Bhabra

35. diwali

"Sorry about the candles, a lot of power cuts happening this week, even here."

"I don't mind, it's good actually."

"I was hoping you'd think it's romantic, given that the rest of the house is a mess." Perhaps it was the dim lighting, but his smile appeared more hopeful than his words as he poured her drink.

"It doesn't give me a headache," she muttered. "That's the thing about lights, even the prettiest of them, they're cheeky. You can't live without them. And yet if you get too close, they'll blind you. Darkness? Well it doesn't cheat, it's cool and soothing, it's reliable."

"It's illegal to think like that in Diwali season." He settled on the sofa next to her before positioning her feet in his lap, picking up his own can of beer from the coffee table. "So you told Shikha?"

"How do you know?"

"Why else would you be here?"

"To confess my undying love for you?"

"If you were planning on doing that, you would've done it as soon as I opened the door. But you stepped inside and asked to talk. So in the worst-case scenario, you want to find comfort in your partner in crime so you can tell yourself you're not as bad as him. And in the best, you're confused but want to give him another chance."

"I can't do both?"

"Sure you can, but that's not love."

She realised the smile, that was still resting on his face, was one of self-pity and not hope. "Did you love Shikha when you married her?"

"I wish I did. She deserved the world and, well, she got us."

"Cheers to that." Madhu took a large sip of her wine. "So you married her to get back at me."

Neither of them had said it out loud before, but it had always been a fact. Well, not always. First a doubt, then an inclination and, when they finally found each other again, it became a fact. An axiom. No one needed to state it, it was simply true.

"Partly, but I was also hoping to move on from you."

"You would've succeeded if we'd both been better people." Her mind went to nudge her about two better people she knew. Two better people who had moved on because Nakul wasn't a petty bastard, wasn't someone who'd willingly tear apart someone's family.

Funny that the first time she'd had allowed herself to think of him was here, in Roshan's house.

"Was she angry?" asked the person in question, oblivious to her chain of thought.

"No, she was...Shikha. She was Shikha. She ordered me to be a good guest and pretended to be a good host herself. God knows what she must be doing right now."

"Her mother would come to stay with her tomorrow, so she won't be alone for long. We still have the same cook. He told me."

"Look at us, pretending as if we have any right to care about her."