Chapter 6 Aditi
Aditi
‘What are you reading?’ he asks while looking outside.
I’m sure he’s thinking what I’m thinking. The rain’s completely stopped now, the floodwater of the road has receded. Couldn’t they have been here now?
‘Roman history. I mean, I’m failing to read anything to be honest,’ I tell him. ‘Usually, I can just lose myself in these books.’
‘History books?’
‘I wanted to be a historian once. Obsessed with dead people and their bad decisions. Despite being so aware of what a bad decision is, I have found myself in one.’
His face scrunches into a frown. ‘We can’t think like that,’ he says. It seems like it’s directed to him as much as it’s directed to me. ‘This is going to be . . . the best decision of our lives.’
‘Sure,’ I say, while being unsure.
I can be unsure here but not in front of Aman. And I know he tries to hide his unsureness too. A few hours from now, we are going to be each other’s only family. Doubt will have no place in our lives.
‘So, your parents didn’t let you become a history professor? An archaeologist? That’s what you become after a degree in history?’ he asks, clearly to change the topic.
‘After doing a history course, you become a drain to your parents,’ I say. ‘The joke’s on me because to them, I still am.’
‘You have siblings?’
‘An elder sister, an elder brother,’ I answer him, my thoughts racing to the folded letter on my bed. The bed that my sister and I shared for twenty-five years before she got married and though I had been excited to have the room all to myself, I just found myself lonely. ‘You?’
‘I have a younger sister—’
‘NO.’
The word comes out as a gasp.
‘What?’ he asks.
And then I see them. Outside. Through the glass. Just beyond the Costa Coffee counter. My entire stomach drops like it’s been unplugged from my body.
Didi, my elder sister.
Didi’s husband.
And Bhaiya, my elder brother . . . even through the toughened glass, I can see the unbridled fury in his eyes.
Of all the battles he could have picked in the world, he has picked this.
His fists are clenched and he’s stomping around.
That restless, angry energy I have seen directed at others—the customers, the shop, the vendors, the car wash guy, Gupta Ji who lost the battle for the parking space last month—is now directed at me.
They are going to drag me home. Home? They are going to take away my phone, lock me up.
Maa’s going to cry outside, Didi’s going to say didn’t we tell you this would happen?
, Papa will refuse to address me directly and Bhaiya .
. . I don’t know what he will do. What he’s going on about now, what he did when he first got to know of Aman, I could never have predicted.
My fingers tremble.
‘Hey? Hey?’ says Raghav. ‘What’s happening?
I watch them storming from one end to another. I blink and they are still there. Searching. They are scanning signs, flashing their tickets at the staff.
‘They’re here,’ I whisper. ‘They read it.’
I want to get up and run, but my feet are bolted to the floor, my eyes stuck on them. Didi’s doing that thing she does when she’s nervous—chewing her bottom lip and pretending she isn’t. Her husband looks annoyed. How dare he come looking for me?
‘Who’s here? What did who read?’ he asks. ‘. . . the letter? Where are they?’
And then, his eyes follow mine and he spots them.
‘What am I going to do?’ I mumble.
He looks around too. ‘Umm . . . can’t you . . . what . . . wait . . . washroom? Go hide in the washroom? I will call you when they leave. Go to the disabled washroom . . . they might not check that.’
‘What if they—’
He looks around. The walls seem to be collapsing. I feel like I’m losing balance, when he holds me.
‘That’s our only option,’ he says, his voice mirroring my panic.
Tears spring to my eyes, our.
‘You need to go,’ he firmly says to me.
I turn and run. I don’t look back. I push the door, lock myself into the stall, sit down on the closed toilet seat.
I curl into myself. My hands are trembling.
I try to breathe, but it’s like someone has stepped on my chest. What will they do that’s not been done before?
How worse will they make my life? Why did we not hide our relationship better?
My sister once said she’d jump off a terrace if I ever ‘embarrassed the family’.
My jiju, brother-in-law? He’s the literal embodiment of the worst traits in a person.
Five minutes pass by. Or an hour. I have no way of telling.
I put my ear to the door, but I can’t hear anything.
The door latched shut, I wait.
And then, I hear his voice. It’s Raghav. I put my ear to the door again. I only hear snatches of conversation.
‘Yes, yes . . . the pivot is a little clunky . . . check the second sheet . . . I’m just going to the washroom . . . I will call you back . . .’
And then, I see the handle twist. It’s locked.
‘. . . no, no . . . nothing . . . just the door is locked . . .’
Shit. Now, I get it. I quickly unlatch the door. He walks in casually and closes the door shut.
‘They are outside,’ he whispers. ‘They checked the men’s, the women’s, and they were coming this way . . .’
I nod. I know I can’t say a word, or I will disintegrate into tears.
We stay there for a long time. We don’t talk.
After a while, Raghav gets up to look outside.
He opens the door ever so slightly, then a little more, and then steps out and closes the door again.
A minute passes by, and then another. And then he pushes open the door.
‘They are gone,’ he says.
‘Thank—’
The tears come before I can complete the word.