The name written in beautiful cursive with golden ink on the lid of the wooden box with curving all over, sitting on the living room coffee table caught Ipshita's eyes. Throwing herself on the shoulder of the couch and having a sigh of fatigue from the day of work she leaned in and grabbed the box. 

' Abhijit weds Olivia'

The beautiful golden words on the box stung her eyes.

'Dear, friends and family,
   I Suvendu Bagchi son of late Sabyasachi Bangchi and late Alaka Bagchi, invite you to the reception of our only son Abhijit Bagchi's holly matrimony with Sodpur's Amalendu Paul's only daughter Olivia Paul on the 11th day of December of this year.'

Reading this much a soft sad smile played on Ipshita's lips pulling up the left side of her thick lips.

"Ipu!"
Her mother's voice calling her name made her look up. "I forgot about getting rid of this." Taking the invitation card from Ipshita's hand quickly Tuli said with a frown on her head.
"Maa, Abhijit is getting married." Still playing with the same smile on her lips, Ipshita said looking at her mother.
"I know." Sitting down on the couch beside her daughter while staffing the card into the box Tulika nodded.
"Maa, are you still mad that I broke it off?"
The daughter's soft murmur of the question made the mother look up at her face, trying to fathom the amount of hurt the invitation might have caused. But the daughter being the total impression of her father refused to give anything away but her eyes. Smiling, mother cupped her daughter's face tracing her hair gently with all the affection and care she could gather and whispered looking into Ipshita's pleading eyes "No. Not at all." before taking her in her arms.
Snaking her arms around her mother tightly and inhaling that beautiful smell of her 'Maa' Ipshita mumbled, "He is marrying on the same day Maa."
Tuli was hoping for her not to notice that, but the reverse of reality made her eyes shut with hurt, anger towards the Bagchis and the feeling of inability to protect her daughter from this. She cursed herself for not dumping the cards into the waste as soon as she read them.
Sighing before planting a kiss on Ipshita's hair as she rubbed her forearm she whispered against her hair, "I know. I know."

...

"What type of psychotic asshole does this? The moment I saw the engagement announcement on FB I could barely compel myself from sending him a hateful message. What on earth?!!" Artriya growled through the charcoal mask on her face. Her peeping eyes through the black layer of the charcoal looked mad as the layer of the mask hardening around her mouth made her voice throaty.

The fleeting moments of the last rays of the late October Sun were playing around the city. Winter was starting to mystify the streets and nights. Durga puja had just ended still the smell of Night-flowering Jasmin and Burflower, had surrounded Bengal soothing the post-Durga puja-depression in every Bengali's heart. Roads of Kolkata still had the placards of the advertisements of sponsors of the puja pandals and the whole race of Bengali was trying to overcome the pain with the thought of Lakhsmee and Kali puja and Christmas in mind.
Intending to get rid of this sadness, Artriya had dragged two of her friends to a spa where she was being offered a discount price in exchange for some celebrity exposure.

"Why are you even following him anyway?" Riti scrunched her nose holding back laughter at the voice that came out of Aratriya while scrolling through the profile of the woman Abhijit was marrying.
"Yes, that is the bigger problem here!" Artriya snapped back glaring right back at Riti's head.
"We don't even have a problem to compare." Riti shrugged looking at Artriya before shifting her eyes to Ipshita and asking, "Do we?"
"How -"
"No. You are right." Ipshita interrupted Artriya's agitated words. Looking up from the freshly painted red toenails Ipshita shrugged Looking at her friends with black face, "I broke the marriage off. He can do whatever he wants. How is he an ashole for marrying someone?"
"Within one year? You broke the marriage last December it's October now, even one year hasn't passed!!" Ari again howled through the mask.
"Okay what you saying is true, but stop sounding like an ogre." Unable to hold back Riti pointed out earning another glare from her friend. Ipshita couldn't but chuckle distantly looking down at her palm.
"Shut up Ri!"
"But yeah, I have to agree," quickly dodging the topic Ritika looked back at Ipshita, "Some massive ego must have you hurt Ipshita Sengupta, for him to jump up and fix the date on the same date on which you two were supposed to get married." She nodded chuckling sadly pilling on Artriya's logic.
"Yes! Exactly! Who- what kind of...person does that?"
"A person who is determined to win a challenge."
"Exactly -"

"Challenge! What challenge?" Ipshita asked bewildered by the howling arguments her boiling friends were throwing at the idea of Abhijit's marriage.

"Oh don't be naive Sengupta! How do you assist in running that office, sometimes I just don't get." Artriya rolled her eyes and sighed as the attendance of the spa came to warn her about the mask and its state of fragility on the face of Artriya's aggressive movement.

"I didn't want to marry so I called it off. He of course had marriage in mind so he is getting -"

"You think that did not have any consciousness?" Not letting Ipshita finish her sentence Riti pointed out. "You not only broke his hurt more than that you hurt Abhijit and his family's mammoth size of an ego. Of course, they took it as a challenge to show you that he can get a better offer, a hotter girl and a family with money. The girl's father owns three petrol pumps." She shrugged matter of- fact-ly and answered both of her friends' questioning and equally horrified eyes with just a, "I have my ways to know things." before leaning on the shoulder of the spa chair to let attendance start her hair treatment.
"Why else do you think they sent you the invitation box? God such an awful family! I am telling you Ipu, you dodged a bullet there-" Artriya said through her shut jaws as the mask dried on her face.
"Agreed! Imagine the desperation once, they smuggled a woman out of the city!"
"Sodpur is not that far! Stop being an elitist moron Ri!"
"Yes, it's the centre of Kolkata! What even..."
"Shut up Ri!"
"Hey if you bump your face to that mirror now would it break?"
"Let me bump it on your face and watch-"
"Bump it on Abhijit's face."
"I will pour petrol down his throat, slit it and put fire in it I swear-"
"I'll help you ogre and shove Dubai up his and his mother's -"

Ipshita sat there in the light pink spa robe as a woman from the spa started applying a mask on her face. Her friends bantered and laughed beside her but not a word was passing through her ears. Riti's words kept ringing in her ears. 'Challenge! How could they do that? How could he do that!' Eight years they were together! Didn't he understand her even a little bit? She didn't mean to hurt him. However, she wasn't a fool to realize how much hurt must have she caused him. So many times she tried to reach over and mend and apologize but Abhijit didn't, and neither did his family.
Because this was on their mind? They wanted to show her that he could do better?! Well, of course, he could. He was a great person and Ipshita knew that and maybe would have married him too if - if - just if she could feel for Abhijit, even one ounce of what she felt standing in front of a sweet shop in the busy market area of Delhi, with the guy she just had met, ever. It was not just there. She was with him for eight years and she felt more excited while closing a deal with a client than with Abhijit, intimacy included. It's not like she did not love him, she still did have feelings for him, but not like it was needed for her to marry him or at least how she imagined. Kisses, touches, sex with Abhijit- nothing surpassed the number of butterflies she had in her stomach on the top of Qutab Minar.

...

November was rolling away as the days of Durgapuja did too.
As days passed Ipshita once again submerged in work. Work made her forget the world. Not in the sad, escapist kind of way. She liked working and she loved the job. Abhimanyu Ghosh and his wife Maitreyi Ghosh were her inspiration. The couple started the company coming back from Philadelphia in the 1980s. This was one of the first companies to start in Kolkata as the branch of an American company. She loved working here, which showed in her almost workaholic behaviour helping her climb up the corporate ladder than her batchmates, overtaking her life goals.

So it wasn't until on the afternoon 12th of December when she was busy doing her afternoon Sunday ritual of running around the house with a duster, a wiper and a bucket of soap water and yelling at everyone who would come in the way that Rubel's phone came asking to check whether she was feeling fine, Ipshita didn't realize 11th December had come and went by once again.

...

"Why right now? Why marry right now? Why can't you buy some more days?" Riti cried holding Ajopa's hands in her.
"Because- I can not anymore. Dada knows about us. And - and every time I ask for a bit of time he becomes so- so furious-" Through sobs Ajopa replied putting her head on their entwined fingers. "I can't! I can't..."
"Opa please don't cry. Let's... Let's run away! We will go somewhere and rent a home..."
"And do what?" With fire in her welling-up eyes, Ajopa looked up at Riti. "Who'll rent us flats Riti? Don't be a child! It won't take days for the truth to come out." Through flaring nostrils, Ajopa heaved a sigh looking nowhere as her eyes filled up with tears again, "I can't." She whispered, "Forgive me, Riti, please. I love you so much! But this is my reality. My family isn't like yours. I can't even contemplate telling them. I am so sorry."

After thirty minutes Ajopa left her on the sidewalk of the lake they used to meet, Riti unlocked her phone with a shaking hand and dialled the number she knew by heart, "Ipshita, please come soon, I am not feeling well. I don't know what to do or how to move. Will you come please?"
"Tell me where you are I am on my way, stay exactly where you are Riti, don't move, don't do anything, do you hear me?" The cold, numb, sad tone of Ritika's voice was not unfamiliar to Ipshita. She had heard it before, so many times. A chill wind ran down her spinal cord as she ran towards her car messaging Rubel while still holding Riti's call.

It was just last night at dinner when the incident happened. Unable to take the constant questions of "Why not this guy?", "What is wrong about this man?", "Look at this guy's photo, oh look once!" from her mother, Ritika had screamed and yelled "Why don't you understand mother I am not interested in guys, I like women! Don't you understand? You knew it since I was sixteen, you saw me with Madhumita on our terrace, you saw us kissing. Why are you acting blind?"

Horrified her mother looked at her face. Surprise wasn't there, but the shock of the reality she was dreading for ages was visible on her face. Unable to find a word to conceal the situation that had suddenly erupted in front o her husband she stayed mum for a moment shifting her eyes from her daughter to her husband and then her daughter again.
"What are you trying to say? Those were teenage hormonal stuff, those things happen. Doesn't mean anything-" she tried cracking a smile.

"No, it does mother! I am gay! I am a homosexual woman of 25 years old, don't tell me the things I feel are meaningless or I don't know anything. Because I do. I do mother and my feelings do mean something. And I can not marry  a man because I am in love with a woman!" Ritika had howled thumping her palm on the table with every word of the last sentence.

"Ritika lower your voice!!! No one is deaf in here." Her father had growled before standing up from his chair. He heaved a sigh looking at his wife "And Bina, for heaven's sake!" and left the room.

Ritika did not mean it to go like this, she did not wish to tell her mother what she did, like that, at the dinner table while her father looked at her with glaring eyes, like he couldn't believe his own ears and his beloved daughter when her mother looked at her with betrayed and hurt eyes. It was not like Ritika's mother didn't anticipate such a reality but she hoped and prayed for otherwise. When she caught her daughter with that girl, she took her downstairs right away. She couldn't believe her eyes. Madhumita was their neighbour. She was certain that it was Manudhumita who had tricked her daughter into such a thing. Sooner pestering her husband she changed neighbourhood to get rid of the influence that would help grow such an idea in her 'growing mind' and believed, hoped and prayed it had worked.

.

Ritika knew Ajopa's family was pressuring her to get married and they had a boy in mind, but she wished her Opa would grow a little strength and stand up and come forth with what she wanted. But she knew it as well that Ajopa's family was heavily traditional and old books. The anxiety of such an situation wasn't out of her thoughts, but the time of the occurrence, she did not judge it to be this soon. Tears didn't know any bound as the park around the lake grew darker and Ritika curled up on the bench holding her phone in one ear...

So this was the chapter. It was one of the hardest ones to write for various reasons. Please Vote and Comment your thoughts, I love love love reading them.
Thank you...