River & Desert

Part 22

With his eyes closed, Adhrit leaned his head back against the sofa's headrest. He shielded his eyes from the piercing LED light overhead with his right forearm.

The tense and silent moments in the clinic's room had put him through an unimaginable experience. The moments had removed the conflagration, shedding light on the darkest corners of his consciousness. The vortex of uncertainty had engulfed him in a serpentine clasp of remorse.

The moment Adhrit felt a hand on his shoulder, he decided not to engage in conversation with the intruder. He was confident that his older sister came in to check on him since he took the day off and rejected breakfast. "Di, please..."

"I'm afraid I'm not your sister, Adhrit." Adhrit's arm fell to his side when he registered the voice to be of his grandmother. Although she wanted to come, I thought it would be best if I talked to you in private."

Shanti sat down on the mahogany chair beside Adhrit's work desk, casting a downward glance at her dilapidated grandson with a wrinkled face. "And what makes you think I will speak to you, Dadi?"

"I didn't want- "

Adhrit sneered and a mocking smirk appeared on his flinching lips. "Oh, please. You had this all planned out, Dadi. By selecting an unmarried woman who had never given birth as the surrogate, you violated the law. You wanted her to form an unbreakable connection with the child. You never cared about her potential suffering. Don't you dare deny it!"

His abrasive words and mocking tone didn't affect her expression of ease. Except for the slight stretch of her creased lips, she remained as restive as she was when she entered the room.

"Adhrit, the surrogacy law never had any bearing on you. The law recognizes her as your wife."

The implication of a conspiracy in his grandmother's words left Adhrit's jaw hanging open. Mitali's outburst at their first meeting had aroused equal proportions of animosity and admiration in the surprised man. "Her demands, her little speech - you staged them?" he asked, with a wry chuckle.

"Oh, I didn't have to, Adhrit. I had planned to marry you to make the paperwork less cumbersome, but the girl's tenacity simplified things."

Shanti placed her hand over her benumbed grandson's shoulder. "A marriage certificate removes the legal obligation to adopt your own child and eliminates the risk of losing parental rights if it's a girl, as single men cannot adopt female children."

There was a twinkle of delight in her eyes, which were rimmed with a blue ring, and her voice was streaked with contentment as she expressed her pride in her decision. Adhrit's biceps muscles had become taut, stretching his shirt along with his skin and other muscles.

His lips curled and a flush of warmth splayed across his neck and face, along with a bitter tang that permeated his mouth. He moved his shoulder away from her touch and stood up. "What about her future, Dadi? What about your ethics? Both of them appear to have gone down the drain."

The accusatory tone used by her grandson caused Shanti to flinch. "Epics and empires don't run on ethics, Adhrit. They run on an earthy cog."

Adhrit let out an awkward huff and shook his head. The tidal wave of nausea grappled him and pulled his hand to his mouth. His grandmother's proud defense of her less-than-noble tactics had brought the acrid fluid in his stomach to his tongue - leaving a burning trail behind just like the blaze of repentance.

"So, that's all we are, then? Cogs in a machine? Some earthy, and some defunct because of their ethics?" he asked, pacing in the space enclosed by the sofas with his arms resting against his hip.

The glimmer of annoyance replaced the satisfied glint in her eyes, and his upper lip twitched with a frantic rhythm. "Don't use that tone with me, young man. You were about to leave your child without a mother, and I ensured they had a mother to fall back on..."

"If it weren't for your incessant demands to produce an heir, I wouldn't have made that choice, Dadi. I made a mess, because you threw me to wolves," he said. His form trembled and his bloodshot eyes flickered with the blaze of fury.

"If looking out for your future was synonymous with..."

"That's enough!" said Purvi, walking into the room. Her chest fluttered in a frenzy rhythm and her air gushed out of her restless lungs as shallow breaths. "I knew this was a terrible idea. My brother has had enough tugging at his conscience already, Dadi. You need not add fuel to that flame."

Purvi Sinha had never raised her voice against Shanti Sinha. Shanti's protection of the siblings from the chaos at their father's home had bought Purvi's unflinching loyalty.

Women waltzed in through the doors of their home - some more unhinged than the others - taunting their mother and plunging into the throes of passion with their father in front of the children, who had lost their childish obliviousness before their first milk tooth.

When Shanti Sinha pulled them out of the hellhole, there was little she could do to win the ire of the Sinha siblings. Overwhelmed by gratitude, obligation had sealed their mouth shut and for years, there was not a demand they had not fulfilled.

As years passed, Adhrit's desire for autonomy overpowered the sutures of debt sewing his mouth, and his rebellion weighed down on Purvi's scale of obligation - compelling her to compensate for her brother.

But there was something Shanti Sinha could do to deter Purvi from her enduring compliance - traumatizing her baby brother. "I - we - did everything you asked us of. Everything. Because we believed you rescued us from clutches of a manipulating monster. But now, now I know the monsters just switched hands."

Purvi shook her head whilst biting down on her lower lip to contain the sobs rumbling in her chest. Guilt gnawed at her conscience and the voices inside in her head screamed at her ingrate self, but one look at her devastated brother had drowned the voices. "Leave, Dadi."

In that moment of resolute defiance, Purvi hoped their stance against their grandmother was not too late, and their solace was not lost in entirety.

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When her phone rang for the fifteenth time that day, Mitali realized she could not ignore the calls anymore. Dread pooled in the pit of her abdomen and the possibility of losing yet another loved one made Mitali's breath hitch at her throat.

She pressed the green icon and pressed the phone against her right ear. "Snigdha, is everything alright?" she asked.

"I had almost given up, Mitali. And such an irony. I wanted to ask you the same question," said the woman on the other side of the call. Mitali's eyebrows angled towards each other, and she assumed a sitting position. "What... What do you mean?"

"I had run into Aunt Pushpa earlier. She told me about the trip you took with the boss, which is impossible because the boss is here. So, I confronted Bhaiyya..."

"And he spilled everything like a sea cucumber, didn't he?" asked Mitali with a harsh edge to her tone. Her free hand crumpled the sheets between the fingers and she could feel the first few beads of perspiration over her lower back.

"I am so sorry you had endured such harsh situations, Mitali. I wish you had considered sharing your woes with me, and I'm sorry I didn't inspire enough trust for you to feel comfortable with me."

Snigdha's thoughtful words eased the knots in her stomach. "I didn't think there was a soul in the world who could understand my predicament, Snigdha. You were a great friend."

"From what I heard and know, there are more people than you acknowledge who would love to understand your worries, Mitali. Try me," said Snigdha.

Snigdha, like Mitali, was a recluse introvert, and when a colleague tried to coerce her into a dalliance, she had no one to fall back on. Except another reserved woman - who worked more, spoke less, and kept to herself - jumped to her help.

Mitali Pathak was the harbinger of hope when she drowned in waves of powerlessness, and Snigdha Arora had no intention of letting her Angel lose herself in the same ocean.

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A new entry, and a shift in the power dynamics. I have seen so many people justify their crooked ways citing the instances from Kurukshetra, and it is almost funny how we align and equal our intent with a cosmic plan or a tale with a moral that righteous intent matters. Please VOTE and COMMENT!