Page 226 - The World's Best Boyfriend

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Aranya had slept peacefully that night. Little did she know what awaited her the

next morning.
She had even smiled in her sleep thinking of the brief conversation she had
had with Dhruv.
Aranya had lived the conversation in her head for five hours when she had

been rudely awakened by her father banging on the door. ‘I HAD WARNED
YOU! I HAD WARNED YOU, ARANYA! Bola tha nazar rahegi tujh par!’

Aranya’s father had shouted that morning when he barged into Aranya’s room,
unannounced.
Aranya sat there wordlessly, rubbing her sweaty palms together, staring at the
strewn books and registers her father had brutally torn apart. Her room lay in

dismal disarray.
She wanted to cry but the tears didn’t come, as if the boiling rage inside had

consumed the tears as well. Her face still singed from where Dad had hit her.
Her back hurt from when Dad pushed her against the chair demanding why she
was still talking to Dhruv.
It wasn’t Dad’s fault, it was hers. She should have known better. Did she

really think her little night out with Dhruv would go unnoticed? Nothing in her
wretched life ever went unnoticed, no matter how hard she tried to be invisible!

Aranya had tried to tell Dad about Dhruv, about her hatred or indifference or
whatever she felt for him but he had already called her a disgrace. If he weren’t
her father, he would have called Aranya a whore, a word she had heard her

father use for other girls who had boyfriends. She was sure he was thinking the
same about her.
So she had let her father hit her. Fighting back would be foolish, she thought.

‘Do you think we don’t know what you’re doing in college? We know
everything!’ Dad had shouted. ‘The warden told us. You were out of the hostel
for an entire night, weren’t you? WEREN’T YOU?’ Aranya could hear girls of

her hostel murmuring outside. Dad continued, ‘When will you straighten your
ways, Aranya, when? Ya tu hume maar hi daalegi?’ He looked at Mom who had
followed him in and stood crying the entire time. Dad had trained his eyes back