Shape of the Sun

Shattered beyond measure

"You sure you don't want some more bananas?" They had stopped for some and Manmeet seemed to like them a lot since she had eaten two whole bunches, which made Rajkumar wonder if she wanted more. He could turn the car around if she said yes. It was that easy.

However, Manmeet refused.

"No, thank you. Let's just go home."

Her fingers secretly pinched the corner of her dress, conveying her anxiety. Manmeet didn't want to continue being in such an enclosed space with Rajkumar. While she had made up her mind to keep it at a co-parent level with him, her body still needed time to adjust to such proximity to him. Ever since they made for home, Rajkumar kept trying to induce a conversation with her, which left her nervous and upset all at once. Why couldn't he just understand that she wanted to be away from him?

It wasn't that he didn't understand. Of course, he did. Manmeet was trying to draw a line, which he respected.

No, actually. He thought he respected. Haa. It was such a bad habit that he had.

Rajkumar felt the need to blur those lines. He had thought it would have been easy to parry but her effort at aloofness irritated him; it struck a sensitive chord reminiscent of the time he had been back in London, and there were many excuses that he could give for this, but all of them steered clear of the plain truth.

He couldn't handle the first stumbling-block in his life, personified in Manmeet. He was not as flexible as he thought, unable to see this woman set her mind upon staying apart from him. He was a pretender, the very person that he loathed, who wanted her not to stick to her guns, wanted her to talk to him like before, to look at him like before.

"Today, I had a patient." he began, ignoring the throbbing in his heart, "It was a girl, about nineteen, like Gunjan."

Manmeet was clearly listening to him. In fact, as ironic as it sounded, she thought that it was better that he talked. When Rajkumar had gone silent after her earlier refusal, she felt tense about it, and even more tense at her increasing irrationality. It was putting a strain on her, the rate at which her ability to control her desires was steadily falling.

"She tried to kill herself, Manmeet." he said, glancing at her who now had a shocked expression on her face. It was expected. Anyone hearing such a terrible thing would look just like she did. Rajkumar himself had once thought that it was easy after the first time. It wasn't, truly.

"And she went through so much shit, and yet...she was so strong. It was amazing, really. I had never seen anything like it." he continued, hands on the wheel, eyes trained on the road. But Rajkumar knew that she was listening, that he was communicating his feelings to someone. It felt nice.

He spent so much time listening to others. How many times had he been listened to? Rajkumar thought it was something rare. And he cherished it.

"You know, Manmeet, I couldn't help worrying about our baby for the first time, whether it's a boy  or a girl. This world is so cruel and if it's a girl we have, it would be even crueler." he clenched the wheel in a bid to suppress his rising emotions, "I just want to do nothing more than protect our baby, you know? I just want to protect him or her from this wicked world and be the best father I can be."

Manmeet silently stared at his side profile from the passenger seat. Anyone could tell that he meant every word that he said, his voice filled with so much intensity. It was dark out and in, making her unable to clearly see his face, but Manmeet thought that if she could, it would be a serious one, with eyes that told how serious he was, and at the same time, exposed his vulnerability.

Ah. It was so difficult. It was so difficult not to love this man who told her that he wanted to be a better father for their child, who had so much empathy and goodness and kindness that his heart was filled with it, who filled her own heart with love for him. Whether it was this Rajkumar or the hypocritical Rajkumar, Manmeet loved all of him. She suddenly wanted to reach out to touch his face, wanted to see what expression he'd make when she told him plainly that she loved him, that she wanted them to raise their child together in this cruel world and give her a chance to show him how much he meant to her.