"It's the inter-school basketball match tomorrow," Riddhi says, bounding up next to Shweta. It's currently lunchtime and she's meeting Shweta at their usual spot. Monday morning had found Shweta unusually glum, much to Riddhi's surprise. They hadn't spoken much and Shweta had been brushing off any attempts at conversation.
Shweta looks up, rather surprised. "Why the sudden school spirit? Decided that the last few months are worth it?"
She cocks an eyebrow up and smirks at her friend.
"Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have always had school spirit. Just not when it comes to games." Riddhi says.
"Well, whatever. So why do you know about the basketball tournament?" Shweta asks, holding up her lunch box to Riddhi. "You want some?" She asks, the aroma of puri-bhaji wafting in the air. (Fried bread and curry.)
"Hello? It's inter-school. And it's both the boys and girls tournament. It's going to be held at our school." Riddhi says, looking like she's waiting for Shweta to say something.
"And? Why don't you just get over with whatever it is that you want to say?" Shweta asks, grumpily.
"Vaibhav. He's on his school basketball team. And he's coming here day after tomorrow." Riddhi says, "He must have mentioned it."
"Oh," Shweta says, realisation dawning upon her.
"Oh, is right. Wait, you are going to show up, aren't you? Don't tell me you'd forgotten! Have you thought of what you're going to tell him? Or how you intend to take it from there?" Riddhi asks, looking at her best friend, rather concerned.
"Oh, my goodness, no I haven't," Shweta says, panicking. "Do you even think I should meet him? I mean I want to, but I was kind of hoping for the entire thing with my mother to blow over properly before I even move an inch towards him."
"That bad, huh." Riddhi winces at the mention of Dr Seema who had glared at them the day at the pharmacy.
"You have no idea." Shweta shudders, reminiscing the fight she had with her mother on the previous Sunday, following which both mother and daughter had been avoiding each other.
"Hm. Well, we could bunk school on that day. There's going to be no attendance anyway. But the way in which you guys left things, it wouldn't be wise for you to not show up. I mean, I'm no expert but it would make him think you weren't interested or that you were dead." Riddhi says thoughtfully.
"Yeah, you're right." Shweta sighs. "Wait. He's not going to stay at your home now, is he?" She adds.
With the cold war going on at home, the last thing Shweta needs to do is to be caught in the neighbourhood with Vaibhav. That would be the ultimate nuclear weapon resulting in the complete annihilation of whatever peace she may have had for the next sixty years.
"No. No. He's staying with the team. Probably at the school." Riddhi says, settling down next to Shweta and finishing off her lunch. She opens her lunch and offers it to Shweta who denies it. Riddhi's carried rajma-chawal for lunch today. Normally, Shweta would wolf it down and Riddhi would barely have a few spoonfuls, but today she looks pale and deathly.
Shweta waits quietly, having finished her own lunch. She picks up a stick lying nearby and starts poking the sticky, wet mud. It was a rainy morning and the sun had just set up. The trees, the roads and the birds were all wet after a morning shower. The puddles sat on the road and the school ground. Shweta is currently sitting on one of the cement slabs that surround the school ground. It serves as a seating place- a cheap and permanent auditorium seat. Shweta looks at the school ground, still wet and absolutely muddy. She can see the younger children play there, running in gumboots. They splash and slosh against the mud and run around in the wet grass. For a minute, it's so painfully nostalgic.
Looking back at all those days when she and Riddhi were growing up. When they were the children running around in gumboots and jumping into puddles. Of course, that was only a tiny part of her brain that was thinking that. The rest was about Vaibhav. Try as she might to not think about him, a couple of weeks and lack of contact has made her very anxious and irritable. And the hounding bit of insecurity that had arisen after Shruti had erased her first one.
What if he had really meant it when he had asked her out but had now gotten over it? What if the weeks of complete silence and absence from his life had made him rethink their entire dynamic? What if he didn't want a relationship and had moved on? It would be so utterly pathetic if he'd moved on completely and she was stuck mooning over him? The insane amount of overthinking she's been doing has driven her to put doubtful questions where there were none; question what had already been answered.
She's not sure about anything anymore. The world just seems completely out of sync with her; almost everything in her life seemed to be moving in random directions. Then, cheery on top, there was the case of her missing period which Nancy Drew wouldn't be able to solve.
The paranoia had begun gripping her yet again, causing her to doubt the pregnancy tests and her mother's skills as a medical professional. To add to that, Dadis face is now permanently etched in her brain, reproving her weight and making her wonder if she were actually pregnant.
Riddhi sensing the storm raging underneath Shweta's calm demeanour keeps quiet. There are a thousand things that she's been meaning to ask Shweta, her tongue itching with questions that she wanted answers to. She had been too stunned by Shweta's fake pregnancy hysteria to even formulate a proper sequence of thought regarding what she felt about it. It is only in the recent days that she's realized how betrayed she felt. It was one thing for Shweta to lie about her boyfriend; but when it was her cousin Vaibhav, Riddhi almost felt like she had a right to know. And in the recent days, he had been pestering her, trying to get her to ask Shweta to talk to him. Under normal circumstances, Riddhi wouldn't have hesitated in letting Shweta know, but these weeks she had been so withdrawn. Wrapped up in her own little world, so much so that even a teacher had asked Riddhi if all was well with Shweta.
"You want to tell me something else," Shweta says, after a while.
"Well." Riddhi hesitates, but deciding it would be better to tell her, says "It's Vaibhav, he's been asking about you. And he was the one who told me he's coming for the match. He really wants to meet you." Riddhi says in a rush. It's a relief to get at least that one out.
"He's been talking to you?" Shweta asks, whipping her head around to look at Riddhi. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
Taken aback by Shweta's accusatory tone, Riddhi hastens to defend herself. "Well, it's not like you told me anything about it at all. And you've been so withdrawn and unwilling to talk about this every-time I broach the subject."
"Still," Shweta says, obstinately. "You should have told me. Did you really think that lying to me would be the best way to help me?"
"Lie to you?" Riddhi's eyes widen at the false accusation. "When and what did I lie to you about?"
"Technically, withholding information is considered as a lie." Shweta snaps.
"What does that say about you, then? Withholding information from not just your mother but me and Shruti as well? By your standards, do you realize you're categorizing yourself as the world's greatest liar? And I didn't want to not tell you, Shweta. But the way you've been holding onto your precious little secret even when it's already out in the open made me feel like an intruder of some kind." Riddhi says, her nostrils flaring in anger.
"That's my personal life!" Shweta says angrily, her skin heating up. The anger courses within her partly because she knows what Riddhi is saying is right but cannot bring herself to face it. "And did you realize that I'm not answerable to you? And maybe the reason I didn't tell you about it was that I didn't want to!"
Riddhi flinches and Shweta can see the physical impact her words have had on her friend. But managing to iron out the quiver in her voice, Riddhi says, "I didn't say you were answerable to me. All I wanted was for you to allow me to be there for you. But you always go about the world acting like a goddamn warrior asked to save the world on her own."
"Maybe that's because I can, Riddhi," Shweta says, the words on a roll now. "I'm not weak." She says, the heavy insinuation hanging in the air. I'm not weak like you. Riddhi doesn't need her to utter the last two words to be able to read it; Shweta's silence is loud enough to confirm it.
She looks stunned, unable to comprehend the spite coming out of Shweta. The latter herself is embarrassed by it and opens her mouth to rectify it. But the damage is already done and Riddhi cuts her off before she can even get a word in.
"I didn't realize that was what you thought of me." She says, her voice weakening; making Shweta hate herself for it.
"That's not what I meant." She says, shamefacedly. "I didn't mean you were weak."
"Then what? What did you mean?" Riddhi demands, the quivering voice now replaced by cold wrath that Shweta had never seen before.
"I just." She says, helplessly. "You're this perfect person going about your perfect little grades and pleasing everyone on Earth. It's one thing to be your best friend but quite another to lie in your shadow. But with Little Miss Sunshine, there's hardly any difference between a best-friend and a shadow, is there? And god forbid, something interesting happens in my life for once; you cannot bear not being the centre of attention even for a day, can you?"
"That's untrue," Riddhi says, Shweta's accusations appearing to her as utterly unfair. Refusing to believe that underneath the over-exaggeration, there was a bit of truth there. "I've never asked you to be a shadow or something stupid like that."
"You don't need to put it in words. But Riddhi, you've always been like that." Shweta says, coldly.
"I don't think you're right," Riddhi says decisively. "But, if you're going to do me the favour of handing out untruths about me, I might as well tell you exactly what I think of all of this."
"I'm all ears," Shweta says, sarcastically.
"I think you're being extremely unfair. You always jump headfirst into whatever decision suits your fancy at the moment with no thought towards the consequence or the fact that it might affect people other than you. You're being stupidly selfish with your mother and Vaibhav both; always putting what you feel first over what they might feel for you. And even if there stands an ounce of truth to everything you just said about me, I'm glad I'm some goody two shoes and not a lying, scheming person like you. I'm not stupid, to think that everything you said is just out of anger. You've obviously been thinking that way of me for a long time and I cannot believe you've been so hypocritical! Do me a favour please and the next time you decide to have a pregnancy scare, find a new best friend!"Â Riddhi says, slamming her lunch-box against the concrete seat and walking off.
"Gladly," Shweta says loudly, to her retreating back.
*******
Later that night, everything is extremely fidgety in the household. They all are at the dinner table none of them tasting any morsel of food they put in their mouths. Shweta and her mother are barely talking to each other and Shruti sits feeling the uncomfortable silence cut through her. It's tangible; the tension and Shruti doesn't know what to say to make it better. And she somehow feels guilty for not knowing what to say. She's still heartbroken over what her mother said and the guilt in her heart is gnawing at her painfully.
A minute later, Shruti speaks. Her voice is unnaturally squeaky and evident that the tension is getting to her. "Nani says she'll be reaching here early morning tomorrow. She said she's travelling alone." She squeaks.
"Well, wasn't Uncle supposed to drop her?" Shweta asks, sensing her sister's discomfort. The absence of conversation on the otherwise noisy dinner table seemed strange and unnatural.
"He was but he's got some business to look after apparently," Shruti says.
"Typical." Both Seema and Shweta snort and then pretend that they didn't hear the other one. In ways more than she realises, Shweta and Seema are very much alike. The girl is exactly like her mother- they are both headstrong and hot-headed. Seema has, of course, learnt over the years to level her anger but her stubbornness is still the same.
She will not budge from her opinion and neither will her youngest daughter. Shruti though outspoken is not as stubborn as the duo. She doesn't go after either her mother or her father. She goes after herself. She matured sooner and quicker than her years had demanded and built and moulded herself into what her breaking family needed. Shruti was like glue, filling the cracks that her hot-headed family members made.
The silence continues for a bit before Seema asks. "What time is she reaching tomorrow?"
"Early. It's probably going to be before six." Shruti says, taking another bit of roti in her mouth.
"So, you'll both meet her before she leaves for school," Seema says, referring to Shweta as she.
Shweta bites the inside of her cheek. Following the spat, with Riddhi she was still very angry and had completely forgotten the fact that Vaibhav would be in her school the following day.
"That would be nice." Shweta exhales.
"Indeed," Shruti says, her voice relieved. She heaves a small sigh and gets up from the table. Shruti feels the words rising in her throat, fighting to get out. But once they do, she knows that they will never be forgotten. Maybe, she thinks, I should keep it within me. But she knows that guilt won't let her keep it within for long. She walks towards the kitchen, her heart heavy and her conscience weighing her down.
Seema and Shweta sit in silence both of them equally stubborn. Try as she may, she cannot erase the fear and anticipation gnawing at her heart. What if what Seema said turned out to be true? That love was nothing more than attraction that faded and fizzled out over the years? Her mother's words are still ringing in her ears and Shweta cannot help but acknowledge the sudden pessimism that had settled over her. Vaibhav's existence had led her to fight with two of the most important people in her life; what did that say about her? Did Riddhi and Seema see something more than she did? Or were they being their typical, rigid and rule-following selves? And the most important question that she didn't realize had been haunting the calm waters of her subconscious and sending ripples into her conscious mind, until now. The underlying reason for all those fights and disagreements. Was Vaibhav worth it? And how long would she fight for it? The thought sent an ominous chill to her spine.
Shruti was looking at her worriedly though when she tried to give her a reassuring smile, she didn't seem to register it.
Why did everything have to be so hard?
A/n: It's a hard world sometimes, ain't it? What do you feel for Shweta? What do you think about her argument with Riddhi? And most importantly what do you think about Riddhi? Oh, if our friendships could only be as honest and resolved as Riddhi wishes them to be. Would you want a best friend like Riddhi? Or Shweta?
Let me know in the comments! I'm dying to hear your thoughts.
Feel free to stop reading this note now. Hang in there until the next chapter!
It's just going to be a little personal rant from now on. I'm really new at my university right now. As I'm highly introverted (in case you couldn't make it out by the ridiculous amount of time I spend writing about a fictional world in my head), I'm having a hard time making friends. But hey, it's only been four days. When I look at the others already fitting in and belonging, I feel a bit bad. It feels like I'm not enough. Will I ever find better friends?
It's currently been over a month, as I'm posting this, and yeah, things do get better. But I'm leaving that little rant here and not deleting it. To me, deleting it somehow tampers with the feel or the vibe with which I wrote.
As I'm rereading this over a year later; I'd like to remind my past self. Yeah, babe things do get better.
Do you feel like that at times? Well, let me know.
A tad bit sad,
Yours sincerely,
shortgirlbigbook â¤ï¸.