STIFLED
CHAPTER THREE
Sunday afternoon.
Mira waited until all the friends left. Correction -- until all his friends left. They had descended on her apartment the previous evening, a rowdy convoy of Karan's college buddies and their girlfriends, and had proceeded to drink her beer, eat her snacks, sprawl across her furniture, and treat her home as if it were a hostel common room. One of them -- a girl called Priya, all legs and lip gloss -- had draped herself across Karan's shoulders for a group photograph, and Karan had let her. More than let her. He had pulled her closer, his hand settling on her waist with the easy familiarity of a man who touched women the way other people touched furniture -- without thinking, without permission, without consequence.
Mira had watched from the kitchen doorway, a plate of reheated samosas in her hands, and felt something inside her crystallise.
Sanika was right. Being a yes-master was not the way to go about it.
She loved Karan. Yes. But that love was costing her self-respect. She had given and given and adjusted and accommodated and smiled when she wanted to scream, and what had it got her? A relationship that existed only in private. A boyfriend who introduced her as "a colleague" and hid her from his family. A life lived in the margins of someone else's convenience.
She was going to put her foot down. Yes, it would hurt. But it was not as if she was not hurting already.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stood in front of the couch where Karan was slouching, fiddling with the TV remote. The apartment smelled of stale beer and the ghost of fifteen people's perfume. Empty glasses lined the coffee table. A cushion had fallen behind the sofa and no one had picked it up. This was her home, and it didn't feel like hers anymore.
"I'm leaving," she said.
Karan didn't look up from the TV. "What's the hurry? My sis's flight doesn't land till almost midnight."
"Karan." She injected firmness into her voice -- a firmness that felt unfamiliar, like wearing a shoe on the wrong foot. "I'm going."
He frowned and got up slowly. "What's wrong, Mira?"
She took another deep, fortifying breath. No backing down now. She had rehearsed this in her head a hundred times -- in the shower, during her commute, lying awake at three in the morning while Karan snored beside her. The words were ready. She just had to say them out loud.
"You said we should be just neighbours when your family gets here. I think we should continue the same even after they leave."
"What, you're breaking up with me?" He scoffed, disbelief written across his face like a headline. The idea that she would leave him was so foreign to his worldview that he literally could not process it.
"Yes. I'll start looking for another apartment and vacate mine as soon as I can. I don't think it would be comfortable for either of us --"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on just a damn minute. Where is this coming from? You were fine until a few minutes ago. We went out yesterday, spent the night together, and today you want to break up?"
She would miss him. She already missed him. Tears glistened in her eyes at the thought of not seeing him again. Not feeling his arms around her as they cuddled and watched movies. His smiles, his laughter, his touch. The deep, soothing voice he used when he gave her a massage after a tiring day at work. She would miss him so much.
But.
"I love you, Karan. You know that. I love you more than I can ever say, but --"
"But what?" He looked plain bewildered.
"Love is not supposed to hurt like this, Karan. And it's hurting me. You are hurting me. Every time you flirt and charm other women, you hurt me. Every time you touch them, you hurt me."
"Oh, come on, Mira." He took a step towards her but stopped immediately when she backed up a step. To this day, he could not remember a time when she had backed away from him. "You know it doesn't mean anything. I'm just being friendly."
"It is not friendly. Don't tell me it's friendly because I know the difference. I can see the difference." She remembered Sanika's words. "What if I did the same thing? What if I hugged and patted Sunil's butt?" she asked, naming Karan's best friend. "How would you feel if I flirted with him, extended my plate so he could share my dinner? Complimented him on how hot he looked?"
Karan looked away, as if he didn't like the picture she was painting. Too bad. She should have painted and coloured it a long time ago.
"Do you know how it felt to watch you do all that yesterday with that girl? And it wasn't the first time." She waved her hand, cutting him off when he opened his mouth. "I know there are a lot of women out there who are OK with that kind of thing. But I'm not. I'm not OK." She swiped a trembling hand over her wet eyes, smearing her mascara and not caring. "I put up with all that hurt because I love you. But hiding me away when your family comes, like I'm your dirty little secret, like you're... you're ashamed to even know someone like me..." Her voice cracked. "I accept that you can't tell them we're lovers. But what about a friend? A girl you like, respect, someone you're interested in? You can't even do that, can you? Because I don't hold that kind of place in your life. I never tried to hold myself away from you, so you probably think I'm e-easy."
More tears leaked from her eyes. God, she hadn't known it could hurt this much.
"Maybe I am, I don't know," she continued, sniffing, inhaling deeply, steadying her voice through sheer force of will. "I did what I did because I fell in love with you and saw my future with you. But now I realise it's not enough if I see it alone." She met his eyes -- those large, handsome, utterly bewildered eyes -- for the last time. "Bye, Karan. Take care. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other until I move out of my apartment, but I'll try to keep out of your way as much as I can. I suggest you do the same."
She turned and walked out before her courage deserted her.
The door clicked shut behind her. She stood in the corridor of the apartment building, her back against the wall, and let the tears come. They came hard and fast and silent, the way tears do when you've been holding them for two years.
She didn't know how long she stood there. Could have been five minutes. Could have been thirty. The corridor smelled of dal frying in someone's kitchen and the faint chemical tang of floor cleaner. Through the wall, she could hear the muffled sounds of a cricket match on someone's television -- some batsman hit a four and a family cheered and it was just an ordinary evening for everyone in this building except her. She wanted to bang on every door and scream I just left the man I love, does nobody care? But nobody would care, and she knew that, and knowing it made the tears come faster.
Her phone buzzed. Sanika.
Su: You OK? You've been quiet all day.
Mira typed and deleted three responses before settling on: Broke up with Karan. For real this time.
The reply was instantaneous: Coming over. Don't move.
No. I'm OK. I just need to be alone tonight. I'll tell you both everything tomorrow.
A pause. Then: If you change your mind, I'm one call away. Any hour. I mean it, Si.
I know. Love you.
Love you more. And I'm proud of you.
Those last four words broke something open in her chest. She pressed the phone against her heart and took a shuddering breath. Then she straightened her spine, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and walked to her own apartment. She unlocked the door, stepped inside, locked it behind her, and stood in the small hallway that smelled of the jasmine incense she'd lit that morning.
She was alone. Truly, completely alone for the first time in two years. No Karan to text goodnight. No Karan to plan weekends around. No Karan to make excuses for.
The silence was terrifying. And liberating. And she wasn't sure which feeling was winning.
Shruti watched the front door slam shut behind her departing husband.
It was Sunday and he had gone off to work. An important meeting, he'd said. And maybe it was. She didn't deny the possibility. She herself had weekends when she'd gone to meet a prospective client, but it had been rare. She tried her level best to avoid bringing work home. She tried to give a hundred per cent to her home and her husband.
But not Runal. Not anymore.
He had been so much fun during their college days. Full of laughter and jokes and the kind of spontaneous affection that made her feel like the centre of someone's universe. She remembered the boy who had waited outside her hostel gate in the rain, holding a bouquet of roses he'd bought with his pocket money, grinning like a fool because she'd agreed to go to the movies with him. She remembered the clumsy, eager young man who had torn her blouse in his eagerness to make love to her on their wedding night and looked so contrite and apologetic that she'd laughed and kissed him and told him she loved him anyway. She remembered the partner who had prepared her resume and applied to job sites on her behalf because he didn't want her to sit at home waiting for him -- because he believed she was meant for bigger things than domestic routine.
Where had that man gone?
She didn't love the man who didn't come near her except to sleep with her once a fortnight, if that. She didn't love the man who told her to work but resented her when she succeeded. She didn't love the man who communicated primarily through criticism and silence, who had turned their home into a theatre of polite avoidance, who slept with his back turned to her every night as if her presence in the bed was something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
Pathetic, she thought with a grimace. That's what she was. There were countless women out there who suffered through truly traumatic marriages -- violence, abandonment, poverty. Here she was, in a nice three-bedroom apartment in Koregaon Park, with a job and friends and financial independence, complaining because her husband didn't cuddle her anymore. Her mother-in-law would call her ungrateful. Half her relatives would agree.
But she wasn't happy. And pretending otherwise was becoming exhausting.
With a sigh, she started sorting the clothes for washing. Midway through the task, she stopped.
She had already found the perfume on his shirt earlier in the week. She had already seen the email from Zara. She had already told her friends. But she had not confronted Runal, because confrontation would make it real, and she was not yet ready for real.
Now, standing in the utility room with his blue shirt in her hands -- the same blue shirt Zara had recommended, the same blue shirt he had worn without a word, the same blue shirt that had come home smelling of someone else -- she realised that real had arrived whether she was ready or not.
She brought the shirt to her nose again. The perfume was still there. Fainter now, after a week of hanging in the closet, but present. Undeniable. A floral-musky scent that was nothing like anything Shruti owned.
She put the shirt in the washing machine. Poured in the detergent. Pressed start. And stood there, listening to the machine fill with water, watching the drum begin its slow rotation, and feeling, for the first time in her marriage, genuinely afraid.
Sanika shifted the carry bag from one hand to another as she turned into her street, her steps easy and leisurely. She had forgotten to get milk and juice packs during yesterday's grocery run, and rather than drive, she had walked to the nearest supermarket. Honestly, in Pune traffic, it was faster to walk than to drive and spend half an hour circling for parking.
Lost in her thoughts -- replaying the confrontation with Samar Rane and coming up with increasingly creative insults she should have deployed -- she didn't hear the bike roaring up behind her.
Before she realised what was happening, she felt a swift tug on the back of her shirt, heard a ripping sound, and stumbled sideways as a motorcycle swept past with two men on it, laughing their heads off. Her shirt had been torn from neck to waist. The collar and edges held together, keeping the fabric against her back, but the violation -- the casual, laughing cruelty of it -- hit her like a physical blow.
Fury replaced shock in approximately half a second.
"Bloody bastards!" she screamed.
They heard it. The bike screeched to a halt and both riders erupted from it, their laughter curdling into aggression with the terrifying speed of men who had been drinking.
"What did you call us, bitch?" The first one bore down on her, weaving slightly, his breath carrying the sour-sweet stench of cheap liquor.
This was a residential street. Her street. A small, friendly neighbourhood where people smiled and waved and helped each other. Sanika's scream, followed by the screeching bike, brought people out of their houses within seconds.
"What's going on here? Sanika beti, any problem?" Mr. Kulkarni, her father's friend, came out of his house, concern on his face.
"Shut up, old man!" The second drunk shoved him backward, coming to stand beside his friend. They were surrounding her now -- two men, drunk enough to be aggressive but not staggering. Dangerous.
She could hear the neighbours' voices rising. "Someone go and call that policewala. I think he's home."
The drunks either didn't hear or didn't care. The first one leaned into her face. "I asked a question here, bitch. What did you call us just now, huh?"
"Bloody bastards," Sanika said. Loudly. Clearly. Enunciating each syllable. "Drunken. Bloody. Bastards."
The first guy's face contorted. "Drunk or not, I think it's time we showed you we can do more than tear your shirt."
Yeah, like she was going to wait for that.
Sanika charged him. She dropped her shoulder and bulldozed into him from the side -- a move she had learned from being the only girl between two brothers, both of whom had considered it their sacred duty to teach their little sister how to fight before she learned how to ride a bicycle. The impact sent him staggering. He tried to regain his balance, failed, and landed hard on his backside. He struggled to get up and, with a lurid curse, lunged for her.
She dodged sideways and stuck out her foot.
He stumbled but managed not to fall on his face. The second guy tried to grab her from behind, but Mr. Kulkarni's son -- a college kid with more courage than sense -- caught him by wrapping both arms around his waist. Another neighbour joined, and together they brought the second drunk down and held him. The women of the street were running inside their houses, probably to fetch weapons -- rolling pins, cricket bats, the heavy brass pestle that every Indian kitchen kept for emergencies.
The first drunk regained his footing and turned to Sanika with blood in his eyes. She fell into a boxing stance -- left foot forward, weight on the balls of her feet, guard up. Her army brother had drilled this into her during summer holidays until the stance was muscle memory. She only hoped she still remembered what came next.
He charged. This time there was no evading him. She went down, but she brought him down with her, and as they hit the ground, she drove her knee into his ribs with every ounce of fury that had been building since two forty-five that morning. She felt something give -- not break, but crack -- and he howled.
Then a hand grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him off her with the casual authority of someone picking up a piece of litter.
Samar Rane stood there in his uniform, the drunk dangling from his fist like a caught fish, and behind him, two constables were already handcuffing the second man with efficient, practiced movements.
"Everyone OK?" Samar asked, directing the question at the street at large but looking at Sanika. She was on the ground, her torn shirt bunched at her back, her knee bleeding from where it had hit the gravel, her hair wild, her eyes blazing with adrenaline and rage. She looked, he thought, like a woman who did not need rescuing but would accept it under protest.
"That one is mine," she said, pointing at the drunk he was holding. "I wasn't finished."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "I noticed. That was a solid knee strike."
"My brother taught me."
"Smart brother." He handed the drunk to one of the constables and extended his hand to help her up. She took it, grudgingly, and stood. Her knee throbbed. Her shirt was ruined. Her carry bag had split, and milk packets were scattered across the road.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his eyes scanning her with the quick, thorough assessment of a man trained to evaluate damage.
"Just the knee. And the shirt. And my dignity." She tried to adjust the torn fabric. "Can you at least turn around?"
He turned. Behind him, she could hear him instructing the constables in rapid-fire Marathi, directing the neighbours to go back inside, coordinating the arrest with the efficiency of a man for whom street-level chaos was a Tuesday afternoon.
Mrs. Menon from three doors down appeared with a shawl and a cup of tea. "Here, beti. Wrap this around yourself and drink this. Those animals -- in our own street! Thank God the DCP sahab was home."
Thank God indeed. Not that Sanika would ever admit it. Not to him. Not ever.
Monday evening, the three of them converged on Pizza Hut with the desperate energy of survivors regrouping after a natural disaster. They fell into each other's arms in a tight group hug before collapsing into a corner booth.
"How's your knee?" Shruti asked, inspecting Sanika's bruised leg.
"Fine. Just a scrape." Sanika waved it away. "And guess what? The jerk neighbour is the cop who made the arrest. DCP, Crime Branch, no less. He came over later to take my statement and update me on the case."
"What?" both friends chorused. "Are you sure?"
"Positive. Uniform, badge, the whole deal. He even grinned at me when he told me the drunk I punched had cracked ribs."
"Cracked ribs?" Mira's eyes went round with admiration. "From your punch?"
"From my knee, actually. And the neighbour ladies threw chilli powder at the other one." Sanika's grin was savage. "He had it everywhere."
Shruti laughed for the first time in what felt like days. "God, I wish I'd been there."
"So your scary, grizzly-bear neighbour turns out to be a cop," Mira mused. "That explains the weird hours and the motorcycle."
"It explains the hours. It does not excuse the motorcycle. Or the porch light. Or the personality."
"You're blushing."
"I am not blushing."
"You are absolutely blushing, and you never blush." Mira was grinning. "We've been through all three engagements with you and you have never, not once, blushed when talking about a man."
"Because there is nothing to blush about! We introduced ourselves and he accompanied me during my morning run the last couple of days. That's it."
"If you say so," Mira shrugged one shoulder.
"He's a Maratha, for God's sake. Rane. With my track record, even thinking about it would be asking for trouble." She waved them to silence. "We're getting off the topic. Shratz, what's happening?"
Shruti's face sobered. "Nothing's changed. I still haven't asked. I'm still afraid to."
"And Si?"
Mira nodded, firmly but sadly. "I broke up with Karan. For real this time."
A pause. Then Sanika reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "Good. He didn't deserve you."
"I know." Mira's voice was small. "But it still hurts."
The music system finished one song and another started. A syrupy love ballad about dying for your beloved, which was precisely the kind of thing none of them wanted to hear right now.
"OK, you know what?" Sanika said, sitting up straight, her second cocktail making her bolder than usual. "I'm so sick of pretending. Pretending it doesn't hurt. Pretending we're fine. Pretending these men didn't completely wreck us."
The words landed on the table like a grenade with the pin pulled.
Mira set down her glass. Her eyes were red-rimmed but fierce. "You know what Karan did? The last time his parents came to visit from Lucknow? He introduced me as his colleague. Two years together. Two years of me cooking for him, cleaning up after his messes, holding his hand through every panic attack and career crisis. And I was his colleague." She laughed -- a harsh, brittle sound. "He couldn't even say the word girlfriend in front of his mother. Like I was something to be ashamed of."
Shruti traced the rim of her glass, her jaw tight. "Runal used to come home smelling of perfume. Not mine. Someone sharp and floral -- Jo Malone, I think. He'd walk in at midnight, shower immediately, and then slide into bed like nothing happened. I found the receipt once. Tucked into his coat pocket. A dinner for two at a restaurant he'd never taken me to. When I confronted him, you know what he said?" Her voice cracked. "'You're imagining things, Shruti. You always imagine things.' Made me feel like I was the crazy one."
Sanika exhaled hard. The cocktails had loosened something in her chest -- a knot she'd been carrying so long she'd forgotten it was there. "Three engagements," she said quietly. "Three men who looked me in the eye and said forever and then walked away like I was a pair of shoes they'd tried on and didn't like." She held up a finger. "Rohit. My college sweetheart. Left me three weeks before the wedding because his mother decided a girl with short hair was inauspicious. Short hair! Like my haircut was a bigger red flag than his inability to stand up to a woman who still ironed his underwear."
Mira snorted. Even Shruti managed a small, painful smile.
"Number two. Varun. The chartered accountant." Sanika held up a second finger. "Six months in, I found out he was simultaneously engaged to a girl in Nagpur. A backup engagement, he called it. In case I didn't work out. Like I was a mutual fund and he was hedging his bets."
"Oh my God," Mira whispered.
"And then there was Mihir." The third finger. Sanika's voice went very quiet. "Mihir was the worst. Because Mihir was kind. Mihir was everything. And then one day, four months before our wedding, he sat me down and said, 'Sanika, I love you, but I'm not in love with you. I think I might be in love with someone else.' Someone else turned out to be his gym trainer. A man named Arjun." She swallowed. "I don't blame him for being who he is. I blame him for using me as a shield while he figured it out. Three years. Three years of my life as someone's cover story."
The silence at the table was thick enough to touch.
Mira picked up her phone. Not the Notes app this time. She opened the camera, switched it to video mode, and propped it against the salt shaker so it faced all three of them.
"What are you doing?" Sanika asked.
"Something we should have done a long time ago." Mira's voice was raw but steady. "We're done being silent. We're done letting these men walk away clean while we sit here bleeding. I want to say it out loud. On camera. All of it. Everything they did. Everything we swallowed." She looked at both of them. "Who's in?"
Shruti stared at the phone's blinking red light. Then she straightened her spine. "I'm in."
Sanika looked at the camera. At her friends' faces -- flushed, angry, a little drunk, completely done pretending. She thought about three broken engagements and the pitying looks from relatives and the WhatsApp groups where aunties discussed her defects like she was a returned product. She thought about every night she'd spent wondering what was wrong with her, when the truth was that nothing had ever been wrong with her.
"Record," she said.
Mira hit the button.
What followed was forty-seven minutes of raw, unfiltered, slightly buzzed truth-telling that none of them would fully remember recording but none of them would ever regret.
Sanika went first, her voice gaining strength with each sentence. Rohit and his mother's superstitions. Varun and his backup fiancee. Mihir and the three years of borrowed time. She didn't cry. She was past crying. She was furious -- a clean, clarifying fury that burned away the shame she'd been carrying for years.
Mira went next. Karan's cowardice -- the family trips she was never invited to, the festivals she spent alone, the way he'd reach for her in private but couldn't hold her hand in public. "Two years," she said, looking directly at the camera, her eyes bright with tears she refused to let fall. "Two years and I wasn't even worth a noun. Not girlfriend. Not partner. Not even friend. I was a colleague." She laughed again, that sharp, wounded sound. "He had the audacity to cry when I broke up with him. Like he was the victim. Like his heart was the one that got stepped on every single time his mother called and he'd lock himself in the bathroom to take it so she wouldn't hear my voice in the background."
Then Shruti. Quiet, controlled Shruti, who never raised her voice, who always mediated, who smoothed things over. Shruti, who looked at the camera and said, in a voice so calm it was terrifying: "My husband cheated on me. I don't know for how long. I don't know how many times. But I know the perfume, and I know the restaurant, and I know the exact shade of lipstick I found on his collar -- MAC Ruby Woo, if anyone's curious. And when I told him I knew, he looked me in the eye and said I was paranoid. He said maybe I needed to talk to someone. He meant a therapist. For my trust issues." She paused. "My trust issues. Because apparently noticing that your husband comes home smelling like another woman is a mental health condition now."
By the end of the video, they were laughing and crying simultaneously -- the kind of unhinged, cathartic, mascara-ruining breakdown that happens when you finally stop performing strength and let yourself be honest. Sanika made a crack about the dimensions of a man's character being more important than the dimensions of anything else, which sent them into hysterics. Mira confessed that Karan was spectacular in bed and absolutely useless everywhere else, "which is basically like having a sports car with no steering wheel." Shruti said she hoped Runal's mistress enjoyed the Jo Malone perfume because she certainly hadn't, and that if there was a man worth dying for out there, he'd better show up with a receipt for his own damn dinner.
They clinked their glasses one last time, paid the bill, and went home -- Sanika to her empty house and her chrysanthemums and the distant sound of a Royal Enfield Bullet that she pretended she couldn't hear; Shruti to her silent apartment and the bedroom she now occupied alone; and Mira to her one-bedroom flat across from Karan's, where she stood under the shower for twenty minutes and cried for a relationship she had ended and a man she still loved despite knowing he didn't deserve it.
Later that night, Mira lay in bed, scrolling through her phone, unable to sleep.
The video was still in her camera roll. She played it back, watching through her fingers, cringing and laughing in equal measure. It was messy. It was raw. It was real. Three women, slightly drunk, mascara smudged, saying everything they'd been too polite and too scared and too conditioned to say in all the years they'd spent swallowing other people's failures.
It was aimed, every unfiltered word of it, at the man she had just walked away from. The man who had failed on loyalty, on courage, and on the basic human decency of acknowledging her existence in front of his own family.
Before she could think about it too carefully -- before the rational part of her brain could intervene and remind her that the internet was forever and impulse posting was a recipe for regret -- she opened Instagram, uploaded the video, added a caption (Never again silent. #NeverAgainSilent), tagged Sanika and Shruti, and hit Share.
Then she silenced notifications, put her phone on the nightstand, pulled the covers over her head, and fell into the first deep sleep she'd had in weeks.
By morning, the video would have ten thousand views. By lunch, fifty thousand. By the end of the week, it would have crossed into the millions -- shared on X and WhatsApp and Reddit and every workplace group chat from Pune to Bombay. Clips were reposted on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Reaction videos spawned reaction videos. Feminist accounts called it "the most honest forty-seven minutes on the internet." Men's rights accounts called it "toxic feminism." Everyone had an opinion. No one could look away.
And somewhere, in a quiet room in a quiet house, someone would watch it with shaking hands and narrowed eyes and a hatred that had been building for years -- a hatred that had nothing to do with the video and everything to do with a wound so old and so deep that nothing, not time, not therapy, not reason, could reach it.
Someone who would decide, calmly and methodically, that the women who said those words deserved to die.
End of Chapter Three.
© 2025 Atharva Inamdar. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Free to read and share with attribution.