Telling someone you love them was harder than Naina thought it would be. Her eyes fell on a picture partially under a photo-album on the coffee table of Aman Mathur and a beautiful woman, both dressed in their wedding finery.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Who?”
She pulled the picture out from under the photo album and turned it to show Aman. He stood from the armrest of the wing-back chair he was sitting on and sat next to her on the sofa.
“This is me.” He grinned.
” I know that…Who is this?” Naina said, a bit impatient with his constant jokes.
“Yes…This is Priya.” He took the picture from her hand.
“Priya?” She asked, curious. She had never heard Aman talk about another woman before.
“Priya, my wife.” Aman looked at her from the corner of his eye as if to gauge her reaction to his statement.
Naina hoped she didn’t look like the idiot she felt she was. Not only did Aman not love her, he was married. How had she fallen in love with a married man?
Aman kept talking. “She is the reason why Mom and I came to New York.”
Naina hoped she could listen to this without bursting into tears, which is all she wanted to do at this moment. And maybe, stomp her feet like a child.
Aman continued, “Unh…I am so silly, I didn’t even tell you. I kept talking about everything except what is important.”
Naina didn’t care how silly he was. She just wanted this finished so she could go home and cry her eyes out. It was hard enough sitting next to him, pretending that the world hadn’t just fallen away from under her feet. She forced herself to concentrate on his words instead of the huge hole in her heart.
“Priya and I were married three years ago. Everything was good until the honeymoon but then began the usual husband-wife squabbles. One day, I said too much. You know how I am. I can be a bit rude.”
Thinking of some of the ways he had been rude to her almost made her smile. But then the hurt came back, and with it an uncharacteristic urge to hit something, preferably him.
Aman continued with his story.
“She got mad, left home, and came here, to New York. Her parents live here. Mom and I followed her here, hoping to convince her to come back home. But she is still very angry with me. She says she needs more time. But I know that in the end everything will turn out fine. You know how it is. Isn’t she pretty?”
Naina tried hard to control herself but his last question really brought home the unfairness of it all. The sheer irony of the question was not lost on her. She felt the tears overflowing her eyes and sliding down her cheeks.
“Hey, why are you crying? Oh, god. All you women are the same. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’m telling you everything will be fine.” Aman gently wiped away her tears with his index finger.
“May I go now?” Naina tried to make it sound nonchalant, uncaring, but it came out as more of a whimper.
“Please stay, Priya…I mean, Naina. I’m feeling sad.”
“So am I,” her voice wasn’t any louder. “I’m going,” came out more firmly. She grabbed her purse and the bouquet of roses.
She hoped Aman did not notice her shaky steps as she almost ran for the front door.
“It’s still raining outside. You’ll get wet. Take this towel with you.”
Naina continued walking towards the door. “Bye, Aman.”
“Bye.”
Naina almost reached home when she realized that her mom would ask questions about tonight. The tears would be indistinguishable from the rain running down her face but how would she explain the bouquet of roses.
She turned around and headed back to Aman’s Uncle’s house. She started to knock but didn’t want to face anyone. So she tested the door knob. It was not locked.
Naina opened the door and peeked in to make sure no one was in the foyer. She was putting the bouquet on the table in the foyer when she heard voices.
The voices were hypnotizing and so, she moved forward until she could hear them more clearly.
“You love her, don’t you?” Aman’s mother was saying.
Naina almost fled but her masochist side wanted to hear Aman say that he loved Priya.
“Who, Mom?” Aman said. “It’s not like that. I don’t love Naina,” he said almost forcefully, as though if he said it enough times, he might believe it himself.
“I didn’t say anything about Naina,” his mom said.
“I don’t love her,” he said forcefully again.
“I’m your mother. You cannot lie to me.”
“So, what should I do, Mom? Tell her the truth?”
Aman sounded farther away so Naina moved closer to the door and peeked in. Aman was standing in front of the living room windows, his back to his mother and the door.
Naina, however, clearly heard the plaintive sound of his next words. “When, after knowing everything, you don’t have the courage to face the truth, then, how will Naina?”
Aman put his forehead on the window. The wind was blowing the rain onto the window. Everything outside was blurry. Very fitting.
Aman turned to face his mom. “What do I do, Mom? What should I say?”
Naina wished she could see his face. His voice sounded so sad, so hopeless. Not at all like the always cheerful Aman she knew.
“How do I say that, for the first time in my life this heart has wanted someone, this heart has taken a breath for someone, this heart has loved someone?”
“How do I say, Naina, this heart loves you with all its strength but this heart itself is very weak?”
Naina nearly fell over from the shock. What was this?
Aman was still talking, “How do I give her this weak heart, Mom? How do I give her this weak heart?”
“How do I tell her that the girl in that picture is not my wife, that she is my friend, my doctor, who is fighting day and night to keep me alive a few more days.”
Naina wasn’t sure her heart could handle the shocks this conversation was giving her but she didn’t move from her position.
“Damn it, damn it,” Aman said, “I’m dying, Mom.”
His mom shook her head saying, “That’s not true. That’s not true. Priya said that a transplant is possible.”
Naina too was shaking her head. Aman, dead. She couldn’t envision it, didn’t want to envision it.
“Mom, I know Naina. If I tell her that I love her too, then she will want to marry me. And when I die, she will never let herself love again.”
Naina had heard enough. Bad enough that her dad had chosen to make the decision to commit suicide. But this was a question of her life, of her love. She was not going to let anyone else make decisions for her life, however much she loved him. She stomped into the living room and stood right in front of Aman.
“I love you, Aman Mathur, but from now on I am going to make my own decisions. I am sick and tired of the men in my life making my decisions for me. My father didn’t even give me a chance to help him ease his burdens, but suddenly and irrevocably made a decision that has ruined all our lives. Now, you are making the decision to give me up, without even asking me, if I want to spend what is left of your life with you. Well, Mr. Mathur, I have made a decision – I am going to marry you. I am going to make sure that I use every advantage I have to make my decision a reality. Good day.”
And she walked out.
***
Aman didn’t know whether to applaud her or cry. This was the reason why he loved Naina so much. Even with all the things she had faced in her life, she still had the courage to love, and to stand up for herself. He knew that he had lost. There was going to be no stopping her now.
Aman looked over to see his mom pretending to be invisible. He raised an eyebrow at her. She smiled at him, that smile of hers that always unnerved him. The smile that said that he had been caught and there was no escaping her punishment. Only this time he wasn’t really sure it would be that much of a punishment, more like torture. Being around Naina when he hadn’t known she loved him had been hard enough. But being around her with her actively pursuing him would be extremely hard on his self-control.
Vinita Eggers has been writing fanfiction before she knew what to call it. While she lived in India, she had at least three classmates telling her stories of movies they’d watched. To entertain herself, she would rewrite those stories in her head. When she moved to the US, she fell out of watching Bollywood and instead fell into watching Hollywood. Years later she returned to her first love and was reintroduced to Bollywood.
In addition to Bollywood, Vinita Eggers writes fanfiction for the Star Trek and Supernatural fandoms. In her mundane life, she is a bookkeeper and a tax return preparer.
What inspired me to change the original plot for Kal Ho Naa Ho?
I felt that Naina was portrayed as too much of a wet rag whenever the men in her life made decisions that affected her without her input. I saw Naina much stronger than that. That she would have preferred to make her own decisions, especially those that affected her personally.
Where did this come from?
In my real life, it was my mother who made all the decisions that affected my life. I was powerless. But I knew I could rewrite Naina’s reality. In short, I was able to harness the power of fanfiction to rewrite the story how I wished it had been, both in fiction, and in my real life.