"You had sex with another woman when your wife was pregnant? And Shumi saw that?"

I felt my stomach churn —no, drop—that sudden drop—when my brother finally mentioned Shumi in the middle of his chaos.

It made me sick to admit that Shumi had seen them. My brother with another woman, and this other woman being her cousin sister.

I should have gone numb, but no, I could feel every bit of the sensations across myself. My skin crawled. My throat tightened. I refused to even picture the very situation my brother was explaining. 

To imagine a child, that too a ten-year-old, walking into something so dark, adult and violating even surpassed my corrupt mind.

How can I? 

Which man would accept that the woman he loved was tangled in a mess of his brother's creation? 

I could see my brother wasn't responsible either. 

Nevertheless, he was involved, and that was not acceptable.

But brushing aside the sickening part, an icy panic washed through me. I pressed a hand to my forehead, pressing harder. 

I couldn't imagine what must have gone through her head.

How terrified she must have been.

How confused. How scared.

I felt my anger rise, already suffocating me, to fuel the feeling of protectiveness which was mixed with a horror I couldn't swallow.

"Dada...," I whispered, almost choking on my own disbelief. "Shumi? She—she was a child."

My brother flinched as if the words struck him like a hot iron rod. His face tightened painfully, shame and grief settling into every line as he took a long, shuddering breath.

"I know you know this, but still, I need to be very clear. Ved...understand this and understand this right," he said, voice trembling. "Shumi's involvement in the chain of events that destroyed an entire phase of my life was entirely unintentional."

My chest clenched. 

Dada rarely sounded so raw and stripped of all defences, but I knew he was determined to remove any kinds of misconceptions that I might have harboured after his confession. Not that I had any, but he was how he was, always on point.

"She wasn't supposed to be there," he continued, each word landing with visible regret.
"And yet... she became an unwilling witness to something far beyond her understanding."

He wiped his face with shaking fingers. "I cannot deny that one night marked her. Marked her innocence, her emotional sensitivity... everything."

My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.

Dada looked away; his voice low and hoarse. "If you put it lightly, it was a simple case of misinterpretation, born out of sheer panic and terror."

He exhaled shakily. "And Gayatri... God, Gayatri had never treated her kindly to begin with. She had shunned her, pushed her away, kept her distance. And for Shumi, Gayatri was just this rigid person who never expressed any kind of feelings except anger in front of her."

His voice hardened in a kind of resigned bitterness that perhaps only comes from living with one's worst decisions or severe hatred. 

In his case, I knew he harboured both.

"Shumi always tried," he said quietly. "Always respected her. Always looked up to her. But Gayatri... she never let her in."

He looked away, jaw tight with memory.

"The pictures you burned were from Shumi's—"

"—ninth birthday... yes, I know. She was—"

"—standing in one corner. On her own birthday, like an ignored kid." Dada rubbed his hands slowly. So slowly that it bothered me. He had gone silent, so I spoke.

"But dada...there were several photos. She looked happy."

"Yes, that was when Shreetama and I were around her. She used to consider us her best friends. Me her idol, Shreetama her secret sharer. But things changed..." He sighed. "You see Ved...The celebration happened before our mess, so yes, we still had that bond with Shumi. However,  the pictures you saw were taken before and after Gayatri's interaction with Shumi on her birthday."

"What kind of interaction?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"Ah! She was so small, so excited!" My brother smiled for a second, but then his smile morphed into anger. "When everyone was dancing, Shumi ran up to Gayatri, hugging her legs from behind, giggling, asking her to join."

His breath hitched.

"But Gayatri shoved her away!"

"Shoved her? Why?" A wave of disgust burned up my throat again.

"Apparently, she didn't like Shumi. She did come to dance with us, but didn't like Shumi dancing with Shreetama and me!"

"Fucking hell! That was her birthday party!" I cursed.

"I know, and for that reason, I thought I should have protested. Also, because I was the only one who had noticed. But then I decided it might be their family matter, and my interference might spoil her birthday. So I didn't say anything," dada whispered, guilt bleeding into the edges of his voice.

"But later... I understood. The hatred she carried for Shumi... it was...it was way more twisted than I could have anticipated."

My jaw clenched. "Why?"

Dada opened his mouth, closed it, then finally forced the truth out. "I didn't know, but it only grew."

"But I don't understand, when she saw you and Gayatri together, what does that—"

"Because Shumi still respected and loved Gayatri so much, she took Gayatri's reactions with me as expressions of distress. Also, we cannot blame her innocent mind for failing to understand the... the intimate position she walked into." He swallowed, eyes glistening.

My blood ran cold. Absolute disgust. Yes, that's what I felt. I didn't choose to hear a past that I wasn't a part of. Yet, the constant reminder that Shumi had to go through this was wreaking havoc in my mind.

"And she did what any frightened child would do—she ran." Dada paused, rubbing his temples as if the memory still stabbed him. "She ran straight to Shreetama. Her safe space."

Shumi, Gayatri's shy cousin who lived upstairs, had forgotten to return Rohit's book and decided to drop it off. She was passing by Rohit's apartment when the deep moaning stopped her.

The door was slightly ajar, and out of concern and instinct, she walked in and went towards Rohit's room, but she didn't have to walk any further.

What she saw froze her to the spot. Gayatri on Rohit's bed, her limbs tangled with Rohit's, the dim light revealing more than it should have. Her face was flushed, her eyes rolled back as she kept screaming.

Shumi gasped and stepped back, her hand over her mouth. Her tiny mind could only think of one possibility.

She ran down the stairs and shouted, banging the door, "Dorja kholo! Dorja kholo!" She pleaded to open the door, and a panicked Shreetama quickly stepped out. 

"Shumi?" Shreetama saw her pale face, the way she held her breath, and asked, "What happened? Why are you so – "

"Hurry! Hurry! I—I saw them," Shumi stammered. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but I saw Rohit dada... he was beating Dibhai." Tears ran down her cheeks as she sobbed.

"Beating? Gayatri?" Shreetama's frown deepened, but before she could analyse the situation, Shumi dragged her upstairs. She stumbled once on the staircase side that was under maintenance, but steadied herself and ran with Shumi.

The next few moments were a blur. 

Shumi pushed open the door, and as soon as Shreetama stepped into the flat, Gayatri's moan jolted her. Not willing to imagine the worst possible scenario, she rushed towards Rohit's room and, pushing the door ajar, she froze.

Gayatri sat on top of Rohit in her full naked glory. She didn't even move, seeing Shreetama. Shamelessly remained at her spot. But the commotion jerked Rohit.

Though he sat up too late, the sheet wrapped around his waist, confusion catching up to him, "Shree..." his senses were now shuffling between wide consciousness and total oblivion.

"Get off me!" he pushed Gayatri away and rushed down from the bed.

"Shreetama—wait—"

But Shreetama didn't stop to think. Her blood pumped harder, spinning her entire surroundings.

She turned and ran out of his flat with Shumi behind her, calling out in desperation while Rohit hastily pulled on a shirt and trousers and ran after them. 

Shreetama didn't listen. Not to Shumi's desperate calls nor Rohit's pleading.

She ran down the stairs as tears blurred her vision. Raging in the fire of betrayal, her heart pounded, and she clutched her stomach, muttering a soft cry. 

She was just about to take the next step towards another landing when Rohit caught up and tried to hold her arm, but in that sudden, chaotic chase and run, she missed a step and slipped.

"SHREE!" Rohit's fear that had crossed his mind a second before manifested.

The sound of Shreetama rolling down the stairs echoed through the corridor like a gunshot. She tumbled down the concrete steps, her body twisting, arms flailing to hold onto the nearby objects while screaming.

She hit the landing hard, but before Rohit could rush to her, a sickening crunch pierced through the air. 

A sharp, broken tile jutting out near the edge of the staircase that was under maintenance pierced straight into her lower abdomen as she collapsed with full force against it. Blood gushed instantly, soaking through her clothes. Her hand flew to the wound as eyes went wide in shock and pain. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp and then a desperate cry.

By the time Rohit reached her, she was curled in pain, trembling, vision started to blur while she clutched her wound and tried to stay awake. Tears were streaming down her face, and her beige kurta was stained with a crimson trail.

The neighbours came out hearing her cry, but before anybody could come forward to assess the situation and help, Rohit didn't wait for anyone and picked her up, rushing straight to the hospital.

"Stay awake, please, Shree, hold on!" Rohit had kept calling while driving like a maniac. As soon as he entered the hospital premises, Shreetama was taken away by a team of emergency nurses and doctors while he waited in the corridor.

The hours that followed threw Rohit in a state of shock, panic and guilt altogether, while people from the society had come to join him as well. 

With the first ray of the dawn, his last hope vanished.

The news came in a quiet, devastating landslide upon him.

Shreetama's pregnancy was a false alarm. She was not pregnant. 

However, the tile had pierced her abdomen in such a way that it had left behind a brutal wound. Apart from damaging her fallopian tubes severely, she suffered internal bleeding as well. The doctors declared the result as no possible way for any kind of pregnancy in the future.

At that moment, Rohit realised how much he had wanted the baby just as Shreetama did.

"I wanted the baby, Ved... I just didn't realise how badly!" My brother's face was pierced with grief and guilt. "But I also knew that Shumi did not cause the betrayal, nor the fall, nor the emotional choices of us adults, our moral failures—" his voice shook again. "She was simply present at the wrong place at the wrong moment..." He paused, then continued, "her innocent attempt to help went on to create a chain of events she never intended, and that affected Shreetama, me and herself."

I watched as dada stood up and walked towards the window. Holding onto the knob, he kept looking outside into the night sky.

"Call it the tragic reality of childhood innocence caught in adult complications, Shumi was never the same again. She was fragile, an easy hit, which Gayatri used. As a result, an innocent child suffered when adults failed to protect their own world."

I was about to ask – questions that I was piling up inside me, but couldn't. He spoke again, this time his eyes clouded with deep thoughts.

"Did she think there would be repercussions? No. How could she? In fact, the kind of fear that was instilled in her kept her feeling guilty all her life. Ved..." He looked at me, which turned my gaze on him as well.

I could see he was hesitating, but then he said something that hit me right on the chest. "...That fear stayed with her."

I felt something inside me twist. Like taking a turn for the worse.

"Wait. Stayed with her?"  

I just didn't like where this was heading.

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