Sometimes when you’re desperate to leave the past behind, the past is eager to catch up!
Anuradha leaves Gurgaon when Dhruv chooses his family over her. She thinks that chapter of her life has ended, and starts afresh in Mumbai. But strangely, it seems her past is trying to catch up. Dhruv suddenly comes back into her life. Even as they try to figure out their relationship, horrible things start happening to people they know. Together, Anuradha and Dhruv need to find out who it is that cannot bear to see them together. Who is carrying out these shocking crimes? Are they really soulmates cursed to stay apart, or is there some karmic debt they have to repay?
Read on for a look at the psychological aftermath of an extra-marital affair
Mumbai has unnerved me every single time I’ve set foot here in the last few months. It wasn’t like this before. It used to be like any other city. Just that I frequented it more as my advertising agency, C&M, is headquartered here. But now, since you have been here for about a year, coming to this city has never been the same. Work still brings me here—a couple of times a month at least—for a sales review or a client meeting. But every time I am here, I feel like running to you first, clasping you to my chest and not letting you go. Yes, that’s what I still feel, Anuradha, after pushing you so far away from my life. The first few months after you left were tough—to come to work each day with you not being in office; to live without you in Gurgaon; not hearing your voice; and not feeling your touch. Despite having Shalini and the kids back in my life, there was this one large gash in my heart. However hard I tried, it refused to heal. It stayed there, untended and bleeding. My head feels heavy with the weight of a sack inside it.. ‘“Don’t do it!” didn’t we warn you?’ the pebbles inside the sack which rests in my head scream in unison. ‘You can’t love two people at the same time.’ ‘I didn’t do it knowingly. It wasn’t in my control,’ I protest. ‘Oh, come on! Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ squeals one. ‘You had a rock-solid marriage, a lovely family. Didn’t you know what you were getting into?’ ‘I know. All my fault. I thought I could handle it. I loved them both, you know. I just couldn’t stop.’ One of the pebbles has a throaty voice. It’s smaller than the rest. ‘Look where this “love” has led you to. No one’s happy. Neither Shalini, nor you and I guess not even Anuradha.’ ‘Well, who knows?’ I say. ‘Maybe she has found someone. Why “maybe”? I am sure she has someone in her life by now. She is young, beautiful, successful . . . she can easily be happy. Don’t you think so?’ The pebble glances at me, scrutinizing me. ‘Yes . . . maybe. Will you be happy if she has found someone?’ I clear my throat, ‘Why not? Yes.’ ‘Sure?’ I nod. ‘Yes. I will be happy as long as she is.’ ‘Do you want to meet her?’ the pebbles chorus. ‘No. It’s over, isn’t it? Why would I want that?’ ‘Ah, come on,’ one of them says. ‘It’s what you want the most. To meet her. Isn’t it?’ I fumble for an appropriate answer. Unsuccessful. I go quiet, then. The plane has landed. I get out of the airport and spot the driver holding a placard with my name on it. I purse my lips and force a smile; a familiar weakness sweeps over me. He signals to me to wait and hurries off to get the car when I nod. I glance at the passengers leaving the airport, people gathered around the arrival gate, greeting incoming passengers: relatives and friends. I wish you too were here, waiting for me, Anuradha . . .Such feelings seem even more unreal after the way our relationship ended. But then how is one supposed to conceal one’s true feelings from oneself? How can I hide that I love you? Even after you lied to me. Even after I promised my wife, Shalini, that our affair happened in the heat of the moment and was well over. How can my feelings for you ever cease to exist? Maybe I really am the asshole that the people I love think me to be. Shalini and you. Maybe I don’t deserve love from either of you. My relationship with my wife will never go back to what it was. I have done enough to scar it and I don’t know if those scars will ever fully disappear. ‘We have struck a compromise for our children, Dhruv,’ was what Shalini told me at the dinner table one day when the kids were asleep. ‘It can never be the same again,’ she had said. Shalini is a headstrong, self-made woman who sticks to her word in her personal life as much as she does when treating her patients.
