Chapter 12
MEHER
M y mother had been practically delirious with joy when we returned home last night.
“Finally! Shreenathji has heard my prayers,” she cried, as we walked into the house. “He brought Samrat back into your life.”
“He isn’t back in my life, Ma,” I said firmly, and she gave me a sceptical look.
“Really? Then why was he following you around like a puppy all evening? Look, I know you’re upset about the past, but it wasn’t all his fault. You made some mistakes too.”
I stared at her in disbelief, not able to get a word out for a few seconds.
“What was my mistake, Ma?” I finally asked, almost shaking with fury. “Please tell me. Because you never believed in my innocence, did you?”
“Do we really have to get into it, beta?” she asked with an uneasy laugh. “Let’s leave the past where it belongs.”
“No, I really want to know, Ma. What do you think happened that night?” I insisted.
“Fine! If you want to hear it, that’s on you,” she snapped. “Samrat caught you in bed with Sanjay Jhala the morning after his big polo win. That’s why he dumped you eight years ago, and to be honest, I don’t blame him. You shamed yourself and you shamed us all, Meher.”
Every word of hers hit me like a body blow, and I wrapped my arms around my body to brace myself.
“Wow,” I whispered. “That’s what you really think of me.”
Nausea roiled in my stomach, and I began to shiver.
Not with cold, but with grief. My mother had said a lot of things over the years, but she had never come out and outright said she believed Sanjay’s narrative.
I had suspected it, but we’d never discussed it because Baba Sa had banned her from talking about it after the first few days of constant recrimination.
Was this what everyone believed? Even Baba Sa and Shaurya?
I had assumed they all knew I was innocent, but maybe they believed Sanjay.
“What else are we supposed to think, beta? We asked you what happened…”
“And I told you! I told you, Ma, that I don’t know how I got there.”
“How the hell can you not know?”
“Because I was asleep! I was fast asleep, Ma! And I woke up when Nilanjana screamed and created that big scene. I had no idea why I was suddenly in Sanjay’s bed instead of mine, and why half the guests in the palace suddenly turned up outside that room.
You all just assumed I’d slept with Sanjay, and nobody cared to hear my side of the story. ”
“Meher, I asked you if he forced himself on you,” said Ma. “And you said no! I heard you loud and clear. I asked you over and over again. If you’d said yes, we could have salvaged the situation. But you insisted there was no rape.”
“Because there wasn’t,” I yelled. “Sanjay did not rape me, Ma. He didn’t even touch me!”
“Hain? Then what the hell were you doing in his bed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how I got there. I know he said we slept together, but we didn’t. He lied. And you chose to believe him over me. I will never forget that. Never,” I whispered before I ran upstairs to my bedroom and slammed the door as hard as I could.
I hadn’t cried about my past for a long time because I refused to cry over a relationship so fickle that it fizzled out in complete silence, without so much as a whimper.
But now, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I sank to the ground and leaned against the door as the tears flowed down my face, my body wracked with sobs.
I didn’t know why I was crying. Or for whom I was crying.
Maybe I was crying because for the first time in my life, I felt completely alone.
If even my family was ready to believe the worst about me, and had believed it for years, then who did I have on my side?
As I cried, I relived the morning that changed the course of my life all over again. It was still etched clearly in my mind even though it had happened eight years ago.
I’d been fast asleep when Nilanjana started screeching, and for some reason, I found it very difficult to pry my eyes open. When I did, I was very confused to see her standing by my bed. But then, my eyes went to Samrat, who was standing just beside her as if turned to stone.
“What are you doing in this room?” Nilanjana demanded..
“What’s going on?” I mumbled sleepily, but Samrat’s eyes were fixed just behind me.
That’s when I became aware of a presence in my bed. A large, malevolent, unwelcome presence that wrapped its arm around my waist and pulled me closer.
With a little shriek, I jumped out of bed and saw that it was Sanjay, the only man I had dated for a bit before Samrat, who was also Nilanjana’s brother. And then, it struck me that this wasn’t my room!
“It’s just me, babe. Relax,” he said, with that creepy laugh. “You weren’t so jumpy last night.”
I could hear him clearly, but for some reason, it felt like his words were swimming through thick, wet mud before they reached my ears. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. But I figured out that I was in his room, for some strange reason.
“What?” I asked in confusion, and swayed a little as I turned to face Samrat.
The grim expression on his face scared me, and I knew something was seriously wrong. Why was I sleeping in Sanjay’s bed? And why did I want to throw up all of a sudden?
Samrat took one step closer to me, but just then, my mother burst into the room and slammed the door shut.
“Meher, what have you done, you little idiot?” she asked.
I shook my head and tried to speak, but the words just vanished on their way from my brain to my lips.
“Ma…I…I…”
She grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.
“You look terrible, beta. Did this monster force himself on you?” she demanded.
I did my best to focus on her words. She was asking if…if Sanjay had raped me. Why was she asking that?
“What?”
I did a mental check of my body, and nothing seemed strange. Nothing hurt. I didn’t feel violated in any way.
“No, he didn’t, Ma,” I said firmly, trying to allay her fears.
“You all heard her. It wasn’t rape,” exclaimed Nilanjana. “And I must say I’m not surprised. They do have a very intense history.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked hoarsely, but she turned to Samrat.
“This is exactly what I was trying to explain to you yesterday, Samrat. Meher and Sanjay have had a love/hate relationship for years, but they truly can’t stay away from each other.”
And somehow, before I could deny her ridiculous claim, the atmosphere in the room changed.
It turned angry and accusing. The worry in my mother’s eyes turned to disgust. I turned to Samrat for reassurance and saw a kaleidoscope of emotions in them.
Shock and pain, followed by fury. Then, as if a light went out inside him, his eyes turned blank.
He took one long look at me before he walked out of the room.
I tried to go after him, but my mother held my shoulders in a vice-like grip and was going on about how I had shamed the family.
My eyes followed Samrat out of the door, and that’s when I noticed the avid faces staring at us from the corridor outside the room.
Nilanjana had somehow managed to turn me into a spectacle that would keep our social circle entertained for years.
For days after I returned to Matta, I tried calling him, but his phone was turned off.
He didn’t respond to my emails, if he even read them.
Even Nilanjana wouldn’t tell me where he was.
Shaurya Bhai Sa said he’d started his special forces probation.
I hoped against hope he’d reach out to me after he calmed down and thought the whole thing through.
After all, I was his Meher. The love of his life.
Surely, he wouldn’t discard me over a misunderstanding.
For that’s what it had to be. Nobody would ever believe a moron like Sanjay over me. Right?
As it turned out, I was wrong on both counts.
Samrat discarded me like a used piece of toilet paper.
And everyone believed Sanjay, because he was backed by Nilanjana, the Maharani of Deorangir.
According to them, I was drunk when I knocked on Sanjay’s door late that night.
And I seduced him. They painted him as a lovesick fool who had been in love with me for years.
So he got off scot free, but I was tarred as a slut.
The first thing I did as soon as I got back to Matta that evening was call a doctor over for a medical examination.
She was an old school friend who came over right away with a rape kit.
The report said findings consistent with no recent penetration .
I hadn’t thought to show it to my mother because we didn’t discuss such things in our extremely conservative family.
Also, my friend had been very clear that the absence of signs of penetration like local trauma, semen, or DNA traces did not always mean that sex hadn’t occurred.
But now, I wiped my tears and splashed some cold water on my face before I pulled out my laptop. I had to have the soft copy of that report somewhere. I dug into my old folders, and it took a few minutes, but I found it.
I went over to Baba Sa’s study and took out a printout of the report, and then I went to my mother’s room. She was in the shower, and I realised I didn’t have it in me to speak to her tonight. I left the report on her pillow and walked out of her room with my head held high.
Tonight, at least one person in the world would know for sure that I was innocent.
T he next morning, I ignored my mother’s tentative olive branch of having the chef prepare my favourite breakfast of akuri and sourdough brioche with pesto, and ate a slice of dry toast with a large espresso. We had to be at the polo club by eleven.
I put on one of my favourite dresses, a navy blue chiffon maxi dress with tiny white polka dots, and paired it with a navy blue hat and matching kitten heels. I kept my makeup minimal, but I did add a swipe of my brightest red lipstick as a fuck you to the world before I strode out of the house.