"Lie there," he ordered, suddenly cutting through the silence and undoing the top button of his kurta. When she didn't move, still shocked at how she ended up marrying this man, he cocked his head towards the bed. "There."
* * *
Twenty-one year ol...
"Priya, what is it?" Ahanay said tiredly, his eyes skimming through the stacks of folders on his table that resembled the leaning tower of Pisa. One of his biggest pet peeve was using paper documents instead of digital copies. The time taken to study these documents could be spent on studying Naina, how her cheeks puffed up when she ate greedily with big spoonfuls, how her drool created a little pond on her pillow when she slept, how her pink fingertips would shrink like raisins because she enjoyed bubble baths a little too much.
"How was your honeymoon?" An angelic voice spoke, waking Ahanay from the dreams of his demonic wife.
"Sorry Priya, I'm busy right now. I can't discuss with you my personal affairs."
As of Priya, they hadn't spoken to each other since- he couldn't recall and he didn't give a shit because what the fuck was this? Who had the time to handwrite each tile measurement instead of typing in excel?
"Personal? Since when did anything become personal between us?" Priya said, sitting on the table opposite to him and swinging her legs as if she was a five-year-old child. "Judging from how grumpy you look, your honeymoon didn't go as planned."
"What do you want?"
"I can help you spice things up," Priya said, getting up and stalking towards him, giving away that she was a devil disguised as an angel. Ahanay instinctively pushed his chair back, trying to put a distance between them and she laughed airily. "Don't worry, I'm not going to fuck you."
Ahanay was surprised that Priya could be so direct, the angelic Priya who had manipulated him in many indirect ways. "I didn't know you were capable of saying that word."
"Why? Only your wife is allowed to be uncouth?" She retorted, smiling cruelly. "Now that we're on the topic of your wife, shouldn't you be paying more attention to her? Her best-friend told me that she was plotting with him to kill you. Ironic, no?"
"Kill me? If she wanted to do that, she would have done already."
"Well, how many days are you home anyway? Always busy with your work," she said, retrieving her phone and playing the recording. A familiar voice spoke, "It's all a ruse, Ohas. I can do anything for money. Even pretend to be in love with him."
A flicker of doubt passed on Ahanay's face as he quickly composed himself. "I heard about your family's debt, Priya. Is that why you're here? For money?"
"That's why your wife married you, not me. I'm no whore." She hopped down the table, disappointed that Ahanay hadn't taken the bait as she had expected. "Anyway, I have cut all ties with them."
"Is that a good idea? They need you as much as you need them."
"I don't need them," she said defensively. "Don't put your foot in my business."
"Exactly," he said, his eyes darting back to the stack of documents. To Priya's eyes, the fish never took the bait and swam merrily in the ocean, not knowing that the fish had sniffed the bait... wondering if Naina truly was in love with him.
* * *
Priya hadn't intended to expose Naina's past ploys to Ahanay or Ahanay's past ploys to Naina, instead, she had gone to warn them about the skeleton man. But both their outright and quiet arrogance made her change her mind, wanting them to hurt at least a fraction of what she was going through. How could their lives be perfect when hers wasn't even worthy to be called a life? Living on a thug's borrowed apartment and no friends, she was the loneliest.
"They need you as much as you need them," Ahanay's words buzzed incessantly in her head like a mosquito. As if her feet had a mind of their own, they carried her to her old house. Perhaps a peek at her family's lives wouldn't do any harm....
There were many signs on her way to the house like the crows flying below the dark clouds and cawing loudly as if warning her. Or the eerily quiet street leading to her house. The most unmistakable signs were somber people dressed in white salwars, some faces she recognized had blood-shot eyes and chalky faces while others gleamed with gossip and excitement.
"What-what is going on?" She caught hold of a stranger in a white kurta who sighed.
"The Sahib of the house killed his wife and committed suicide," the man said, failing to recognize that he was speaking to the Sahib's daughter. "Why take so much debt if you can't repay?"
"He repaid with their lives. Good, his daughter wasn't home or he would have killed her," a woman's voice emerged from behind him, followed by the dropping of a thali. "Madam! You're back!"
The shrill voice of her maid and the thali's ringing noise echoed the street and Priya felt like a shell of a person, occupying this strange body in a strange place. She was no longer Priya, she was the daughter of a man who killed his wife before killing himself. She was the daughter of nobody because her parents were dead.
Like a petal drifting will-lessly in the wind, she found herself guided by her maid to the photographs of her dead parents. Their bodies were burnt and ashes were kept in ceramic pickle jars. A group of women blubbered next to the photograph of her mother, some cursing the fate for her mother marrying this murderer. When their eyes landed on Priya, they pulled her into a suffocating embrace and she felt wetness on her cheeks, not from her tears, but the sweat from their armpits.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a blur of men in uniforms and knew the interrogation that would follow, about her father, the bankruptcy, the leftover assets. She was no longer Priya, but the daughter of the man who killed his wife before killing himself. Excusing herself, she hurried out of the house and onto the street where she could feel the coolness of a wet day on her face. She was welcomed by a light shower, not thunderous rain, and blamed it for her shivering body. Midway, tears flowed down her face as freely as blood during her periods, mingling with snot and saliva. She didn't know she was howling until a mother pushed her little daughter away from her on the street, shooting a disapproving look. She was the daughter of nobody because her parents were dead.
Days turned into nights as she lay in the darkness of her apartment, punishing herself for abandoning her parents. She reasoned and argued with herself about her terrible her parents were, playing an advocate on both sides till her mind gave away to exhaustion. She was going mad and there was nobody to witness it, nobody to give a fuck about her.
As if on cue, light streamed into her room and she cracked her eyes open, her blurry vision zeroing on Ohas who bellowed at her, "What the fuck is going on here? Get up now!"
And then seeing how her droopy and swollen eyes couldn't bear to see the world and her ghostly pale face couldn't hide the exasperating thoughts running in her mind, how she couldn't live outside or inside, he pulled her forcefully into a hug. To check if her heart was beating in between the bag of bones. And there it was, beating faintly, scared to make a sound, to be alive. "I'm here now, Priya. I'm here."
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