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“Do you even know what it’s like over here?” Harsh lowered his voice as he continued to complain. “You left us to live with the Stoneman. How could you do that to me?”
“I didn’t leave you,” she murmured reflexively. She’d only left one person.
“You left all of us,” Harsh said dramatically. Pretend sobs flooded the phone line. “It’s been so hard. I don’t know how we are even surviving. Yesterday, he snarled at me for eating an extra boiled egg.”
Veda giggled.
“A boiled egg! I need my protein or how am I to maintain these incredible muscles?” Harsh asked. “But does he understand? No, he doesn’t. He thinks eight eggs are enough for me. The ninth is overkill.”
“Was the ninth his?” Veda asked, knowing exactly the kind of stunt Harsh was known to pull.
“It doesn’t matter,” he assured her. “It’s not like he’s eating anything anyway.”
“He isn’t?” Worry snaked through her at the thought of Agastya not eating.
“Please!” Harsh snorted dismissively. “Did his role model, Devdas eat? No, he did not.”
“Stop it, Harsh.” Veda sat up in the bed. “How is he? Really?”
“He’s a complete disaster,” he replied frankly. “It’s like he turned into the Stoneman but has forgotten how to reverse the change.”
Veda found that hard to believe. In the two weeks since they’d finally closed the ‘Ganesh chapter’ as she liked to think of it, she’d heard nothing from Agastya. No calls, no messages, nothing. She was reduced to the snippets of him she found online or on the news channels. The glimpses she got of him told her “Stoneman’ was a pretty accurate nickname for him.
“You need to come home, Akka,” Harsh said, dropping his irreverent act for once. “We all need you to come back.”
“I’ll come to your screening,” she told him. “The rest I don’t know Harsh…”
“What is the plan?” he asked her, sounding a lot like his older brother suddenly. “To live like this in limbo forever?”
She stared at the wall ahead of her unseeingly. What was her plan? To sulk in her childhood bedroom forever?
“If you’re not coming back, then leave him officially. File for divorce.”
The words slammed through her, her entire being rejecting the thought.
“No?” Harsh asked, wry humour twining through his words. Veda didn’t answer but he continued, “I thought so. Could you just put us all out of our misery though? The more he suffers, the more the rest of us suffer. Right now, the cloud of doom has descended over our home. In all fairness earlier, it was the cloud of misery,” he confided. “But mix it in with doom, and honestly, Akka, I’m tempted to sign a porn flick next just to lighten the mood over here.”
Veda laughed, a watery chuckle.
“That’s good to hear.” Ram leaned against the entrance to her room, his shirt collar loosened, and his black robes draped over one arm.
“I’ll see you at the screening,” she told Harsh before disconnecting one brother to deal with the other one.
“What’s good to hear?” she asked Ram who came in to sit beside her.
“You laughing.” His gaze roved over her. “Now maybe you could consider getting out of bed and acting like a sentient human being.”
If Agastya was being the Stoneman, then Veda was auditioning for the role of Sloth. She shrugged defensively, not meeting her brother’s eyes. Raashi had left for the States a week ago leaving behind a hole that only underscored Veda’s loneliness.
“Now what?” Ram asked, flopping back on the bed, an exhausted sigh escaping him.
“Now what?” Veda echoed, her strong conflict avoidance skills coming to the fore.
“Veda.” Ram rolled his head to the side, fixing her with a firm glare.
She sighed. “I can’t get over how stupid I was. I brought this on myself by being wilfully blind. You tried to warn me, but I didn’t want to listen.”
“You’ve always seen the best in people,” Ram said diplomatically.
