Dark Secrets

12

Shreshtha and Aditya lived in Delhi for six months after which they shifted to Rockvile, Maryland, U.S. In those six months, there was only one way Yuvansh could reach her: Yahoo Messenger. He kept checking his notification every other hour to see if she had accepted his invite. After two nights, he was thrilled to see that his friend request had been accepted. He excepted a message from her. But none came. There were no "likes" on any of his pictures or statuses.

Shreshtha kept changing her display picture on the trot. The more Yuvansh saw them the more he understood that they must be her honeymoon pictures. He started magnifying the pictures toa size where only her smile filled the frame. Yuvansh wondered why he couldn't have been the reason for her dazzling smile. He wondered how it might have been if he had been in Aditya's shoes- would she have smiled more? or less? Moments are life's building blocks. As if you spend every moment with the one you love, life seems complete, fulfilling.

As the days passed, Shreshtha uploaded more and more pictures of their travels to various destinations around the world. One aspect of the photos that stood out vividly was their obvious intimacy. Their proprietorial attitude towards each other made him uneasy; Yuvansh knew that she was his wife and they had the right to express their love anyway they pleased, but it still  disturbed him deeply. It propelled him into a barrage of questions: who decides who gets whom ? Is domesticated love the only form of love?

Yuvansh explored his own feelings for Shreshtha. Even though he respected and loved her, he had no rights over her. Love didn't give one rights; a relationship did, Ranisa was right, Yuvansh concluded. The magnitude of one's love for someone is nothing compared to whether it is socially acceptable. If the relationship isn't endorsed by society , that love is deemed illegitimate. And illegitimate things are always swept under the carpet or kept under wraps despite the purity borne in its womb.

Yuvansh topped the XII standard board exams across India. He decided to pursue the Bachelors degree in English literature because after he realized his feelings for Shreshtha and his inability to be with her due to the so called "Destiny", he decided to express his unrequited love  in the form of writing . This decision shocked Mahendra and Kanchan as earlier he decided he wanted to be a doctor , but they tried their best to support him although he didn't tell them why he chose this degree. He gave the STEP entrance exam and got admission in St. Stephen's college in Delhi. The moment he got his results, he had wanted to share the joy with Shreshtha, but that was not possible. The fact that she hadn't reached out to him yet was a sign for him to not reach out to her as well. And he had to respect it. For her was not "her" man. He was, at best, the other man.

When the results were declared , Mahendra took the family out for dinner and also invited Dimpy, who had secured a seat in the BSc course in Chemistry in Ajmer's Sophia college.

"When are you leaving?" Dimpy asked Yuvansh as he escorted her home after dinner.

"Next week".

Dimpy noticed a subtle change in Yuvansh ever since Shreshtha had come and gone. He had grown taciturn and had grown out of his silly shenanigans. They no longer colluded to pull pranks on others.

Although she long suspected that Yuvansh had harboured feelings for Shreshtha, Dimpy never broached this directly for fear of having her hunch validated and she shrank from exhuming something that needed to remain buried. Dimpy herself had developed a crush on Yuvansh and if he admitted that he was still carrying a torch for Shreshtha, that would only complicate matters. She was convinced that she would marry him someday; in fact, she had overheard her parents discuss this possibility; so, she wisely abstained from mentioning the elephant in the room.

"you'll be very busy this week, won't you?" Dimpy asked. "

"Sort of , why?"

"I wanted to tell you something."

"What?"

"You know I love you, right? Dimpy exclaimed. She had rehearsed this moment several times but didn't except it to happen quite this way- in a rush. Yuvansh went quiet.:

"What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue?" Dimpy demanded. As far as she was aware, Yuvansh wasn't involved with anybody; in fact, she knew that she was his only friend.

Yuvansh took a deep breath and said, "You know people talk about "loss of innocence", but we rarely know the exact moment that we lose it."

Dimpy looked into his eyes uncomphrehendingly.

"I know when I lost mine."

"When?"

"The moment I understood a very important fact of life: no matter how badly you want something, if you're not meant to have it, you'll never have it. And it's not you who decides what's yours and what's not. You can only decide who you want to belong to ."

Dimpy could anticipate what was coming next but prayed that the benevolent gods would strike her deaf before that.

"I've made my decision, Dimpy. I-"

"I don't want to hear her name," Dimpy broke in hurriedly, "and thanks for destroying my innocence as well! You're right, Yuvansh , we don't always get what we want. We can only con ourselves into believing that we've always wanted what we eventually get."

"I'm sorry, Dimpy. I hope this doesn't destroy our friendship."

"No way. It won't . If you can love someone knowing she's married , I think I can love you knowing you'll never be mine," so saying, she turned away and fled into her house. For the first time, Yuvansh felt he had underestimated Dimpy's maturity. Or perhaps in the last one year, he hadn't realized that she had grown up too , just as he had.

When Yuvansh went home , he immediately pulled up his social media account on his computer. He went to Shreshtha's profile. She had checked into a hotel in Peru. Her caption read:

                                             CAN'T WAIT TO SEE MACHCHU PICHCHU.

Aditya and Shreshtha travelled a lot, and Yuvansh stalked her display pictures relentlessly on social media- staring at each photo for hours. And then imagining himself with her at that very spot. That night he clicked on the message button and wrote:

HI RANISA, HOW ARE YOU? NOT A MOMENT GOES BY THAT I DON'T MISS YOU. I THOUGHT YOU WOULD MESSAGE ME AND I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU NEVER DO. DID YOU THINK THAT I WOULD EVENTUALLY FORGET YOU?

Yuvansh read and re-read the message and then deleted it. He wrote instead:

HI RANISA, HOW ARE YOU?

He sent it. The impatience of waiting for her reply gave him insomnia for several nights. Six days later, he recieved a reply:

HI, PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE ME. MY HUSBAND HAS MY PASSWORD. I WON'T BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN OUR RELATIONSHIP TO HIM. TAKE CARE.

Yuvansh read the message the night before he was scheduled to leave for  St. Stephen's college, Delhi. He stared at the message, unblinking, until he could no longer see it because his eyes had turned blurry. When he did blink, large tears rolled unchecked down his face. He noticed that he had been "unfriended" as well . In her sky, he was surely that lone star didn't have the right to twinkle.

What could she possibly tell anyone about me ? Who  am I to her? Nobody. So what if I love her more than anyone else in this world, where's my social license to claim it? Yuvansh cried his heart out the entire night.