REVULSION

She had arrived at their serene little house at a terrible midnight, which was never to be forgotten, 10th of April. It was the intense but sly look in her eyes that Aastha always reviled. It was the look like that in the eyes of a crafty witch. She was Aastha’s husband Avinash’s supposed sister. Sounds uncanny, right? Well, if one knew how much Aastha abhorred this fact, one would definitely realize how uncanny it was. She was weeping and her eyes seemed inflamed. He pulled her in. And then there was this burst of tears and snivels. Aastha and Avinash sat on the two corners of their simple yet elegant couch and she sat in between them. “How symbolic!”, Aastha reflected to herself, “She belongs there, amid me and Avinash.” Prerna had always been a part of Avinash’s life, as far as Aastha knew. Avinash and Aastha had fallen in love and had decided to get married when Prerna had been in London earning her MBA degree. This occasionally gave Aastha second thoughts about their love. She looked up from her thoughts, and Prerna was in Avinash’s arms. She was clasping him taut and tears were rolling down her insipid cheeks. Aastha felt out of the place, so she departed off to get some water for Prerna. She stood in the kitchen, retrospecting Avinash’s relationship with Prerna. Everything used to feel so void and dismal to her when Prerna was around. It was like someone was stabbing her chest with a stiletto and her hands were tied. She felt helpless. She knew most of the people would rebuff this feeling of hers as steep jealousy. “It is NOT jealousy!”, she murmured to herself, standing in the dim kitchen, “It is revulsion ” That’s what she christened her feeling as. Murmuring voices suddenly interrupted her thoughts. She came back to reality. Prerna was sitting in her living room with her husband. She filled a glass of water and carried it to the living room. Prerna was telling Avinash something but she stopped abruptly when Aastha walked in. Avinash looked up, to Aastha, and said the most dreadful words; “Prerna is going to stay with us for a while. I think she can stay in that bedroom near the dining room. Right?” It was just for Avinash that Aastha smiled back at both of them and replied, “Yes, sure! But is everything fine? I mmmean, what happened?” She was looking at Avinash intensely but she could see from the corner of her eyes that Prerna had that ‘Don’t tell her’ look on her face. “ She needs a break from her hectic life”, replied Avinash, “and this is the best place she can be right now.” Prerna looked at Avinash through her wet lids and smiled. “Ah! there! I’m stabbed again!” Aastha thought to herself. Avinash took Prerna by her hand and took her to the bedroom near the dining room. Aastha picked up the jute bag that Prerna had brought with her and followed them decorously. In the bedroom Avinash and Aastha asked Prerna to get some sleep and she thanked both of them and hugged them. She looked at Prerna and said, “Thanks a lot!” “Come on”, said Aastha, “I just hope that you get better soon.” The couple departed to their bedroom. There was simply no talking. Aastha didn’t ask anything at all and Avinash did not seem to be too keen on telling her anything. They slept.
The morning was unexpectedly faint and doleful. Aastha looked out her window as she woke up. Avinash wasn’t beside her. She got up and washed her face and went out of the bedroom to look for Avinash, expecting him by all means to be sitting and sipping coffee with Prerna. Prerna loved Avinash’s coffee, Aastha knew that. Avinash was standing in the balcony of their small yet roomy apartment house, sipping coffee, alone. Aastha hugged him from behind and said “Good morning!” Avinash turned and smiled at her. There was a singular kind of discomfort between him and her. “Is Prerna up?” asked Avinash in a rather low voice. “I don’t think so”, replied Aastha. “Umm…anyways, lets get ready for work”, said Avinash, kind of avoiding that moment of uneasiness, “I have to reach early today.” Aastha had faced this countenance of Avinash a lot of times, so she didn’t say anything but “Okay”. They got ready and arrived at the dining table to find Prerna sitting there gawping outside the window of the dining room. There were no dialogues, but only exchange of smiles, essentially between Avinash and Prerna. Aastha loathed that smile of hers. It was vivacious yet exasperating. “I’m going crazy”, Aastha thought to herself, “No one can enrage me so much by doing zilch! This is certainly unusual.” She dumped her thoughts at one corner of her mind. Avinash was pouring milk for Prerna. There were times when Avinash used to pour milk for her too, every morning. Particularly, when she was pregnant. Unfortunately, she had had a miscarriage. And Avinash had left her sobbing on the hospital bed, because the same day Prerna had had a small vehicular accident. She just broke her right arm bone. But when her doctor had asked her if she considered it necessary for him to call someone, she asked him to call Avinash. That day Aastha’s heart bled. Later Avinash apologized to her that he couldn’t stay with her and assured her that the miscarriage had not disappointed him. Things calmed down. But the event left a sore patch on Aastha’s heart. She looked up and now Avinash was pouring cereal for Prerna. She looked at Prerna. In a flash, something happened to Aastha and she fell down, becoming unconscious. Avinash dashed athwart the table to take hold of her falling body. She was carried to her bedroom and when she woke up Prerna and Avinash were sitting beside her. Avinash had an expression of extreme fret on his face. Things like these used to happen with Aastha recurrently since she was anemic and she never took enough care of herself. “Are you okay?”, Avinash asked almost howling, “What happened to you?” “I am oblivious”, replied Aastha, “but now I am very fine. You must leave for work. You have to reach early today right?” “That’s not as significant as you”, replied Avinash. At this, Aastha smiled and Prerna turned her face away. Avinash got up and left for work, without saying another word. Aastha looked at Prerna and said, “I am really sorry. I should be taking care of you and instead I have tied you down.” “Please don’t embarrass me”, said Prerna, “I will be honored to do something for you. After all you mean so much to Avinash and Avinash means so much to me.” No matter how hard Aastha tried to not bring Avinash in her conversations with Prerna, she was never able to evade it. There had been times when Aastha and Prerna used to talk to each other quite often. But Aastha just couldn’t stand Prerna’s habit of talking incessantly about Avinash and his rectitude. No one was supposed to tell her all the time how nice her husband is! There was a time when Aastha used to feel so frightened about all this that she used to whimper every night in the bathroom. She used to beat her feet on the floor and pound her hands on the wall and grumble all sorts of things to herself. She used to feel like a susceptible maniac. It used to appear to her that everyone knew of her wretched circumstances and everything from trees to automobiles used to be snickering at her state. She would have not really gone so fanatical if even once Prerna herself would have mentioned to her that she considers Avinash to be a brother. She would have assured herself somehow by hearing that. But no! Only Avinash had mentioned to her that Prerna was more than a real sister to him. But she knew that men are naïve when it comes to things like these and in particular Avinash was. Fortunately she soon came out of that phase and she never really talked to Prerna after that. She learnt to tolerate. She used to assure herself thinking that if Avinash is ever asked to choose between her and Prerna, he will definitely choose her. But deep wounds don’t heal fast. Right now, Prerna was looking intently at Aastha. “I am really fine. I would really feel nice if you would carry on with whatever you were doing,” said Aastha, “If you are going to sit here with me all day then I am going to feel really guilty.” Prerna flashed her exasperating smile and said, “Okay, then I’ll finish some work that I was planning to do. But can I get you anything, anything at all?” “No, really, thanks a lot,” replied Aastha, “I’ll finish off my breakfast.” Aastha flashed Prerna a phony smile. Prerna got up and left the room. Aastha sat there for sometime picturing that anxious face of Avinash that she saw in the morning. It was truly appealing how much he cared for her. Aastha got up and went to the dining hall. She was sipping on her coffee, when she heard Prerna talking in a very soft voice to someone, intensely. Curiosity pulled her towards Prerna’s room. Prerna had her black posh mobile phone stuck to her right ear and she was saying, “Avinash, I love you a lot too. I too want to be with you forever. I really want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. But I told you it’s not possible. And you know why! And I will have to go back home now. I don’t want to bother Aastha anymore. She herself is not well…..” That was all that Aastha could stand. The last stab was into her chest. Her whole world collapsed in that one moment. It was sickening her. Revulsion was the feeling she had for this whole world. She could feel her whole body shaking and she somehow managed to reach her bedroom and there she sat down, hurt and forlorn. “How could God ever do this to me?” she thought to herself, “I have nothing left to myself. The only reason I was alive was Avinash. And now I don’t have that reason.” From where she sat on the bed, she could see herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face was pale and sodden. She looked lifeless. Underneath the mirror she could see Avinash’s toiletries, and what stopped her moving eyes was the razor that shone with the blade in it that Avinash had changed yesterday in front of her. She did not linger for a second. She immediately took out a new blade from the bathroom cabinet and slashed her wrist unfeelingly. She was in tranquility now. Forever.
By afternoon, there was a huge mass in that small serene house. When Avinash came and saw what had happened, he was beleaguered. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t speak. Prerna came scampering to him. She had been sobbing for a long time now. Her cheeks were stained with inscriptions of tears. Although she knew that Avinash wasn’t hearing anything, she spoke in between her sobs, explaining him, “I am sorry Avinash….I just, just don’t know how all this happened! Aastha insisted that I go do my work so I left her alone. And when I returned after talking to Avinash on the phone, I saw her body lying on the bed and her wrist smeared with blood…Avinash please say something. I am sorry Avinash….I am sorry!” Avinash did not stir. He just stood there gaping at Aastha’s body. “I know I should have never come here! Its all because of me…yes...me!,” Prerna was mumbling to herself, “I should have never come back from London! I was so happy there with my Avinash. I came here and lost my only reason to be alive and now I made you lose your only reason to be alive, right Avinash?”
After this incident, Aastha’s Avinash went into a coma for two years and when he recovered, he was more like a lifeless piece of furniture lying in his parents’ house. He never spoke after that incident. Prerna went back to London and married her boyfriend Avinash and settled there, against her parents’ will. She used to call her supposed brother Avinash’s parents, every week in India, to know of Avinash’s progress. There was none.
No one ever came to know why Aastha killed herself. Aastha was an elapsed event of time now.