The fourth author as part of the Write India campaign is Ravi Subramanian. His competition was set in the modern society, and explored extramarital affairs. Read on for the short story I wrote for the same. Do leave feedback in the comments.
The following short story was written based on the competition held between 7th October and 30th October as part of the Write India campaign, about which I have talked here. Apart from the regular rules of the Write India campaign, Ravi himself had set the following rules:
His passage for the story has been highlighted in florescent. Hope you guys like what I made of the tale.- The passage can appear anywhere in the story.
- Introduce any character that you might want or you think will add to the story.
- No Murder. No Gore is permitted. Mind Games are welcome.
- Originality will be appreciated
* * *
“What the hell is going on between my husband and that bitch?” Maya’s patience was at its lowest ebb and she was ready to burst. Sanjay knew that she was serious. “Look, Maya. There is nothing going on between the two of them. Just a little bit of healthy flirting, I’d say.”
“Flirting? Healthy flirting? Really Sanjay.” she rolled her eyes in disgust. “That’s what you men call it? There is nothing healthy about flirting, Sanjay, not for a married man.
Healthy flirting is a term introduced by perverted men who want to lend legitimacy to their extramarital dalliances. Flirting invariably has a sexual connotation to it.” She got up from her seat and walked around the room gesticulating and muttering something to herself. Suddenly she stopped, turned back, looked at Sanjay and asked, “Did my husband sleep with her? You are his friend. Did he ever tell you anything about it?”
“Of course he didn’t. What is wrong with you?” Sanjay protested, affronted. Flirting was one thing, but Tapan would never cheat on Maya. That she could even think of it said volumes of the depths of suspicion she was mired in. He took a deep breath, and said calmly, “You know him, and his opinions on extramarital dalliances.” Maya only looked at his eyes, searching for hidden truths, before breaking eye contact with a grimace. She knew as well as him that Tapan would never stray.
“I know my husband would die before he becomes like his father, but come on! You know what this looks like.” She said, pleadingly. Sanjay only nodded. She needed support, not someone telling her she was getting paranoid. Not when he himself had seen Tapan laughing and hugging some girl half his age. He had broken the news to Maya, so he was responsible for her mood right now, even if none of this had come as a surprise to her. It seemed she knew about her husband and this intern of his for a while now.
“Maya, you know he disowned his own father for cheating on his mother. You know how much he hated him. It was almost like he took responsibility for his father’s failings. Hell, he didn’t even attend his father’s funeral last year, even after staying out of touch with him for twenty odd years.” Sanjay shuddered at a sudden memory from almost a decade back. “Extramarital affairs bring out the rage in him like nothing else does, I can personally attest to that. If nothing else, you can be sure he would never cheat on you.”
Maya just stood in front of him, biting her lower lip. She knew all about how Tapan had almost lost his job getting into a fistfight with a coworker he found was having an extramarital affair. Still she had reason for concern. Sanjay himself had never seen Tapan so much as look at a woman other than Maya. She had been the center of his world, and their relationship had been one to aspire for, to everyone who knew them, himself included. If Tapan was now roaming about, lying to his wife, laughing and hugging a woman… There was something there that he was missing. Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought matters to Maya before he had all the facts.
“Sanjay, I need your help.” Maya whispered, looking away. “I need to find out what is going on with my husband.”
Sanjay sighed. She was still referring to Tapan as her husband. She only did that when she felt overly
possessive of her husband. A rare jealous streak in Maya that Sanjay had not seen in the last thirty years. The last time he had seen it, Tapan and Maya hadn’t even married yet. No, there was something going on for sure, and if he needed to be there so Maya wouldn’t go off the edge. For his best friend, Tapan, he could do at least that much. Motioning for Maya to sit back down, Sanjay rubbed his temples and asked,
“Tell me what you need, Maya.”
* * *
Sanjay switched off the car engine as Tapan and the intern girl walked away from their ride into the building: a residential complex where he had followed his best friend and Shobha on three separate occasions now. He still didn’t like putting a name to the girl – it felt wrong, as though he was accepting her existence. He turned to face Maya, he could feel her get impatient: anger and hurt radiated from her.
“Maya…”
“No Sanjay. You wanted to wait to be sure. We have waited and followed for a week. My husband and that bitch get to keep going in there while I sit here stewing. Today we confront them.”
Sanjay knew he couldn’t push Maya, but then again, he couldn’t believe Tapan was really cheating on his wife. Only the evidence was overwhelming. Other than visiting this apartment here, the two often went to watch movies together, and he even took her shopping. Maybe Tapan had changed. Perhaps he had lost his friend somewhere along the way. All the evasion, and the lies about bank work, Tapan was hardly the same as he was before.
“Alright, we follow, but promise me you will remain behind me. And not do anything rash.”
“You know me Sanjay. I just want my husband back.”
Sanjay was not sure he wasn’t making a mistake by taking his best friend’s wife in to confront him with another woman. No point thinking about it, he decided, getting out of the car. Maya got out from the other side, looking determined. As they moved to the building, Sanjay saw Maya put her hands in her jacket. The Gurgaon winter was still setting in, and it was pleasantly warm for noon, but he shivered in spite of himself. No doubt her hands were knuckled, ready to rain punches. He was going to have to play this very carefully. They reached the lift and watched the ticker count up to the 11th floor. He hoped he could keep the confrontation within Shobha’s apartment. Better than risking a fight on the stairs, with a fall down eleven stories waiting.
“He’s going to 1104.” Sanjay said quietly, pressing the button to call the lift back down. He didn’t feel any need to tell Maya that Tapan had been renting the apartment on Shobha’s behalf. Nor did he feel the need to relive sneaking around in Tapan’s office, going through his papers. None of this made Tapan look good, nor did any of this make Sanjay feel any good about himself. He was betraying his best friend. And yet, it was his duty as Tapan’s best friend to help him save his marriage. If only Sanjay could be sure that he was not making a mess of that duty as well. He could hear his heart beating in rhythm with the impatient tapping of Maya’s foot as the lift came back to receive them. This was it.
* * *
One of the biggest dilemmas Sanjay pondered over while riding the lift up to the eleventh floor was whether to knock, ring the bell, or just break down the door. He had come to an impasse with the ethics of the situation, so he had put his mind to the functional aspects of the task. Get in, contain the confrontation to within the apartment, try to play peacemaker to minimize violence, convince his friend to leave his mistress and come back to his wife, convince his friend’s wife to take back her errant husband, and apologize for his own role in this entire mess. Simple. Maya had looked at him askance when he had snorted at the thought.
At the floor, Maya took the lead, striding across the corridor, looking for the right door. At the door however, she hesitated. Sanjay understood. They needed to do this. But all they had right now were suspicions and circumstantial evidence. Once these doors opened, the proverbial shit would hit the fan. Sanjay lifted his hand to bang on the door, but even before his hand could land on the door, it opened. A person rushed out past them to the elevators. Sanjay put his foot in the door and they pushed in, surprised at seeing the stranger. Perhaps he was the help. A rented apartment, hired help, what was Tapan doing here – setting up a second household?
There was no one in the living room, sparsely fashioned with a single couch and a television on one end and a dining table for two on the other. Maya was trying to drink in everything in sight at once, eyes wide as they could go. She heaved breaths as deeply as Sanjay knew he himself did – his heartbeats filled his ears. They were so loud that it took almost a minute for him to register the talking coming from the inner room. Sanjay looked at Maya, they both nodded and stepped together into the master bedroom.
Tapan stood there, with his arm around the intern girl, their backs to him and Maya. He sounded concerned, and she seemed to be holding on to him for support. Somehow this is not what Sanjay had imagined, even in his worst nightmares. The room was centered on a single bed, where someone lay. The person’s face might have been hidden by Shobha and Tapan, but her condition was evident by the medical apparatus surrounding the bed. The entire room looked like a portable hospital room. Maya and Sanjay exchanged yet another confused glance before voiced drew their attention back to the couple and the patient. Only then did Sanjay notice the other person in the room, a doctor.
“I would say about two more weeks at best. We can only make her comfortable now.” He said quietly to the sobbing Shobha, who buried her face in Tapan’s chest as he whispered what undoubtedly were
reassurances in her ear. Sanjay felt stunned. When they had decided to confront Tapan today, this was
perhaps the last thing they had expected. It surely did not explain his behavior, but it only made Sanjay’s gut feeling stronger – there was still more to the picture than Maya or he could see. As Sanjay moved to the side silently to get a look at the patient, his accidentally walked into a chair.
Gasps from across the room told Sanjay their presence had been betrayed. He looked up to find a shocked Tapan standing rooted to his ground and a trembling Shobha wiping her tears away, both with eyes fixed on Maya. Maya, for her part, had on her face the cold rage of a determined woman. Tapan knew what that look meant. He swallowed emptily, and the silence stretched. The doctor just looked confused, and smartly decided this was not a place he wanted to be in. He hastily made his goodbyes and left the room with no one paying him any attention. The silence grew till it was louder than the heartbeats drumming in Sanjay’s ears.
“Let’s take this out.” Maya said calmly, and turned to walk out of the bedroom. “You are coming,
husband?”
Tapan looked at Sanjay questioningly, who returned a rueful shrug, and they both sighed together, one with trepidation, and the other relaxing. Shobha still wouldn’t let go of Tapan’s arms. She held on like he was a lifeline, but she just looked… resigned. As they both walked past him out of the room, Sanjay quickly turned to look at the patient, and gasped. And just like that everything fell into place in his head. He rushed out to pre-empt the explosion that Maya would cause any second and leaped between Maya and Tapan shouting “It’s not what you think!”
All three of them just stared at him. Shaking his head at the anticlimactic stunt, Sanjay picked himself up and dusted himself. Throwing Maya a meaningful look, he repeated himself, “It is not what you think.” He then turned to Tapan and said, “Why don’t you explain, from the beginning, so that Maya can understand. Later, maybe we can have a pointed conversation about hiding this from us. From me.”
* * *
“You remember how I told you my father cheated on my mother, Maya?” Tapan asked, taking the cup of coffee gratefully from Shobha, who then settled back next to him and snuggled up close to him. He absently caressed her head, but he spoke to Maya, looking straight at her.
“Yes. You didn’t even let him attend our wedding.” Maya replied levelly. Her eyes however were hard, and drilling into Tapan, somehow excluding the girl holding on to him. “What does she have to do with him?”
“The woman you saw inside is Riddhima, the woman he had the affair with.” Tapan’s face never changed as he told the story, Shobha merely sniffled. Maya’s eyes, however, widened, and for the first time comprehension glinted in them. She looked at Shobha for the first time.
“Then this is…”
“My half-sister. Shobha, meet my wife, Maya.”
Shobha smiled weakly at Maya, who still seemed stunned. “But how… why?”
“My father made a lot of mistakes, but his biggest was to abandon Riddhima, pregnant. When I went to confront her for breaking my family, I found out about… this.” Tapan looked down, and studied his hands, not able to meet his wife’s eyes any more. “That was the real reason I chased him out and cut contact with him. All these years, I have been taking care of her expenses, sponsoring Shobha’s education. My father never paid for his sins. And so I bore penance on his behalf.”
“So when you told me you didn’t want to have kids?”
“That had nothing to do with this. This is my duty. Whether by choice or fate, I now have a sister and a mother, after a fashion anyway.” Sanjay thought he saw the hint of a smile on his friend’s face.
“But you never met them. Or told me about them. Why?” Maya asked.
“And more importantly, why now?” Sanjay added.
“Ego, I suppose. I was angry. I didn’t want a reminder of him around me. I wired money to Riddhima, and by unsaid agreement, she never showed me her face.”
“Till she fell sick.” Maya filled in the blanks, “She is dying, isn’t she?”
“Yes”, Shobha wailed. Before even Tapan could move, Maya was there, comforting her. Just like that, all her anger and betrayal forgotten, a true partner to Tapan.
Tapan smiled, still studying his hands, “I wanted to tell you, but there is no thing as a right time, is there? I’ve been getting to know her, and I have realized I was wrong, you know? My penance wasn’t supporting the fruit of my father’s sin, it was not recognizing the only family I had left. She isn’t a burden, Maya. She is my salvation.”
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