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The librarian walked by just then and the two of them hurriedly separated.
For the next ten minutes, Nili did not register a single word of what she pretended to read as the librarian hovered around. She stole a look at Atharv who smiled widely at her. He reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers.
‘You are one of the nicest people I know,’ Atharv said, looking intently at Nili, who blushed. He had known her for three years now and had realized that there was not a single bad bone in her body. And that, and not her beauty, was why he loved her, he thought to himself, surprised that he needed to convince himself.
‘You are the nicest person I know,’ she replied and looked at Atharv with so much love in her eyes that Atharv did a double-take. ‘This feels right.’
This feels right. Did it? Atharv wondered, but when he looked at Nili’s angelic face the doubts vanished.
‘I want you to meet Koyal,’ he said. Why did he already feel a bit weird about talking to Koyal about his relationship with Nili? What was missing?
This feels right. Does it?
9
From the outside, looking in, you can never understand it. From the inside, looking out, you can never explain it.
When it happened for the first time, about three years into their marriage, she was already walking on eggshells around him. Anything, the slightest of things, could set him off. This time, she had misplaced a credit card. The moment he heard about it, all hell broke loose.
She stared silently at his furrowed brow, narrowed angry eyes and quivering lips, and felt a kind of hatred in her that she had not known for a long time.
It was a credit card that had not left home. She would find it, she said meekly, but another bout of shouting from him drowned her words.
It was such a small matter, she thought to herself, perplexed. She sat in a corner, head down and listened to him rant and call her names. He abused her, her family and her friends.
She told herself he would stop soon, a little surprised at the stirring she could feel in her chest.
When he kept getting angrier and when she could no longer take another word and when she felt like she’d burst if she did not say anything, she screamed.
‘Shut up!’ she yelled, her face feeling red hot with indignation and anger. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
Fuck. She hated that word and now she was using it.
For a moment there was deathly silence. He stared at her, shocked at her reaction, stunned into temporary inaction.
And then he took three quick, long strides towards her, stopping with his face a few inches from hers.
His eyes were red with anger and he was breathing funny. She felt fear begin to spread across her body.
‘How dare you,’ he growled like a dangerous animal awakened.
She trembled. She searched for the fire that had made her scream a few minutes back, but it was no longer to be found.
And then he raised his hand and slapped her right across her face.
‘That was for raising your voice against me, you useless, good-for-nothing woman,’ he hissed. He turned and walked away, slamming the door behind him.
She collapsed to the floor, her left cheek stinging, angry tears beginning to pool in her eyes. It had been just the two of them, but she felt like the entire world had just witnessed her humiliation.
‘He hit me,’ she mumbled to herself, surprised.
‘I should leave him,’ she mumbled again.
And then despair overtook her heart. Where w
ould she go?
She was stuck. Stuck with this monster of a man for the rest of her life with no hope of a baby to make her heart heal. A dank cloud enveloped her and she lay on the cold floor, in foetal position, hugging her knees, silent tears streaming down her lifeless face.
