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Atharv, however, refused to give up and managed to dig out Koyal’s address in Munnar.
Nili tried hard to convince Atharv that no good would come of going all the way to Munnar but Atharv would have none of it.
‘I am losing my best friend, Nili. I can’t just sit and do nothing about it,’ he said, his throat catching.
The least the greatest friendship he had known deserved was one last chance.
On reaching her house in Munnar, Atharv rang the bell, his heart thumping with nervous excitement. A maid opened door and Atharv peeped inside, hungrily hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of his best friend.
He did.
And it broke his heart.
In the ten seconds he got, he noted how she had lost a lot of weight, and for one mad minute, Atharv was sure it was an illness that Koyal was hiding from him. She looked gaunt and spiritless. The cheeky glint was gone from her eyes, replaced by a forlorn look.
This was not his Koyal.
Koyal looked up when she felt eyes on herself. For a split second, life danced again in the eyes but then Atharv could see pain and anger replace it. As she stared at him with hate and distaste, Atharv felt something give way inside him. It was then, with Koyal’s glare on him, that he realized he was never going to get his Koyal back. Their friendship was over.
‘Talk to me, please!’ he shouted. ‘Please!’
‘Shut the door, Maya,’ Koyal said and ran out of the room.
The maid slammed the door in Atharv’s face.
For the next few minutes, Atharv tried to make sense of the maelstrom of emotions that swirled inside him.
He stood rooted to the spot, unable to move.
Thinking and mourning.
What had he done to deserve this? Why should he put up with this? Why couldn’t Koyal tell him what had happened? Why had Koyal so ruthlessly snatched his best friend from him? Who had given her that right?
As indignation and hurt gained strength in his heart, a new, unfamiliar feeling began to stir and take shape in his chest. Hatred.
‘I hate you, Koyal Hansini Raje. I hate you for what you have done to me,’ he screamed at the door, willing the winds to carry his voice to Koyal. He was done with her. He kicked at the door with all his might, about-turned and walked off.
A few metres away, Koyal sat on the edge of her bed, shaking. Seeing Atharv like that had jolted her. She had noticed the watery eyes, the unkempt look and the pained face. Yet, none of that mattered now.
‘I hate you, Atharv Jayakrishna. I hate you,’ she sobbed into her hand.
11
Time gently nudged her.
The universe whispered to her, softly at first and then a little louder and then louder and then so loud that she could no longer ignore the summons of destiny.
That day she sat in front of the mirror and stared at the woman staring back at her. She stared at the black eye and she tried hard not to think about last night when her husband had come back home drunk and turned violent.
Are you being the best version of yourself you can possibly be? a painfully familiar voice she hadn’t heard in the longest time rang in her head.
A man’s voice.
His voice.
Something about that voice was so warm and gentle that it enveloped her heart in the softest blanket and brought stinging tears to her eyes.
She stared at her little mole that sat pretty on the top right side of her upper lip. When she was younger, her mother used to tell her that her mole added character to her heart-shaped face.
