35
Kirit
Present day
Present day
Rahul would be here soon. Kirit took the gun out of the drawer and called his wife.
As expected, he got her voice mail. A mechanical voice telling him she was not available. Even now at the very end, she remained unavailable. “Attachment is the heart of all suffering,” she loved to say. Every conversation with her was a reminder of that little ditty of hers.
“This isn’t an apology,” he said into the phone. “But I did want to tell you that I loved you once and thank you for giving me the most beautiful thing in my life. My regret is that I have to leave her in the hands of the parent who doesn’t know how to be a parent anymore. If she ever needs you, try to be there for her. I doubt she will. We’ve both learned how to live without you. She loves that boy, and I’m giving them my blessings. As long as you don’t stand in their way, I have left you well taken care of. Use the money how you will. Go on and spend all of it on your gurus, who tell you to choke your ability to live until it is all gone, if you must. But let Kimi give life a chance.”
He hadn’t expected saying good-bye to her to hurt like this. But life was full of surprises. He hadn’t expected any of this. Amazingly enough, the biggest problem with sugarcane farming was the husk waste. Sugarcane, like life, made you pay in tons of unsavory, unusable husk for a bowlful of sugar. Once that husk started to decay, the smell of that thing could burn your nose hairs.
And yet, the bowlful of sugar was worth it. Just like his Kimi. His only regret was that he wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to her.
As expected there was a knock on the door. Kirit picked up the gun and held it to his head. “On time as usual, DCP Savant,” he said as Rahul walked in and froze, his tall, proud form taking in the situation with deadly calm. It was a strange time to feel pride in this boy who had never really been a boy. He’d been more of a man than most men, even when he was a boy.
“Please put the gun down, sir,” he said in that even negotiator’s voice.
“Have you told Kimi?”
“You can tell her yourself. Please put the gun down.”
Kirit couldn’t help it, he laughed. “You want me to tell her? I thought you loved the girl. How are you okay with what it will do to her?”
To his credit, the boy looked utterly destroyed.
“She’s capable of handling more than we give her credit for,” he said. “But you can’t do this to her. You can’t leave her with a dead father on top of everything else she has to handle.” He took a step closer, and Kirit released the safety.
“Don’t come any closer or I won’t get to say what I need to say. What I need you to understand and explain to Kimi.”
“Fine. I’m listening. But please take your finger off the trigger.”
Kirit left his finger where it was. “Did you know I was an orphan?”
Rahul shook his head.
“My parents died when I was two. My uncle was forced to take me in. But I barely ever saw him. My nanny was my only source of affection, and I decided that she was my mother. At eight, I insisted that she take me to her home. It took one trip to the servants’ quarters for me to know definitively that she was not my mother. That I had been lying to myself. Her three children argued constantly. They made no effort to be nice. She smacked them when they misbehaved but there was nothing hateful about it. What I saw in their home that day, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I spent my entire childhood seeking it out—this thing that made families families. The ownership and the ability to be filterless and your very worst and best at the same time. I wanted it more than anything else.
“What attracted me to Rupa was that she shared my yearning. We were on a film set with some children, and she wanted to play with the children all day. She was such a mother even before being a mother. Her first movie was a super hit. She was set to be a star. But when I offered her a family, she jumped at it. I told her then that my wife would not work. That our children would have to come before everything else. She agreed. No hesitation. It’s what she wanted too. When she got pregnant that first time, I thought the sheer volume of my happiness would kill me. But we couldn’t keep the babies. Three boys and four girls we lost before my Kimaya stayed.
“Ten years—that’s all we got. For ten years I had a family. Because Rupa went through all that pain. I promised her that I would never let it be in vain. That our family would never break apart. Kimi turned us into a family. She became our life. I would have done anything. I would have cut out my own heart if it meant we got to keep Kimi.”
“Jen was pregnant too. Did you know that?” Rahul said, as though everything Kirit had said meant nothing. “Her husband and she were also going to start a family.”
“It doesn’t matter, Rahul. It couldn’t matter. How dare you not understand? You, who knows Kimi. Knows what she is. Could you let her go? Would you let her go if you had a choice to keep her?”
He was about to answer. But Kirit couldn’t let him deny it. He swung the gun between them. “Don’t lie. I’ve asked you to let her go. I’ve told you how dangerous this connection between you two is. You can never keep her happy. Not because she’s a princess and you’re barely a step above a beggar, but because you could never bear the pain of living with loss hanging over your head. Your cowardice would kill her spirit. If I had let her die when I was offered a solution, what would your life have been? And she would have died. We had come to the end of the road. I was offered a bridge and I took it.”
“What you were offered was the chance to steal another human being’s heart. You made the decision to let another person die, so someone you love could live.”
“It wasn’t like that. Asif tricked me so he could blackmail me. I thought I was paying to get to the top of a list of recipients. I didn’t know he would kill someone.”
“So it was okay to let other people on the list die?”
“Judge me all you will. But you know you would have done the same thing.” Kirit’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“I don’t know, sir,” Rahul said, not moving a muscle. “But Kimi has to live with the knowledge that her life comes from someone’s death. And now you want her to live with the additional burden of knowing it made you take your own life. After how hard she’s fought for you. You’re the coward here.” He took a step closer. “I lied earlier. Kimi already knows it was you. And her only response was that I don’t let anyone hurt you. She won’t be able to live with what you’re about to do. You know that.”
Kimi knew? The entire burden of the pain he had caused her descended upon him, making the gun feel too heavy in his hand.
“You said yourself I know her. I do know her. Kimi believes you always do the right thing. She understands your motivations better than anybody. All the things you just told me. When you tell her she’ll understand. If you turn yourself in and take your punishment, she has only your crime to deal with. She might still forgive you. Don’t take that choice away from her. Please. You’ve already taken too many choices away.”
Rahul’s form got blurry as Kirit’s eyes filled with tears. His baby girl. He’d never asked her what she wanted. And she’d never complained.
“Her life has just started. Don’t end any chance she has at happiness this way.”
The gun trembled in Kirit’s hand.
“Put the gun down.”
He tried, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Kimi really was just starting out. He couldn’t take her lease on life away from her.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Harder even than reading the last rites for seven babies. He put the gun down.
Rahul was on the gun in a second. He popped out the magazine, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and called to the officers who were standing outside.
Five officers stormed into Kirit’s office, guns drawn. Rahul handed the handcuffs to another officer and left the room.
The officer turned Kirit around. “You are under arrest for abetment in a criminal offense and intentionally participating in a criminal activity.” The click of the handcuffs was louder than he had expected.
“I release you from your promise,” Kirit said to no one in particular.
Rahul was exactly the kind of man his Kimi deserved.