‘But, Daksh, my decision changed me. What happened between us, changed me.’ She pushes the plate to me. ‘I can’t have it any more.’
As if on cue, the waiter brings another plate. Before I can say no to him, Aanchal butts in.
‘Let him keep it, you know you’re going to eat them both.’
I nod and the waiter walks away.
‘You wanted to get married to me after less than three months of dating, Daksh,’ she says in a small voice. ‘And now you say that you think you were wrong?’
‘You were pregnant. To me it seemed like a logical thing to do,’ I say.
Her eyes radiate hurt. ‘You realized it too late, didn’t you?’
‘I was too much in love with you. Too much in love with the future I saw with you. I couldn’t see anything else. To the Daksh of that time, it was the only natural progression of things. I’m sorry I put you through it. I’m sorry I put you through the person I was.’
‘I’m sorry too, Daksh.’
‘You don’t have to say that.’
‘But I do.’
‘You did what anyone else would have done. Twenty-two is no age to get married, have a kid. Not, at least, where you camefrom.’
‘I didn’t have to do what everyone else would have done. Couldn’t I have taken a different route?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Couldn’t I have done what you suggested? Maybe things would have been the same, better, who knows?’ she says.
Drawing the plate back to herself, she languidly twirls a few noodles on her fork, gathering her thoughts for what’s to come. I give her space, time; something I hadn’t done when she first shared her pregnancy news. Back then, I was at her feet, imploring her, begging her to choose marriage, motherhood, things too daunting for a twenty-one-year-old. And when she reached her decision and I reached mine, everything shattered.
Now, she lifts her gaze to mine, and says, ‘The things you wanted were weird. A little romantic, true, but still weird. No boy at twenty-four wants a family.’
‘I understand that now. I was a different person then.’
‘You had no career, you were living in a one-room kitchen and you had so many responsibilities. Another kid? Me? We would have dragged each other down,’ she says softly.
I nod. ‘I don’t blame you any more for not wanting it. You had worked your entire life to make things easier for yourself.’
‘Logically, I made sense. I was in the right. I kept screaming at you that I was right,’ she says, and her voice trails.
When our gazes lock, every moment we’ve shared flickers before my eyes. This is the first time we have had a civil conversation in five years.
‘But now I wonder, Daksh, is it all that weird?’ she says. ‘And for you, it must have been the most natural thing ever. Was it all that unfair for you to ask what you did?’
‘We change our mind about things,’ I concede. ‘That’s just how things are.’
She looks down at her nails and scratches the gel off them. ‘You derived your purpose from family. Now I feel that wasn’t too crazy an idea. In fact, it’s the most well-accepted one.’
I don’t know how to react.
‘Sometimes I think, what if.’
She waits for me to say something. I can’t blame it on her, not any more. Not after the way I had behaved all those yearsago.
‘You took the right decision, Aanchal. I was the one who spoiled it all. I should never have left.’
She smiles wryly. ‘You loved too much. It was insane. I don’t know if it was because you were young, but it was something. You were one great love story.’
