There was only so much he could endure. He took the unopened tiffin box and walked over to her house.
"What do you think you are doing?" he demanded as soon as she had closed the door behind them, slamming the tiffin box down on a rickety table.
"You are angry?"
"That surprises you?"
"I thought staying away was the best way to not meddle in your life."
"You have proved your point. Now will you stop this madness?"
"Trust me, Prof. Khanna. I wasn't trying to prove anything. Not to you anyway..."
"Will you tell me why had you gone to see Dr. Sinha back in Mumbai? And why had you finally not talked to him?"
"Someday I will tell you, the day when I would have nothing to gain by attracting your pity, and nothing to lose by attracting your disgust."
"And when will the day come?"
She looked away and unconsciously dug the floor with her toes. She chewed at her lips and squinted her eyes as she struggled with the decision of whether or not to answer him. At long last she decided in favor of answering.
"When either I have gotten over you, or you have accepted me."
Before she had as much as drawn a breath after that, she found herself pulled in his arms, and her lips crushed under his.
"What do you think?" his hissed in her ears, thwarting her attempts to step away from him, "That I don't feel it? Am I some kind of a robot?"
Then as suddenly as he had pulled her, he pushed her away.
"Have some pity on me, Rupali. I am trying to do the right thing by you. I have chosen this life. I am not going to turn back from here. I have chosen it knowing that it will be a lonely one. That I should not hope to have love, money or comforts in my life. And then you bring it all on a plate for me. And yes - you are adaptable enough to even fit in comfortably. Yet - there is something which tells me that it is not right for you and you are too young to know this for yourself."
"I am not too young for anything now," there was a chill in her voice that startled Paritosh, "I was too young once upon a time. I was too young to be told by my uncle how special I was, more special than all my other cousins; I was too young to know then that I shouldn't feel proud about that, that it meant something sinister,something that will haunt me for the rest of my life; I was too young to lose my parents and be adopted by the same childless uncle; I was too young to be left alone with him too often, because my aunt was a simple woman who never suspected anything; I was too young to be violated by him, while he kept murmuring in my ears that I was special and that he loved me and that it was to be our little secret; I was too young to have my mouth stuffed with my own dress so that I didn't cry out loud...."