Twist of Fate

“No!!! Please don’t go,” he shouted, “I love you. You know that I can’t live without you.”

Shivani nudged the handheld away from my ears, tired of the same sob story.

“Ajay, this relationship has become a one-way street, and neither of us will be happy to keep up with the farce. I was a child when I started going out with you. I am a grown-up woman now. Our interests and outlook towards life are different. We don’t go together.”

Shivani did not attempt to decipher the incomprehensible sounds at the other end of the line. She continued once the sounds ceased. 

“I have tried to break up with you half a dozen times before today, only to be swayed by your incessant pleading and sobbing. This cycle is going to repeat if I were to again pay heed to you. I am not going to make the same mistake. We will not be happy in this forced relationship.”

“How can you wriggle out of a seven-year relationship over a seven-minute phone call? You called yourself a child, but I was a man when I fell for you. For your sake, I fought with my family, broke off my engagement, ignored my friends. They kept on telling me that you are out of my league, too rich and too intelligent to be a permanent companion to me, but I had faith in your vows. I was so happy when you got selected for your MBA in IIM Ahmedabad. I naively thought that this would bridge the barrier of distance between us, only for it to accentuate the class divide.” 

“I am sorry, Ajay. I loved you at one point. I have outgrown you with time. I don’t see myself with a person whose world is confined to a small town like Gandhinagar while I work in Delhi or Mumbai, if not London or Paris. I can’t live with someone who earns Rs 10,000 a month when my day’s earnings will be higher. I don’t want to feel ashamed to introduce a husband like you to my friends.”

“Your words are piercing my heart. You are not the Shivani I know. You have changed.”

“Exactly! People evolve with time. I know you are hurting now. It will hurt for some time and then cease to matter. You will move on. It is good that I realised the futility of our relationship in time; imagine how our life would have been had this happened after our marriage.”

“My life has no meaning without you.”

“Cut out the heavy dialogue.”

“Since when have you become so cruel?”

“This conversation is not going anywhere. I have to leave for my class in some time. Goodbye.”

“Wait, you can’t do this to me.”

“I am left with no other option. We are done.”

“Let’s speak in the evening. I will come around to your hostel.”

“No, you won’t. I will tell the security guard that I don’t know you. I have said whatever I had to. You and I should stop speaking to each other rather than prolong this agony. I am blocking your number and deleting your contact in my phonebook. If you have some self-respect, do not call me.”

“You bitch!!! You will never be happy in life, no matter how much money and fame you earn. You…”

Shivani cut the call and slammed the cell phone into the bed. 

Then she let out an ear-piercing scream.

The charade was much more painful than the terminal disease slowly eating out her body. She loved Ajay more than her life and knew that he would be a broken man after her death. It was better to be angry than heartbroken. 

She wiped away the water streaming down her face and got up to leave for her chemotherapy.