Barrister Babu

Chapter 5: First Anidita Talk

Bondita stepped inside the study.

Anirudh looked at her and a curt smile formed on his lips. "You brought my coffee? Where is Koyeli?"

She kept the coffee on the table and walked toward the bookshelf. "Why? Can't I bring coffee for you?"

"I never said that," he mumbled and took a sip of the coffee. He closed his eyes at the familiar taste. This was definitely made by Bondita. Oh, how much he missed this!

Bondita took out the books one by one and started to clean them. "By the way, Patibabu—" she looked at him and found him enjoying drinking the coffee, which made her smile. "Patibabu?"

"Yes?" he glanced at her.

"How's the coffee?"

"It's good," he replied and went back to reading a file.

"Are you busy?" she continued cleaning the books.

"Depends. Why?"

"I want to talk to you. You know, like catch-up." As soon as she said that, Anirudh closed the file and got up from his seat.

He took a few books and started cleaning along with her. "Then let's talk, Bondita."

"But your wor—" she was interrupted by him.

"I am not busy for you."

Both of them started cleaning and organizing the bookshelf together as Bondita spoke, "How has your life been in these years, Patibabu?"

"Why are you asking that? I wrote about it in the letters, Bondita," he simply answered.

"Oh, really? But you never mentioned your clients meet you here too. Nor did you mention that many women claim to be your wife," she casually said.

Anirudh, without thinking much, replied, "There are some clients I meet here because I want to stay busy with work to avoid thinking about you and about the women you mentioned, they never claimed to be my wife. They wanted to be my wife so proposed to me multiple times and I—" he became quiet and froze, realizing what he just spilled.

Bondita glanced at him sharply. "Oh, so women proposed to you despite knowing you are married?"

"You... you trapped me in your words, Bondita." He looked at her, flabbergasted. The last thing he expected was to get trapped in a casual conversation—at least, that's what he thought that Bondita wanted a casual conversation.

She kept the book on the shelf and placed her hands on her hips. "So you decided to never inform me about this?"

He gulped. "No, it's just, not important enough."

"So telling me to 'study' is the only important thing, right? Because that's what your every letter contained—importance of education. You never talked about yourself!" she accused him, slight hurt visible in her eyes. "Even when I called you, you didn't tell me whether you were eating properly or not. You lied to me."

"I... said I was eating food, so technically that wasn't a lie?" he tried to explain.

"This is not fair, Patibabu! I know you don't consider me as your wife, but I do consider you as my husband." Her eyes started getting watery. "So the least you could do was communicate with me—be honest with me."

His heart clenched at the sight. He cupped her cheeks and wiped her tears. "Bondita, I didn't say because of this. You would have cried by thinking about me. I didn't want to bother you and—"

She pushed his hands away. "So I can bother you but you can't? You are giving me my rights, but what about your rights?"

"What about my rights? What do you mean, Bondita?"

More tears poured from her eyes. "This is what you always do. Be selfless. Why don't you be selfish for once and demand your rights as a husband, Patibabu?"

His eyes grew as wide as saucers. All this time, she was talking about this? Their relationship as a husband and wife?

Precap:

"If you want to be in this marriage, I want it to be like a real one. But if you don't want to be with me, then we can get a divorce and you can marry the girl of your choice."

"You want to divorce me?"

She nodded.

Was this the time Anirudh would finally say that they should part ways?