Mens Rea • Ikka | I
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A/N:- The first chapter deals more with the setting of the relationship between Meenakshi and Shauryaman so it might be a bit boring. We will get into the meat of things from the second or third chapter. Please keep reviewing till then :)
Word Count: 16.2k+
Masterlist
Chapter I
They are both fire. Burn. Scorch. Wild.
Meenakshi Gaur née Bannerjee stared at the glittering skyline of Mumbai, lined by the various blinking skyscrapers along the famous Marine drive, bordering the foaming Arabian sea as it reflected the mesmerizing view of the same, in its dark inky waters.
A breath-taking view of the city that only the state, if not the country’s most affluent residents can afford. But the beauty of this picturesque scenery hid beneath it, the filth of its less fortunate members quite effectively. A kind of dazzling glamor that blinded one to its rank secrets buried like dirt brushed under a Persian carpet.
Such irony that this mesmerizing panorama from the glass partition of her new bedroom should parallel Meenakshi’s life so poetically.
The wedding had been covered extensively by every known and quite a few internationally accoladed magazines and media outlets, rivalling the popularity and coverage of some of the biggest celebrity weddings the state has ever seen.
After all, it wasn't everyday that two of the country’s richest business families were joined in holy matrimony.
The Gaurs had been big names in the construction business spanning three generations, having had extensive contracts from the Indian government and quite a few private clients spread worldwide.
The Bannerjees came from aristocracy— their ancestors having started the silk and textile trade dating back to the time when the Mughals had outposts in ancient Bengal. Now their business interests had spread towards various concerns, the biggest being private shipping and transport.
The wedding brought forth an alliance that would strengthen a hundred crore deal between the two corporate giants and thus had been the talk of the town and of financial experts and political analysts for weeks preceding the ceremony.
And if that wasn’t reason for scrutiny enough, the bride and groom themselves have been in the crosshairs of tabloid gossip for years— if only for slightly differing reasons.
Shauryaman Gaur— the heir to the Gaur millions had made headlines often, especially for all the wrong reasons. A notorious womanizer, infamous for his devil may care attitude, wild parties and lavishly excessive lifestyle was only tempered with a surprisingly brief stint as a lawyer in a well known law firm that has been celebrated for taking up a lot of pro bono work in addition to a few high profile patronage.
His disbarment had been quite a scandal, though no one knew what the charges brought had been, due to it being a closed court hearing and the records had been sealed.
Meenakshi Bannerjee— the chief liaison officer, has been, since the time she debuted in her father’s company— Laconte, infamous in the business world for being recklessly ambitious and quite cutthroat. Under her direction, the company had tripled its profits in the last two quarters, if only through ruthless hostile takeovers and ingenious strategic overhauls. She was known to be razor mouthed and a firebrand.
They had made quite the controversial, yet a pretty handsome couple— and aided with the added aesthetics that only an obscene amount of wealth could provide and a star studded guestlist that could rival the premiers of a few countries— what more was needed for the public to gush over them?
This sham of a marriage that had looked so gorgeous and dreamy on the papers whose bedrock was a contract signed by two old men seated in a boardroom was just as empty as the magnificent horizon of the city of dreams as it shielded its dirty underbelly from view.
The sheer deception of the entire charade at playing happy families and newly wedded bliss for the cameras was as tiring as the heavy set crimson lehenga wrapped around her body.
Meenakshi wouldn’t call herself particularly beautiful.
But she wasn’t as modest as to not realise that she did turn quite a few heads when she wanted. Her body was a result of years of rigorous discipline and carefully crafted regimens and she had inherited her mother’s large hazel eyes and her wavy rich raven hair that reached her curved waist and her father’s aquiline nose on an oval face.
She was fairly tall and her skin was the colour of milk stirred with honey.
All the gold she had been layered with was pinching her uncomfortably and she wanted to get out of this jewellery induced torture trap yesterday and run her fingers through her itchy hair that had been set to almost stone with all that ridiculous hair spray.
And didn’t anyone tell the stylist that she absolutely despised the scent of roses?
The things one has to do to keep up appearances.
She could see her reflection on the glass in front, a little of the vermillion staining the partition of her hair had fallen on her nose, that apparently no one had cared to clean off or even point out to her.
Tradition bespoke of how if the sindoor fell on your nose, it meant your husband would love you more.
Hah!
Meenakshi wanted to balk.
Who even writes all this bogus shit—
“Keep staring at the glass a little harder and I swear it will crack.”
Shauryaman Gaur had stepped inside the room and was now lounging on the other side of the decorated bed, hands folded behind his bed, posture laconic and unbothered like he was the pinnacle of nonchalance, his lithe ripped limbs were splayed like that of a big graceful cat on the white sheets.
In this way, his cream sherwani was stretched across the surprising breadth of his shoulders and chest, exposing the clean lines of his trim waist and sharp hips. There was that annoying strand curled over his dark lustrous eyes, having escaped the confines of his styled inky hair.
And that ever perennial smirk had marred his chiselled face, pulling his slim lips down in a half mocking, half amused way.
Now Meenakshi would have considered her newly wedded husband to be quite a strikingly attractive man had he not made her want to punch him in that handsome face whenever he opened his mouth.
She had had the privilege of meeting Shauryaman Gaur once before the wedding, for a measly two hours when the marriage contract had been finalised by their respective team of lawyers, and she had gritted her teeth throughout.
“Heard you were in the military Major sahab, should I expect your daughter to be a drill sergeant?”, he had thrown at her father, an icy note hidden in the otherwise mockingly jocular tone of his surprisingly gravelly voice.
She had barely held back from launching straight at the man swinging like a five year old on his chair, sassing everyone in sight every two seconds, with the cavalier arrogance of a God looking down on ants.
But she had given just as good as she had got.
“Heard you used to be a lawyer once, Gaur sahab, was your impeccable behaviour the reason they disbarred you?”, she had asked sweetly from behind her own gucci sunglasses. The hangover had been shitty, like a hammer drilling inside her head.
She had drunk half her weight in vodka when her beloved mother had told her that she was getting married.
Shauryaman had grinned at that, his eyes invisible under the chocolate colored glasses but there was something nasty in the curve of that mouth. He hadn’t seemed particularly bothered about what was being put in the papers, or that his marriage was being fixed right in front of him.
Donned in a black shirt and dark jeans and dark brown aviators which definitely hid his own hangover from the previous night, he seemed too busy playing candy crush on his phone than focus on the prenup that was being signed.
If not for his father, leveling a half disgusted look at his useless son, and their head lawyer— she could have easily taken him to the cleaners in case of a divorce.
Meenakshi couldn’t figure out whether the man was so completely detached from any kind of seriousness or was he really that dumb— a typical rich spoiled brat.
He had barely looked at her face, even when she had effectively poured salt over a visible wound. And yet he had successfully managed to rile her up enough to have her storm through everyone like a rampaging tornado for two days straight.
Her father, bless the man, had actually considered not getting her married, but then, that decision had been out of his hands anyway. The board’s majority shares were held by her mother, a ruthless financial analyst and twice as ambitious as her daughter.
Lata Bannerjee was a shark that even Major Riddhiman Bannerjee, famously monikered the Bengal tiger, a retired Indian Airforce officer himself and current business mogul, feared a healthy dose.
“I mean, if you want to break the glass, be my guest, there is a hammer somewhere in the toolshed. I can ask the servants to fetch it for you—”
It was with a sisyphean effort that Meenakshi resisted the urge to turn around and throw the glass of half filled whiskey that she had been gripping for dear life, right on his stupid face.
She was taught to be more civilized than that even if the person in front deserved a face full of shattered glass.
Instead she downed the alcohol like a shot in one smooth gulp, enjoying the smooth burn of it sliding past her throat and turned around. He had raised a sculpted eyebrow at her less than ladylike behaviour but that irritating smirk hadn’t left his face.
Well, if he was expecting a sweet servile tradwife he was in for a rude awakening.
“Okay, ground rules”, she spat, ignoring the deliberate baiting while unhooking the million pins from her hair to pull off the veil.
He raised both his eyebrows at that and fuck, how was his face so expressive anyway?
“I don’t give a damn about you—”
“Ouch”, he put a hand on his chest like she had shot him point blank even if his pupils had turned darker than those usual pits of volcanic ash— if that was even possible.
“And you don’t give a damn about me—”, she continued unperturbed by his dramatic expressions.
“Not true”, his smirk was disgustingly lascivious as he roved his eyes all over her body like he was appraising her and Meenakshi was debating the finer points of domestic violence.
“Shut up and listen. I will lead my own life and you can carry on crawling through whichever gutter you find. I don’t care how many women you fuck as long as you don’t bring them to my home. You don’t question me ever and I won’t poke my nose in your business— understood?”
He was staring at her unreadably now.
She wished she could crack his skull open and see if there was anything present between those ears or was he just existing on the mercy of his outer shell, no matter how lovely looking.
How had the man even passed the bar examination?
Maybe his daddy had lined some pockets somewhere along the way—
No wonder he got disbarred.
“You don’t care if I fuck other women?”, he asked finally.
“I don’t care period”, she had finally managed to unhook the heavy necklace from around her throat.
“Does that mean, you will fuck other men?”, that damning eyebrow was back near that envious hairline. Meenakshi’s blood was already simmering and this was like striking a match against raw phosphorus.
“Like I said, I won’t question you and you won’t question me”, she said between gritted teeth and tugged off her gold bangles viciously.
“Does that mean, we will fuck?”, that smirk was back on his lips and she finally noticed his cheeks had a slight impression of dimples on either side.
“I will cut off your dick if you bring it anywhere close to me”, Meenakshi warned, holding the hair pin like a blade towards him, kohl lined eyes pouring fire, “and is sex all you can think about?”
Shauryaman shrugged and leaned back down on the pillows as if it was a moot point.
“You are undressing after all. I was just making sure.”
“I am undressing because this stupid dress is fucking suffocating, not because I want to be anywhere near you”, she sighed and opened her nose ring and kept it on the side table and eyed him skeptically, “I’m honestly suprised you even asked. I was expecting to have to fight you off…in fact I was almost waiting for it.”
The idea of knocking the daylights out of Shauryaman Gaur with an elbow to that sharp nose shouldn’t be as tempting as it was sounding.
She had been expecting to see him smirk at her in that disgustingly attractive way again only to see his expression shuttering off. For the first time since they had met, he looked disgruntled. His eyes had hardened like chips of coal and for the first time, Meenakshi felt like there was something under that seemingly unbothered exterior after all.
The scent of danger repressed so tightly under pretentious charm and feigned harmlessness that it was almost a static presence under her tongue.
He was pissed.
“No matter what you may have heard about me, wife— I don’t rape women. They fall at my feet consensually.”
There was a strange note in his voice that she couldn’t decipher and neither did she want to at the moment. Every playboy she had met had said the same thing. Only they mistook drunken and drugged disorientation as consent as well.
Men will be men and disgusting pigs.
She forcefully suppressed the urge to shiver at the dark cadence of his tone. She won't give him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm.
“You know what, husband?”, she said brightly instead, “I don’t care. I need to sleep. Stay on your side”, she warned and started rummaging through the wardrobe for her night clothes that the housekeeping staff had mercifully arranged for her from her innumerable suitcases.
Shauryaman peeled himself off the bed and seemingly took a few to steady himself. The sudden palpable tension in the air had vanished again.
He was clearly drunk just like she had expected.
She wished she could drink herself to oblivion as well and just forget about everything for one night.
“I will get out of your hair”, her husband mumbled discombobulated and surprisingly enough staggered out of their bedroom slowly.
“Good riddance”, she muttered.
“I heard that!”, he hollered from outside.
“You were meant to!”, she snarled back and then smirked at the muffled curse she heard that echoed off the staircase.
The bed was calling to her and Meenakshi Bannerjee Gaur decided she could figure out the semantics of living with an asshole for a husband without losing her sanity or committing murder, later.
___________________
Meenakshi had adjusted to married life as well as can be expected. It also helped that Shauryaman seemed to have taken her conditions to heart and was happy enough to avoid her and continue with his whorish partying ways as usual.
They barely saw each other, orbiting their shared life like two planets unwilling to collide lest the black hole created would suck them both in as a result.
Sometimes they saw each other, mainly at the dining table, even then, they mostly ate in silence, her busy in her tablet, steeped in work and him, usually picking at his food like a bird. Meenakshi wondered whether that is how he maintained his girlish figure or did he have an eating disorder— not that she cared.
It could very well be that he had already eaten outside with his friends. Or whatever he called that band of vain hooligans he went around with.
She had had reservations about sleeping on the same bed, lest he tries something but that was soon negated as most of the times, their schedules barely matched to coincide lying on the bed together let alone sleeping. Meenakshi would sleep late and wake up really early, go for her morning run around the property, finish her workout in the gym, have her breakfast and then leave for her office.
Shauryaman, she knew would come in, even later, long after she had already fallen asleep and sometimes he never even came back home, spending the night in someone else’s bed in all probability and would wake up really late, around noon and then get out of the house by evening.
That was not to say that their paths never crossed.
One day, Meenakshi had come panting from her morning run, wiping her neck with a microfibre towel as she barked the morning’s agenda to her PA on her wireless earbud, pushing open the glass double doors of the gym only to find her husband running on the treadmill.
Shauryaman seemed lost to the world outside of his earphones, running with surprising form and the controlled power of trained athletes, his eyes fixed on the glass in front, overlooking the brilliant landscape of their posh locality in Malabar Hill.
He had seemed very far away to her.
And if the sudden and unexpected sight of seeing the other man awake at this hour, no less working out, was shocking, he was wearing nothing except a pair of grey sweats. He had a small towel, similar to her own, hung around his neck.
His torso was completely bare.
And for the life of her, Meenakshi couldn’t look away. She had stopped talking midway leaving her poor unaware assistant hanging on the other side.
She knew Shauryaman was fit enough and had a lean build but she had never seen him without his clothes. The muscles stretched wiry and ripped all over his back and chest, mapping over taut, glistening and tanned skin were like a display of the most scandalous works of Michelangelo himself.
The man was carved like fine chisel and not a hint of any alcohol induced puffiness was in sight. He had dark hair lining his chest muscles and abs and those long ripped archer’s arms.
No wonder women kept throwing themselves at him, despite his rakish ways.
She may have gawked at him for too long because she had missed the smirk that had painted his face in knowing vanity.
“Like what you see?”
His voice had lowered three registers, almost feeling like a velvet purr against her skin and she had straightened like being electrocuted and turned around while closing the open line on her earbuds with a hasty tap.
Her face was smoking and she would die before she let him see it.
“Keep dreaming”, she spat and leaned back on the weights bench.
Shauryaman had grinned at her, turning to face her finally, switching the machine off and patting the sweat collected on the hollow of his throat and collarbones with the towel.
“You don't want to know my dreams”, he had drawled in that syrupy voice.
“No. I don’t. Now if you will excuse me”, she had said, trying to block off his suddenly magnetic presence as she focussed on the burn of her muscles while lifting the weights.
“Such a prude, Mrs. Gaur”, he had whispered mockingly and sauntered off and thank god for that or else he would have had the next weight flung at his face.
If Meenakshi had surreptitiously tried to check him out as he had come back down, bathed and covered in a white shirt and grey suit pants, no one had to know except her own guilty mind.
She must have been on her cycle.
____________________
It had taken Meenakshi not very long to fit into the hierarchy of the upper management in Gaur Constructions. The company board had welcomed her according to their deal and she now owned fifteen percent stakes in all their businesses as her husband did in Laconte.
Her company name had come from the French multibillionaire who had partnered with her great grandfather to bring the textile giant into the international market in the early 1900s in British occupied India.
Harshvardhan Gaur, her father in law was a hard taskmaster as she had understood but he was also quite a respected figure in the business world. His name meant something to the rich and affluent in Mumbai. He also had extensive political alliances and very deep pockets.
And he seemed to like her well enough.
He had introduced her to the top brass so to speak.
“We pride ourselves on the quality of our service and our business relationships just as much, if not more than the profits. For generations, Gaur Constructions has been the face of reliability in the construction business as well as our innumerable real estate projects”, Harshvardhan had said, the pride for his company clear in his voice.
“We appreciate your brand of ambition quite some bit too. I hope you will find working with us just as rewarding”, he had concluded as she had been ushered inside the glittering reception area of their chrome and glass tombed corporate headquarters.
“Harsh is being a stuck-up, my dear. Don’t listen to him, we are essentially a family. Have you heard of the time your father in law and I had been suspended from college for throwing an illegal rave? His father had to beg the DIG to throw that case away—”
Prakhar Sahani, the CEO and Harshvardhan Gaur’s oldest friend and closest confidante was one of the majority shareholders of the company. He seemed diametrically opposite to the stern MD of the Gaur Constructions, indulging more in humour and jest and had an all rounding cheery personality.
He had taken Meenakshi under his wing, educating her on the informal politics of the corporation and the day to day workings of their offices. He also had the best stories, one more ludicrous than the other making her laugh at his brilliant way of spinning a tale.
Everyone liked him.
Amongst her new family’s friends and business associates, Meenakshi liked Prakhar Sahani the best
Harshvardhan seemed to open up around him the most too.
“Don’t listen to the ridiculous tales he spins. It's grossly exaggerated—”, the older man had laughed and thrown an arm around his sniggering friend.
“Lies and slander. I say the truth. Nothing but the truth, my lady”, Prakhar had guffawed.
“You two seem close..”, Meenakshi had remarked later to her father in law.
“He is my brother. The one man who has held me up in some very dark times”, Harshvardhan’s eyes were like his son’s. Dark and seemingly fathomless, his skin wrinkled from age but still tough along that sharp jawline hidden behind a shock of salt and pepper stubble.
Harshvardhan Gaur must have been quite a handsome man in his prime.
“And, Meenakshi”, he had opened the door of her car, very chivalrously. She could see why the media had such a kind opinion of the billionaire industrialist. He reminded her a little bit of her own father with those straight backed shoulders and severe yet gentle eyes.
“Yes sir?”
“Call me Papa”
She had smiled at him.
“Call me Akshi then…Papa”
Prakhar Sahani seemed to wield most of the company’s onsite operations with his team. He was also spectacularly well liked in the community, Meenakshi had observed. Involved in many philanthropic institutions, he seemed to live a very simple life himself. A modest apartment in Bandra— well as modest as it goes for the people of their economic stature.
But his lifestyle was more understated than anyone would expect.
There was also the matter of the fact that for some reason, he seemed like the only one in the entire board who seemed to actually care for Shauryaman.
Or that could just be loyalty towards his friend— to look after his son’s interests even if Shauryaman himself didn’t seem all that interested in the company he might one day inherit.
That is if the board doesn’t kick him out before.
____________________
“He was supposed to be here today!”, one of the board member’s raged and Harshvardhan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Javed, seriously, cut the man some slack. You know how Shaurya is— he will get here”, Prakhar tried smoothening over ruffled feathers but to no avail.
“It is a shareholders’ meeting, Mr. Gaur. If your son ever wishes to take the reins of this organization, he has to learn the meaning of responsibility—”, another one had piped up.
Meenakshi was feeling second hand embarrassment for her father in law. But before she could steer the conversation in her direction and hopefully appease the enraged investors, there was her husband, sliding inside the room, dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, his sunglasses hanging from the opening at his collar, completely unbothered about the tension gathering like storm clouds abovehead.
The man couldn’t have dressed more casually even if he had wanted to.
“Morning everyone… or is it afternoon? Sorry, I lost track of time”, he said and dropped on a seat beside his father.
By the white knuckled grip Harshvardhan had on the table, Meenakshi knew he was two seconds away from blowing a gasket. Meenakshi could commiserate. She wanted to bang her head on the table, herself.
“Shaurya! There you are! Where were you? The meeting was due to start an hour and a half ago!”, Prakhar exclaimed but sounded relieved.
Shauryaman completely ignored the older man and put one leg over the other, like it was his living room and threw his hands around in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. It was inherently disrespectful and seemed completely on brand for him.
Her father in law looked like he had sucked on a lemon.
Which seemed to be his go to reaction whenever faced with his son.
“The meeting has concluded. The vote is supposed to occur now”, one of them said with gritted teeth.
“What vote?”
His eyes were already unfocused and trained behind on the glass, like he couldn’t even be bothered to look anyone in the face. He looked spectacularly bored.
“The vote on whether to give the contract of our cement plants to Arcelor-Mittal— did you even read the documents we sent?”
Evidently he hadn’t, if one went by his clueless face. Meenakshi wanted to groan.
“I vote that we should go with them solely because I hate the other guy…whasisname Jindal”, he concluded and then suddenly got up like he remembered he had to be somewhere else, post haste.
“Well then, you have my vote gentlemen, adios”
“Shaurya wait. We have to discuss the financials and the—”
“I am sure you can do it on your own, Akshat. Or do you need me to hold your hand?”
Their CFO shut his mouth and scowled darkly as Shauryaman gallivanted off just like he had entered. The silence in the room was so painful in the aftermath that Meenakshi had to resist the urge to crack a joke if only to somehow bring the simmering tempers down.
“That's it. I am out”
Javad Khosla, one of their biggest investors, proclaimed suddenly and left his seat.
“Javed—”, Harshvardhan tried intervening but the older man was already storming away, face red with humiliated rage.
“Your son cannot respect us enough to even give us the time of day and you expect me to invest in a company that would probably go to him!”
Meenakshi had heard the last vestiges of Harshvardhan trying to placate the man as they walked off followed by the rest of the board in a more sedate pace.
The vote remained hanging as they couldn’t proceed without Khosla’s support. A good deal was squandered and she could mentally calculate a staggering five percent loss in the current project because of the now indefinite hiatus on the cement supply.
All because her husband had been an arrogant ass.
She wanted to kill someone.
Prefarably, him.
“He is..difficult, Akshi. But not a bad man”, Prakhar’s sudden whisper had brought her violently back from her homicidal thoughts. They had been standing in the main lobby.
She had no idea when the older man had found her.
“I— I just don’t understand why Papa tolerates his nonsense, Prakhar uncle. That was completely disgraceful”, she retorted, irritated.
“Shaurya..has had a hard childhood”, the older man seemed thoughtful, “Harsh— I love that man like a brother but he has his own faults. And Shaurya..he wasn’t like this before, you know. He was quite a sweet child. Then his mother died and—”
The older man stopped himself as if overcome with some invisible force.
Meenakshi turned and looked up at the wall as if on cue. There was an enlarged black and white picture of a woman hung artistically all over its expanse, visibly immediately to anyone entering the reception.
It was quite a sentimental tribute Harshvardhan Gaur had given to his late wife.
Theirs had been a love story for the ages.
Pauravi had come from a very modest family, not belonging to the Gaurs’ social class at all. Harshvardhan’s father had been against the match, expecting to get his only son married to a girl from another business family but his son had fallen madly in love with Pauravi Khedkar— the daughter of a lowly government clerk.
The story went that she had been performing for an inauguration ceremony at a school where she taught dance and music and Harshvardhan had been in attendance as the chief guest. He had been smitten at first sight.
The marriage had been the talk of the town at that time with A-listers from every field in attendance. She didn’t know what had happened to the woman after, but it seemed Pauravi Gaur had been battling clinical depression for a long time and one fine day Harshvardhan had come home to his wife overdosed on her sleeping pills.
Shauryaman had been twelve.
The media as usual, had been merciless vultures.
Talks of the late Mrs.Gaur having an affair with a prominent bollywood producer had flown the rumour coop for a long time.
Harshvardhan never remarried— seemingly completely heartbroken over his wife’s loss. And maybe that was the time he had distanced himself from his young son, as well.
Her reverie broke when Prakhar started speaking again.
“Something changed him after…that. Harsh was inconsolable in his own grief and he shut us all out. By the time he opened the doors, his son was long gone. Too far out of our reach. And then all that scandal with his disbarment—”, his eyes had been trained on Pauravi’s face, a strange melancholy in those handsome features.
“But I'm afraid I can’t protect him for long if he keeps self-destructing. The board just needs enough votes and they could kick him out and then nothing Harsh might want to do would work.”
It was a sobering thought.
Meenakshi didn’t know exactly what had soured the relationship between Shauryaman and her father in law but it was an open secret— the discord between them. The house in Malabar Hills belonged to the family but Harshvardhan had apparently moved out years ago, letting his son live alone in the property.
And then she came into the picture. It had seemed strange and a little sad to her— just one man living in a three storey behemoth of a house, alone, not counting the servants. Not that Shauryaman stayed in the house for too long at a stretch.
While touring the house, she had come across a locked room. On asking, Vimmi tai, their housekeeper, had told her that it belonged to the late Mrs.Gaur and only Shauryaman had the keys to the room. He didn’t even let the servants inside.
She had seen her husband reacting quite viciously with his father on more than one occasion as only with the latter, Shauryaman seemed to lose that annoying uncaring attitude of his and get mercurial quite overtly. Harshvardhan on the other hand, seemed unwilling to rise to his son’s rage and simply countered him with the cold precision of an expert surgeon.
And maybe that was worse.
He looked like he couldn’t be bothered to spend that much effort on being angry at the younger man. Like he was always treating him like a child— an adult humouring a rotten tantrum throwing kid.
And that was one feeling Meenakshi had unfortunately been closely acquainted with herself. A parent being so aloof that it fucked you up completely— yes, she could commiserate with her husband, if only on this single thing.
But it had specially come to head after the lost deal.
Javed Khosla had left the board and joined their rivals and the partnership with the steel giant hadn’t fallen through because of the indecision of the board after Khosla’s exit and the votes falling short as a result.
“You are a fucking disgrace to the Gaur name! Do you know how much revenue loss has happened because of your stupidity?”
“I don’t know why it should be my problem if some old geezer can’t handle his overinflated bruised ego. I came to the meeting and gave my vote—”
“You have no concept of respect! You didn’t even sit through five minutes! You humiliated a very powerful man and a good friend! You humiliated me!”
Harshvardhan had never been this enraged before. At least, Meenakshi hadn’t seen him like this before. He had come storming into their living room and started raging at Shauryaman who was still lounging on the sofa, fiddling with his phone, completely unbothered.
She had come running from her study hearing the uproar.
“Akshi, I swear to God, one of these days, I will disown this worthless idiot!”, he had spat at her and Meenakshi had seen something flicker in her husband’s eyes before going out like a light. His expression hadn’t changed though.
“Papa, calm down. The doctors had warned us before of your blood pressure..please”, she had tried appeasing her father in law.
“Yes. We don’t want you to have a stoke because of a few bucks”
Sometimes, she really wished she could chuck something at this man’s head. Harshvardhan’s eyes became rounder on his pink face if that was even possible and he was huffing like a maddened bull.
She could see that vein beating against her father in law’s temple from ten feet away.
“FEW! Five hundred crores feel ‘few’ to you! And keep your empty considerations to yourself. You will be the happiest if I have a stroke. I will have my fucking will altered before, mind you. I won’t leave you a single penny, you ungrateful piece of shit.”
And he had stormed off despite her protests.
When she had turned to him, Shauryaman had looked just as uncaring as he had, throughout the entire fiasco.
“Don’t start—”, he had waved her off before she could even open her mouth.
“It is your company. You want to kick it down the drain, be my guest”, she had snapped and climbed up the staircase to their bedroom, hoping he would take it as a hint to go get drunk in some hole and leave her the hell alone.
Thankfully she hadn’t seen him for a few days after.
________________
It was a tepid evening when Meenakshi had finally found herself a little bit of downtime.
She had taken a long shower, completed her meticulous twelve step skincare routine, poured a Château Pétrus from the bar, cleared all her inboxes since the past two years and had switched on ‘The Great British Bakeoff’, a guilty pleasure of hers, which was weird because she knew nothing of baking or cooking in general.
She had been so engrossed as the participants on screen debated the finer points of using mascarpone in the white chocolate raspberry fondant that they were making that she hadn’t even seen him till he was right by her ear, standing behind the couch.
“Cream cheese would cut the sourness of the raspberry better than mascarpone”
The sudden voice made her jump as she turned wide eyed at the supposed intruder. Shauryaman was frowning at the eighty four inch flat screen TV like he was trying to solve world hunger. He was still wearing the leather jacket from the club he had apparently come from.
She could see the glitter on the sleeves from her seat.
“What the hell are you doing home so early?”, she asked surprised.
“That is a singular question I don’t think any wife has ever asked their husband. It is more often, ‘why the fuck are you so late’”, he smirked and then opened his jacket dropping it on the floor, giving her a good view of his maroon shirt stretched across those broad shoulders and defined chest and came and sat beside her.
Strangely enough he didn’t smell of whiskey or cheap hooker perfume either.
It was almost a musky stronger scent— cedar, pine and something smoky like flavoured tobacco with a hint of something citrusy.
It was a disturbingly pleasant smell.
“We are not a usual husband-wife either, are we?”, she challenged with a raised brow and sipped on the red wine from the round bottomed glass in her hand.
She was wearing her midnight blue silk nightsuit, her recently shaved legs bare from her knees and crossed elegantly at the ankles as she lounged on the couch. Her hair was braided loose and a few unruly locks kissed her cheeks in the cool air of the hall.
“Touche”, he smirked.
“You didn’t answer my question”, she continued as the bakers had moved on from the fondant and were busy preparing the spongy base of the cake, on the screen.
Shauryaman suddenly looked tired. The sharp lines of his face had dropped into a more softened base. The smirk loosened up till it was a half smile clinging on desperately. He ran a hand through his styled hair and messed up the strands till his locks looked more natural and somehow curlier.
He had his mother’s hair.
“I just… I was feeling a little under the weather, so I came back”, he said finally and for a startling second, Meenakshi realised that this might have been the most genuine statement that has ever left Shauryaman Gaur’s mouth till the day they had met.
Has it been almost a year already?
She looked at his side profile for a long time, sipping her wine intermittently as he pretended to focus on the screen, head leaning back on the couch.
“So..cream cheese huh?”, she said finally and saw a spark of gratitude flicker into those abyssal pits of his eyes. His unasked question was perhaps answered to his satisfaction.
“If the flavor profile is all sour, it would numb you to the taste. Hence, something rich to balance the tartness”, he continued and Meenakshi found herself staring at him again, this time bemused.
“How do you know about flavor profiling anyway?”
“I was in Paris for a summer and made friends with a pastry chef from the Ritz Carlton.”
“Friends..huh?”
He turned towards her finally and smirked like always, a hint of mischief flickering on that effervescent face. It made him look strangely young.
“She had lovely legs and could bend in half like a pretzel—”
“Which she obviously demonstrated for you for strictly educational purposes.”
“Oh I was educated alright. What was the saying..they never do it like the French…”
Meenakshi had found herself chuckling at the salacious words and then later on, laughing quite some bit, hearing her husband’s quite hilarious commentary on the baking choices of the contestants on the screen.
It was later when she was almost asleep, the other side of the bed still empty, that she had realised— it was the most time she had spent with her husband at one go since her wedding without wanting to take his head off.
And Shauryaman Gaur apparently knew enough about pastry making to give their Michelin star approved chef a run for his money.
The next morning she had seen white chocolate covered muffins topped with raspberry compote and crushed pistachios kept alongside her usual granola bowl, eggs and protein shake. She had bit into one skeptically and had to control a quite inappropriate moan from escaping her lips.
Creme cheese definitely elevated the flavor profile.
Not that she would tell her quietly gloating husband that, even if the wicked man had peeked his head from the kitchen door, winking at her lasciviously.
Instead she had declared that if the board did kick him off then he could earn his keep by baking these exact same muffins for her every day. Shauryaman had looked at her incredulously for a few seconds and then against all expectations and to her great if not delighted surprise, burst out laughing.
And if her heart had skipped a beat spotting the dimples blooming on his cheeks and the sudden boyish handsomeness that had peeked from behind that razor sharp darkness, no one had to know.
_____________
It was like something had changed between them from that day.
Yes, they still fought at times, at the most trivial of things and Shauryaman was still that ass who loved ragebaiting anything that moved and was for some reason hellbent on being a trainwreck on most days and she was still healthily wary about his intentions.
But somehow they seemed to be spending more time together than she would have once expected. The viciousness from their arguments had tempered into an acerbic banter— could still leave them bleeding at the end but it was more playful pokes than jagged lacerations.
“So, Rudra seems to have been eyeing you the entire night”, Shauryaman commented casually leaning back against the bar with a shot glass in one hand.
It was one of those tiring afterparties of some bollywood celebrity’s birthday bash. Meenakshi was wearing a black sheath dress that hugged her curves and accentuated her height pretty nicely. Her hair had been swept at one side, letting everyone witness her creamy back held together by stringy straps.
She smirked into her drink and gave Rudra Sinha— a spoiled nepo baby, a wink of her own.
“Why, are you jealous?”, she drawled, hazel eyes twinkling in mirth.
Shauryaman looked nonplussed but there was a hint of something dark in his eyes. In an all black ensemble, with his blazer opened and vest buttoned down to reveal a nice portion of his chest, inky hair splayed over his mischievous eyes, he was just as handsome if not more than the silver screen heroes milling about.
“Why should I be jealous?”, he muttered but slowly and very unsubtly angled his body in a way that clearly blocked Rudra’s direct sight to her.
Meenakshi resisted the urge to giggle at the blatant way he was staking his territory. It would have irritated her at literally any other time, but tonight she was feeling particularly buzzed and her husband looked good enough to eat.
So what if she was enjoying his uncharacteristic attention a little too much. She had legal rights to do so, fuck you good sense—
“What are you drinking?”, she said and snatched his glass, taking a sip and almost gagging at it. It tasted like an unholy concoction of sulphuric acid but went down her throat like liquid ice. So strong she had felt a little dizzy instantly.
“My God, what the hell was that? Motor oil?”
The wicked man laughed at her and stroked a strand of her straightened hair off her cheek where the glitter from her highlighter had made that single lock stick to her skin. His touch ignited a fiery feeling inside her core that made her want to clamp her legs shut.
Damn, she was really drunk wasn’t she?
“I call it, ‘the wife’. The way it pours like wildfire down your throat threatening to burn everything inside, but it also has a sweet aftertaste”, his voice had gone syrupy, heavy and dark and Meenakshi was turned towards him fully now, abandoning her pathetic attempts to look nonchalant.
“Mr. Shauryaman Gaur…”, she hiccuped, a little giggly, “are you possibly flirting with me?”, and then gasped dramatically.
“Mrs. Meenakshi Gaur, I would like to clear it right away that I am absolutely flirting with you”, he had whispered over her cheek, smelling of that irresistible combination of expensive cologne and something musky and virile, which seemed to be his natural scent.
That voice would do her in one of these days. It felt like gravel over silk. Like velveteen chocolate over her skin, like a fucking hand in between her legs, stroking her damp heat with maddening rhythm and fuck it—
She grabbed the open lapels of his blazer and dragged him to a fierce kiss. It was wet and sloppy and completely uncoordinated thanks to both of them being drunk off their asses and it wasn’t the best kiss she had had by a long shot but the way it had made her insides self combust, had been novel indeed.
His hands had encircled her waist and she had found herself plastered and hanging against him, his lips dominating her with practiced ease, licking into her mouth like a greedy monster and battling with her tongue and clashing against her teeth, tasting of hard liquor, blood and something uniquely him.
She let out a tiny moan, rubbing herself against the very visible hardness of her husband’s interest when he suddenly separated from her, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Wha..what happened?”, she tried catching his lips again but he held her apart.
“Can’t do it like this..”, he sounded miserable.
“Like what? We are not kids, Shaurya..I want this, you want this— we are married for god’s sake”, she grumbled placing a small kiss at the corner of his mouth and giggled at the tortured groan that had come out of him.
“Sweetheart, we are so drunk we can barely see straight. You want this now, you will not want this in the morning so much..lets go..”, he practically picked her up and started walking towards the exit, her grumbling about him choosing to be a gentleman at the worst possible moment.
The next morning saw her sprawled over the bed like a starfish, clothed and feeling like someone had poured cement down her brain and stuffed cotton inside her mouth.
Her husband was sleeping beside her, hanging half off the bed from his knees, having only removed his jacket.
He was still wearing his shoes.
She remembered bits and pieces from the previous night and got increasingly alarmed till she realised that nothing had actually progressed beyond that kiss. The hint of relief had been overtaken by an unprecedented wave of disappointment.
She could chase the taste of his mouth stuck to her lips still.
Meenakshi had anticipated things to get awkward after that but strangely enough nothing much changed. Shauryaman still teased her mercilessly almost to the point of having a heel being chucked at his head and they had settled back in their previous routine almost seamlessly.
If Meenakshi dreamt about that one drunken tussle of mouths and lay wondering in the dark about the things that could have followed, no one other than her own sick and twisted desires knew about it.
_____________________
Shauryaman kept testing his board’s patience recklessly.
He had thrown two more minor alliances away, by sheer unprofessionalism aided by his inherently incorrigible arrogance. A road reconstruction contract in Borivali and a mid-sized powerplant construction in Surat had gone to their rivals.
Meenakshi was most sympathetic to her father in law and Prakhar uncle’s piling headaches.
Yet another mystifying reason that she couldn’t figure out was why her husband seemed to detest Prakhar Sahani as much as the man was seemingly fond of him. The wizened CEO would try to engage him in the meetings only to get coldly rebuffed every time.
Shauryaman refused to talk to him straight and snarled almost rabidly if he was forced.
“You could be a little more respectful, you know. He is your only ally on the board. And for some godforsaken reason, seems to care about you”, she had said once.
“No one cares about anyone in this world, Meenakshi. It's all one big play and we are the unwilling actors”, he had countered sharply.
There was something unsettling in his voice.
“That is quite cynical”
“It is the truth”
“It might be your truth. Doesn’t make it universal.”
“Tell me then sweetheart, who cares about you? Your parents who got you married to a loser? Your friends who would ditch you the day you step out of the boundaries of an acceptable societal status?”
The words had been nasty, the endearment dripping with condescendence and targeted to rile her up and even if she had understood that, it had still rankled.
“Just because no one cares about you Shaurya, doesn’t mean no one cares about me. You know nothing about me”, she had snarled.
He had chuckled meanly and walked off, not refuting her statement but not accepting it at the same time. The bitterness on his face had transformed into a strange flicker of hurt just for a second before it had smoothened out into that damning detached nonchalance.
Meenakshi had twisted and turned on her bed for the whole night after that, unable to unhear those poisonous words. Shauryaman always brought out the worst in her. And she seemed all the more jubilant at duelling with him, no matter how vitriolic the arguments could turn.
It was like countering fire with fire.
They were much too alike in some ways. And so different, in many others.
And yet Meenakshi couldn’t have anticipated just how low both of them could have fallen, if only to cut the other down.
________________
It was a pleasant winter evening when the Sahanis came to their house. Meenakshi had wanted to host Prakhar and his wife, Leena for a long time. They had always been exceptionally kind and accepting of her.
She didn’t know whether it had been just mere courtesy or that lingering yet childish need to get back at her husband, she hadn’t informed him of the dinner priorly— just saying she had guests over and if he did come home on time, to be decent.
Shauryaman came back home on time alright, and surprisingly enough he also brought a wrapped bottle like a gift but none of that had mattered in the end because the moment he had seen Prakhar Sahani seated on the couch, laughing with Meenakshi, he had blown his top off like a missile being shot out.
“Get the fuck out of my house!”, he growled at the older man, voice lowered four degrees in absolute chilling venom.
“Shaurya what the hell are you saying”, Meenakshi tried intervening but to no avail. It was like he was seeing red, a loud uncontrollable rage that had transformed his so-called harmless persona into a pitfire of hellish doom.
This wasn’t the lethargic, alcoholic playboy that the world knew Shauryaman Gaur to be.
Meenakshi had been intimately conversant with violence in her life and she knew well enough how to spot danger, living with a former military personnel and for other reasons that she refused to admit even in the privacy of her own mind, she knew the exact moment when to anticipate it.
And right now her husband was the most dangerous man standing in the room.
His jaw had hardened enough to cut glass and his knuckles were so white around the wine bottle that they were almost bloodless.
“Shaurya…please”, Prakhar tried placating him, hands hovering in the air but the younger man snarled so hard he had to take a step back.
Shauryaman was like a wild animal, pouring murder from his eyes in a way that chilled Meenakshi’s blood.
She had been wrong about him.
There was nothing harmless about this man. He was a bored tiger who had been playing tag with his prey and now his fangs had been bared and she could see the blood stained on the gleaming enamel.
But Meenakshi was no weakling, herself.
Wrath had coloured her vision crimson too.
“I will say it for the last time. Get. Out. Of. My. House. Right the fuck now before I call the cops”, he spat between gritted teeth and Prakhar sighed and ushered his shaken wife outside, throwing apologetic looks at Meenakshi whose face was burning with shame and rage.
The moment the older couple had left, she felt the last string holding her temper snap audibly.
“Have you lost your goddamned mind! What kind of disrespectful behaviour was that? Are you an illiterate savage?”, she yelled, eyes blazing, nails digging into her own palms.
Shauryaman slammed the wine bottle down on the table with a mighty thud, almost shattering the glass and turned to her, his charcoal eyes spitting fire.
“Why the fuck would you call that fucking pi—”
“Speak of him with respect! He is old enough to be your fucking father!”
“Shut the fuck up! As if age has anything to do with it!”
“You are right! Age has nothing to do with it. I would respect a five year old more than a tantrum throwing brat like you! What the fuck is wrong with you! I have never felt so ashamed in my entire life! I called them—”
She was pinching the bridge of her nose feeling the humiliation sizzle inside her veins.
Her husband apparently wasn’t done.
“You stay the fuck away from him!”, he spat which only made her blood boil harder. Her voice was icy like a stalactite when she spoke.
“You do not order me, Shauryaman.”
“And you do not bring someone to my home without my permission.”
“This is my home too!”
He threw his hands up, almost in despair even if his handsome face was now almost ugly in its ferocity. She was faring no better and could practically feel her entire body thrum with repressed violence.
“This is the reason!”, she growled pointing at him, “your father was right. They were all right. I thought there might be something everyone is missing. But it was just wishful thinking. You are a worthless piece of shit who can barely differentiate his ass from his nose on most days. Your ex dodged a fucking canon ball!”
His head snapped towards her with a dizzying force.
“Yes, I know about Avantika”, she continued ruthlessly.
“Meenakshi”, he warned, face paling slightly but she was on a roll and had no intention of stopping. Her endless well of patience had extinguished.
“And your illegitimate daughter. Thank fuck, she had the good sense of leaving. You didn’t deserve her or that poor girl who unfortunately will have to carry your good for nothing genes for the rest of her life! A selfish monster like you knows nothing about love.”
Shauryaman went bone white and the anger was gone at the force of the sudden hurt that spread uninvited on his features. He looked like she had taken that massive swiss knife from the kitchen counter and rammed it inside his chest and twisted it for good measure.
Good.
Meenakshi knew she had always had a viciously mean streak but this man deserved worse. Someone who cannot respect anyone, had no regard whatsoever about anyone except himself, deserved no regard or consideration from anyone else.
But then the shen pallor was gone and replaced with a cold vitriolic look of utter contempt.
“You are standing here lecturing me about love? You? You think I don’t know about your past? What you did to your sibling—”
It was Meenakshi’s turn to pale and she could barely hear the rest of his words. Her head was spinning and the constant ringing inside her ears had overtaken her. His words were poison and slipped inside her ribs like cold steel, burning through all her flesh.
“You stood and watched your sister drown. You have no right to say anything to me about being a selfish monster, Meenakshi Bannerjee. You killed an innocent baby because momma cared about her more than you—”
The slap turned his head to the side with vicious force and shocked both of them. Meenakshi could see the scratch marks her diamond rings had left on his clean shaven cheek. Her knees were jelly and she could barely breathe.
She turned around and ran and somehow the world went black at the same time.
Later their housekeeper, Vimmi tai had told her that she had locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the shower and had sat underneath the icy spray like a statue for hours.
Apparently the servants had been banging at her door urging her to get out before Shauryaman had broken the door open himself and had carried her out in his arms. Then Vimmi had changed her into warm clothes and called the doctor.
She did remember snippets of a loud thudding, a muffled curse, calls of her name going in and out from a fog but everything had felt like having come from under water. There was water in her lungs, pulling her down into an inky abyss. She had felt a warm touch around her too, for a brief second she remembered seeing Shauryaman’s panicked face, his arms around her.
And then nothing again.
Her husband was nowhere to be seen when she had woken up from the medicated sleep and Meenakshi had been quietly glad.
It felt like she had been back at that moment again. Frozen stiff at the edge of the pool, unable to move a single muscle as her little sister gasped and screamed for help till the dark waters claimed her.
All these years of therapy and clinical help and constant struggle against her own demons and it had taken just a few words to undo everything.
But the words had been true.
She had killed her sister. And she had no right to lecture anyone about anything because a mean insecure asshole Shauryaman maybe, he was still not a murderer.
____________________
A year of progress seemed to have vanished under the weight of silence.
Shauryaman and Meenakshi still managed to catch a glimpse of each other but they rarely interacted anymore. The words both had spat at the other seemed to have plunged into their bodies like daggers with their shining hilts sticking out like pincushions for anyone to see.
And try as they might, they couldn’t pull them out.
When the hysteria from the ptsd and the rage from earlier had cleared off, Meenakshi had been forced to admit that she too may have jumped the gun this time.
She may know about the breakup, thanks to the tabloids running their mouths loose, especially because Avantika had gone right up and married Arjun Mehra, her boss who was not only a celebrity in law circles himself but had also been the one to disbar Shauryaman when he had been interning under him.
The daughter being Shauryaman’s wasn’t something she had learned from the tabloids, that had been hidden quite well— thus the hasty marriage, she figured. It had been a fixer who had been employed by Arjun to help him investigate a high profile client. He had accidentally happened upon the truth and had revealed it to her later in a party, in a drunken state.
She knew nothing of why Avantika had broken up with her husband.
She didn’t even know if Shauryaman had ever wanted to meet the girl. But it was clear from his expression that he still harboured some feelings for the woman who had once famously trapped the most sought after bachelor in town and a certified playboy and then had apparently broken his heart.
Meenakshi had later met up with Prakhar, inviting him to lunch in the Laconte headquarters and had called up a famous celebrity chef from Bandra to provide for them and apologized for her husband’s deplorable behaviour.
“It's okay, Akshi. Don’t be stressed. I am used to it. I had hoped he would have softened a little by now but—”, the older man had smiled but there had been pain in the lines of his face.
“I am still sorry, Prakhar uncle. It was tremendously ungracious and..oh god your wife, I hope aunty isn’t too mad at me?”
“Nonsense. Leena understands, just as well. Come to our house once, both of you— we’ll make everything alright.”
At least her relationship with the CEO of Gaur Constructions hadn’t soured yet. The man must either really love her husband or have the patience of a saint.
Meenakshi on the other hand, had no idea how to get out of this strangely depressing limbo she had fallen into.
_____________
It was pretty late when Meenakshi’s silver Audi entered the gates of their house in Malabar Hills. The property was a good few acres, surrounded by a garden which had a gravel path layered around the road to the front porch, for the cars.
Ravi, their valet had been dutifully waiting at the front doors of the three story building to take her car to the parking garage in the basement. Meenakshi exited from the driver’s seat and her tired eyes suddenly caught the light reflecting off the young valet’s wrist.
“Ravi, where did you get that watch?”, she asked curiously. The nineteen year old blushed crimson under his dark skin but held out his wrist proudly for her to see.
“Shauryaman sir, gave it to me. I am writing the test for the police constable post next year and I asked for leave from sir and he said to have this. He said, ‘it is a good luck charm’ and helped him pass his lawyer examination”, the boy declared with a mixture of shyness and clear adoration.
Meenakshi’s eyes climbed her forehead involuntarily.
She was sure poor Ravi had no idea that it was a fifty lakh worth limited edition Patek Philippe. Anyway the boy just seemed happy to have been given a gift which had someone’s well wishes.
What was a price tag in front of good natured blessings?
“Oh, all the best, Ravi. You will do great. Remember to come and have dahi cheeni from me before going to the exam center.”
“Aww madam. Thank you”, the boy blushed even harder and scurried off. She knew he was an orphan and lived alone in the chawl. This was the least she could do for him.
Her mind was scattered as she entered the hall. The more she unearthed her husband, the more perplexed she became.
How can one person be simultaneously so cruel and so kind?
As if on cue she caught sight of the man in question and froze.
Shauryaman was slumped on their massive twelve seater dining table, half of which was covered with books and papers and varied other paraphernalia. She came closer and caught sight of the titles. They were all law books, opened at various pages and marked over and over again with sticky notes and highlighters. There were pencil markings at the edges, covered in a sharp and spiky handwriting she was intimately familiar with.
There were various musty old documents and freshly printed photos of undecipherable objects and what looked like court transcripts and witness testimonies and old police records and newspaper cuttings dating back a decade. It was like the department of legal studies or an advocate’s homework had exploded on the table.
Shauryaman was fast asleep, his eyes hidden by a shock of surprisingly product free hair, head nestled in between the spine of a very heavy leather bound book. His back would not thank him when he invariably woke up.
He had been typing something on his laptop, the screen saver preventing her from taking a peek. It was a chillingly impersonal photo of the summer sky and she felt unsettled just looking at it for too long, like she was staring at something intimate, something impermissible.
She was slowly backing off from the table top, when she saw a single photo stuck in the spine of the book, half hidden by Shauryaman’s hair.
The face of Avantika Mehra, well she used to go by Bhatt then, greeted her from its glossy creased surface. It seemed like the photo had been folded and unfolded a lot from the spiky creases made over it in abundance.
Shauryaman’s face was turned towards Avantika and he looked so damned young in it, it was almost heartbreaking. The joy in her smile was infectious and Meenakshi found herself mirroring it almost involuntarily. But what had caught her sight more was the look in her husband’s face as he seemingly watched his then girlfriend.
The love painted over his handsome features was so naked, so unmarred by life and fate yet, that it felt like a hot iron inside her stomach. It was too much exposure and she felt the ridiculous urge to go back in time and shield him retrospectively.
It was with a slightly sickening jolt that Meenakshi realised that despite what he might have become later, Shauryaman had loved Avantika with as much sincerity as he could have managed at that age— maybe even beyond.
The existence of the photograph was evidence enough.
And suddenly, Meenakshi didn’t want to know why Shauryaman was sleeping on his law books on the dining table of all places. The desire to unearth the mystery behind her husband’s increasingly strange activities had dampened under the force of his past.
‘Why is it bothering you? So what if he is still in love with his ex? You had made it clear you wanted nothing to do with him. This marriage is a contract anyway, a business deal. At least this proves the man used to have a heart somewhere hidden beneath that detached cavalier exterior.’
She had still been arguing with herself later, inside their bedroom when a sudden shriek came from downstairs, piercing the air like a nail against a chalkboard. The fear in that scream was so potent that it automatically made her run out in panic.
“What happened?”
Meenakshi screamed back, holding her red soled Louboutin in her right hand, poised to launch at the unknown intruders with military precision.
Only to see Vimmi tai and two other man servants searching the heap of books, utterly hassled while her husband was standing on the couch of all things, clutching desperately to what appeared to be a rather fat volume on criminal law, eyes wide on his sleep-creased face.
“Shauryaman, did you scream?”, she poked at him lightly, having climbed down the stairs near the couch over which he was still posed like the statue of liberty.
“Yaa! What..fuck! Oh it's you”, he had almost taken her head off with the book that he was still brandishing like a shield in front of him or an impromptu weapon for invisible enemies about to charge at him.
“What the hell is happening here and who the hell shrieked like that?”
“It wasn’t a shriek. It was a very manly scream”, Shauryaman countered, frowning even as he backed away from the table slowly.
“It's a cockroach madam”, Vimmi tai answered her instead, looking hilariously exasperated at her terrified employer.
“Just a cockroach? Just. That thing was fatter than a dung beetle and it has wings and do you know how many diseases spread from cockroaches and why the hell are there bugs in the house! Don’t I pay you guys enough to deal with shit like this!”, the man retorted slightly hysterically.
Meenakshi was staring baffled at Shauryaman when he finally met her gaze. She couldn’t help the sudden bubbling laugh that had opened up like a can of soda inside her stomach.
He was shooting her a warning look but it was too late.
She had already doubled over.
“You are scared of a bug? A poor little arthropod?”
She was gasping for breath, tears rolling down her face while her husband had turned an endearing shade of pink, trying and failing miserably to glare her into submission.
“Shut up! I am not scared of cockroaches. I just don’t like them. It must have crawled back home from the evidence lockup. Fucking policemen can’t keep their stuff clean—”
He would have continued his rant had Vimmi not found their little troublemaker and held it up triumphantly by a wing.
“Found it!”, she declared like a general having won a war and Shauryaman looked like he would pass out with how colorless his face looked.
Meenakshi stifled her giggles with an herculean effort and ordered their victorious housekeeper to let it out in the garden.
“So, my brave and mighty husband, may I ask, what were you rifling about in evidence lockups?”, she asked carefully and saw him stiffening. It was as if he had just realised that she had seen everything scattered on the table.
He seemed to debate internally whether to disclose anything before sighing. The book was kept back on the table and he picked up a single sheet from the court transcripts.
“Nothing. It was just an old case. Someone said something and I had to check it out for myself. I had forgotten how much work lawyering actually took—”
There was something wistful in his voice that called out to her gently. The man wasn’t as unaffected as he usually liked to pretend and that was a fact that she had come to realize time and again, after all these months of forced proximity.
He missed being a lawyer and that was evident.
Meenakshi suppressed the desire to ask what had happened leading to his disbarment.
She would not scrape at old wounds anymore. The rebound from her own, if only intentional cruelty, had been quite gruesome. She wasn’t sure she could take another round and survive in one piece.
At least not anytime soon.
Suddenly she had to change the subject.
“Did you eat dinner?”
Shauryaman stared at her a little bewildered at the sudden non sequitur. She hadn’t talked to him straight since their fight nearly a month ago. He hadn’t approached her and she had left him to his devices as well.
Maybe the silence had been a little painful to him too because he seemed to brighten up immediately.
“No. Have you?”
She shook her head.
“I think Vimmi tai could spare us some if we ask her nicely”, he offered hesitantly.
“I don’t know….you did just ask her to catch a roach—”, she pointed out, the mirth coming back to her voice in spades and by his irritated look, she knew he knew that she was having way too much fun with this.
“You are never going to let me forget this one, will you?”
“Never.”
He smiled at her and suddenly the world felt a little less darker than it had an hour ago.
They had eaten dinner like college kids on the island table in the kitchen, engaging in a surprisingly not awkward conversation about the most trivial happenings of their day.
There was a little unease in the background, like they were too master sportsmen having been out of the game for years and were just relearning to sync again, one unsteady step at a time. It seemed like the elephant in the room would remain invisible for the time being— the topics and their individual reactions to them were too painful to breach anytime soon.
The wounds were still fresh and both Meenakshi and Shauryaman were too proud to admit to their fallacies.
___________________
“That looks…expensive”
Meenakshi was staring at the small colorful concoction on her plate with mild disgust. Shauryaman, seated opposite to her, swallowed the entire thing in one go, made a face and then drank a little of the sparkling water kept beside.
“I was told, this place was going to get a Michelin star.”
Meenakshi sighed morosely at the piece of whatever raw fish and truffle and artichoke and orange slice mini monstrosity on her plate and muttered a disheartened, ‘figures’. Her lunch partner sipped on the white wine and then sighed heavily, wiping his mouth with the white cloth kept over the white oval table.
“I knew this would be a disaster but my father insisted I take you out somewhere fancy. Apparently I couldn’t be trusted to make an informed choice about your particular taste and so he reserved a table for us.”
Meenakshi sighed and drank the rest of the wine in her glass in one gulp. She had been more than a little surprised when Shauryaman had come one afternoon to her office and insisted she accompany him to lunch.
She had been ready to bat him away but he had looked strangely hopeful, trying to hide it behind his usual panache, but there had been something sweetly hesitant about his expression.
And she had been hungry anyway.
“Come with me then, daddy dearest’s option sucked, let's try mine—”, he held out his hand and she rolled her eyes but took it anyway.
“Shaurya if you take me to a pub, I swear to god—”, she threatened as they walked, strangely hand in hand, to his parked convertible.
“Oh ye of little faith…”, he said in a sing-song voice, opening the car door for her, again, being uncharacteristically chivalrous.
But Meenakshi didn’t complain. This has been a nice change. His usually abrasive jeering nature had softened as weeks had turned into months and in turn she could feel the ice around her heart melt slowly.
“Where are we going?”, she asked, feeling the wind whip her loose wavy curls and the Juhu beach hugged the other end of the road under their wheels.
“Patience woman..”, her husband muttered and stopped in front of a rocky expanse of the beach which opened into the sands a few metres away. He asked her to go sit on a rock and said he would be back in a few.
Climbing up a rock in her grey pencil skirt and Valentino heels was probably not a good idea, so she ditched the shoes and walked barefoot on the sand. It had been so long since she had been on the beach. The salty sea air was probably making a mess of her blowout but she didn’t care.
Not when she could feel the cold water foaming in between her manicured nails.
“Here you go, watch the heat”, Shauryaman appeared out of nowhere beside her. She had been so lost in the scenery in front she hadn’t even realised when he had come back.
“Vada pav?”, she laughed in pleasant surprise but took her share. The spicy scent of the favourite street snack of the Mumbaikars wafted in the air making her mouth water almost immediately.
“The best vada pav in the city”, her husband responded seriously and bit into his own.
She saw he had pulled his slacks over his shins and left his socks in the car as well, sinking barefoot in the sand like her. His hair was free of product and fluttered over his dark eyes and the late afternoon sun fell golden over his olive toned skin.
He looked carefree.
She felt carefree.
It was like both of them had been thrust into a strange bubble of comfort and something whimsical. She wolfed down on the vada pav hungrily and had to concede to his claim— it had perhaps been the best she had ever eaten in a long while.
“My mother used to bring me here when I was just a kid”, he said, suddenly breaking the comfortable silence between them, “it was my favourite spot. She would ask the driver to park the car somewhere far and we would walk down this strip of the beach and she would buy vada pav for both of us and we would sink our feet into the sea”.
His voice was light.
Empty.
Like that of a hollowed out tin vessel rattling in the air.
He never spoke of his mother.
At least, he hadn’t, not before this.
Meenakshi slipped her slimmer fingers inside his bigger ones before she even knew what she was doing. It was like her envious control had slipped in face of a grief like that and she had no words to offer except her silence.
So she said nothing but kept holding onto his larger hand in a firm grip.
Both the Bannerjees were alive.
Even if sometimes she felt like her mother had died with her youngest sibling that horrible day, but still she could see her everyday, feel her warmth as she brushed past her in the office, and watch the light blaze behind her topaz gaze.
She didn’t know how it would have felt to lose her when she was just a child.
She had lost track of how long they stood in silence, till Shauryaman broke it, that teasing cheer back in his voice and the bubble burst finally.
“God, it's so late. I promised your dad, I will have you back before your client meeting this evening. Let’s go. I don’t want to test a tiger’s patience”
Meenakshi had rolled her eyes all the way to heaven.
She had only realised it quite late, when she had been busy peering into her laptop and mentally apologizing to her chiropractor, that they hadn’t left each other’s hands long after the beach had hidden behind the glass domed office buildings.
“Thank you for the lunch”, she had said softly while he had opened the door for her at the front porch leading to the building’s lobby.
“Anything for my lovely lady”, he had smirked but the curve had reached his eyes for the first time and she had elbowed him gently in the ribs as payback.
The flush hadn’t left her windblown cheeks for hours.
Meenakshi could still feel the shape and the weight of her husband’s hand inside her own, long after the day had already passed— like a tattoo branded against her skin, oddly soothing in all its mystifying glory.
______________________
Life had been so good lately that Meenakshi had started becoming distrustful of it. The idyllic habits she had unknowingly developed, had somehow blanketed her in a secure bubble, not letting the bitter reality of existence touch her.
Shauryaman had not instigated a major boardroom breakdown recently, her father in law had not needed to visit his personal doctor as a result and Laconte had secured a multi crore deal with a French company to extend their shipping business off the Amalfi coast.
Her personal life had improved a great deal too.
There had been some arguments here and there but it had all been essentially in good faith. And if she wasn’t imagining stuff, her husband seemed to have lowered going out to the clubs and partying all his nights away.
She saw him more and more, seemingly buried in some of his old cases, law books scattered on the couch and the dining table during quiet evenings and she had finally pushed him to make a personal study room to stuff his books in, like her own.
Some mornings saw them both in the gym, working out in comfortable silence and sometimes on a few shared beats of music.
Shauryaman had commandeered the kitchen one day and baked the entire afternoon away. It had smelled like a sweet lover’s paradise when she had come back home that evening. In her husband’s defense, he had quoted that he stress-baked sometimes, though he had flat out diverted all her attempts to figure out what had stressed him so.
She would deny it till she is blue in the face but she would kill for the oatmeal cookies with caramel crust and chocolate chips.
And somewhere along the way, they had somehow started a fierce competition of solving the crossword puzzle that came out in the digital version of the NY Times. They would compete on who could finish it first. It was incredibly silly but she enjoyed the mental exercise.
Meenakshi had always been a beast in puzzles and solving riddles, but she had to admit that Shauryaman was just as good. It had blown all her initial reservations about him being dumb right off the water.
The man could be cunning as the devil when it suited him.
It made her wonder, how many other things she had missed or rather how many secrets did the man hide behind his cocky sex addicted superiority complex and mile wide daddy issues.
The physical barrier between them had also been loosening by leaps and bounds, since that day on the beach.
She would often find herself having rolled over to his side of the bed, comfortably throwing an arm or leg over his slumbering body even if he did keep his hands religiously to himself. The man had an iron control even when asleep and it sure did give credence to his offense at her accusations against his character, at their wedding night.
But one night, Meenakshi had found herself completely shattering even that little illusion of distance.
It had not been her fault. There weren't many things that scared Meenakshi Gaur. But thunder and lightning came at the top of the list. She was terrified of thunderstorms.
And one rainy night, when the world outside was drenched from the relentless monsoon downpour and thunder had lashed dazzling white against the inky sky, she had sat up straight on the bed, heart hammering hard enough to beat out of her chest.
Shauryaman seemed dead to the world beside her.
She tried meditating, distracting herself on her mobile, putting noise cancelling headphones but nothing could stop the relentless shaking in her limbs and the soft whimpers leaving her lips.
Finally it had been a rather loud bolt of thunder and Meenakshi not being able to hold in a small cry of despair that had woken her husband up. The man had grappled for an invisible enemy in the dark and then had looked up at her with groggy eyes.
“Akshi?”, his sleep drenched voice had been a broken rasp.
“Its…nothing..go to sleep…”, she had said, chattering all the while, her own arms wrapped around herself.
“Are you cold? Do you want me to increase the AC temp?”, he had gotten up slowly but she had backed away, shaking her head. As if on cue lightning had flashed, throwing their dark room into a streak of light for a split second through the heavy blinds.
It had been followed by a splitting boom and Meenakshi had jumped out of her skin.
Shauryaman’s voice had been strangely gentle when he had spoken next.
“Is it the thunder, darling?”
Her terrified brain hadn’t even registered the endearment, only that his voice had sounded softer than the mayhem reigning outside. She had nodded hesitantly and had almost startled when he had tugged at her hand gently.
“Come here a moment…”, he had whispered and she had inched closer.
The warmth of his body had been very inviting against the chill in the room and she had burrowed at his side instinctively. A heavy and large arm had wrapped around her shaking shoulders, bringing them down from her around her ears and had scooped her inside a warm chest.
The material of his sleep shirt had been soft against her wet cheek and had smelled like clean detergent infused with that smoky undertones of his natural scent and the faint fragrance of his cologne. The rain had lashed harder against the insulated glass and she had buried her face inside his chest like a scared kitten.
“Mama had taught me a trick. Try to count the seconds between one thunder strike and the next. You will see how the time increases between each pair. That signals that the storm is moving away”.
He had whispered inside her hair and she had found her mind being strangely attuned to the instructions. No one had ever given her such a simple yet logical solution to counter her fear, irrational be it.
His other arm had come and wrapped around her waist by then, keeping the back of her head to his chest steady and in place. There was something strangely tender in the way he was holding her. Like she was made out of spun glass.
It was so uncharacteristic that had Meenakshi been in her full capabilities, she would have been completely befuddled. But right now her hind brain had become activated and it was signaling to her body that she was finally safe.
The way Shauryaman had pressed her to himself, almost curving his bigger, heavier frame around her like a human shield, it made her primitive senses calm down immediately. She could feel the anxiety rocking her heart tune out slowly with his loud and rhythmic heart beats drumming against her smaller body.
She whined a little, clutching the back of his t-shirt tight and there was an answering rumble which seemed to come deep from within his chest and settled the last vestiges of her frayed nerves.
Meenakshi had no idea when she had fallen asleep and whether she had dreamt up the barely there press of lips on the crown of her head.
She had woken up alone on the bed the next morning and Shauryaman had not said anything when she had met him later for breakfast. She had expected him to tease her mercilessly considering how much shit she had given him for his scare that day with that cockroach, but he hadn’t even broached the topic.
It was almost like last night had been a dream conjured up by her delirious brain.
Had it not been for her lying bundled under his blanket on his side of the bed, curled into the shape left by the press of his body on the mattress and the lingering scent of his aftershave on her clothes, she would have believed nothing had happened at all.
Meenakshi didn’t know how to handle this kind of unfathomable kindness from a man she hadn’t even given the benefit of doubt the first time they had met. Not that he had made it any easier with his following actions.
She had considered him for a long moment and then had just squeezed his loose fingers on the table top in silent gratitude and had left for work.
There might have been a barely there smile on his face.
______________________
It was their first wedding anniversary.
The building had been glammed up to resemble the likes of the Udaipur palace. The guests milling about the hall had a collective net worth more than the GDP of a small country. Champagne flew through swarovski crystal flutes and mild chatter and clinging of expensive jewels echoed from the glittering corners.
Meenakshi had already completed her rounds.
Shauryaman had accompanied her for some bit, shaking hands and levying everyone with a smirk that kept on turning more plastic as the evening progressed. She could practically feel the coiled tension in his body even as he kept a warm and surprisingly possessive hand on her waist.
She had chosen to wear a saree of a deep forest green color that complimented her fair skin and matched the green pocket square inside her husband’s pinstriped slate suit. The blouse was in the same monochrome shade and had a low back and quarter sleeves.
Her hair was in a bun letting a few styled curls frame her oval face, the partition of it filled neatly with sindoor and she had opted for a simple gold choker and her mangalsutra. There were tiny gold framed emerald studs in her ears.
The earrings had been a gift from her husband.
He had come inside her room when she had been busy trying to keep all the pins in her saree from falling off while simultaneously instructing her hapless housestaff on the phone to keep memorising the guestlist and their personal food preferences and dietary restrictions to relay to the private chefs later.
She had seen his reflection on the dressing mirror.
Shauryaman had a clear look of awe on his face and Meenakshi had had to resist the urge to duck like an idiotic blushing maiden on her first night. Of late, her body seemed to be betraying her just as much as her mind. Especially when he would be near.
It was like a switch inside of her, had been pressed that she could no longer reach to shut off.
It was maddening.
And strangely thrilling.
“You look…”, he had cleared his throat and a faint blush had stained the tips of his ears and it had been annoyingly sweet, “..good. You look good”, he had repeated a little more confidently, as if reorienting himself to their reality just a split second later.
“You look good too”, she had said immediately and turned to face him, if only to reduce the sudden awkwardness in the air that none of them were used to. He had thrust the small box in her hands then.
“Happy anniversary, Meenakshi. Congratulations, you have survived me for a year”, he had winked at her, back to his salacious coy self and she had rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop her lips from breaking into a smile.
“Happy anniversary, Shauryaman. Congratulations, you have managed to not get yourself killed by your wife”, she had retorted back, opening the box.
He had chuckled and ducked away from the door before she could thank him for the gift.
Her husband was a strange man indeed.
But his dark eyes had twinkled when he had seen her come out, wearing the studs and he had offered her his elbow, reminiscent of that day on the beach, all those weeks ago.
“You look beautiful, my dear”, Harshvardhan had commented, kissing the air by her cheek and she had chuckled and let the photographers snap away.
Her own parents had pulled her in while she had been playing the perfect hostess. Shauryaman had excused himself after an hour, probably making a beeline for the bar. She only hoped he wouldn’t create a scene today of all days. He had been pretty gracious so far.
“I know you didn’t want to get married”, her mother had begun, holding her hand and Meenakshi had squirmed at the sheer intensity of her gaze on her, “but I see it has been good for you.”
What a preposterous conclusion—
“I don’t know, Lata. I heard Shauryaman was the reason Gaur lost that deal with AMNS and the Surat Plant went to the Jindals. The man is spoiled rotten”, her father had whispered, kissing her cheeks and she had sighed.
“I don’t know, baba. He…he is difficult to read on most days and impossible to understand. He hasn’t been bad to me. He does the most stupid reckless irresponsible things and then turns around and does the kindest things possible. At this rate I'm surprised I haven’t gotten whiplash.”
She confided in her father as her mother had already left them to greet other people, losing interest the moment more emotional topics had been delved into.
This, she was used to, at least.
Riddhiman looked considerately at her.
“You know Meenu, people aren’t binomial. You can’t categorize them into two broad labels, good or bad, black or white, sane or insane, kind or cruel— they exist in spectrums, they have so many layers, so many secrets…so many facets.”
Her father had always been the wiser one amongst her parents.
“Thank you, baba”, she squeezed her father’s hands.
Meenakshi had excused herself after some time.
It was strange, she couldn’t see Prakhar uncle anywhere. She had already talked to his wife, Leena. And apologized for her husband’s atrocious behavior all those months ago which the older woman had very kindly brushed off.
The party was in full swing now and Meenakshi was getting stopped every two minutes by people, known and unknown and she had yet to find Prakhar or incidentally, her husband. She had searched the bar but Shauryaman was nowhere to be seen.
A sudden noise made Meenakshi turn towards the kitchen, having left the hubbub of the hall behind. It sounded like someone had smashed a dinner plate on the ground.
“....will destroy you!”
The gravelly rasp was unmistakable. Even in its uncharacteristic yet terrible fury.
Meenakshi entered the kitchen and gasped, hands flying to her mouth in horror.
Shauryaman, eyes wild and clothes slightly dishevelled, had that gigantic swiss knife gripped so tight in his hand that his knuckles were white and there was this manic look on his face, like he was a cornered predator about to pounce. His entire body was trembling with barely contained rage.
He looked mad enough to murder.
And Prakhar Sahani looked terrified, leaning back from where he was standing close to the former.
They were both half hidden by the island table in the kitchen.
“Shaurya!”, Meenakshi cried out and her husband whipped his head so fast it almost looked cartoonish. His eyes had gone unfocused in a scary way before recognition bloomed on his face.
“What are you— drop the knife!”, she came around the table, fear strangling her throat but hands steady enough to snatch the makeshift weapon away from him, if required.
“Meenakshi, please. Be careful”, Prakhar yelped from the other side, backing away to almost plaster himself against the opposite wall.
“Shaurya, please, drop the knife. You are hurting yourself”, she ignored the older man and tugged at her husband’s sleeve and as if breaking from a trance, Shauryaman dropped the knife at last, the sharp blade slicing the skin of his palm in a streak of crimson.
“Shit!”, she and Prakhar seemed to echo together.
“Prakhar uncle, please go back to the guests and make some excuse. I will get him some first aid and—”
Meenakshi stopped as Shauryaman suddenly propelled into action, slinked away from the door and practically fled upstairs, leaving a macabre pattern of blood on the marble flooring as the only witness to what had happened.
“My dear, he is unstable right now, are you sure, you’ll be safe?”, the older man asked worriedly.
“I will be fine. The guests please—”, she implored him and turned and followed her errant husband up the staircase leaving Prakhar standing confused in the corridor entrance to the hall, beneath.
What the fuck had even happened?
____________________
The guests were cheerfully tipsy.
The Gaurs knew how to throw a party and it was evident by the sheer grandeur of the event.
Harshvardhan Gaur was drinking with the Ruia patriarch. He had already fixed a rudimentary meeting with the business giant and was now laughing at the colorful recounting of his college days that his best friend and the CEO of his company, Prakhar Sahani was regaling the guests with.
He hadn’t seen either Shauryaman or Meenakshi in a good while now and there was a little concern sparking at the edge of his pleasantly buzzed brain.
It was then when a loud ominous crash reverberated so piercingly through the hall that everyone immediately shut up at the same time, in absolute jarring shock.
Everyone had turned as one towards the source of the sound.
There was his daughter in law—
Meenakshi Gaur, standing by the balustrade above, still resplendent in her dark green saree and glittering gold jewellery but the strangest change had been the sheer apoplectic wrath that had colored her hazel eyes a brilliant fiery amber.
Her red lips were stretched in a snarl that would have looked macabre and ugly on anyone else but on her, just somehow looked like divine rage.
“Meenu?”
Major Bannerjee’s whisper went unheard as his daughter descended from the staircase like a goddess on a warpath.
She made a straight beeline for where Harshvardhan was standing and had the older man not been so completely baffled he would have felt a spark of genuine fear. His daughter in law had shed the graceful, dutiful and elegant skin of the Gaur family and had wrapped herself in the brutal violence of her ancestral heritage.
Anger had never looked so righteous and so fearsome on anyone before.
“Akshi, what—”, Harshvardhan began but couldn't finish.
Because Meenakshi Gaur had walked past him, ignoring him completely and stopped in front of Prakhar.
And before anyone could even figure what was about to happen, she had dug her Jimmy Choos inside the carpet, leaned and angled her body back, assuming the posture of an MMA fighter perfectly, pulled her right arm in a fist, dragging it back against her own ear and punched the other man so hard and so blindingly fast that they had heard the terrible noise of bone crunching under bone and skin, much later than the man had already hit the bartop behind and crumpled on the ground.
The loud horrified gasps ringing almost in tandem from their gobsmacked spectators, seemed to brush past her like oil over wax.
She hadn’t even broken a breath or noticed that her knuckles had split under the terrible pressure and deadly force.
Her voice had been ice when she had spat the words through gritted teeth.
“Get the hell out of my house.”
To be continued
