Chapter 7

She kept asking him why he had done this huge favour for her, and kept thanking him for that. He said he couldn’t be thanked. He started bursting out.

“You are such a freak. Why on earth would I do it for you after all the pain you caused Rahul? I have my friends, and I stand by them. Not the way you treated him. And to think he was with you all the while, it gives me fury and even more pain. He begged you for forgiveness, but you were in no mood to forgive him. You were in no mood to talk to me either. You couldn’t give a damn to how he was. All you cared about was that he proposed to you. You didn’t have the sense to realise that he was always with you, always, through thick and thin, through every incident that happened with you. His thoughts ever remained with you. And what did you have to offer him, abuses. He filed your application for MIT, all because he remembered you once told him it was your dream to make it there. You started off with archi, but he sensed your interest in science, and did you forget, it was him who got you a seat in IISER Pune? Did you forget, when you lost in love to Vinay, and when you experienced so much pain, it was him who stood by you and got the positive side in you outside? You had to forget all this, and dump him and his feelings for life. I don’t say you rejecting his love was a crime, but then the pain you caused him was most definitely a huge crime, accept it or not. He had true feelings, he was innocent in every aspect, and all you had to give him, your one time closest friend, was nothing but a slap on the wall

I don’t say you should have given him roses, but brickbats were definitely unnecessary. Start looking at life on a more level plane. Don’t look at people who respect you, trust you, admire you with suspicion. When people give you space, give them some space in your life. You might think I’m saying all this because he is my best friend. His feelings were true, very true, and all you had to do was bury it in deep sand. Sad, Anjali, very sad, I didn’t expect this from you. “