Fifteen
Anika
‘I haven’t seen you in a week, do you know that?’ he began quietly, avoiding my gaze.
My heart sank. I could hear the accusation even if he’d not said anything damaging yet. ‘I know…’
‘You’ve become a machine, Anika,’ Vikrant cut me off, in the same brusque tone. ‘All you want to do is study for your precious exam and the hospital. Then, you want to fuck me when you surface.’
I recoiled at the bitterness in him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said stiltedly. Not knowing what else to say.
He shot me a despairing look. His heart was broken. Written all over his face. I had a sudden realization. This was not the first time he was feeling like this. This lonely. This alone.
My own heart started gasping as if I was experiencing a myocardial infarction. A. heart attack. Stuttering and slipping.
‘You’re not. You just want to fuck me right now,’ he said bluntly. ‘You go to sleep. Wake up and go to the hospital and do this all over again. You don’t want to deal with anything.’
‘What’s there to deal with?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Do you even know what’s going on with me? My family? My father’s pension from the school has been withdrawn by the government, because of fund shortage and they don’t know what to do now. They have no money.’
Vikrant’s father was the sole earner in their family of three. His mother had always been a homemaker.
I bit my lip. ‘I’m…sorry,’ I offered inadequately. ‘That’s terrible news. I’m so sorry, Vikrant.’ I touched his rigid arm and it went even harder at my touch. As if he was rejecting it.
Rejecting me.
This had never happened before too! Vikrant would never reject me.
‘You’re not,’ he said harshly. ‘You don’t fucking care,’ he repeated as if he wasn’t my husband at all. The planes of his shoulders tightened in the tee shirt I’d washed for him just a few days ago. His height made it seem like he was so far away from me.
‘You don’t care about me or us or anything that isn’t part of your precious goals.’
Something snapped in me then. Something fragile and hopeful. I remembered what my father had told me, years ago when I’d first told him I was in love with Vikrant, when I was a second-year medical student.
This boy will never understand your goals. Your need to fulfil them. He’s too ordinary for you, Anika.
‘And all you care about is your fucking family and yourself, don’t you?’ I snapped back. The echo of my father’s words swirled in my head. ‘Just because you don’t want to get your MD tag you punish me for wanting mine.’
He straightened, gave me a cool look. ‘What. Did. You. Just. Say?’ He spaced each word out.
I blinked back useless, weak tears, they stung my nose. My throat worked rapidly to not weep in front of this cold, unfeeling, judgmental man. The son of his small town, conservative parents.
‘I’m killing myself trying to get through this exam and work without losing my mind, when most people take a whole year off to study for it. But we can’t afford to lose my income for that long, can we?’
His head snapped back, as if I’d slapped him.
We made decent money between us. Enough to pay rent, save a little for a really rainy day and he sent more than a quarter of his money back home to his parents. But yes, Mumbai was the most expensive city in South Asia, we couldn’t afford for me to not work for a whole year and just study for the MD exam.
And asking my loaded father for help was out of the realm of possibility.
I felt my chest tighten. The words hung in the air between us. Cancerous. Leaching all the love we’d ever had. Killing it from the inside out.
‘Vikrant…’
‘I’m sorry, then,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m sorry for standing in the way of your dreams. Your fucking goals. I’m sorry, Anika, that my family and my problems are obstacles for you.’
A tear slipped out unbidden down my cheek. Because I knew he wasn’t sorry.
He wanted to be right. He wanted me to pay. He wanted me to back down because his needs were more important than mine. They were more immediate and involved his helpless parents. And he was a dutiful son to them more than he’d ever want to be my husband, my champion.
‘Yes.’ I thumbed the culprit tear away. ‘You are. Just like my father.’ Willing him to refute my words. Make me take them back.
He said nothing. He didn’t even look at me. Just looked at his empty hands as if they held the answer to all our problems.
That was the first of many times, Vikrant walked away. First into the next room, then to the family lawyer’s office…and then right out of my life.
***
We never recovered from the accusations we hurled at each other during that first fight. The bitter venom behind them.
We went to the divorce lawyer two weeks later, on the first mutually free day we had.
And there Vikrant had announced his intention to return back to Aronda and run the town hospital - a position that came with a significant pay bump, huge house, and other amenities. He’d bludgeoned me with his decision.
I couldn’t believe he’d actually just abandon me like that. Or, worse, expect me to move states just to take care of his folks while my own career was just taking off.
And, to be fair, he hadn’t asked me to move.
The counsellor had asked us both to consider what it was we wanted, and we’d said opposite things.
I wanted to finish my MD exam and continue living in Mumbai. He wanted to move somewhere else and start again.
That’s when I knew, deep in my heart, love wasn’t enough to surmount the mountain of obstacles facing us. Our opposite personalities, our opposing ambitions had destroyed our relationship.
So, it had broken my heart when he’d actually packed his things and left. Just like that.
As if almost a decade of loving someone could vanish in a moment.