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| September (First) 2010 |
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| DELHI PRESS MAGAZINES : WOMAN'S ERA |
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WOMAN'S ERA /
FICTION (3/21) / PRIYADARSHINI WILLS HER BILLIONS - PART III
Priyadarshini Wills Her Billions - Part III
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| The saga of the wealthy Bilal family continues. Ansh and Anjali would have none of Badi-ma. Then, suddenly, she passes away. The young couple is filled with remorse. But there is a big surprise! |
| By Anoop Verma |
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In keeping with the tradition that the body, even if it is of a billionaire, must rest only on Mother Earth, the body of Ravindra Bilal, draped in a white shroud was laid out on the floor. Relatives, friends, associates, representatives from other industrial empires, political heavyweights, celebrities formed a melancholy group around the body. Some reminisced their interactions with Ravindra, when he was alive. Some wailed between convulsions of grief.
Priyadarshini sat in the centre of the hall surrounded by some Bilal women. Every few minutes she raised her eyes to look at Ansh, sitting a few feet away from her. It had taken 3 long years and a death in the family to bring Ansh to Kolkata. She knew that Ansh was peeved because he thought that she had bequeathed her fortune to Lakhani. But why couldn't he understand that her wealth was for him only? She would change the will if he agreed to live with her in Kolkata. Oh what she wouldn't do to convince him that living in Kolkata was in his best interests!
Anjali was sitting beside Ansh. “I always knew that something bad would come out of Ansh's marriage with Anjali,” Priyadarshini muttered to herself. But despite her bitterness against Anjali, she made up her mind to talk to her. After all, she was Anjali's Badi-ma. Why shouldn't she listen to her? Priyadarshini was still fixated on them when suddenly Ansh looked up and their eyes met. She saw boundless hatred in his glance. An earthly chill passed through her and her teeth chattered.
The funeral was over and Anjali was alone in her room lying on the bed with a tabloid in her hand. Someone pushed open the door. Anjali took her eye off from the tabloid to look at the door, expecting to find Ansh. Instead she saw Priyadarshini walk in. An encounter with Badi-ma was the last thing Anjali could have wished for. “Ansh is not here,” she stammered, hoping Badi-ma would leave. “He is in the hall.”
“I know where he is,” Badi-ma answered. “I came here for you.”
Anjali rose from the bed and sat with Badi-ma on the sofa. “It has taken a death in the family to get you and Ansh to come to Kolkata,” Badi-ma said.
“There is nothing for us here,” Anjali answered bluntly. “We are quite satisfied with the way we live in Mumbai.”
“Kolkata is more suited for Ansh than Mumbai…”
“That is what you think,” Anjali interrupted.
Anjali's brusqueness hit a raw nerve with Badi-ma and she blurted out, “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you keeping Ansh away from me?”
“I am keeping Ansh away from you!” Anjali snapped. “It is you who denied him his rightful inheritance. Lakhani means more to you than Ansh.”
“That is not true. Lakhani is only an employee. Ansh is my blood. Everything I own belongs to Ansh.”
“Ha! Everything belongs to Ansh,” Anjali mimicked peevishly. “Is that why your will speaks only of Lakhani?”
“That will means nothing. If Ansh agrees to live with me at Kolkata, I will change my will and make him the sole beneficiary.”
“I know very well what you are after. You don't care a whit about Ansh,” Anjali panted. “He is just a symbol for you, a symbol of your illustrious family name, your traditions, your wealth and your monumental ego. You have some quaint notions in your mind about how a Bilal should live and you are forever judging Ansh by those notions. You want him to live only as a Bilal should. That is the reason why you were against our marriage.
“Because a Bilal is not supposed to marry a middle-class woman! That we were in love with each other meant nothing to you! You hate me because I allowed him to escape your trap. I have taken him away to Mumbai where he can live the way he wants to. Isn't this what bothers you the most? That he is not leading a life of any stereotyped Bilal. That he is free of your influence.”
“Marriage into a family of billionaires has not changed you at all. Your attitude still smacks of what you always were – a middle-class chit of a girl!”
It became unbearable for Anjali to sit beside the old woman and she rose abruptly from the sofa. “If you are not ready to accept the truth that is your misfortune,” she hissed. “I might have been a middle-class girl once but now I am a Bilal. I am as much a part of this family as you are. I am Ansh's wife.” She raised her voice till it almost sounded like a screech, “No one in this world can deny my relation to Ansh. I am his wife.”
“I had come here hoping for a possible improvement in relations with you,” Badi-ma retorted. “But now I realise how naive I was to even consider that possibility. You have fooled Ansh into marrying you, but in my eyes you will forever remain an outsider. You dance half-naked in disreputable discotheques, get portrayed in Page 3 columns as a bimbo, you have brought disrepute to my family. You are incorrigible. You can never change from what you were before your marriage, a woman without any breeding, who cannot grow out of the gutter in which she was born. You cannot develop the mentality of a billionaire. It is because of you that I was forced to will my wealth to Lakhani. I should have been more forceful in preventing Ansh from marrying you.”
“Badi-ma,” Ansh's voice cracked across the room like a whiplash. He was standing at the door, his eyes ablaze with anger. He marched towards the two women in measured steps. Anjali broke into sobs and threw herself on his shoulders. “I have never been so insulted,” she cried, “never…never…in my life.”
Ansh took to heart Anjali's contention that she had been insulted. “Why are you here?” he demanded angrily.
Despite all their differences Badi-ma had never expected Ansh to be so brusque with her. She loved him more than her own life, but he was treating her so unfairly. Her heart broke into a million pieces.
“I only came to talk with her,” she said.
“You came here to insult her. To call her all sorts of things.”
“I intended to be polite but she…”
“I heard you,” Ansh snarled. “I heard you being rude to her.”
“Did you also hear the things she said to me?”
“I didn't say anything half as bad as what she said,” Anjali cried.
“You have no right to be here in my absence,” Ansh glared at Badi-ma. His mind was already made up about who was to blame.
“Don't I even have the right to come and go from your room as I please? Do I have to get permission for that? She may be your wife, but I am your
Badi-ma. You are still my blood.”
“Stop calling me your blood. I am nothing to you. Our relationship ended the day you willed your property to Lakhani.”
“I willed my property to Lakhani only to make you realise how desperate I was to have you back with me.”
“You slighted me that day! I came with my wife taking for granted that the will would be in my favour, and suddenly you announced that…that despicable Lakhani was the sole beneficiary. You made me a laughing stock in front of the whole family. At that moment I knew that my relationship with you was over…”
“My idea of making Lakhani a temporary beneficiary might have been misplaced. But you must understand why I did that,” Badi-ma beseeched. “You have to start living in Kolkata with me. I will change the will in your favour.”
“There is no way I will agree to live in Kolkata,” interjected Anjali. “To be at your beck and call all the time, to be enslaved by your monumental ego for every moment of my life, that kind of life is unacceptable to me.”
“You heard what she said,” Ansh said with a degree of firmness in his voice. “We will never live in Kolkata. Mumbai is where our home is.”
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