Wrecked - An After-Divorce Romance✨

Chapter Eleven

"Will you drop me?"

For a minute, there was utter silence in the room, even Dhruv himself was lost in his thoughts and he realised that his father had asked him something. Perhaps, for the first and only time in his life.

"Yeah sure." He said getting up from the couch.

In the car, they both stayed silent. He watched the massive gates of the house where he had spent his childhood, where his mother had died and where he was thrown out of. The hulking mass of the house hadn't changed at all. It felt as if he had stepped back in time.

His father cleared his throat but didn't get out the car. "Come in. We need to talk." Saying only that, his dad walked to the house which was opened by Suresh Kaka who didn't looked timeless. The man looked old.

"Kaka, kaise ho? Bacche sab thik?" Dhruv asked.

"Arey Dhruv baba, baccha sab married ho gaye ab."

He looked for his dad but he was already walking up the stairs. Dhruv followed and he almost stopped when his father opened the door to his mother's room.

The room was dusty and covered in drapes. He pulled away the drape from a framed picture. Dhruv knew that picture very we'll, it was etched onto his memory.

But looking at it now, his face reflected beside his mother's. He was 33 now. His mother looked so young in contrast to him, her face was lit with a girlish smile as she balanced the crown with one hand and the sash that said 1st runner up. He knew that she was barely 17 in the picture but yet he realised that he would never know how his mother would look with the signs of age.

"What did you want to talk about?" He asked and looked side at his father beside him who looked as if he was lost in his own past.

"Your mother and I married young. I was 31 and she was only 20. We didn't always have a wonderful marriage but I tried to always do my duty by her."

Dhruv controlled the urge to roll his eyes. If beating a wife was his duty then his father had done that well indeed.

"But she was young and she wanted to do more. She wanted to be more. She didn't like being tied down by marriage and kids and she hated it when she was pregnant with you. But, as soon as she gave birth to you, I know that she loved you with all her heart. Probably because you looked so much like her."

He had known that, he was the spitting image of his mother. His mother's praises on his looks had made him vain in his youth but now he understood how shallow it was.

"She liked that you didn't look anything like me because she hated me. I didn't love her much either. But our relationship soured when she wanted to work as an actress. She had auditioned behind my back and got the part. I refused ofcourse."

Dhruv curled his fingers into a fist, "Why?"

"Can you not understand why? Because you were young, approaching your boards, I wanted her to pay attention to you. But she insisted. I agreed. Much to her dismay, the offer was for a detergent powder advertisement. It was for the role of a mother. She hated it. She wasn't young anymore according to Bollywood standards and it made her so angry. She would constantly lament on how she regretted marrying me and having you so young."

Dhruv hissed and walked out of the room until he reached the massive upper veranda, there he laid his hand on the balustrade and he knew his dad followed him,

"Why are you telling me this dad?"

"It made us fight. All the time. She provoked me and I lost my temper often."

Dhruv laughed bitterly, "She provoked you? So you hit her?"

"You don't know what happened behind closed doors. She threw temper tantrums daily, breaking things, cussing, drinking and being an absolute menace."

"That doesn't justify what you did."

"No it doesn't. But it explains it." He said and Dhruv was shocked because his father had quoted something from one of the lectures he had delivered for Tedx.

"I'm not trying to justify my behaviour. I'm just telling you what exactly went down. I told her that we should divorce and she absolutely was against it. She didn't want to get divorced. We were happy for a while. We had Drishti. I thought it would last but it didn't."

He father walked to where he stood, "She still wanted to be an actress and she tried. She tried her best but she never got a lead role. She neglected Dishu. To the point where Dishu had to be admitted to the hospital. When I saw it, I lost my mind. I am not proud of it. So I told her that that was the end of it and banned her from going to auditions."

Dhruv leaned his elbows on the parapet and she blew out a deep breath to control his anger.

"But that only made her more rebellious. She sneaked from the house and kept giving auditions and she met a guy. Barely 25 and started an affair with him. I only knew of it because she eloped with him. You were at school but Dishu? She was still nursing. It took me a year to finally find her and she refused to come back. I forced her to come back by blackmailing her lover and bribing him to leave the country. He did. She returned But she was not happy here. Her mental health deteriorated until one day she decided to take her own life."

They stayed silent for a moment. "Why did you tell me this?"

"I felt sad and sorry that you had to go through the same thing. With your wife cheating on you."

Dhruv stood at his full height and faced his father, "It's not even remotely close. What mom did was terrible but what you did wasn't good too. You were worse. I don't think mom would've started an whole affair if she didn't feel like she was lacking something here."

His father looked at him flabbergasted, "So you are blaming me? Moreover you're blaming yourself?"

"Isn't it obvious? It takes two to make a marriage work, dad. Khushi failed me in some aspects but I failed her too."

"I don't want you to blame yourself, son. Like I have been all these years. I realised that if I had let go all of us would've been happier. So if things don't work out, let go, Dhruv."

***

A/N: I just wanted to upload this short chapter today because I was free and I had written it. Anyways, vote and comment and follow my Instagram
(@ sweet_shakkar)