Unkept Promises

The reason - Part II

Abhiram's POV

"Frankly speaking, if I retrospect now, I shouldn't have ever overlooked upon her twisted ways, and twisted words. She was excessively difficult to Avi with her overly sharp tongue, and her stinging words. Mummy, pappa, and I had been used to her snarky demeanour and, we would plainly ignore her tantrums, but initially Avi did not have an idea about all of those things. Yes, I defended her, protected her, but then again, we all told her to ignore Kinjal's pettiness since we believed nothing could be done about that, and that nothing significant would be the outcome of that. She had at times, even tried to create a rift between the two of us, but it was all in vain."

"Do you think she might have been able to be controlled had you not overlooked upon her tantrums?"

"I am not quite sure doctor. See, despite of not knowing that she has been a narcissist, I knew one thing, she thrived on attention, and we did not give that to her. So perhaps, had we given our attention - even negative attention, things might have been different.", I speculated, but then shook my head.

"But honestly, I also think that in such a case, she might have jumped in to create more issues. So ignoring all that pettiness seemed to be the best option at that time."

She noted it down.

"One more thing doctor. After I had gotten married, Avi and I stayed separately in our home, and she was with my parents, so our interaction was quite limited, or more like we had consciously limited it. When we would visit my parents, which was often, we would ensure that she would not be there. And more than us visiting them, mummy and pappa would come over. That's because, ever since I had moved out following my marriage, Kinjal had calmed down considerably. And that was a welcome change. The few occasions where we would be forced to interact, were filled with her acting out, but that was manageable."

"So you had a very little contact with her?"

"Yes, you can say that. We were not close enough to exchange phone calls.", I shrugged.

"Abhiram, your words have confused me to some extent. Where, on one hand you say that Kinjal's temper had flared greatly after you had gotten married, on the other hand, you say that the interaction was limited, and things were manageable since she had simmered down - so what exactly is the scenario here?"

F*ck, in my state of turmoil, I had managed to confuse her too.

"I am sorry doctor, not in the greatest state of mind presently. What I meant is, after my marriage, considering the massive number of rituals, and much other stuff concerning newly married couples, there were many interactions with Kinjal. And Avi too wanted to connect with her sister-in-law, so that too involved interacting with her. All of those meetings were not at all pleasant, to say the least. And after a certain period of time, when Avi would get hurt by her behaviour, even after overlooking upon a few things, we decided to cut off as many interactions with Kinjal as possible. It was then that the things got manageable.", I explained.

She nodded in understanding, and again scribbled a few words.

"Avantika, what do you have to say here?", she turned towards Avi.

I turned to face her. She had a distressed expression on her face, rightly so.

"Doctor I tried to be friendly with her initially, then seeing her being the exact opposite of friendliness, I stuck with being cordial, but even that did not work. The thing is, all others - him, mummy, pappa, they knew how to deal with Kinjal, and whatever snarky comment she used to throw at them, they knew how to deal with that as well. I had no clue about this. Yes, Abhiram did explain me that its just the way she is, and that I should overlook upon her behaviour, and I did exactly that. Initially her words used to hurt, but when I came to know of the way all of them dealt with her, I followed the same.", Avi explained.