Chapter 25
There was a sudden drop in the temperature and she couldn’t chase away the cold from her chest. Neena gasped softly, and Mihit looked wide-eyed at them. Abhay had gone absolutely still beside her. He was gripping the wine glass so hard, it looked like he intended to crush it.
‘What… what are you saying, Dadi?’
Kartik leaned back, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. ‘After your mother’s accident, you suffered blunt force trauma that led to some uterine damage. The doctor warned us you will not be able to conceive in the future.’
It felt as though someone had yanked her heart right out of her body. Her mind spun, trying to piece together memories of the accident that stole her mother from her. The fragments she could recall were fuzzy.
‘Laddoo, don’t talk about such things right now. It’s not suitable for dinner conversation,’ Sharda admonished him with a glare.
‘Are you kidding me, Dadi? You drop a bomb like that and then talk about table manners?’ Dhruv cut in.
‘And just because she suffered blunt force trauma doesn’t mean it couldn’t have healed by now. Childhood wounds have a better chance of going away,’ Neena suggested, holding Abhay’s hand on the table.
Kartik shook his head. ‘The doctor was adamant for Siya to undergo immediate surgery to reverse some damage but I was away and Amma was in Singapore with her sisters. There was no guardian here so we had to say no. She made sure to tell us that Siya will not be able to conceive naturally without it.’
‘And you still declined?’ Siya managed to ask past the lump in her throat.
He couldn’t be that indifferent, that heartless toward me… right?
Kartik shrugged, as if it were something casual like forgetting to switch off the lights.
‘Besides, we needed you to take care of the younger one,’ Sharda snapped her fingers, trying to recall. When she couldn’t, she turned to Kartik. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Kashvi,’ Kartik answered, with no hint of anger in his voice.
‘Right. What kind of name is that?’ she waved her hand once. ‘Anyway, the recovery phase of that surgery was long. What would have happened to your sister if you had stayed bedridden for months?’
Her fork clattered onto her plate as Siya exclaimed, ‘We lost Maa, but that didn’t make us orphans! Dad could have looked after Kashu, or even you!’
‘We had better things to do,’ Sharda scolded her, as if it was obvious.
A slow, high ringing built in her ears, drowning out the rest of her answer. Agony and fury tangled in her chest. The tension was so thick in the air that she could practically taste its smoky bitterness.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before? I could have done something! I could have…’ she blurted out, unable to wrap her mind around it.
Sharda folded her hands neatly in her lap. ‘What was the point in telling you? You were sedated at the time, and as a ten-year-old, you couldn’t have given consent for the surgery. And you know how I feel about these modern medicines, so I did what I had to do.’
‘Did what you had to do?’ her voice rose as her silly justification rubbed salt on her fresh wounds. ‘What was the plan, Dadi? Rob me of my chance to have a child, and use some stupid, misogynistic heir condition to hand over everything to Dhruv?’
Kartik leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. ‘First of all, do not talk to your grandmother like that. Secondly, you’re overreacting. I don’t care what it looks like but we were protecting you from this pain.’
Through the static in her ear, she heard Abhay say, ‘What it looks like is you just waited until tonight to throw it in our face. Is that your version of mercy?’ He clasped his hand and Siya turned to see his eyes brimming with anger and sorrow.
‘Siya had enough to handle then, and we didn’t think—’
Abhay interrupted with barely restrained anger. ‘You thought what, exactly? That she would just go on living her life without ever finding out what you did to her?’
‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic! We planned to talk about this tonight, anyway. Now that the launch is only a few days away, Dhruv will need to start preparing to take more responsibilities so he becomes ready to take over after it.’
‘What are you talking about? When did I ever say I want to inherit the company?’ Dhruv asked incredulously.
‘What’s there to say in it? You’re the only one who can carry this family forward. That Kashvi girl is too naive and young to take over, and Siya is too barren to give us an heir. At least this way, the family line isn’t diluted.’
That cutting word lodged like a stone in Siya’s gut, and she clenched her palm, nails indenting in her palm.
‘Don’t you dare call her that!’ Abhay shouted.
Sharda tried to reason with him. ‘You can wrap the truth in pretty words but it won’t change it. Barren, infertile, medically compromised—the result is the same. Siya can give us no children.’
They were just words and they wouldn’t have any power if Siya didn’t let them get to her, but there was only so much her heart could take.
‘No, you’re cruel enough to make a choice to say that word, and I will not allow it.’
‘I see. So this is how Neena taught you to behave with your elders.’
‘Yes. I taught my son to speak for the honour and dignity of the women in his life, and when the one in question is his wife, you better believe he will stand up for her,’ Neena said, her voice brittle with disbelief.
Sharda gave a short, amused laugh. ‘My dear, you can’t expect all of us to tiptoe around Siya’s feelings forever.’
‘Amma is not wrong. We’ve all been dancing around this for a long time, and she is only stating facts. We do not mean to dismiss your efforts, Siya, but there’s no space for feelings in business. It’s nothing personal,’ Kartik said.
‘Exactly, you’re making a mountain out of a mole. These things happen. Some women aren’t meant to be mothers but I’m sure Siya can learn how to be a good wife in time.’
Siya jerked back like she’d been slapped. Her ribs felt far too tight around her lungs.
‘And let’s not forget,’ Sharda continued. ‘Arohi had no one to blame but herself. I told her, time and time again, not to trust these doctors and their fake pills. If she’d just listened to my herbal suggestions, she might’ve had a son.’
The mention of her mother sent a molten rage burning through her veins.
Sharda kept on going. ‘Instead, she ignored every piece of wisdom I gave her. Then what happened? The tragedy that followed her. Sometimes, life finds a way to restore balance, even if it means taking something away from us to remind us of our place. Nature has a cruel rhythm, and you can’t cheat it. ’
‘Shut up!’ Siya screamed louder than she’d meant to, louder than she’d ever been in this house.
Sharda flinched back, startled, but recovered quickly. ‘You insolent child! How dare you raise your voice—’
‘No!’ Siya brought her fist down on the table, rattling it. ‘You don’t get to say her name when you have the shameless audacity to imply that her death was some kind of nature’s revenge for not following your ridiculous remedies.’
‘I’m blaming her for having useless daughters like you and that other one instead of a son. But it’s not about me. You’ve always been too hysterical, Siya. That’s your problem.’
‘I am allowed to get hysterical when you’re insulting my mother and my body, all because we don’t serve your outdated idea of what a woman should be.’
‘I’m not here to flatter anyone. I have the courage to speak what others are too cowardly to say. This family needed a son, and Arohi wasn’t woman enough to bear one.’
‘Alright, that’s enough!’ Neena said sharply.
Her hands were clenched on the tablecloth, her earrings swaying with the force of her fury.
‘You’ve made your point, Sharda ji. Several times, actually.
What I still can’t understand is how you could abandon Siya when she needed both of you the most, much less insult her with the news out of nowhere. ’
Kartik cut in. ‘There are things bigger than—’
‘Bigger than your daughter and her dignity? Bigger than the humiliation you just made her swallow in front of the whole family?’ Mihit asked, incredulously.
Sharda answered, ‘Spare us the lecture, Mihit. You’re still young enough to think idealism fixes the world, but let me tell you it doesn’t.’
Neena argued. ‘How can you even justify not getting her the medical help she needed? She lost her mother, and you wouldn’t let us visit her in the hospital, when neither of you even bothered to come back home. What kind of a fuckall family does that?’
‘It’s so stupid that none of you see how generous we’ve been with Siya. In my time, we’d throw such girls out of the society because they weren’t suitable to live in a noble family. At least we didn’t do that with her.’
‘Should I get on my knees and kiss your hand in gratitude?’ Siya called her out.
‘You didn’t keep me home out of the goodness of your heart.
You kept me because someone had to take care of Kashvi as a baby, and neither you nor Dad wanted to spend money on a babysitter, no matter how many times I begged for help.
If not for Kashvi, I don’t know what lengths you’d have gone to get rid of me. ’
‘If I had my way, we wouldn’t have been unfortunate enough to have you but your stupid mother didn’t listen to me when I told her to abort you!’
Dhruv gripped her elbow as he said, ‘Dadi, stop it! Do you even have any idea what you’re saying?’
Sharda narrowed her eyes. ‘Better no child at all than a daughter! Arohi got what was coming for her.’
It happened too fast for Siya to stop herself. She pushed her chair back hard enough to make it scrape, the sound screeching through the room, and stood.
‘You think her death was some kind of punishment? You think the universe killed my mother because she made the “mistake” of giving birth to daughters?’
‘You are forgetting your place, Siya,’ Kartik warned her with a fist banging on the wood.
‘Oh, let me guess, that place is beneath all of you, isn’t it?’