I lay on my bed, neither alive nor dead, drifting through life like the clouds floating in the sky. Some days stormy winds pushed them violently, other days the gentle breeze nudged them ahead. Still, they never knew if they were moving forwards or backwards, the sky around them was endless and pointless. On one such stormy night, I heard shuffling noises coming from the other end of the room and I was awake, despite the world sleeping. Confused, I asked in the darkness, "What are you doing, Pavitra?"

The movements quietened and I heard it say after a long while, "I'm leaving."

"What? Where?" I forced my exhausted body to sit up, my back curved like a question mark on its own accord. "Where are you going at this hour? It's three in the night." It ignored me, opening its wardrobe to grab a pile of clothes that it dumped in a large tote bag. Its hurried movements alerted me and my exhaustion evaporated, my voice growing louder and demanding, "Where are you going?! Pavitra!"

"I'm leaving," it repeated in irritation, kneading the bag like it was dough to compress it.

"You can wait till tomorrow morning at least to go wherever the hell you want."

"He's waiting down," it said and striding to the window, I flung the windows open to notice a familiar car under the midnight blue sky. Shocked, I turned around to look at it. It wore those Chandbaali earrings and spread kohl under its eyes with its ring finger like it was getting dressed for a Diwali party.

"Is that Lila's dad?" I asked slowly and through the mirror, I saw it smile.

"Now you can have this entire room. You can keep your nerdy books anywhere, hang your ugly clothes wherever you want."

"Are you kidding me? You're running away with her dad?" I burst out, her calmness augmenting my anger till I finally exploded. "Have you thought what aai and baba will do after you have run away with a married man? How they will be devastated?"

"He's not married now. He's like me, divorced."

"That's not the point! Have you thought about what aai and baba will feel? Have you thought once what will become of them?"

"Have they thought what I feel?" it snapped, suddenly whirling around with eyes as wide as the full moon outside. "Why are you butting in when all this while you never stood up for me? Not once? Even that boyfriend of yours stood up for his brother when they came to our house. But you watched everything like it was a good soap opera."

"What?" I laughed then, not knowing what on earth it was accusing me of. "You cheated on your husband---"

"I never cheated on him. He got disgusted when I told him about my past. I slept with your girlfriend's dad long ago before I married him."

"You broke their family! Do you know how much my girlfriend---" I paused in irritation and its lips curled in the vilest smile as if teasing me was going to clean its mess. "---Lila suffered because of you? You destroyed three families!"

"Do you think cheating is that simple?" it asked me instead, perplexing me. "Do all people cheat just because they feel like it? Do you know the whole story? How your girlfriend's parents stopped loving each other long before I came. But you will never listen. You like seeing me as a villain in your story and blaming everything on me." It removed its red lipstick and smeared it, puckering its lips at the mirror. "I don't mind though. Villains have a hot sex appeal."

"You're crazy," I muttered under my breath, feeling discomfort crawl in my stomach. Its words, do you think cheating is that simple? echoed in my ears. My lips that had kissed Lila while dating Dev knew the truth, yet it quivered to say it out aloud.

"A woman is ought to be crazy living in this house," it said, picking up its bags and turning to me. For a moment, its smile vanished and those full-moon eyes bore into me. Then it questioned in a bewildered voice, "Why didn't you ever stand up for me? Or just said something when I fought with them all. You knew I didn't want to get married when everyone else was pushing me to, you knew I wanted a divorce when things didn't work out. You know I don't want to get married again. Instead, you are just like them, wanting to lock me up here as if I don't have a mind of my own."

The large lump in my throat sat there like a rock, preventing any words to flow out of my mouth. All I could hear were my own thoughts, why, why, why? Then I remembered the days when we were young, the days when I broke barbie legs again and again and my sister would fix it. When I had scrapbook submissions the next day and my sister would cut printouts for me late at midnight. When I had to complete ten different assignments and my sister would write for me in the journals, in her neat, cursive writing. Every time, it was her who would magically make things fall into place.

"So you're going," I breathed and my sister remained silent like the night outside. "Can you please stay. . . Aai and baba aren't that bad. They're just. . . like everyone else here."

"No, they aren't bad," she agreed, clutching the bags tighter.

"Then you don't have to go. Things will be alright soon. You don't have to get a job or get married again. I'm sure they will understand. I will talk to them this time---"

"I'm going now," she said, cutting my desperate voice. "I'll call them soon. You don't have to worry about the drama. You can pretend to never know that I left." I held my throat, but the lump never dissolved and looking at me for the last time without a smile or a tear, she closed the door. Through my vision blurred with fat tears that refused to spill out, I watched from the window, Lila's dad taking the bags from her and her climbing into the car that gleamed under the full moonlight. He followed her inside and started the car, I watched it all, the car disappearing into the silence that was left behind.

The days that came after that silence were jumbled together into one thick mass of impenetrable darkness. My father and I who knew the truth consoled my mother who wept ceaselessly, sometimes threatening to go to the police and other times believing the lie that Pavitra was at her friend's house and would return home soon. She called them as promised, but the call was too short, too unconvincing. I never knew where she stayed or went, it was only months later when I was in Delhi that I saw a picture of her on a cruise ship. The vast ocean behind her didn't give any hint as to where she was. But wherever she was, seeing her luminous face, I knew she was happier than she ever could have been here.

As for me, I stood at the window, holding my throat when Lila burst into my room one summer morning.

"He left me and then she," I paused, unable to speak. "How are you?"

"Mama told me," she said in a dismissive manner, then she lifted her paper bags and shook them excitedly as if expecting them to jingle like bells. "I bought pizza to cheer you up!"

I snorted, a chuckle escaping my lips at her simplicity and that made her grin broaden. "So you're talking to your mother now?"

She flipped open a huge box and pulled the cheesiest slice, the stringy cheese never letting the pizza go. "She's my best friend. Best friends never leave each other." She bit into the pizza as I sat opposite to her, watching her chew and moan deliberately to make me laugh. Then with that smug smile, she admitted, "And I needed money. They cut off my electricity at the apartment just because I was a teeny-tiny bit late!"

"How late?"

"Only four months. They're so rude."

"So rude," I repeated, feeling my lips twitch upwards. "How is everything at your house?"

"Mama and I don't care what he does." She shrugged, gesturing me to take a slice. When I refused, she held the pizza slice like an aeroplane and said in a robotic voice as if the announcers at the airport were robots, "Flight Pizza is landing on the runway---"

"Lila, stop---"

"3, 2, 1!" And pouncing on me, she stuffed the pizza in my mouth without any mercy. I was unable to swallow it because of the laughter that kept bubbling and spilling toppings everywhere on the floor. "Are you feeling good now?"

My laughter ceased as I stared at her. "Can I tell you the truth?" She nodded. "I'm not feeling good. At all. Whatever is going on in my life right now, it's my fault, I know. But I can't. . . First Dev and now Pavitra---" I struggled to find the right words, to tell her how I couldn't sleep at night. How I waited for either of them to call me. To hear more than silence. "---I have never made a mistake so big and now I'm living it every day. I can't anymore. I'm leaving for Delhi tomorrow. It might be worse than Mumbai, but that's the only way where I can start again. Do you think I should go? That it's okay to leave my parents when they're this miserable?"

"Don't worry, aunty and uncle are the strongest people I know!"

"And you? Will you be okay?" I asked and all I got was more silence, a silence that swelled around me like a bubble and caged me in.

* * *

A/N :

Just one more chapter to go . . .

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