The door closes behind them.
No.
12.
Daksh Dey
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 people descend like locusts with their swimsuits and floral shirts, cameras and beer bottles in hand. But I’m glad there are people around so I can pretend to look somewhere else than into the sad and bewildered eyes of Aanchal’s father.
I make a mental note to never let Gaurav 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 them.
‘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 about her pregnancy, 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.Justtwelve 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, that she had decided 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, to think about it. I kept asking her to take more time but her mind was made up. She was unyielding. She was a stone.
‘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. I promised nothing would change in her life. So what if we were young? We wouldn’t have been the first people who get married at twenty-two or twenty-three and have a kid. If you’re sure, you’re sure.
‘The child would be my responsibility,’ I told her.
‘It’s been barely a month since Vicky,’ she reminded mecoldly.
For a week, we shouted and screamed and called each other cold, heartless and selfish. We yelled that we hated each other and then wept that we loved each other. She would agree fora brief second before changing her mind, steeling herself even further. On the seventh day, she took the pills. Next to her was Rajat, supposedly her best friend.
‘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.’
