in front of him. “She would have been sorry she taught him manners to listen silently to his father, even when his father did not deserve to talk.”
That was the final nail in the coffin. His father and his fragile ego were out of his door, banging it shut. Nilay began to apologise to Ritu when she turned with her face in her hands and threw herself into his chest — “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so sorry, it wasn’t my place. I will apologise to him if you want me to…”
“Ritu…” he cupped her arm. It was shaking. Her face was vibrating. She was crying?
“Ritu?” He pulled her head back and tugged her hands away. Her face wasn't wet but she was definitely panicked. “No, Doctor,” he pulled her into his chest. “No, don’t worry. Fuck, not for that man. I am sorry.Ifroze when he started attacking you. I should have fought first…”
She shook her head — “I didn’t let you speak.”
Nilay tightened his arms around her — “I am sorry, Ritu. I am so sorry.”
“This is what you saw all your life?” She pulled back. Their eyes met.
“We are both not so different that way,” he ran a finger down the curve of her cheek. She huffed.
“But life moves, and we move on,” Nilay said. “What happened today, the things he said, are not new to me. I shouldn’t have let him come onto you, and that’s on me.”
“I did give him back. I feel so bad for screaming at a man so much older than me but I couldn’t help it.”
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger — “That shows your manners and the lack of his. Forgive me, on his behalf. And I assure you that the gene does not manifest in me.”
She chuckled through that dark, sad, angry, morose expression.
Nilay pulled her into his chest again. When she was in his arms, everything felt so right. Usually, he spent some time replaying his father’s cutting words after an episode like this. Today, he couldn’t stop replayingherwords uttered inhisdefence.
“Who told you about the dupes? And the ambassadorship?”
“Who do you think?” Came her thin, amused voice.
He laughed.
“You gossip about me with your niece?”
“You are not that important. It came up in conversation.”
“You might be the only woman who does not consider me god.”
“Thank god for that.”
And he couldn’t stop laughing.
