The Bestseller She Wrote (21 page)

Her phone rang. The name Ram Kumar flashed on her screen; it was the same name that she had called some time back. Probably Ram Kumar had seen her call and was calling her back. She picked up the phone and didn’t speak.

‘Hello . . . Hello . . . who is this?’

As soon as she heard the voice on the other side of the line, everything came together in a flash. She understood the entire game. She had been cheated. She disconnected the phone. Her head was spinning like a top. She got up, struggling to balance herself. The corner of the table came to her rescue again.

She picked up the phone and dialled another number. It continued ringing. No one picked up. She called again. This time someone picked up the phone.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, ‘now.’

‘Maya? At this hour . . . what happened?’ Sanjay stammered. He had not woken up fully. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Will it be possible for you to come over,’ she was breathing heavily, ‘right now?’

‘Now? What happened? Is everything all right?’

‘Are you coming?’ Maya kept her composure.

‘Can we talk over the phone?’ He sat up rubbing his eyes.

‘Are you coming now or should I get into my car and come over?’ It was a threat she knew would work.

‘Hold on, I am coming,’ Sanjay said, alarmed. He got out of his bed. ‘Give me thirty minutes.’

In a little over thirty minutes, Sanjay was back where he had dropped Maya a few hours ago. He had tried to call Aditya on his way, but he didn’t take his call. He was probably fast asleep.

Maya opened the door within three seconds of him ringing the bell. She appeared to have been waiting for him.

‘Maya . . .’ he had hardly begun when he noticed the anguish on her face. He fell silent, waiting for her to talk.

‘Did you contact Aditya after you dropped me?’

Sanjay looked confused. ‘I sent him an SMS that I had dropped you home, yes. Why?’

‘Did you call?’ she asked firmly.

‘No. I thought he would be sleeping. He pulled out his phone from his right pocket and looked through it. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘At 2.47 am I sent him the message. Why? What’s the problem?’

It didn’t come as a surprise to her that Aditya had lied about being on a call with Sanjay earlier that night. She wanted to make sure that her hypothesis was correct. ‘On the day of the Crossword Books’ award party, did you drop Tim home?’

‘Tim?’ Sanjay sounded surprised. ‘Why would I need to drop Tim in my Innova when he has his own Mercedes GL?’

So her assumption was correct. ‘What’s going on, Sanjay?’ There was a tremor in her voice—the kind that creeps in when one is angry and frustrated but forced to keep calm.

‘As in? What are you talking about?’

‘Stop faking it, Sanjay. Tell me what’s going on between Aditya and that bitch.’

‘I don’t know who you mean, Maya . . .’

‘Sanjay,’ she cut him short, ‘stop covering up for him. What the hell is going on between my husband and that bitch?’ Maya’s patience was at its lowest ebb and she was ready to burst.

‘Whom are you talking about?’

‘That management trainee from Bengaluru, Sanjay,’ she raised her voice.

‘Ohh . . . Shreya.’

Maya didn’t respond. It was as if she didn’t even want to utter her name. Her piercing gaze made Sanjay uncomfortable. He was searching for words. He looked to his right, then at the table in the centre of the room, his restless mind unable to decide what would be the appropriate thing to say.

‘Sanjay,’ Maya said, this time a strange fear in her voice. ‘You are making me nervous.’

‘Well there is nothing to be nervous about. I don’t know why you are worried. Aditya is a dedicated guy. He has always been committed to you and Aryan.’

‘If that is true then why is your face staunchly refusing to endorse your words?’

‘What gave you the impression that something is going on between the two of them?’

‘This.’ She gave him her iPhone. On the screen was the message string—explicit romantic messages between Aditya and someone else. ‘How do you explain this?’

‘Whose phone is this?’

‘It’s my new iPhone.’

‘How did these messages get in here?’

‘How important is it for you to know that? Can you please just tell me what is going on?’

‘Just asking!’ Sanjay reasoned.

Maya felt bad that she was being rude to him, to someone who she was counting on to tell her the truth. ‘I was setting up the new phone that I bought. I backed up my old iPhone on iTunes and then connected my new iPhone6. When I restored the new one from a backup, accidentally I chose an older backup of Aditya’s phone. His phone was a hand-me-down—a phone that I had used for a short while.’ She looked at the phone in his hand. ‘An iPhone5, the same one that you have. It is also registered as Maya’s iPhone5. So when I selected a file to restore, I mistakenly restored from the backup of his phone. All his messages, contact list everything came into my phone. That is when I saw the messages.’

‘But these are from some Ram Kumar. Where does Shreya fit in?’

‘Do you have Shreya’s phone number?’

‘I do.’

‘Read it out loud please.’

Sanjay looked into his phone and brought up Shreya’s number. The number matched the number saved in Maya’s phone as Ram Kumar.

‘Now tell me, Sanjay, apart from the explicit messages, why would Aditya save Shreya’s number as Ram Kumar’s, unless he has something to hide. Now will you tell me the truth or should I call this Ram Kumar and confront “him”?’

Sanjay knew that she was serious. ‘Look, Maya. There is nothing going on between the two of them. Just a little bit of healthy flirting, I’d say.’

‘Flirting? Healthy flirting? Really Sanjay . . .’ she rolled her eyes in disgust. ‘That’s what you men call it.’ She threw up her hands in utter exasperation. ‘That’s what you call
it . . . Healthy flirting. There is nothing healthy about flirting, Sanjay, not for a married man. Healthy flirting is a term introduced by perverted men who want to lend legitimacy to their extramarital dalliances. Flirting invariably has a sexual connotation to it.’ She got up from her seat and walked around the room gesticulating and muttering something to herself. Suddenly she stopped, turned back, looked at Sanjay and asked, ‘Did my husband sleep with her? Did he ever tell you anything about it?’

‘No,’ Sanjay immediately responded, and then after a moment’s thought, added, ‘Not that I know of at least.’

A look of resignation came on Maya’s face. ‘Sanjay,’ she pleaded, ‘how deep in this shit is he? Please don’t lie to me. I have Aryan’s future to consider. I can’t compromise that because of a wayward father. Please, Sanjay. Don’t lie to me.’ There were tears welling up in her eyes. She was brave, but every brave act has a breaking point. She was fast reaching that point.

‘Maya . . .’ Sanjay wanted to console her.

‘You are not telling me the entire truth. You were in Bengaluru with him when he went for the placement interviews. Who hired her?’

‘Maya, you must relax. Let Aditya come back. We will sort this out,’ he stopped when he saw her angry face. ‘Or rather let me call him now. We can kill it right now.’

‘No!’ Maya yelled. ‘You will not call him now. You will not call him on this ever. I will deal with this. He has cheated on me. I will not tolerate it. I have given him my entire life. I would have tolerated him sleeping with her once. It would’ve hurt me but I could’ve explained it to myself as an impulsive reaction. But getting into a long-drawn emotional tangle with her could not have been without him considering the repercussions. So it is obvious. He made a choice. He chose her over our relationship. From this very instant he is gone for me. I don’t need him in my life. A man who does not consider the ramifications of his actions on his six-year-old child is not worth wasting my time on. He is dead to me. He does not deserve Aryan and me. He is dead.’ Maya started shivering.

It was clear that she was upset. Her hands were shaking with anger. She picked up the glass vase kept on the centre table and flung it with all her might. It hit the wall and shattered into a thousand pieces. She was getting hysterical now, screaming expletives, abusing Shreya and Aditya. Sanjay was worried. This was not the Maya he knew. He walked up to her and held her by her forearm.

‘Maya, please calm down . . . Maya!’ he screamed. But Maya kept shouting. Her body was shivering violently. Sanjay finally held her tightly, hugged her and sobered her down. He made her sit and gave her a glass of water. She drank it while Sanjay patiently held her hand. Even though Maya had calmed down, the shivering hadn’t stopped. Sanjay realised that she wasn’t shivering simply out of anger. Her body was burning. She had a fever. He estimated it to be around 103 degrees.

‘Maya, you don’t seem well,’ he said in a concerned tone.

Maya just looked the other way. ‘Does it matter anymore? When my life is getting torn to smithereens, does a simple fever matter?’

‘Come on, Maya. You need to take some medicines.’ Sanjay walked to the cabinet, pulled out a Crocin and gave it to Maya along with a glass of water.

‘Thank you, Sanjay.’ Even in a moment of extreme angst, Maya didn’t forget basic courtesy.

‘Maya, you must go to sleep now. Let Aditya come back. We will sort this issue out.’

‘No. He will not come here. I don’t want to even see his face. When he comes back, I am going to throw him and his luggage out through the front door.’ She seemed determined. ‘And before you go, Sanjay, promise me that you will not utter a word about this to him. I want to confront him when he is unprepared. When he is least expecting this.’

Sanjay promised not to tell Aditya and returned home.

Sleep had deserted Maya and she lay on the bed staring blankly at the roof. Her future seemed bleak. Her personal life was in tatters. What had she done? Rather what had she not done that things had come to this stage? She had always given Aditya his privacy, his space; never ever doubted him or his intent.

She didn’t realise when her eyes shut involuntarily and she dropped off to sleep. She slipped into a dream in which she was wandering around in a desert, chased by someone riding a horse. The man’s face was covered. He ran his horse tantalisingly close to her but never knocked her down. She was tired and thirsty. Profusely sweating, she considered giving up and surrendering to the horse rider. Just as her senses were giving way, she saw a pool of water. She ran towards it. The man on the horse kept following her. She reached the oasis and hurriedly scooped some water and gulped it down. It tasted like nectar. She kept drinking, oblivious to the fact that the man on the horse had closed the gap. By the time she saw his reflection in the water, he was standing right over her head. The cloth covering his face had slipped. She was surprised to see who he was—Aditya!

What was he doing chasing her through the desert? Why didn’t he offer her a ride? Before she could figure out answers to these questions, the rider pulled out a sword, its edges glistening in the sun, and in a rehearsed motion, brought it down smooth and fast, the blade slicing through her abdomen like hot knife on butter. She clutched her abdomen and screamed, ‘Aaaaaaah!’

She woke up with a start and sat upright on her bed. The desert was a dream, the man on the horse was a dream, the sword was a dream and the murderous attack was a dream.

The pain wasn’t. It was real.

And when the same pain hit her again, she clutched her abdomen and rolled over in a foetal position. It was unbearable. She couldn’t move. For an instant she felt that she was going to die. And then, like it had hit her all of a sudden, the pain subsided on its own.

She got up from her bed, wondering what was happening to her. She couldn’t stand straight. Her head was spinning. Worried, she sat down, which was just as well for she felt weak and could have crashed to the floor.

‘Oh my God! Why are you doing this to me?’ she cried. She could feel the pain coming back. Deep inside her, the stirrings of pain which would soon shoot through her body, were beginning. This time the pain was different. It was accompanied by a churn in the stomach, like someone had set a centrifuge inside her. She rushed to the bathroom, clutching her stomach. The pain was unbearable now, and the churning was uncontrollable. Doggedly she held on, but for how long . . . The moment she opened the door, she let go, spraying vomit all over the floor and some bits inside the washbasin. She collapsed on the marble floor and started crying.

She couldn’t bear it any more. Yet, the pain in her abdomen seemed a lot more bearable than the pain that Aditya had gifted her.

50

A
DITYA RETURNED
S
ANJAY’S
call the next morning. ‘Sorry, missed your call last night. I was talking to Maya.’

‘Really?’ Sanjay was not in a mood to humour him.

‘Hahaha!’ Aditya laughed, which only irritated Sanjay even more. ‘So, why had you called yesterday?’ Aditya continued.

‘I just wanted to tell you that last night I had a long call with Tim. He wanted us to finish the entire retrenchment exercise by today. Just get it over with and come back.’ He didn’t tell him about Maya’s conversation with him honouring Maya’s wishes.