Page 36 of Mrs. Pandey
When he told me how he fainted during his first surgery in the OT, a genuine laugh slipped out of me. For a brief moment, I wasn’t comparing him to Prashant. I was just there, and listening.
But then my phone buzzed.
Prashant: “I heard you’re getting married to that doctor. Congratulations.”
That was it. No emotion. No jealousy. Nothing else. Just enough to shatter the fragile peace I had managed to build around myself.
Kabir looked up. “Is everything okay?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes. Just a message.” But inside, it wasn’t just a message. It was a jolt. A reminder. A silent scream.
“I’m really glad you came today, Ira,” Kabir said sincerely. “I know how hard this must be, especially with the kind of lives we both lead.”
“I’m glad too,” I whispered, not sure I truly meant it. Because Kabir was everything I should want. Everything that made sense.
But my heart? It was still somewhere else. Still tied to a name I couldn’t say out loud anymore.
Prashant.
_______
“You look happy today,” my mom said as soon as I entered the house. She quickly got up from the sofa and headed straight to me with the same smile she wore whenever I did what she wanted me to do. “How was Kabir? What do you think about him? You know he’s a doctor at AIIMS.”
“He’s nice, respectful, and decent-looking. I’ll need a couple more dates to get to know him better, and then you can decide the date of our marriage if things go as planned. I won’t give you trouble this time.”
I smiled, and my heart warmed when she pulled me into a tight hug. I let out a heavy sigh and hugged her back. I knew she loved me. She was doing this to make me happy, not my father. She was doing it for me, not for him. I kept telling myself that, even though I knew the whole truth.
My father just wanted to get rid of me.
I pulled away and headed straight to my room. After changing, I lay on the bed and checked my WhatsApp. My brows furrowed when I saw Prashant had just posted a status. I tapped on it. And what I saw drained the color from my face. He was standing next to a beautiful girl in a saree. She looked young, early twenties maybe as she was holding Prashant’s hand, possessively and showing off a ring.
A ring?
I read the caption. “Just engaged.”
The room spun around me, the ceiling turning into a blurry sheet of white. Just engaged. The words echoed in my mind, each one like a hammer to my already broken heart.
Prashant engaged to someone else?
My hand came to my mouth, stifling the breath that threatened to tear me apart. This couldn’t be happening.
I replayed the image in my mind: her hand linked with his, the ring glinting mockingly on her finger. She was young and beautiful. She was everything I was no longer.
A cold dread seeped into my bones, chilling me from the inside out. That was it then. All this time, a small, foolish part of me had held on to a thread of hope that maybe Prashant would come back. That his rejection last year had been a mistake. A moment of weakness. But this was undeniable.
He had moved on and he was happy.
And here I was, still lying on my bed, staring at a phone that held the evidence of my complete and crushing defeat.
Just hours ago, I had been convincing myself to give Kabir a real chance. To embrace a future that was sane and stable. I told myself I was doing it for my parents, for duty, for peace.
But deep down, I knew it was a desperate attempt to escape the ghost of Prashant. To prove to myself that I could move on too.
And now he had done it first. Effortlessly.
I stared at the screen, a wave of raw, bitter anger boiling inside me.
Anger at Prashant for moving on so easily. Anger at myself for being so naïve, so pathetically stuck.
