The exhaustion, as it turns out, is not enough to drown him in the slumber he seeks. Malini had refused to leave Imlie alone and slept right by her side so he was alone in their room yet again. He twists and turns on the bed, barely catching any sleep, thoughts too many battling a battle in his mind that he cannot make head or tail of. It is as the first rays of dawn emerge in the sky that he manages to catch some dregs of sleep.
He awake though in two hours, sighing restlessly and incapable of any contemplation as to his state. So he wakes up and decides a long shower would help and that is what he does. Dressing in his well-worn cotton t-shirt he will never admit is his favorite and pajamas, he makes his way out. He needs to speak to his mother and check in on her once.
_
When she wakes up, it is to her sister still asleep in her arms. The pain killers did have a drowsy effect and she was glad for it because at least this way she is getting the rest her body desperately requires. As she caresses her hair, Malini ponders over what Imlie had revealed the previous day.
Ever since that fateful day that changed the trajectory of her family's life, there have been a lot of things that have wounded her. But in all of it, there never had been any moment where her own family treated her in this subhuman way. There never has been a wound of worthlessness and deserving of pain caused by her own family or anybody for that matter. To see it in somebody so young, whose life has just begun and to realize it had been done when she was a literal child, she shudders at the thought.
What had Imlie done to deserve this? Why has life been so harsh to her when she is literally the sunshine, the balm of her life? If only Malini really knew to what extent life has been harsh with her!
The anger she had managed to bury beneath her shock, now emerges to the fore. How dare her grandmother think what she did was okay? That it was justified? What was Imlie' fault for being born the way she did? And with this line of thought, inadvertently, she ends up thinking wasn't it Imlie's father's, a coward of a man's, fault?
The questions are a cascade, each wave building up protective anger in her chest. She will be damned if she ever let her sister return to that vile woman again. And she resolves she will make sure to give a piece of her mind to that vile disgrace of a woman if she ever had the misfortune of meeting her!
_
He hasn't found himself seated in his parents' room like this since he was 19 and his world had collapsed in tragedy. Now though, it is more conundrum than tragedy the governs his mental state. His mother is seated beside him on the couch and she hands him a steaming cup of black coffee, just the way he likes it. He takes it, letting the heat scald his palms just to curb the nervousness vibrating in them.
"Adi, there have been a few changes that you wouldn't know because you've been away on your assignment, which you should know. When you brought in a simple, young village girl here for work, you didn't just bring a domestic help. You brought a girl who will change our entire viewpoint. In the short while of knowing her, she has not once been thought of as a maid because she is another daughter of this house. She is a Tripathi in every way except by blood. It is almost as if she was fated to reach here, fated to meet us. I can almost say it was almost like she was fated to meet you!"
Is shock enough of a word to convey what he feels? Never in all eternity had he expected his mother to echo the words of every random person he has met ever since he met her! Exhaustion pads his mind, a turbulence of a different sort taking over. He has no energy to process this, to summon the anger, the hatred, majorly that has been at her but so has it been on Fate! Now though, her words echo in fragments in his mind, the need to hear about her condition, to see her alright rising over everything else. He is not fighting fate's whims at the moment even if he resolutely disagrees because he knows the battle will resume later, everything unresolved picking up traction in his psyche all over again. For now though, he tunes it out in favor of listening to his mother.
Aparna begins with her conversation with Imlie, the insight, a revelation it has given her that Imlie still believes herself to be a servant. She explains her resolve alongside the family, uniting them as they came together to get her room ready. She tells him how they did it, who did what and the pure happiness on their daughter's face. And then she tells him about the cursed day where she had come to call Imlie for dinner, seeing as she hadn't stepped out ever since the photoshoot with Malini, which too she had exited abruptly, and finding her unconscious with blood staining her dress. With tears in her eyes, she tells him that it was her periods and that she had been enduring the pre-menstrual symptoms which have always been severe in her history which they know now after her revelation yesterday and their startling realization that they barely know the girl they love so much. Aparna hides nothing, always having believed periods being a taboo only strengthens if they propagate it, a belief her own husband's love and open mindedness had helped her inculcate, breaking the barriers of her own traditional upbringing that had always made her feel some modicum of shame for bleeding every month. She also mentions the conversation her and Malini had with Imlie and what her own grandmother had done.
Like a film reel, all moments of the past few days flash across his eyes. Her being late during Malini's grih pravesh, her looking pale and exhausted, her smiling despite and her when she had finally snapped. Guilt is a pungent thing that twists his chest. He was the reason she ended up in the hospital, he realizes. He was no fool and had always been a curious boy. He had read an entire book on women's health when he was young because he wanted to know the truth and help the women of his house in any way he could. If her PMS was already worse to begin with, her emotional and mental stress had only exacerbated it and he knew, he was the reason. He had been callous and accusative with her when she was already down. He had kicked a person who was already falling. A sense of repugnance for his own actions traverses through him.
He had no right to be inhumane the way he was, even if she had been a culprit. Nobody deserved that level of treatment. Nobody! If only he knew, while what he had said and done had catalyzed her subsequent breakdown, what had finally undone her was her love for him!
He is going to apologize to her. Yes, he has to! As for the rest, he'll think through her changed equation with the family later because nothing mattered in front of apologizing for his misdemeanor.
Note:
It might seem Adi got over his jerk phase way too soon, especially in the show it was much longer. But the way I see it is different. It is pivotal that confrontation unearths something else it would be a total waste. In the show, when she finally snaps, it is overshadowed by her being shot and injured and I specifically wanted to change that. This entire track is a parallel to when Imlie is down with fever and they rush her to hospital and Malini offers to give blood. It makes no medical sense in any way hence I replaced it with something more realistic - periods. Her mental breakdown aligns with her physical to also show how such emotional taxing exacerbates PMS for women who normally have it severe and even for those who don't. Periods are not just 'bleeding every month', for different women, it is accompanied by varying levels of pain, cramps, electric shocks, nausea etc.
Adi is not suddenly becoming sweet to Imlie. He is being humane. His anger, his actions, all emerge from his turmoil and complexities of emotions and reaction to fate, which is beyond and above him. It does not mean he'll be a jerk when she is literally sick.
So do share your views.
Love,
Pratyusha
YOU ARE READING
Lakeerein - Ties That Bind Us
Fanfiction------ Can Be Read As General Fiction ------ One night. One event. Lives of two people altered completely. When Aditya Kumar Tripathi, Chief Executive Reporter at Bhaskar times stepped into Pagdandiya and met Imlie, he did not know how his life woul...
