Between The Blue

07

Delhi, INDIA

Raindrops fell over her head. Closing her eyes, she tried to make her vision clear. Another thunder broke down and Hiral rushed to cross the deafening silence that struck after. Her steps, jumping and crossing the puddle of mud as it splashed at the back of her trousers. She felt dirty. Her pale white cotton kurta gave a hint of the pink bra she wore. She let her dupatta slip through her shoulders as she crossed the empty lanes to her colony. Dogs barked, in echoes, the noise slowly fading away at the recognition. Hiral shivered, her eyelids scrunching and drooping in exhaustion.

The redness of her eyes was capable of telling a million stories of heartbreaks to the world yet it screamed only of her own.

From far, she detected her brother standing outside the house with an umbrella over his head —tensed. She had taken an auto back. She didn't know if she could face her brother after someone told her what a loser she was. Someone told her was not the problem, the problem was, that she allowed it?

Why couldn't she speak when she had to? Why couldn't she put a stop to all the humiliation she was put through? Hiral knew she was pathetic when she had taken all the taunts Prateek had thrown her way in their three years of marriage; when she was told she did not deserve to be taken into a gathering of hundreds; when she was told she was stale; when she was told she would do nothing, she was not capable of doing it; when she was told that she was bad at giving him the kind of satisfaction a man deserved, and when she had allowed her body to be fucked like a whore against her will, drinking back those tears which depicted pain, not pleasure.

But when did she ever become this pathetic?

"Do you even have any idea how worried we were?"

She was covered with a towel as soon as she stepped in. Her brother took away her bag and gently damped her head with another pair of towels. "What was the need of coming on your own when I told you I would pick you up? I called you so many times and the weather was so bad. If you had something to do, you could have at least told me, I would have—"

"—Where is Papa?"

Taruj watched Hiral staring at him with a straight face. She looked pale and all sort of white- as if the droplets were damping much more than just her skin.

"—Did something happen? Tell me, what happened?" Taruj held her arms; worried.

"Nothing!" She let out a small breath. Slowly, removing the towel from her head, she gently wiped her head.

"Did something happen?" Taruj tried to catch up with Hiral's furious steps.

"Nothing" The finality and the dead pause in her tone left Taruj troubled.

"Listen Hiral, Papa is finally starting to speak to you, don't push him on the edge again, talk to me, tell me what happened, we will do something, I—I will do something"

Hiral didn't stop as anger clouded her senses, blinding her with rage and the bitter taste of humiliation which was still very fresh on her lips. She walked in and watched her father write something in the lezure. He glanced at her quickly before diving back into the accounts he was checking.

"Now why are you standing? Go and change or you want to fall ill too on our heads" Her mother commented from the side, halting from peeling and chopping the potatoes.

Hiral ignored her walking close to her father not caring about the droplets that damped the carpet, "Won't you ask me, how did the meeting go Papa?"

Kailash looked up pulling his glasses off, "How does it even matter to you if I ask or not? You are doing what you want to do and I am letting you! What more do you want from me?"