Unable to cope with the strangling crowd inside the vast hall of her house, Krithi sneaked into the kitchen to have a snack. Her growling stomach approved of her decision, and she skidded into the colossal room without anyone noticing her. She searched the cupboards for a snack, preferably chocolate, or biscuits. She swirled through the circular room, opening and closing the dark brown cupboard doors, scavenging for food. Her stomach growled again as she found a box of cookies in the highest shelf.
She frowned at the height. She was five foot ten, but the shelf was too high for her to reach. The saree came apart at her waist as her husband entered the room to see what the ruckus was about. Aniket saw his wife jumping up and down like a little kid, begging her parents for cotton-candy. His eyes moved up to see the chocolate chip cookies, and smirked.
He strode towards her, picking her up by the waist. She used the opportunity to grab the box from the shelf, and grinned down at her prize victoriously. "Hey there, little lady." He said, looking up at her sitting on the counter.
Although she hated the nickname, she smiled at him, clutching her box of cookies as if it was a treasure grove. Aniket's eyes strode to her neck, the marks which littered the base of it and perfectly golden makeup matching her skin tone. A sudden sense of guilt rushed up in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn't have been so harsh with her; although the seductress sitting in front of him was partially to blame.
He slowly retrieved his hands from her waist, but Krithi's hands instantly went to protect her precious cookies. She slapped his hands as it neared the box, and he took a stumbling step back, afraid he was back to square one. He could not afford to coerce her to trust him again, with the extent of his libido.
"Hands off, mister." She scolded him jokingly.
Her smile returned as she ripped open the cardboard box of cookies and plunged her hand into its depths to retrieve a perfectly round piece of the goodness the front of the box displayed.
Aniket sighed with relief as he witnessed her take a bite of the cookie with excitement filling her nerves. She had forbidden him of cookies, not herself. "What are you looking at?" She asked, turning away from his judgmental eyes.
"My pig." He joked.
She stuck her tongue out childishly. "Hubby, you're not getting any of this tonight if you make fun of me." She said, pointing at her body with the half-eaten cookie.
"I don't plan to." He said, his heated gaze returning to her neck. She caught the scent of his guilt, and shook her head.
"I'm fine." She assured him.
"Are you really? You couldn't walk into the tub." He recalled, smirking at the effect he had on her after their previous night together.
A blush creeped up from her neck as she bit into another cookie. "Hmm." She replied, partially embarrassed, and partially afraid that someone will overhear their conversation.
Aniket closed the distance between them, standing in between her legs. She unconsciously wrapped them around his waist, smiling down at him shyly. Although she had gained her confidence and washed away her insecurities, it still felt like a dream for him to be near him. She thought he had died. He had another man's face. Waking up to someone other than her husband beside her, was quite frightening.
Krithi scooted to the edge of the counter, meeting her forehead with his. She wished she could stay like that forever, away from the the arrogant, sexist, materialistic world around and just focus on the perfect man in front of her; and stay in his protective embrace till death parts her from him.
"Why are you hiding here?" He asked her, rubbing off a cookie crumb from the corner of her mouth.
Krithi pulled back. He knew her so well. "Pssh. I'm not hiding." She quickly denied. "Why would you think I'm hiding. And what could I possibly hide from?" She said with a sheepish grin on her face. "You should know that you're wife is not afraid of anything." She flipped her long braid back to prove her confidence.
Aniket rolled his eyes at her. "Please, your afraid to kill a mosquito. You swat it away until it stops bothering you." He said. "You have to stop ignoring your problems. You can't run away from them anymore. The Krithi I want stands her ground and faces all her problems."
Krithi distanced herself from him, nodding. She slowly chewed on the crunchy goodness, rethinking his words. As much as she would like to deny it, she did run from all her problems. She hated that he was correct, but she couldn't prove that she didn't flee from her issues. She escaped her problems by submerging herself into her work, and it was something she had known for quite a while but never truly acknowledged in her heart. The guilt of it only started creeping into her heart when she was distancing herself from the twins in order to forget her connection to Aniket.
"You're telling me to go talk to my mother."
Aniket smiled. "Smart and gorgeous. How the heck did I get so lucky?"
She swatted his bicep. "Stop praising me. I'm not giving you anything tonight unless my body magically fixes itself up." She said.
"I'm not praising you because I want sex, woman." He laughed at her crooked thoughts. "Although, if I had thought of that, I would have praised you some more." He smirked. "But, getting to the point," he said, clearing his throat, "get some closure with your ma like you did with the girls and your pa."
Krithi's eyes widened. How did he know that she had mended everything with Kanya, Preesha and Myra?
"You set it up!" She accused him.
He shrugged, laughing. "I know you still had doubts about Myra's character, so I had no choice but to introduce her to you in real life to make you see how beautiful that woman is inside her heart."
"She's really nice." Krithi agreed. "I see what you mean when you said you two had a professional relationship. She apologized like a thousand times for letting out her personal life, even though we were all sharing our most intimate thoughts."
Aniket scrunched his nose. "Intimate?" He didn't think Krithi would be the sharing type. He did not want anyone else to know what happens between them behind closed doors. Especially if she was sharing those things with his little sister. He shuddered at the thought.
"Nothing too personal." She said, blushing.
"Alright." He said. "If you say so." He paused, remembering why he wanted to talk to her in the first place. "You really have to sort things with everyone. All this drama ends today."
"Today." She agreed.
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She found her mother on the rooftop, overlooking the beautiful scenery surrounding the mansion. Lush trees and a vast gated compound with green grass and flowers of all colors and types planted in a orderly fashion met her line of sight.
"I was waiting for you to stop ignoring me." Her mother said, not even turning to look at her.
"I wasn't ignoring you." She lied.
"Mhmm." Krithika hummed with sarcasm.
Instead of initiating a fight with her mother, she decided it was best to avoid the topic. "I wanted to apologize." She said. It loaned her heart to admit she had been wrong, but it was her mother. It wouldn't hurt to lose to her ma.
The words caught Krithika's attention. The old woman turned abruptly to meet her daughter's challenging gaze. "Apologize? You?" She asked, shocked. Krithi was stubborn when it came to admitting her wrongs. Even though she forgave easily, it was not like her daughter to go down without a fight when she was being accused.
"I brought shame to our family when my husband died. It was my fault that I became widowed. I'm terribly sorry for the wrongs I have committed by refusing to marry another man and not forgetting the man I loved instantly. I'm sorry for not considering our family honor when I refused all those men who proposed to marry me. I'm sorry I moved out of the house to remove the weight of your overgrown daughter and her three children staying with you." She mocked.
Krithika narrowed her eyes at first, but realized where her intelligent daughter was trailing.
She put her hand up when Krithi opened her mouth. again. "Stop right there; I know it was wrong of me to force my decisions upon you. You don't need to make me guilty about it. I did it—
"Don't you dare say it was for my good. You just wanted to preserve your so called good-name and honor in society. But at the cost of my life as well as my children's, ma?"
Krithika sighed. "What did you want me to do? Watch you cry over a dead man?"
"You could've waited for me to get over his death, Ma. You started the marriage conversation two days after the funeral. How do you think I felt?"
Her mother closed her eyes, exasperated. She was done being blamed. "I know it must've hurt—
"You don't care about me!" Krithi yelled, interrupting. "I was just a piece of commodity. Something for you to get rid of at any cost. If you loved me, you would consoled me, not try to hand me over to the highest bidder."
Her mother was battling a storm of guilt in her heart. Her daughter's oppression had been finally revealed. She closed the distance between them both, encircling her arms around her.
Krithika has always given hugs when Krithi had improved in her life; accomplished a major task of some sort. But now, she had stood up to her, made her realize that she was at fault. Right then, Krithika realized that she had raised her daughter well. If she had breathed her last breath then, she would've died peacefully knowing that she had harvested perfection from her daughter.
She was fierce enough to stand up for what she believed was right, and that was all her mother had wanted from her. She beloved that now, Krithi could survive anything. She had immunity against her judgmental society.
"Always know that I love you."
And her mother fell, one last tear dropping onto the cold cold concrete.
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