Chapter 31

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It wasn't long before Geetha found Ramit back on the ground floor again, when he came to pack up and put his laptop inside. They were going to leave early that evening, in an hour or so.

She walked to him and said, "Stop being like this. I feel tired." She had to say it. How long was she going to waste her time, mentally tiring herself out and exhausting her mind?

Ramit stopped. "Then, who's stopping you? I am not."

His low voice and calm eyes got on her nerves and she barely understood. "Speak properly."

"Leave when it's no longer convenient. Leave whenever you want to."

She started counting sheep in her head. Oh, how she wanted to kick him and beat him up!

After a while she asked with the most pleasing tone, "Do you want to change that reply?"

"No. By the way, you should stop acting like this. Maybe that's what is tiring you out. You don't have to butter up my mom. Or me."

This time she was silent. She only replied at some point during their journey through a text. 'I never did that. I am not buttering you up. You've been calling it an act since the accident, but it is not.'

Sitting right next to her, Ramit ignored her and her text. When his phone lit up showing her name, he simply pressed a button to make the screen go dark and turned away from her to watch other vehicles zooming past them.

Unable to do much, she waited for them to be home.

As soon as they stepped in and closed the door, she said, "I am not buttering maa up! Even if I am, I will probably do it all my life!" Her face was aggrieved and her eyes misty. He had not just ignored her through the ride, he ignored her even during dinner they had with their friends just then.

"Really? Okay." He shrugged.

It was the first time she heard such a nonchalant response from him. Her fists clenched and her lips quivered. Moments passed. Unable to take it anymore she cried.

Flustered, he said, "Stop crying!"

"I won't!" she said, her words not very clear. She went into the bedroom and shut the door. She felt better when she kept her embarrassment to herself. After a serious session of crying, she calmed down.

As she lay facing the ceiling, she started assessing herself. Was she in fact just acting? She did not know. She never thought about it. She just loosened up and so, was herself around her mother-in-law. It was the same with him. She felt as if their friendship, which was put on hold, since they no longer met so frequently after he completed school, was back.

But it appeared insincere to him.

∼•∽

The next day, not a word was exchanged. She wanted to talk to him. But when she noticed him avoiding her, she decided not to push it and tried not to stand in front of him with a thick skin. She decided to go out for lunch.

Sun went down and came up with no improvement in their situation. Geetha's thought's weighed her down.

On their ride back, she spoke up. "Listen, I need to know if you'll be happy if we did indeed divorce."

Ramit clenched his jaw into a tight smile. "You really thought you're doing me a favour being with me all this time, didn't you?"

The chip in her brain burned away. "What?"

"I don't need your pity. I don't even need you, damn it!"

"I have no pity for you," she stated, although she did not understand what was wrong with that. "I am grateful."

"Hm! So it was all a pay back?"

"What do you mean!"

"I know you, Geetha."

She instantly remembered how he said she flattered her mother-in-law. She closed her eyes for a moment to calm down. "What the hell do you know apart from accusing me of acting?" she asked his side profile, his nose sharp and eyes reflecting the glitters of the night traffic. Her voice had no fluctuations and was too flat.

He knew she was mad.

He was mad too.

"It's all about convenience for you, isn't it? It's really convenient, after all. It must be nice... having someone to always have your back, someone you satisfy your desire, someone for you to have around despite everything." The road ahead was busy, just like the chaos in his mind. He continued on. "These actually don't matter to you. I won't take back your shares, okay? You can just find someone for sex too." His heart was heavy as he ended.

His lips trembled. He sucked them in, annihilating a whimper that threatened to pour out. Back then, even after he did everything, it was only when he said he'd give her a stake in Hidden that she finally agreed to live with him. He was not worthy before those shares.

Geetha turned to the window. She suddenly understood something. In fact, a lot of things. Maybe, the accident did not hint for her to look for a new career, but it was omen for her to get back to singlehood. After all, she would not run into it if not for him. She closed her eyes and waited for them to reach home.

∼•∽

Ramit drove no more than 40 kmph and it was late by the time they reached their apartment. When their watchman saw them, he did not dare to greet them when he caught Geetha's sharp eyes looking ahead. The couple walked close to each other but the distance between them was evident.

Once home, Geetha said, "Let's divorce. We'll be doing each other a favour this way."

Ramit gave out an empty chuckle. He knew this was what it would come down to. "Finally dropped your act?"

Geetha was close to landing a slap to his face. She folded her hands tight so as not to lose control and said, "You are the one who has been acting all along, Ramit. What convenience do I have? I get a salary higher than your profit share outside. Sex? I didn't know I was the only one who wanted it. Why did you cling on without finding someone outside then? You're not a saint." She knew how much of an animal he was in bed, although his self-control was much greater than hers.

"You were the one acting all along!" she continued, "When I apologised I didn't expect you to say it was okay.

"But you did." She looked away for a moment before looking at him again. "After that whenever I said sorry, again and again, you acted like it was all fine. As if that sorry was redundant, and as if we have left the past behind. But no, you were acting," she stopped to catch a breath and said, "you were acting like it was fine."

Ramit's eyes were full of disbelief. She really never saw his feelings, did she? Whatever she said was acting was the depth of his love for her! "Shut up! You don't know what love is! You're so selfish you don't understand what kindness is either! You don't care about anyone! You just lie your way all the time! Conveniently!"

"Forget about me lying, you can't even take the truth. And stop shifting the conversation!" Why did he talk about love, she thought, it must be because that's one thing he said but she never. "Ah! Before you say anything more ridiculous, I will be taking care of the baby. I don't need you, for the sake of 'convenience' in this matter. In any matter.

"I may not want to deal with a child, but I can manage on my own. I'll leave tomorrow morning. Your assistants know everything. My absence shouldn't matter as long as you can hire someone good enough, or else, just redo the deadlines.

"Since you are the baby's father, I'll tell you. I will wait for it to wean and then put it in the best boarding school."

Ramit was enraged. "You can't do that!" He was the only one who wanted their baby in the first place. When the time comes, he would fight her, if he had to.

"I can! Stop being delusional!"

After that final yell, she felt dizzy as she discovered how loud her voice could get. She waited, even if she did not know what reply she was expecting. After a few moments of silence, she walked out with a single drop of tear.

All of this drama was exactly what she did not need in her life. She should not have agreed to living together with him. So what if she had a baby? She should have insisted she did not want him around. That time was the only time she did not think through things carefully. The only time she let him, someone other than herself, talk her into something and this was the result.

"Lesson learnt," she said quietly.

∼•∽

Ramit plopped onto the sofa for a long time. He thought back to how things had changed. Everything changed in a few hours, in a few words. He shut his eyes not wanting to think what would happen to them next. He did not want to think about their child either.

He got up when he felt hungry. He had calmed down. It was already very late. He went to wash up. In the bathroom, he saw the red eyes of his reflection. "What a loser!" he murmured.

He didn't have much energy, but he made one simple dish to fill both of their stomachs.

The door to the bedroom was left open. Geetha was sprawled on the bed. He knocked on the door. She did not respond. He walked in to find her sleeping. He shook her and then tapped her arm until she opened her eyes, which were equally red.

"I left some food for you on the table." He did not look at her face another time.

He soon walked out and brought his portion to his study and shut the door.

∼•∽

Geetha had a lonely meal and started packing up right after.

For the first time in her life, she felt an utter lack of friends. She called her father, standing on the balcony. That was her only option. She needed someone to be there as a responsible mother-to-be, just in case.

"Geetha?" A pleasantly surprised voice said.

"Dad."

"How are you? It's so late. Is everything fine?"

"Fine. Send mom to her brother. I want to stay for a few days." Little did she know, her mom had already forced her dad to on the speaker.

"Fine. Fine. When will you come?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Fine... But when should I tell your mom then?"

"..." Geetha realised she missed that detail. Indeed, there was no sufficient time. But her dad was not the kind to point out such things. He was in fact bad at picking them.

"Hello?" her dad softly probed.

"She made you ask that, didn't she? Fine. Tell her she can laugh all she wants. Not like I care."

"Why? What happened?" This time, her mom's strict voice came.

Geetha cut the call and looked into the horizon. Then she gazed a little higher. There were few stars because of the citylights that spilled into the sky. Yet she felt the vastness of the universe clearer than ever. She smirked. She knew why that was. Then she laughed it off before dwelling on the reason. Why was she feeling so homeless? Just this one night. The next day, she would be home.

∼•∽

The next morning, by the time Ramit woke up, Geetha had her bag ready. She casually walked around checking if she ought to take anything more.

"You are going." People don't change so easily, after all, he thought.

Geetha did not understand why he was stating the fact that was right in front of his eyes. She also did not understand if he was expecting her to reply or what she should say. She ignored him amid her awkwardness.

When she was done, she walked to a cupboard and opened it. On one shelf she had placed their paper clips. "I should have given these back with the pen. I kept them here."

Their eyes never met.

Ramit sighed. All of the emotions he had bottled up came out last night. Now he felt calm. Calmness came with emptiness.

When she turned around, he walked into the fresh sunlight peeping into their home and hugged her from behind, one last time.

He did not have anything to say to her.

Same was the case with Geetha. She turned around and put her hands around him.

They stood breathing in each other's vicinity, not knowing when the next opportunity would be.

Minutes passed. They were reluctant to separate, reluctant to look at each other, fearful of what they'd see.

In the end, they both took a step back. One looked at her feet, the other at his wife's luggage.

When Geetha's phone chimed, seeing that her cab had arrived, she silently opened the door, and brought her luggage out slowly. Ramit controlled his grief, which was on the rise as he saw her movements. He wanted to help her, but did not want to personally escort her out of his life either. As he watched her shuffling out, she closed the door with a click, ending it all with nothing more.

∼•∽

Later at her parent's home, Geetha did not find a single reason to talk to them. She responded to their questions vaguely at first before she stopped saying anything altogether. Then at one point, as her mother berated her, assuming she must have said or done something to hurt Ramit, Geetha flared up. "Whose mom are you?"

Her mother's scoldings continued with more intensity.

In between Geetha said, "Fine. Yes. I made problems and we decided to separate."

After that she did not utter a sound, even to her father.

She was on her laptop. One tab was opened for job searching, one more to watch wild animals, and another for studying 'buttering someone up.' The first tab was a farce lest her mom should decide to unapologetically peep in and scold her for her uncommitted crime of knowing about electric eels.

When she understood how their electrocytes worked to produce electricity and their hunting techniques, she closed the second tab. She was now in the mood to do something she did not exactly like.

However, as she read through huge amounts of behavioural science, the fire with which she sat down to find out the answers extinguished. She still pulled through but after a while of not really understanding why he thought she was acting, she threw everything aside. The screen looked blurry to her watery eyes.

Afraid someone would catch her crying, she wiped her face clean and willed herself not to cry. Her tears were getting out of control lately, especially as she hugged her pillow and told herself that this embrace was not much different from how she held her husband to sleep.

∼•∽

Ramit's condition seemed better only by an imperceptible difference. If he was at the office, the empty desk sitting on the side was what ate up all of his time. At home, he slept excessively.

He looked into his phone every few hours. Ever since the accident, they had decided to keep their locations visible to each other at all times and Ramit's was also visible to his parents.

He recognized where she went right when she reached that place. It was his in-laws and he knew he had nothing to worry about. Yet from time to time, his thoughts were occupied.

On the second day, his phone rang. It was his father-in-law. A little nervous and a little dreadful, he answered it. She must have told them. He was yet to tell his parents.

"Ramit. How are you?"

"..."

"Hello?"

"I'm okay, uncle."

"Fine... Geetha... She won't tell us what happened..."

"That... How is she?"

"She is fine... She is searching for jobs... Doesn't she know she will have to take a few months leave soon? Who will give her a job now?" Ramit heard a soft sigh following the sentence. His father-in-law continued, "What happened?"

After some silence, he said, "I'm sorry, uncle..."

Then came his mother-in-law's voice. "What did she do? You tell me. I'll tell her."

Saddened instantly, he said, "Auntie, I'm a little busy now. I'll hang up." He cut the call.

He put a hand to his head. It was warm and his eyes felt warmer. A fever seemed to be on the way.

∼•∽

Back at her home, Geetha was glaring at her parents with red eyes as she ate a second lunch that late afternoon. If there was anything good about her mother, it was her cooking.

When Ramit cut the call, her mother turned to her. "Stop crying and start speaking!" she yelled.

Geetha yelled back, "I'm not crying!" She blew her nose before looking into her plate, eating voraciously. She was so hungry all the time because her brain was consuming so much oxygen with all the information she was consuming. She yawned for the seventh time that day.

Quickly finishing her meal under her mother's disappointed gaze, Geetha walked by to her room. She flipped open her laptop and the screen illuminated. She was studying human relations, in particular, how people act nice and flatter one another. She had carelessly said he was the one acting but after a full day of sleeping on it, she wanted to know what made him think she was insincere.

∼•∽


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