Paakhi

E I G H T E E N

Vandana sat on the couch in the living room, her eyes trained on the dented, steel container in the kitchen in which she stored the flour and continued to picture the plastic, Complan box she had placed behind it.

She needed to see it, she needed to check its contents. But there was no way that she could climb on top of the stool and fetch it for herself. It had hardly been three weeks since she had given birth, and hers had been a more complicated pregnancy than most. Even attempting to stretch more than usual caused her pain in her stitches.

She couldn't fetch the container herself, not for another three weeks at least. And without that, she didn't know how to figure out where she had gone wrong with her escape and how Mohit had discovered her. Until she knew her mistake, she couldn't plan an escape now. There was no point of planning anything.

She had withdrawn the money from her bank accounts little by little, and not in a single debit transaction. She had booked a train ticket instead of a plane ticket, to avoid having to use a photo identity. She had left on the day Mohit had been travelling for his conference, and had chosen to walk out when he was on the flight so that by the time he would realize she was gone, she would already be halfway across to Kolkata. She had even taken out her SIM card from her phone through the entire journey so that he couldn't even get her location traced.

It had been a carefully planned, and correctly executed escape. How had he found her then?

Where had she gone wrong?

"You okay there?" Mohit queried, as he adjusted his formal shirt consciously. He had a meeting he needed to attend in another half hour or so, and he was making sure he looked presentable.

Vandana looked away, having stopped trying to communicate with him. He had made his intentions known, and she wasn't okay with it. He could do whatever the hell he wanted to do about it. Without her daughter, she didn't really stand to lose anything.

Her lack of a response caused him to stop, "You really think you can ignore me forever?"

Watch me.

Mohit shook his head in frustration, while simultaneously knotting his tie. His double knotted ties were ridiculously clumsy, he had never been able to do them himself and had always had her do them for him in the past. Today, he looked her way fleetingly with a clear look of hope.

Vandana wanted to scream at the man, was this some kind of a joke to him? Did he think this was some stupid lovers' quarrel they were in that would simply fizzle away?

It took him a few minutes to gather his thoughts, and then, he walked up to her and sat in front of her on the couch. She wasn't sure what was on his mind, but it looked like he was struggling with his own thoughts. At last, after letting out a small breath, he grabbed her hand and looked deep into her eyes, "I can ask Surya to find out where she is and if she is doing okay."

Surya had been devoted to Mohit for as long as she could recall, he was a DCP in the Mumbai Police and would literally do anything for her husband. He was the reason that she had had to reach out to Shantanu for help.

With Surya in the way, there was no way she could escape from Mumbai; there was no way she could escape from Mohit.

Vandana could feel her heart beating wildly in her chest, her brain on an absolute overdrive as she tried to assess the implications of his words.

There was no way for Surya to have known if their daughter was okay unless he actually knew where Vandana had been headed, and who she had met on the train. Did Surya know about Shantanu too? Had Mohit been keeping a watch on their daughter all along?