Mumbai
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"What did you tell your father about me, Poonam?" Shraddha inquired because she knew she had something to do with why he was upset with her.
"I'm a child. What can I say to an adult that will interfere with the relationship he shares with his wife?"
"But you don't act or talk like a child. I'm forced to think you have something to do with this." Shraddha waved a sigh. "Whatever it is, I'm certain it's related to the files you tore earlier. But who informed him about them?"
"Shraddha, it's late. I'm going to sleep." She faked a yawn and stretched her arm openly. "I hope when I wake up tomorrow, you're gone. This is more than enough for my birthday. I ensured that only my mother could be my father's wife. No one else, not even you, can take her place." Her face stiffened while she exclaimed with full seriousness. She walked past Shraddha to return to her room.
"I'm not leaving." Shraddha mumbled to herself. She looked back at Anand's door once. "He's angry with me at the moment, but eventually he'll calm down. Tomorrow, I'll ask him the reason for his anger, but I'll never leave."
Inside the room, Anand was looking at Supriya's portrait. He reminisced about the beautiful memories they shared, and he smiled earnestly. His smile was short-lived until he remembered what Poonam told him on his way upstairs. It vanished in a snap, and his blood boiled with rage.
Flashback.
"Daddy!" Poonam ran towards her father and engulfed him in a hug. Anand was about to break their hug because he was still upset that she called Shraddha a disgrace when it was a heavy, prohibited word to address someone, but he stopped after she continued.
"I'm sorry. I promise never to repeat it. I've also apologized to Shraddha." she whispered.
Anand let go of the grudge and hugged her back.
"I also accepted Shraddha as my mother. Earlier, when I saw her replacing you and Mother's wedding picture in your office with your wedding picture with her, I asked her for the reason, and she said she was now your present and my mother was in the past. She said we can't dwell in the past forever and that we have to accept her as part of the family. I realized she was right. She was now present, although I was very hurt when she tore all of Mother's poems and diaries and threw them away. But again, she was right. She is now our mother. Only her poems, pictures, and diaries should be in your room."
Anand's brows raised. "Did she tear up the last memories I've been cherishing all these years about your mother?"
"Yes. She is now our present, and Mother is in the past. It hurt me deeply, but she's right." Poonam pulled away slowly and looked at her father's bulging eyes with an innocent face. She smiled. "I'm glad I stopped her from taking off the last portrait of Mom from the room. She wanted to remove it too. I begged her. Although at first she didn't want to agree, she did after I went on my knees and cried to her. She's our present now, isn't she?"
Anand cupped his daughter's face in his hands. He bore his angry gaze into her eyes and exclaimed with gritted teeth. "Only Supriya is our present. Shraddha isn't your mother, nor will she ever be. Your mother's pictures will be returned to my room. Never beg in front of her again. My daughter will never beg in front of a two-faced person. Shraddha deceived me by trying to act nice when I was around. I can't believe she still had such thoughts in her head. I told her nothing could ever go on between us. She still thought she and I could be a thing, but I'll prove her wrong. She shouldn't have touched Supriya's belongings because that was rubbing salt in my wound when I was conscious. She will leave the house this instant."
"Don't send her away." Poonam said. "She's not wrong. She's now our mother. She has the right to take over my mother's place in your life."
"That's impossible." Anand snarled. "No one can take your mother's place in my life." He turned and furiously bashed upstairs.
Flashback ends.
Remembering what Poonam said, he entered his office. He saw the picture of him and Shraddha on the wall. It didn't take him more than a second to rip it off the wall. By removing it, he also removed her existence from his life. He told himself to assume she didn't exist; after all, she doesn't.
••••
It's past midnight. The atmosphere was very peaceful and quiet in the room Shraddha was in, as the windows had been shut. It was also very dark since the curtains blocked the natural light. She went to Riya's room to spend the night. But she has been tossing over the bed for so long without any hint of sleep arriving in her eyes anytime soon. She kept pondering about where she went wrong and how that brought her relationship with Anand back to square one.
She heard the door opening and closing. She didn't move nor bothered to check who it was. Her watery eyes drenched the side of the pillow she was resting her head on.
The lights in the room returned. It was then that she squeezed shut her eyes, not wanting to welcome the extreme brightness.
"Shraddha? What are you doing here?" Anand's mother's voice came.
"Anand doesn't want me in the house." she said plainly. Another hot tear gushed out of her eyes. She took silent breaths, and the only thing that could be heard in the room was her and Anand's mother's breathing.
"Why? What happened?" his mother spoke amidst the silence.
Shraddha arose from her sleeping posture and sat down while reclining against the bed's head. She wiped the tears from her face and whispered. "I don't know. I asked him, but he refused to answer me. He said I should leave. He kept insisting I leave."
"You must have done something. Anand won't send you away like that. At least, not until the election is over." She replied.
Shraddha exhaled a sigh. She mumbled under her breath. "But he sent me away. I don't mean anything to him." Another hot tear gushed out of her eyes. Her heart was aching from pain. It was like someone was burning it on a hot coal continually, without sympathy for the pain she was feeling as a result of that.
"Return to the room. Ask him what you did. Had you not separated Riya and her husband, I would have interfered in the matter, but you made many uncorrectable mistakes. You ruined her home and destroyed her children's future. Don't be surprised because the same is happening to your home. You have no idea what you put me through the past two days. You also helped her leave Mumbai. I won't scold you; after all, you're still naive yourself. It will take you time to adjust to the ways of living in this house, but better know that when you meddle in more than needed in what isn't your business, you'll be hurt greatly."
Her words were neither comforting nor did they console Shraddha. Rather, they sounded like a threat, telling her not to help her family members.
"I didn't help Riya escape. I had no idea she was going to."
"It's your fault, Shraddha. Had you not brought her out of her home, she wouldn't have had the freedom to escape. You ruined all our lives in just a few days. You created doubt in her husband's mind about his daughter. You tried to paint my daughter badly. Who told you she's like your mother who sleeps with men apart from her husband?"
Shraddha turned a deaf ear. She had enough of them insulting her mother every time. Her mother wasn't a prostitute. She wished she could scream it out to them into their ears so that they knew she also didn't sleep with anyone apart from her father.
"And as if everything you did wasn't enough, you brought the past back to the present regarding Supriya's death. Who told you she didn't die from childbirth?"
Shraddha's eyes wandered around in search of the paper Riya wrote. She got out of bed and began to look for it everywhere. She couldn't remember where she left it after reading it in the morning.
"What are you looking for?" his mother's eyes followed her every movement around the room.
"I want to prove that I didn't make the story up. Riya wrote it herself in the paper." Her hands wobbled through the dusty old-school scripts inside the bedside drawer. Not finding the paper, she proceeded to check behind the curtains, under the bed, and in every corner of the room. Still, there was no paper.
"Father!" Her mind just knew he took the paper with him since he asked her to give it to him and to stop meddling in Riya's affairs.
"What are you still doing here?" The scream that echoed from Anand startled them. "Did I not ask you to leave the house? Leave!" he yelled while approaching her with a whole pack of anger.
Shraddha hid behind his mother's back like a little child because, truly, she was afraid of his sight.
"Why should she leave?"
"Stay out of this. She is going to leave this house tonight." he declared, leaving no room for settlement.
"I don't want to go, Mother. Please ask him not to send me away." Shraddha mumbled. Anand's mother heard her pleading voice. She felt sympathetic, and so she asked Anand to give her a genuine reason before they send her away.
"I don't owe you an explanation." he vigorously informed.
"The same applies to me. She won't go until the election is over."
"She won't spend a minute longer in this house."
"If her presence bothers you so much, leave the room. No one invited you."
Anand unbelievably stared at his mother for defending the woman who made his child beg her.
"Fine. She can stay. But she should make sure she stays away from me and my children, or else there will be dire consequences." He snarled a warning.
Shraddha gulped her breath sadly.
"I came to take Riya's letter. Where is it?" His voice softened as he asked his mother.
"Shraddha was looking for it. It seems to be lost."
"Is it lost, or has it been intentionally destroyed to hide the truth from me? Who knows? Maybe the person who wants to take Supriya's place in my life created the fake scenario of her not dying naturally so that she will earn herself respect in my eyes. She's nothing but a liar. I'm sure Riya never included that in her letter." he said and left the room.