Page 76 of Red Flags and Rishtas
A shadow crossed his features. I desperately wanted to know what he was thinking, but his eyes didn’t give anything away.
‘Please, say something,’ I urged him.
‘I can’t do this, Ananya.’ He sounded pained. ‘Not right now.’
From the distance, we heard a woman shouting his name. Aadar’s mother was standing at the parking lot’s entrance.
‘I have to go,’ he said, pulling his hand out of my grip. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I raised my voice.
Tears began to sting my eyes and threatened to spill onto my face.
‘What do you suggest I do?’ he spun around and demanded.
‘Don’t go.’
‘So I should abandon my chance at marrying a nice girl, starting a family … for what?’ he asked aggressively. ‘For a girl who can barely go on two dates with the same guy … let alone think about marriage?’
His words stung and I felt my vision blur with tears as I said, ‘For a girl who’s telling you she loves you.’
He scoffed and said, ‘I’m too old to play these games with you, Ananya.’
His mother shouted for him again and he began walking away.
I thought about how a few months ago, he’d sat across from me inmyhome, asking formyhand in marriage. I didn’t want to marry him then, I didn’t want to marry him now, and it was too early to tell if I’d ever want to marry him. But watching him walk out of my life broke my heart harder than anything ever had before.
If my life was a romcom, I would’ve risked it all, gotten down on one knee and proposed to him. He would’ve smiled, bent down next to me and pulled me into his arms. But I knew by now that romcoms were a lie. However strongly I felt for this guy, I couldn’t sacrifice my own beliefs and values to keep his interest in me alive. I couldn’t ask him to marry me to prove to him that I did, in fact, love him.
And so, I held my breath as he took step after step, adding to the growing distance between us. My brain, wired as it was, repeated ‘palat, palat’ as he walked away. But he didn’t turn. He put an arm around his frowning mother and left the parking lot, but not before I heard her say, ‘Wasn’t that Mrs Kapoor’s daughter?’
19
A Clean Slate
There’s a stark distinctionbetween the days leading up to a heartbreak and the ones that follow it. Before heartbreak (BH), you have many sources of pain, like fear, anticipation, etc. After heartbreak (AH), the only thing that can hurt you is the past. So if you find a way to block that out, you’re all good. Before Aadar had so coldly turned me away on the day of his engagement, I had been burdened with the weight of hope. But ever since that day, I felt freed. Losing hope was not such a bad thing, after all.
So, yes, personally, I much preferred my life in the autumn months of 2021 AH to the summer of 2021 BH. Now that I was jobless, friendless and loveless, the only people I was forced to interact with were my parents. And even though they were sick and tired of me zombie-ing around the house, they couldn’t find it in themselves to be assholes to me.
About ten days AH, they sat me down in the living room.
‘We may not say it very often …’ my dad was saying, ‘but we love you very much, Anu.’
Both of them sat awkwardly at the edge of the brown sofa. My mom had her hands in her lap, while my dad had placed his uneasily next to his sides. After having watched me sulk and mope for all these days, their concern had at last won over their discomfort.
‘Okay …’ I darted my eyes between them.
‘You know you can talk to us, right?’ he continued talking in measured words.
‘I’m fine, Papa,’ I said, a pinch of irritation finding its way into my tone.
‘You’ve not stepped out of the house in days, you quit your job and you haven’t spoken to your friends or anyone else about it … you’ve barely even said a word tousall week,’ he said, his calm demeanour cracking at the edges.
My mother joined in and said, ‘Are you … depressed?’
A short gasp escaped her lips as she said the word, and she looked down at her hands, mumbling, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to you.’
My dad gave her a warning look, but her anxious ramble was already underway. ‘This woman in my kitty … her daughter slit her own wrists and wound up in the hospital …’
