Page 10 of 12 Years
‘Harm? What harm?’
‘The term you used can be seen as a suggestion of physical harm.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me? It’s hardly even abuse. Ever been in an engineering college, Kushal? Or any Indian college?’
‘No. I went to Harvard. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, if she refuses to sign, forces you to take this to trial and presents this chat as evidence of threat and abuse, it won’t end well for you.’
‘It’s not ending well for me anyway.’
‘Saket, if you want this done, stay away from her.’
‘She messaged me first.’
‘Yes. But the law protects her. Not you. Not as much at least.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘We can discuss the fairness of gender-specific laws another time. For now, what do you suggest we do?’
‘Meaning?’
‘She wants eighty per cent. And her attorney knows they’ve got us.’
‘By the balls?’
‘I will ignore that comment. Are you okay with eighty per cent? I can negotiate a bit, bring it down maybe to seventy-five, but not beyond that.’
‘Let’s go to trial. This is just wrong.’
‘No, Saket. A trial’s not going to be good for you. I’ll bill you more and make more money in a trial. But, no, let’s not do that.’
‘Then?’
‘I suggest you let her have it. I’ll try for seventy-five.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Is that a yes? I can go back to them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, anything else you want me to convey? To her attorney or Ms Raashi?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What?’
‘Tell them to go fuck themselves.’
I cut the Zoom call and slammed my laptop shut.
I stared outside my window. The trees below my fifth-floor apartment glowed in the fluorescent light of the streetlamps. I could hear a few cars and autos rumble past on Nargis Dutt Road below. Bandra was where the movie stars lived, the more famous ones in mansions with staff rooms bigger than my entire apartment. Technically, I couldn’t afford to stay in this neighbourhood. Raashi had gouged out most of my savings, and my comedy career barely covered auto fares around Bandra, let alone allow me to breathe the same air as Aamir Khan and Ranbir Kapoor. But I needed a tiny haven in this otherwise-crazy, cramped city. And when I found this five-hundred-square-foot apartment in this thirty-year-old building with a crumbling exterior, it became my home, office and pity-party pad. It was less than one-tenth the size of my Bay Area house—sorry, Raashi’s Bay Area house. But the best part about my Bandra place was the cover of the trees below, visible from my living-room window. It hid the traffic and the concrete jungle beneath and, sometimes, even my pain and sorrow.
Hi, I’m Saket Khurana, I’m thirty-three and my life is going nowhere. I’m a failed husband, a career quitter and a not-so-great stand-up comic. I spend my days either working on my jokes or my divorce settlement—which is also a kind of joke, anyway.
I could take you into a full flashback. I could tell you what happened between Raashi and me, how our marriage broke down. But it would be my biased version of things, so there’s no point in doing all that.
Our marriage fell apart four years ago after I discovered she was having an affair with her so-called family friend and ‘rakhi brother’—the latter being a term so abused in India that it should be banned. The rakhi brother and rakhi sister had apparently started their antics even before our marriage. And as it turns out, they never really stopped even after Raashi married me.
