Serendipity

62

"Anu.."

He walked towards her just as she made her way into her room and shut the door on him.

"Anu.." Not wanting to wake the entire household up, he spoke in a furious whisper. The door remained closed. He knocked, first softly and then a little louder. No response. He tried the latch. The door wasn't locked. He opened it and walked in.

The room was dark, save the table light that was emanating a soft yellow glow. A huge silhouette of a woman, shoulders drooping, crouched on her bed, adorned the wall against the headboard.

Anuj diverted his vision to look at Anupama, sitting on her bed, morose, her palm on her forehead. He walked up to her and sat down next to her. He held her hand and pulled it away from her forehead. She let him but continued to look down at her rather pale bedsheet.

"I know you heard everything Kinjal said."

She nodded, acknowledging his statement.

"Why are you upset?"

She looked up at him then, her eyes filled with tears. And he realized the effort with which she'd kept them from spilling out.

"What happened?" he asked moving closer to her, placing his arm around her shoulders. She moved close too, leaning into his body, drawing her strength from it, as she always did.

"I'm a bad mother."

It was a statement. Anupama had tried herself and pronounced herself guilty.

Anuj looked at her, patiently waiting for her to say more. When she didn't he picked up her hand and started doodling on her palm with his finger.

"What are you trying to do?" she asked, pulling her palm away from him.

"Trying to change your fate."

"Huh?"

"If I can rewrite the lines on your hand, your fate will change as well, isn't that right?"

She looked at him like he'd lost his mind. 

"What rubbish," she admonished.

"The same kind of rubbish you just spoke."

Anupama looked at him dumbstruck for a while. When he realized she was too spent to catch on, he patiently explained.

"Pakhi is not just your daughter. She is a 16-year-old girl. She has had and continues to have other influences in her life - your ex-mother-in-law, your ex-husband, his second ex-wife, her friends, television, internet, social media. What she thinks, how she thinks, her actions, are not your sole responsibility and therefore not a reflection of your upbringing.

"It's strange you would blame yourself for Pakhi's behavior with Kinjal today when for the last ten months, she hasn't particularly behaved well with you. In fact, she has gone out of her way to consciously avoid you at school all these months. And now all of a sudden she remembers you're her Mom? Worse, accuses Kinjal of stealing you from her?"

When Anupama continued to stare at Anuj perplexed, he sighed.

"Anu, Pakhi is a brat and it isn't your upbringing that needs to be blamed for that. She never listened to you in the first place, because she was Daddy's "precious princess" or should I say Baa's spoilt brat. But having said that, what she did today was good."

Anu lifted her hand and placed the back of her palm against his forehead. Was he running a temperature, because he sure sounded delirious.

"I'm perfectly okay."

He smiled and pulled her hand away from his forehead.

"The world is filled with Pakhi's. Kinjal will meet such people at every corner, every juncture of her life. More so if she becomes our daughter. 

"But so far, Kinjal has only been taught to suffer and endure. She doesn't understand that the more she endures, the more rot will get dished her way. She needs to learn to stand up for herself. And the sooner she learns, the better."

Anu wiped the tears from near her eyes and smiled.

"Thanks, Anuj. Thank you for making it all sound so easy."

"It is very easy, Anu, for Kinjal. I don't know about you."

"Why?"

"Because Pakhi is your daughter. Should something affect her adversely tomorrow, even if it is perceived, I don't want it to affect you in turn."

"It won't," she promised Anuj. "Pakhi was never my daughter. She was always Daddy's girl. She felt I was an embarrassment. My only child, who truly respected me as a mother was Samar."

"Speaking of him, now that things in your life are settled, do you want to ask him to move in with us?"

She shook her head.

"Let us first get married, after that. I don't want to jinx anything."

"Look at someone, so eager to get married."

Thud! 

She'd whacked him with a pillow on his head. He took his hand to rub the sore spot and looked at her with accusing eyes.

"What?" she asked.

"It hurts. You don't hit like a girl."

She smiled at that and hit him again. He picked up the other pillow and hit her back. Soon the room was filled with cotton from the pillows, and the two lay on the bed laughing. Anu inched closer and placed her head near his heart, while Anuj, as always, protectively wrapped his arm around her. Life was beautiful.