A Poignant End

Next day, wanting to strategize Radha's defense in the impending trail as Dhruva reached the Chanchalguda Jail with Kavya and Prativadi in tow, she sent word to him that even as she was ashamed of seeing him, she was averse to recounting her crimes to any lawyer, but if Kavya were willing, she would love to meet her.

Thus, when Kavya was led away to meet Radha, Dhruva pleaded with Prativadi to bear with Radha's reluctance until they got her around into the defense groove.

So, even as Kavya set out with empathy, Radha awaited her in repentance, and when they made an eye contact, they couldn't take their eyes off each other; but when Kavya neared her, Radha lowered her gaze. But as Kavya lifted Radha's head, as if for an emotional encounter, the latter presented a tearful face to her, and as the former's eyes too welled up, Radha wiped them with a feeling of oneness. So, when Kavya took Radha into her tender arms to convey her empathy, she could feel her resurgent hope in her quivering frame, and when Kavya said Prativadi was sure to save her skin, Radha said she would like to entrust her case to Kavya's care. But as Kavya made her privy to her own sensitivities, Radha said she would have Prativadi if only Kavya was on hand to support her. Before the end of that evocative meeting, having discovered her latent fondness for Radha, when Kavya whispered in Radha's ear about her own lesbian leanings towards her, as an elated Radha planted a kiss on Kavya's lips, they both had their first taste of lesbian love.

Soon, as it was time for them to part for the day, Radha gave Kavya the missive that she penned for Dhruva.

On Kavya's return, as Prativadi was led up to Radha to take her brief, Dhruva began reading Radha's letter.

Darling:

I am ashamed that I let you down. What a fate it is to betray your trust and belittle my love! While I lost my way with you, blinded by revenge, constrained by guilt, I've to hide my face from you; and that's the tragedy of my life. Don't I know how hard I made it for you, so I don't want to add any more, but with your understanding (I know I can't seek your forgiveness) I shall await the noose with fortitude.

What with the fake-notes case bringing Pravar and Shakeel into the spotlight, I came to you to test the waters of avenge. But even as I was shifting my goalpost of life in the arena of our ardor, my fate played foul with my love as Ranjit too came into the setting. It was as if fate had chosen to place its axe in my hand to grind it on the anvil of revenge, forged by the poison of abuse. How sad that I allowed my bitterness towards a deceiver to belittle my affection for my benefactor that is even as I was recasting my shattered life in the mould of his love, you know who.

While I shamefully pried upon Mithya's cupboards, I chanced upon her personal jottings and her long-lost daughter's photograph that has striking resemblances to Natya, and when I showed it to her, as she identified it as hers, I felt like I was her own mother. However, I curbed my impulse to reveal her identity to you, but as she fitted in my game plan, so I bought time, as it were to her peril. Then sadly for me, I discovered the poison that Mithya acquired; you know for what, and with that my urge for revenge got the better of my love for you. But on the other hand, I was more determined than ever to see Pravar's end, if only to end Natya's misery.

Believe me; I wanted to come out clean with you after I was done with the despicable trio, in the hope that you would own me as you had once owned Mithya, in spite of everything. Probably you would have, had not Ranjit's murder pushed Kavya into your enamored fold, for you have a peculiar weakness for feminine criminality. But after that ménage a trios with Pravar and Natya, how odd it would have been for her as your woman to have Natya as her daughter. Maybe, to save Kavya's life from that oddity, fate had ended Natya's tragic life. But then, is my life any less ironical than Kavya's - Ranjit jilted me for her money, and I lost you to her love. Is there a parallel to it by way of fact or fiction?

Perhaps, you and Kavya deserve each other better, and I want to see you tie the knot as I pray for your married bliss, for that won't you earn me a day's parole. I seek your sympathy, not as barter, but to end my agonizing life in penitence.

Yours not to be,

Radha

While he broke down reading the letter, seeing Kavya's concern for him, he gave it to her to let her comprehend his position herself.

When she too finished reading it with tear-filled eyes, he told her that had he acted upon the empathy he felt for Natya that day, perhaps, he could have saved her life, and as Kavya leaned on his shoulder to share his agony, he sought self-solace in her embrace. Then as she recalled her association with the unfortunate Natya, he made her privy to Mithya's inimitable life.

Mithya was the youngest of three siblings in an orthodox family and by the time she matured, her sister got married, and her brother finished the schooling. However, when she was sixteen, even as her mother went to the U.S to spend some time with her sister, their father's new assignment involved touring all the while. That fortuitously left her brother and her together for most of the time, which happenstance, in the formative years of their sexuality, ushered in an unusual togetherness between them that insensibly led them into an incestuous relationship.

On her return even as her mother was horrified at seeing her four-month pregnant daughter, amplifying her misery, her errant son had hanged himself, leaving Mithya to bear their shame, for abortion by then became out of redeem, which forced her parents to let her deliver her sin in secrecy. While her father gave away her girl child to an orphanage, given the abnormality of its being, she could discern the dichotomy in its separation; even as the deprivation of her child afflicted her maternal condition; at the same time, it eased her from the grip of a guilt complex. Thereafter, as a way of psychic escape for all of them, her father sent her to Hyderabad to let her pursue her higher studies.

Later, while the nuptials with Ashok erased the shame of incest in her subconscious, as she was morally constrained in bearing a child having orphaned one, the prospect of conception instilled in her a sense of foreboding. But when she was coming to terms with her life, her man lost his moorings in moneymaking, and though she tried to stop him from entering into the rat race of life with a no-win goal, he was bent on becoming somebody in the society, never mind the sacrifices they have to make for that. So, leaving her to fend for herself, when he left for Dubai for raising the capital for a grandiose venture, so as to engage herself, she took up a job. In time though, as his irregular letters failed to fill her emotional void, for they failed to pen his longing for her, she saw the futility of holding herself anymore.

So, pondering over how to go about her peccadilloes, she opted for one-night stands for they wouldn't be intrusive, but her escapades that catered to her sexual needs, had failed to address her emotional owes. Added to that, but for his yearly sojourns, as her man showed no inclination to return into her arms, she felt as if she were reduced as his distant mistress; so as if to address the emotional neglect and to shore up her self-worth, she started an affair with a colleague she fancied, which, however, ended abruptly when his distressed wife committed suicide; she fared no better in her next venture as her lover deserted her, when his spouse threatened to divorce him.

So, wearied of wooing married men, she sank into a bachelor's arms at the next turn, and as his virgin ardor matched her raging craving, she felt that she was in the seventh heaven. But in time, as his innate need to have a family of his own broke their liaison, she was back to square one, and vexed with the vagaries of peer encounters, she thought of a live-in with a lowly, a la Bona Sera, Mrs. Campbell the movie she happened to see. Like Bona Sera did before her, she too set up a grocery shop, and took the young Dilip to assist her in the shop and cater to her in her bed.

When she all but forgot about Ashok, he returned with mounds of money and an ambition to make a mountain of wealth out of it, but it didn't take her long to realize that he was into smuggling and that he returned only to head Indian operations of an Italian mafia. While she was ill at ease with his escapades, Ashok was restive at Dilip's presence in his house, and Dilip too resented Ashok's return as that reduced him as a mere servant of the house though Mithya allowed him to reign in her bed on the sly. But matters came to a head after they shifted into the newly acquired bungalow at 9, Castle Hills, when Ashok wanted her to fire her hireling and she insisted that he be allowed to stay put in their A.C. Guards house that they vacated.

While Ashok decided to bide for time, seeing the writing on the wall, Dilip, played up her man's neglect of her, and made her believe that there was another woman in his life, out to take her position. Soon, he contrived to convince her that Ashok entertained the idea of eliminating her altogether and also played upon her weakness for him by hammering that if she were killed, he would be left high and dry. Goaded by Dilip to act before it was too late, she pondered over the ways and means of getting rid of her man and get away with it as well.

However, by way of distraction, so it seemed to her, she came to know of her father's death, well after the obsequies were over; though her father had disowned her for her amoral ways, she had informed her mother about her change of address to 9, Castle Hills, just in case.

In that poignant meeting between the mother and her daughter, after a decade long separation, being at a loss for words, they lost eyes to each other. When the mother opened her arms in reconciliation, the daughter closed hers for an embrace of solace. Amidst their myriad emotions in their state of closeness, as the ethos of motherhood came to the fore, the mother savored her daughter while the daughter thought of her own daughter. As the spasms of her daughter's heart conveyed her resurgent craving for her child, the mother, in that moment of self-fulfillment, felt that her daughter too should experience the same. However, even as the daughter's craving to hug her own daughter had increased, the mother turned skeptical about the chances of finding the girl sixteen years after she had abandoned her. Whatever, as the mother wanted to take her to the orphanage, where her daughter was left, the daughter felt that it would be far better for her mother to first befriend the girl, and then prepare her for the reunion before she herself took her under her wings.

So, Mithya hoped that once her mother rediscovered her daughter, she would redeem herself by adopting her own daughter, but shortly after her return home, when her mother informed her that only the previous month, her girl had left the orphanage without a trace, Mithya was truly devastated. But after he came into her life, stirred by the resurgent maternal impulses, she wanted to have children, but, sadly, her two conceptions ended in miscarriages. Wondering why Mithya never showed her daughter's picture to him that Radha laid her hands on, he said, maybe, by then having learned to get over her past, she had put her daughter's memories too on the back burner.

So, as he finished that recap of Mithya's disturbingly fascinating life, Kavya said that while every life was unique in its own way, as Mithya's reveals, some were more unique than the rest. Agreeing with her, he said that the way Mithya came into his life would only illustrate the truism of that, and, anyway, that was for some other day, but for that kidnap maybe she herself would have discovered Natya's photograph, and that would have been a different story altogether. Well, if only Mithya had made him privy to the poison in the bosom of their home, maybe, Natya would have still been alive, for Radha would not have come into its possession. That Mithya kept him in the dark about the deadly thing would only prove that even in the closest of relationships, there was a limit to the openness, and as Radha's ruse to trap Kavya showed, there was no end to the mischief, the sense of insecurity could ensue.

Then, he recounted his tryst with Rani, and said that if only he had allowed her to accompany him to the Tank Bund that evening; she would have recognized Ranjit and spilled the beans on Radha as well; and maybe that would have enabled him to nip Radha's urge for revenge in the bud, which would have saved her soul besides the lives of all those; and also how fate had played hide and seek with Ranjit's life again as he visited 9, Castle Hills, when Rani was there! Had he insisted that she met him, what a difference it would have made to him and the rest of them! But it was not to be.

When Kavya lamented that Radha's paranoia of losing him to her should have undone Natya, he said that her apprehensions were not unfounded after all; as she glowingly took him into her arms, smug in her embrace, he confessed to her that he loved her like none else. At that, as she told him that she would ever think aloud with him, he said, in jest, that his ears would forever be wide open, and she crooned into them that she came to love her rival too, and added that as and when she came out of the cage, he should let her nestle at 9, Castle Hills, in their ménage a trois.

Then, even as he was reaching for her lips that uttered those words after his heart, as if to remind him that it was a public place, Prativadi was about to reach them with the vakalat, at which, pointing at the last lines of Radha's letter, Kavya said coyly that if he chooses to take her to the altar, she would be coming with the Oasis Builders for a dowry. Then, even as the lawyer came in the earshot, he said to her ears only that he hopes to have their heirs in time to 9, Castle Hills and Spandan as well.