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Excerpt:
Sun rays streamed through the windows early
morning. The smell of freshly brewed Colombian coffee wafted through the
kitchen. Trisha lay sleeping under the soft white duvet in Vedant’s bedroom.
She moved her hand to the space beside her hoping to find his smooth bare body
that she could ravish once again. Instead, she found his side of the bed empty.
She opened her eyes slowly and realized he wasn’t there. She lay back on the
bed and closed her eyes. What a wonderful night it had been. Just then, she could feel him standing at the
doorway looking at her and she turned to realize she was correct. She didn’t
know when her senses had suddenly decided to tune into acknowledging his
presence but somewhere over the course of these two years she was in harmony
with Vedant.
There was something that was not in harmony
though, and she knew she had to address it today before it became too late.
“Coffee my love?” Vedant said as he brought
over a dark blue mug of black coffee for Trisha with two spoons of sugar. Just
the way she liked it.
She smiled and sat up. The sheets moved and
left one side of her leg expose . He slid into bed next to her, sliding his
hand up her thigh that was left naked. She giggled and said more seriously,
“Vedant, before we get into anything there is something we need to talk about.’
“Oh those are never good words for a man to
hear at any time of the day. Especially not when he’s most aroused and just
dying to do all sorts of naughty things.” He said trying to distract her.
But she wasn’t buying it. She took a long
gulp of her coffee scalding her tongue while at it but determined to have this
conversation. Yesterday they may have made up but the issues of the fights
still lingered in her head.
“Vedant, what’s going to happen to us after
graduation?” she asked seriously.
Vedant sighed and sat back on the bed with
his one arm under his head, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Should we
get married?” Trisha asked, finally being bold to broach the subject and hear a
positive answer.
Instead Vedant gave a long laugh and took a
sip of water from his nightstand, “Married? Trisha you’re just twenty four
years old. I’m barely twenty seven. We haven’t met each other’s families. We
don’t know if they will like each other or…or… if they will even like us. It’s
kind of complicated right now don’t you think?”
Trisha drained her coffee in one gulp. She was seething with anger and she knew she
shouldn’t say anything in haste. She took some time to think before responding,
“Are we getting married or are our families getting married?”
“In India a marriage is between two
families. Never about two people.” Vedant said defiantly.
“Suppose we get engaged now and then decide
if we want to get married later in a few years?” she said as she turned to face
him.
Vedant shook his head, “I can’t get into
politics being engaged Trisha. It would ruin my career. People would think I
care more about romancing around trees than I do about their suffering.”
Trisha tried to maintain her composure. “Get
real, Vedant. There are so many young politicians who are engaged these days.
It’s not like you are joining Bollywood! People don’t think love is about
romancing around trees. ”
“Yes they do,” he snapped. “You and I live
in ivory towers and we can afford all the luxuries of the world. But for the
common man who is eighty percent of this country, they think love is what they
see on screens. That’s why they emulate their heroes and get into trouble
later. They need a leader who can take them out of their suffering—not a
lovelorn politician who is romancing his fiance. I have been trained for so
many years to be that. This is my start. I can’t give that up.” Vedant said as
he got out of bed and moved into the kitchen.
It was a typical behavior of his to try to
get his way by leaving the room with a defying statement and then hear the applause
from an audience. But Trisha was used to arguing and she followed him outside
grabbing her robe from the bathroom while at it.
“But you’re ready to give us up?” she
demanded in a louder tone.
“I honestly don’t have a solution,” Vedant
said nonchalantly, as he poured some foreign breakfast cereal into a fancy
cut-glass bowl that he was particularly fond of and bought at an exorbitant
price. Bah. Talk about serving the poor of the country, she thought with
bitterness. She couldn’t believe he was being so selfish. This was not the
Vedant she knew, who would deliver Italian food to her apartment and quote
English poets from another century. “Well do you think we should have a long
distance relationship?” She was determined to elicit a response from him today.
Vedant sat on the high stool at the large
open kitchen counter and poured the milk from the container into the bowl
before replying, “I would prefer that we take it a bit slowly. Let’s meet the
parents at graduation. See if they hit it off and they like us. Then you think
about when you want to shift to Mumbai and find a place. I mean, I could help
you but you are the type who never wants anyone’s help! Let us continue seeing
each other and then decide if we want to take it a step further and get
engaged.”
Trisha was shocked. She had thought that
Vedant would be ready to be engaged after these two years with her and they
would at least try to make their relationship work long distance. He knew that
she was planning to take up a job in Delhi. Once she could establish herself with a job
and finally ease out the distance part from travelling from Delhi to Lucknow to
Mumbai to Lucknow in her head, she would be ready to join him. However, it
seemed as if Vedant was calling this off right now! And he was being so
clinical about it! Suddenly Trisha had a terrible thought in her head. Had he just been playing with her these two
years? Maybe he had just used her for all his rallies and thanked her in
bed. Now that she recalled, he hadn’t bought her any gift except books in these
last two years. For all the money he had, he never bought a piece of jewellery
or an item of clothing for her. And from her limited savings, she had bought
him Osho chappals and Elvis t-shirts! She
had moved into his apartment because she wanted to spend more time with him and
he had agreed. He had never offered.
Her head started spinning. She had been a
pawn in his game. He was so good at politics that he didn’t know when to stop.
He had used her. And she had let him. She had lost her virginity to him. She
felt so ashamed at the thought that she tried to hold her head as she felt faint. She
grabbed the kitchen counter. Vedant saw this and shouted, “Trisha you’re going
to fall.” He jumped off the seat and guided her to the sofa. He quickly brought
her some juice and went back to put two toasts in the toaster. She knew that
her blood pressure had again fallen, memories of their encounter at the
hospital coming back to her in sickening waves.
Trisha drank the juice slowly and when he
came back with the toasts, she stared at him. “Vedant Dheeraj Kirloskar, did
you really love me at all?”
Vedant looked at her as if she had gone
mad, “What are you talking about?”
“Well I said I love you to you first and
you only said it when you knew I would agree to sleep with you,” Trisha remarked
bluntly.
Vedant looked at the plate and back at her
and replied sternly, “Just eat your toast. One has Nutella and one has plain butter.
It will help with your blood pressure. You’re just working yourself up to no
good. And if you don’t remember, I was the one who waited till you were ready.”
He put it down on the sofa next to her and went back to his cereal on the
kitchen counter.
“I need to know Vedant,” Trisha yelled
through her tears.
Vedant said, “Trisha you’re just being
hyper. Of course, I love you! We’ll figure something out with our relationship.
I don’t have all the answers right now. We have a week till graduation and you know
the number of things we need to do before that.”
Trisha finished her juice and stood up. She
didn’t touch the toasts that he had made for her. She found her jeans lying in
a heap in the drawing room, which flooded her mind of the wonderful moments just
a few hours earlier. However, in the light of day, the room, the man, and her
life looked very different. A relationship cannot exist in a status quo. It can
change its nature, structure, and meaning. But it can't be about what it was
when it started.
She wore her clothes right there, grabbed
her purse, and decided to leave.
“Where are you going?” Vedant tried to call
after her, “Trisha don’t be this way. Come on. Please baby.”
Trisha shook her head. Sometimes you need
someone who can match your voltage. Not fuse your light. “Have your driver send
over my things to my room. You’re right. I have a lot of things to take care of
before graduation.” Trisha said with her back to Vedant and stormed out of his
house. She knew it would be the last time she ever went there. She needed
answers then. And Vedant had refused to give it. It wasn’t as if it was the
first time they had had this fight. But this had been the most volatile and she
knew it would be the last.
