"I will only hand you this letter once I am completely convinced," said Dadi. "This letter declares that you are innocent and that all the accusations against you are false. My only prayer, my child, is that God grants you justice. We too are guilty, son. We could not see the truth shining in your eyes."
Hearing these words from his grandma's lips, Arjun slowly began to feel a sense of reassurance. She must be Rani, he thought. No one else could it possibly be. Otherwise, why would the letter be coming to the Lalkothi?
He recalled a line by Nirmal Verma he had read somewhere: "Sometimes it fills one with wonder to think that by the time we reach the moments of happiness, we have already become separated from all those with whom we once endured suffering and dreamed of joy."
Arjun lay down on the bed and took a deep breath. He had just extended his hand towards the letter when his phone began to ring. It was Kavya calling.
Arjun now understood that there had once been a time when he and Kavya had been completely transparent to each other—like two glasses of water placed side by side on a windowsill, filled to the same level. But over the past several months, their relationship had been shaken by violent tremors. First came the sudden intrusion of Shreya, which created distance between them. Then suspicion wrapped its coils around them, and the chaos of the legal battle had cast such a thick fog that even each other's faces had begun to appear blurred and distant.
In the beginning, Kavya had tried hard to stand by Arjun. But it was he who had started avoiding her, pushing her away. Yet the moment he realised he might truly lose her, living had become unbearable. Even though he desperately wanted to, he had still not been able to prove his innocence in the case. Helpless, he could make no promises. The future remained uncertain; his life was trapped in a state of painful limbo.
When the police had first come to Kavya's house for questioning, she had declared fearlessly, "Arjun could never do something like this. He is incapable of causing harm to anyone." But as time stretched on and the pressure from the media, family, and society mounted, she gradually fell silent. Instead, she channelled all her energy into making herself stronger and more capable.
She had thrown herself completely into her studies. The result was remarkable,she topped her postgraduate examinations. In her very first attempt, she cleared the CSIR-NET exam, qualifying for both the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and Lectureship in Forensic Science. She had already decided to pursue her research at BHU.
Kavya knew that by immersing herself in research, she could legitimately delay marriage for the next four or five years while steadily building a career in forensic science. The fellowship would cover her expenses, and she would not become an additional burden on her family.
BHU, with its multidisciplinary programmes in Forensic Science, Forensic Medicine, and Criminal Science, along with its well-equipped laboratories, was an excellent place for serious research. At this moment in her life, it seemed the best possible path forward.
By then, Kavya's call had come again. Arjun took a deep breath and, without reading the letters, placed them carefully in the drawer of his desk.
"Reluctantly, she asked on the phone.'I'm almost there. How long will it take you to reach?"
He was stunned into silence; no words came out. Kavya asked anxiously, "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Yes… yes, I'm fine, Kavya. I'm just caught up in the complications of the case. Can you wait there for half an hour? I'm coming."
Kavya wanted to say, "Half an hour? I am ready to wait for you my entire life. Just promise me once that you will walk beside me."But those words rose to her lips and stopped there. She could not speak them. For reasons she herself could not fully understand, she held back.
For a long time now, circumstances had not been in her favour. Every day, every moment, something or the other happened that advised her silence, that counselled restraint.
She knew that when the wind was blowing against you, you did not try to walk with it—you simply let it carry you.
In the quiet of her heart, she told herself, "Promises made in such times are not a hand placed supportively on the shoulder; they are merely sweet illusions. And one cannot complete a journey on the strength of illusions, nor can relationships endure on them."
Kavya remained silent, because she understood deeply: "Sometimes the truest love does not live in the words that are spoken, but in the unspoken sacrifices."
Arjun had begun to feel that Kavya's faith in him no longer stood shoulder to shoulder with him, holding him up. Instead, it watched him from a distance, as if afraid that if it came too close, the storm surrounding him might pull her into its vortex as well.
"Sometimes this very uncertainty, this very distance in a relationship, becomes its deepest attraction. For when someone is not entirely close to you, it is then that their absence hurts the most."
As Kavya's face floated before his eyes, Arjun remembered one evening when they had been sitting together on the railing of an old bridge. Kavya had asked him, "If one day I go far away from you, what will you do?"
Arjun had laughed and replied, "Why would you ever go far away?"
But Kavya had not smiled. She had simply said, "Relationships are never entirely our own, Arjun. There are always unspoken empty spaces within them. If you try to fill them completely, the relationship begins to suffocate."
Today, after so many months, those words echoed in Arjun's ears once again, and he realised that Kavya had been right. Between them now lay those very unspoken spaces—spaces that had been filled with the thorns of suspicion, the sword of the law, and the sharp barbs of social pressure.
And yet, amidst all this, something else had emerged: a strange, restless longing for her. An unfulfilled yearning that, by keeping Kavya away from his life, had somehow made her even more precious to him.
© Copyright Pushpa Chaturvedi
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