Chapter Four

 

 

The gods must have been laughing

It was raining outside.

Frail arms closed about her drawn-up knees, head lowered, sheathed in limp hair that hadn’t been washed in days, Tashi wept. Her sobbing helped her withdraw into herself, to seek solace in a place deep within that was unrelenting and unforgiving.

Her phone lay forgotten by her side, the screen flashing with four unread emails from the blackmailer.

Over the past three weeks, her tormentor had kept her constantly on the edge, but today – with a single text message showing her just how close by he was, he had shaken her entire world. The thin line that blurred her reality from the horror online was shattered, and she had no hope of turning back.

This thought felt heavy as a sack full of rocks on her frail heart.

Unbidden, her mind conjured up a memory of Akash’s trembling voice on the phone. He had been bold in suggesting they go to the police, but he hadn’t contacted her during the next few days. She was convinced that he wasn’t the one blackmailing her, but after what had transpired today, she knew she could no longer be sure of anything.

Akash didn’t know her current address. But he had friends who did, and it wouldn’t be difficult for him to turn up at her doorstep to intimidate her if he wanted to.

She shook off the thought, as a fresh wave of shivers racked her body. She let her mind dredge up memories of the past – a visage of the days she had purposefully locked away in the viscid pools of her consciousness.

She remembered Akash’s face, his dark hair that was straight on most days, curly on some; how she had loved running her fingers through it, how she had joked it would never be fully straight. She thought of his lean frame, and though, since their breakup, it had been impossible to think of Akash without feeling resentment; she recognised a faint twinge of fondness as she recalled how safe his embrace had made her feel. She thought of the stubble on his face, and how often he had whined that he would look like a teenager if he shaved it off.

Helpless and with no one to turn to, Tashi found herself reliving the reason she had given up on what she had hoped would be a future filled with promise.

It had been raining heavily that night - just like today. She had told Akash her period was two weeks late. “What would you do if I were pregnant?” she had joked. Akash was worried sick about it and had gotten her a pregnancy test kit. She was laughing with him on the phone when she took the test – joking it was impossible that their protection had failed, that they had been careful each time.

Careful? The gods must have been laughing, Tashi thought bitterly.

She remembered how her heart had jumped to her throat when the pink patch on the test strip had kept moving upwards after showing the first line – how it had climbed steadily ahead to settle at two pink lines – clear and distinct. The confusion in her head had changed instantly to shock.

Then, to denial.

They were barely twenty-two then, struggling with their studies, with no clue what they would make of their lives.

She had screamed on the phone – “Fuck, I’m pregnant”.

“What? No! How can that be possible?” Akash had begged for an answer.

“I have no fucking clue.”

“This has to be fixed. You have to get rid of the baby at once.”

“Of course, we will do it together.”

“Yes, yes. It’s a big headache. I want you to go to a doctor tomorrow and confirm this. Ask him how to kill it the soonest.”

“You will not come?”

“Um, I wish I could. But I have an exam until 5 PM. You visit the doctor. Let me know what he said.”

“You don’t want to be there with me? Fine!” she said and hung up.

She had feigned anger, hoping he would calm her down; that he would apologise for his behaviour and offer to accompany her to the hospital.

She sat by the window for a long time after that, waiting for him to call back and set things straight.

Her phone never rang.

***

The next day, she went to the hospital unaccompanied.

The gynaecologist had confirmed she was six weeks pregnant. Citing possible future complications, he had urged her to get her pregnancy terminated the next day itself. When she called Akash up and told him everything, he instantly agreed.

On the next day, only an hour before the doctor’s appointment, the two of them were sitting in the college cafeteria discussing the course of action. Akash was dressed in a blue tee and black jeans; his hair was straight that day. Tashi moved from across the table to sit next to him and hold his hand, when he got a call. It was from his friend, Ravi, saying the recruitment interview of one of his dream companies that day.

After he had hung up, Akash bit his lower lip and looked at her with regret in his eyes. “I really wish I could go, but I can’t miss this interview. Can we reschedule the procedure for tomorrow?” he had asked.

“But I have fasted since last night and already taken the prescribed pre-abortion pills.”

“Uh so this means-”

“There is no way I can postpone. We have to do this today, Akash,” she had pleaded.

He looked dejected. “You are brave, Tashu. I know you can do it without me,” he had given her a sad smile offered to walk with her to her hostel room before she could pack some clothes and leave for the hospital.

Tashi was in shock all the way. The moment he left, she lost it. She felt to the floor of her room, breaking down in helpless, uncontrollable sobs. She didn’t know how she could go through this on her own, and in her desperation, had called up her best friend Manav.

She was breathless with sobs when he answered her call. She asked him if he could go with her to the hospital. He agreed instantly without asking her why. Within minutes, he had booked an auto-rickshaw and arrived at her hostel gate to pick her up. On their way to the hospital, she told him the full story. Manav nodded and put an arm round her shoulder as if to shield her from the atrocities of the world.

Hours later, she was lying unconscious on a cold bed, with metal spoons being inserted into her womb to scoop out the life growing within her. Manav had been there through it all – rushing to the nearby medical stores to get medicines when the doctors prescribed something new. After she woke up from her anaesthesia-induced unconsciousness, she shivered and cried for Akash.

But he wasn’t around.

It was Manav who put an extra blanket around her and held her hand till her grogginess subsided. Tashi had suffered from a bout of debilitating depression for several days after. She stopped attending classes and going about her daily routine. All she could obsess over was the baby she had just murdered. Whenever she tried to force herself to focus on something else, her thoughts inadvertently returned to that hospital bed and the look on the face of the doctor when he told her she was no longer pregnant. Her friends and classmates kept going on about life as usual, and many of them stopped to ask her if she was all right. She faked a smile, assuring them that everything was fine, that she was only feeling under the weather. Only in her heart, she knew how much she longed for Akash’s company and support. The two of them had survived a fierce whirlpool of emotions, and he was the only one who could truly understand what she was going through. She wanted him close by.

But Akash was resolutely in denial throughout.

Manav had been her sole support in that dark phase. Though his ways of trying to make her laugh didn’t always work – in the end, he brought the old happy-go-lucky Tashi back.

Apparently, he had supported her a bit too much.

Because right after she had recovered from the post-operation bleeding and stomach cramps, Akash had taken her out on a date to their favourite park. Tashi still remembered the day like it was yesterday. Akash had worn her favourite red shirt with black stripes, and his hair had set itself to an adorably curly mane. He fed her ice cream and asked her in a serious tone: “You and Manav seem to have grown,” he cleared his throat, "close these days.”

His emphasis on the word “close“ caught her attention. She stared at him, not sure what to expect.

“All my friends have been saying,” Akash continued, fumbling with his watch, refusing to meet her eyes, “that from the beginning of this semester, you have been spending more time with him than you did with me.”

“May I ask which friend of yours said this?” she said contemptuously.

“Ravi did. But does it matter?” He looked down again. “I have a question, Tashi.”

She waited, arms crossed, her foot tapping impatiently on the sidewalk. She felt as though she was on the edge; that all that was needed for everything to go berserk was one push.

“The baby you just killed, are you sure it didn’t belong to Manav?”

She could only stare, as the world around came crumpling down.

This man, the one for whom she had nurtured so much love that she hadn’t even blamed him for his callousness during the abortion, had the audacity to suggest that she had cheated on him. A mad rage was boiling in her heart, but it manifested itself in hot tears streaking her flushed cheeks. “How could you?” she spoke quietly, her voice trembling with anger. “After everything I did for you, how could you allege this?”

She threw her bag to the ground in a huff and walked away.

“Wait, Tashi. Tashi!” Akash had called out. He picked her bag up and ran after her.

Tashi didn’t heed his pleas.

That had been the deal breaker – the last straw that sealed the relationship in her eyes. He had come round a few hours later, calling her incessantly and begging for forgiveness, but she had turned a deaf ear to his cries.

How could she be with a man who didn’t have an iota of respect for her?

Months passed and the day of their graduation drew close. Tashi had blocked Akash on every social media platform. She had taken to turning in the opposite direction every time she spotted him in the corridors. It was hard for her - the decision to break up with Akash had torn her apart. But she couldn’t just stop loving him because he hurt her, although things would have been easier if she could. She tried her best, though, to erase Akash from her conversations, the same way she had erased him from her memory - not without pain, but thoroughly.

On their last day in college, he had cornered her when she was least expecting it. Looking dapper in a fitted blue suit, with his hair sleeked up with gel, Akash had gone down on his knees, head hung in shame. There were tears in his eyes when he said how sorry he was, and how he would consider himself lucky if she forgave him.

Tashi didn’t want to create a scene in front of their classmates who had gathered around them. She agreed to part without any hard feelings. They shook hands as their friends cheered and hooted. When the crowd had cleared, Akash held her elbow, pulled her aside and asked, “There is no turning back, is there?”

“Even if we could turn back, do you think we would end up where we started?” she asked drily. Akash stared at her for a while. Then, he shook his head slowly and turned away without a word. That was the last she had seen of him.

After college, they hadn’t kept in touch – until one night a few months back when she assumed he had drunk-dialled her number. It was almost 2 AM, and she had woken up in confusion by the incessant ringing of her phone. She stared at his name on the screen for a full minute, her heart racing, before keeping the phone on silent and going back to sleep. She answered none of his twenty of so calls that night, and he hadn’t called back to follow up the next day.

This isolated incident was the only reminder that Akash still existed in her life. This, and that terrible day three weeks back when she had called him up to hurl accusations at him in her desperate state of mind.

The shrill ring of her phone broke the stillness of the night into a million shards. Startled out of her thoughts, Tashi turned violently and picked up her phone, expecting the worst.

It wasn’t an unknown number. It wasn’t her mother either.

It was Akash.

Hands quivering, she put the phone to her ears and in a trembling voice, said, “Hello?”

“Tashi, I have something terrible to confess,” came Akash’s voice from the other end.

He had been crying.