STIFLED
CHAPTER FOUR
The video went viral the way a forest fire goes -- silently at first, a small flame catching a dry leaf, then a branch, then a tree, and by the time anyone noticed, the whole damn forest was burning.
By Tuesday morning, the #NeverAgainSilent video had crossed two hundred thousand views on Instagram and had been shared on X, WhatsApp, Reddit, LinkedIn (where it generated a furious debate about "workplace professionalism" between people who clearly had no work to do), and approximately seven hundred different group chats across Pune's IT corridor. Someone had even transcribed the best quotes and pinned them to the notice board in the Prisma canteen, where they hung like a declaration of war between two armies that hadn't realised they were fighting until someone drew up the battle lines.
Sanika discovered this when she walked into the office on Tuesday morning, fresh from her run with Samar (they had settled into a routine without discussing it -- he woke her with a call, she cursed him, they ran, they had coffee at the roadside stall, they went their separate ways), and found the entire floor buzzing with a kind of energy that she associated with either a bomb threat or a company-wide email about free pizza.
It was neither. It was worse.
"Have you seen this?" Pallavi from Marketing ambushed her at the coffee machine, phone thrust forward like a weapon. "Two hundred thousand views! And it's trending on X under #NeverAgainSilent. Someone made a meme out of it. Look!"
Sanika looked. The meme featured a stock photo of a confused-looking man hiding behind a laptop, with the caption: When your ex drops a 47-minute confessional video and you're checking if your name came up. Despite everything, she had to bite back a laugh.
"This is so cool!" Pallavi was practically vibrating. "My sister thinks this has the potential to reach the top hundred most-liked posts on Instagram. Hey, why don't we push for it? The women at Prisma are all behind you. Just say the word and we'll flood X. You'll be famous! Signing autographs and stuff!"
Sanika choked back a grunt. She would get her ass fired before that. Her boss was already looking for excuses to knock her down a step or two. This was like delivering her head on a silver platter. She waited until Pallavi bounced away before muttering, "Autographs? If this goes on, I'll have to ask Samar to provide us protection."
She said it without thinking. A throwaway comment, a joke, the kind of thing you say when your brain is still on its first coffee of the day.
The rest of the morning was a parade of reactions. Some colleagues high-fived her in the corridors. Others averted their eyes, as if she'd been caught doing something shameful. The marketing team's WhatsApp group -- the one she wasn't supposed to know about -- had apparently renamed itself #NeverAgainSilent Fan Club, which she only discovered when Pallavi accidentally forwarded a message meant for the group to the official work chat. The resulting scramble to delete it before their VP saw it was, according to witnesses, the most coordinated effort the marketing team had produced all quarter.
In the canteen at lunch, the video had spawned a live debate. Two tables had been pushed together, men on one side, women on the other, voices rising over the clink of steel plates and the smell of dal and rice. A guy from DevOps was arguing that the video was "airing dirty laundry in public," while a woman from QA was calmly dismantling his argument point by point with the precision of someone who debugged code for a living. Sanika grabbed her plate and fled before she could be dragged into it.
But Mira and Shruti, who had materialised beside her at the coffee machine with the silent synchronicity of women who have been friends long enough to communicate through raised eyebrows, stopped with their cups halfway to their mouths.
"Samar?" Mira asked slowly.
"Yeah, Samar. My neighbour. You know him."
Shruti nearly dropped her cup. "The jerk neighbour who turned out to be a jerk cop who resembled a mafia member and a drunkard whose clothes hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine--"
"OK, yeah, fine, it's the same guy."
Mira's eyes went round. "You are blushing, buddy. And you never blush." They should know, after all. Both of them had been with her through all three engagements and the subsequent breakups.
"What? No!" Sanika protested, violently.
Shruti blinked, astonished. "You've fallen for him?"
"Good God, no! What's gotten into you guys? We just kind of introduced ourselves and he accompanied me during my early morning runs the last couple of days. That's it."
"If you say so," Mira shrugged one shoulder.
"No, really. He's not a bad guy, I accept that, but there's nothing more to it than that. I mean, come on, he is a Maratha. Rane. With my history, even thinking of anything with him would be asking for trouble. Aa bail mujhe maar," she quoted the Hindi proverb. She waved them to silence when they tried to protest. "We're getting off the topic. Shruti, what's Runal going to say to this?"
Shruti gave a tight smile. "I don't see any point in trying to deny it or hide it. I refuse to feel ashamed of something that was done with my friends just for fun." Sighing, she packed up the rest of her lunch and got up. "At least this would give me a chance to clear out a few things, right?"
"Good luck," Sanika hugged her. "Keep us posted, OK?"
Mira locked her bike and walked up to her apartment, her thoughts still on Shruti. Did her one careless act ruin the relationship between her friend and her husband? Agreed that things had been rocky even before that, but this video didn't help matters, did it? Would Runal understand? She didn't think she would forgive herself if they broke off because of this.
The initial points had all been valid ones. It was later on that the humour had gotten the better of them. Now they were stuck with people judging them based on those. That was the worst part of this whole fiasco. The judgement that was sure to come. As if all they cared about was the size of a penis and time taken to ejaculate.
Her phone pinged. Since it was not an Instagram or X notification, she opened it. It was from Karan.
You did this to make fun of me, didn't you?
Make fun of him? She frowned. Why would I even want to make fun of you?
Well, that's what's happening to me. Whoever has seen your stupid video, my friends, are laughing. Asking for my size and how long I last.
You know I would never make fun of you Karan. But I was hurt when you said we have to ignore each other in front of your family.
Aaah so you are taking revenge.
Suddenly she was tired. Tired of fighting for him. For them. The hope that refused to completely die down diminished a little more. Sighing, she tapped her reply. You know what? You are right. Parts of what I said in that video were aimed solely at you. Like faithfulness, dependability, sense of humour.
She hit send before she could regret it. Then she put the phone down, went to the kitchen, made herself a cup of chamomile tea, and sat on her small balcony, watching the evening traffic crawl past and wondering when exactly loving someone had become so exhausting.
The balcony was barely three feet wide, just enough room for the cane chair she'd picked up at a Sunday market and the small clay pot where she was trying, with limited success, to grow tulsi. The plant was wilting despite her best efforts, and she saw a grim metaphor in that but chose not to examine it too closely. Below her, the street was settling into its evening rhythm -- the fruit vendor wheeling his cart to the corner, the watchman at the neighbouring building lighting his beedi, the stray dog she'd been feeding for months trotting up to her building gate and sitting with patient expectation.
She tossed the dog a biscuit from the packet she kept by the balcony door. It caught it mid-air and wagged its tail. At least someone in her life was easy to please.
Her phone buzzed again. Not Karan this time. It was Sanika on their group chat.
Su: Girls. Friday dinner. No excuses. We need to debrief.
Shratz: I'll be there. Lord knows I need a drink after the day I've had.
Si: Same. But can we go somewhere where nobody knows us? I'm tired of being famous.
Su: Babe, the whole of Pune IT corridor knows us now. We'd have to move to Goa.
Si: Don't tempt me.
Mira smiled at her phone -- the first real smile she'd managed all day. Whatever else was falling apart, at least she had them. Sanika with her ferocious loyalty and Shruti with her quiet strength. The three of them had found each other at Prisma four years ago and had been inseparable since. Different backgrounds, different temperaments, but the same fundamental understanding that friendship between women -- real friendship, the kind where you could be ugly-crying in your pyjamas at 2 AM and know someone would answer the phone -- was the most underrated force in the universe.
She finished her tea, rinsed the cup, and went to bed early. Sleep didn't come easily. She lay staring at the ceiling fan making its lazy rotations and thought about Karan and whether there was a point at which persistence became pathology. She thought about Sanika's accidental mention of Samar and the blush she'd tried so hard to hide. She thought about Shruti walking into a confrontation with the quiet dignity of a woman who had run out of excuses to make for her husband.
And she thought, with a small, fierce determination, that whatever happened next, the three of them would face it together.
Shruti entered the house and closed the door behind her. Runal was home. Earlier than her. But she didn't fool herself into thinking he wanted to spend time with her. What he came home looking for was a confrontation. He was probably in the study or in the bedroom with his Kindle. She went into the kitchen to deposit her lunch box and got herself a glass of water. She didn't have to wait long. He came out of the study and stood at the entrance of the kitchen as if waiting for her to stammer an apology.
"Wow, you're home early. Will wonders ever cease." There. He can look for her apology in that.
His lips thinned. He hadn't even changed after coming home. She glanced at his stylish clothes and trim haircut. He always did dress very well. Even if it was a pair of jeans, he wore it with style.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Shruti?" She tilted her head, waiting for him to expand. "Seriously, have you gone mad? Recording that video and putting it on the internet like it was some kind of an achievement? You have any idea the kind of comments guys are passing about you? You have any idea how it felt when that guy walked up to me laughing and told me that you were one of the women in it? I never liked those friends of yours to begin with, but now? I'm just--" He threw up his hands in the air. "They're just--"
"Stop." He looked startled at her firm voice. "You want to talk about me, fine. Don't bring them into it. Not. One. Word." She stressed each word when he opened his mouth.
"Fine," he snapped. "They are what they are, but what is wrong with you? Recording some video about how terrible men are and putting it on the internet!"
"Not who, Runal. What. It's about qualities. You know, things like dependability." She looked straight into his eyes. "Faithfulness."
He slid his gaze away from hers.
Shruti waited for the crippling pain to hit her, then gathered it and shoved it into a corner of her heart to be aired out later. Taking a deep breath, she asked in a calm voice, "Who is it? Zara?"
Runal seemed taken aback and stammered. "Who is who? What Zara? What nonsense are you talking?"
"The woman you keep comparing me to."
With a distracting hand through his hair, he whirled away from her. "I'm not having an affair with anyone, if that's what you're asking. And don't change the subject."
"Maybe not yet, but there is someone, isn't there? Someone you're attracted to?" He didn't turn to face her. He didn't deny, and that was a loud answer for her. "I'm going to shift my things to the other bedroom," she said calmly. "Doesn't mean I'm going to file for divorce tomorrow morning, but I really think both of us should step back and think about our relationship. What we want from it. If we even want it."
"You're changing the topic! We need to talk about you and your discussion about the man making you moan and scream. My team members are laughing at me, Shruti!"
It hadn't been her who had added that, but she wasn't going to rat out her friend. "And all you had to tell them was yes, you've spoiled me for another man, and that you're the reason your wife has such high standards. We did it for fun and that's all I'm going to say on that subject. Some new thing will pop up and this one will fade away before you know it. It's an issue only if you make it into one, Runal." Sighing, she rubbed her forehead. "Now I'm going to shift my stuff into the other bedroom. Think about what I've said."
She left him standing in the kitchen doorway, mouth open, the argument unfinished. In the other bedroom -- the guest room with its neutral colours and its single bed and its view of the parking lot instead of the garden -- she sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the wall and wondered how it was possible to share a home with someone and feel so completely alone.
It was past nine by the time Sanika reached home. She backed her car into the portico and laughed out loud when she saw Samar pushing his bike into his portico. Getting down from her car, she called out a greeting: "DCP saab is home early tonight, I see!"
He grinned but she could see the lines of tiredness etched across his face even from that distance. She took out her backpack and the carry bag from the car and walked up to the wall that separated both the houses. "Looks like your day has been as delightfully bitchy as mine."
He laughed, dispelling some of the weariness on his face. At a closer inspection she realised something else. She peered closer at his damaged knuckles. Bruised but they didn't seem to be broken. "The guy is in the hospital or mortuary?"
That drew another huff of laughter from him. "Blood-thirsty woman." And then it was his turn to peer. "I smell food."
She grinned and lifted her carry bag. "Bhelpuri, sevpuri, dahi puri, samosa chat, kachori chat, and vadapav."
"You're going to eat all that?" He looked astonished.
"I might've gotten a little carried away while ordering."
"And I didn't get a chance to have my lunch today. Care to share?"
"Sure. I got two of each. What do you want?"
He looked at the sky and surroundings. "Weather is nice. Let's eat here. That way we can have a little of everything. The wall can be our table."
She giggled. "You're really hungry, aren't you? OK. Let me get changed and we'll meet here in five minutes?"
Both of them hurried into their houses and were out in four and a half minutes. She got the plates, spoons, and a napkin to spread over the wall, and they spent the next ten minutes gorging on the junk food. It probably wouldn't help her calories, but it sure revived her good mood once again. As they got to the last item, she said, "Fine, don't tell me how you got those knuckles. I'll just read in tomorrow's paper."
He finished chewing and said, "You won't find it in any newspaper."
"Online then."
"Not there either." He grinned and shrugged. "A missing person's case. I went to a politician to ask a few questions. His uh, bodyguard got in the way."
"And no one will come to know?" she wailed. "That's so unfair. You should be the one in the news, not me."
He raised his eyebrows. "You're in the news?"
"Not in the way you think," she scowled. "My friends and I recorded something for fun a couple of days back and now it's all over social media along with our names. Everyone at Prisma -- that's where I work -- are now split into two groups because of that one video. Applause from women and catcalls from men."
"What's it about?" he asked, polishing off the last of the bhelpuri and licking his fingers.
He really had been hungry, she thought. Then his question registered. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Fine. I'll check out for myself then."
"Do whatever you want, but I'm not talking."
The sound of the gate opening made them both look in that direction. Another cop walked into Samar's house. He saw them both near the wall, changed direction, and came up to them. "A unique way to have dinner."
Samar wiped his hands with a tissue and made the introductions. "Salim, this is--"
"Sanika Joshi," Salim completed the sentence with a grin. "Hi, I'm Salim, DCP South-East. Samar's friend and current colleague."
"How did you know my name?" Sanika asked suspiciously.
The men exchanged hasty glances which she was sure meant to convey something to each other in a language unknown to her. "Uh, those guys Samar arrested? I saw the evidence video and recognised you."
Yeah, right. She would bet her paycheque her neighbour cop had shared some other facts about his neighbour. "If you say so." She just got back her good mood and didn't want to ruin it, so she let it slide. "So you guys have known each other long?"
"Same batch during our IPS training, and we'd been together for the first couple of postings," Salim replied. He was a little shorter than Samar, leaning towards the lankier side and minus the moustache. But both of them sported the same crew-cut style of hair. He turned back to Samar. "Boss, we need to go. Oh, and before I forget -- Nafiza watched some video online today." He sighed in exasperation. "I am to tell you that according to those women, she'd bet that you tick every box they described, and I would come a close second."
Sanika, who had been in the act of gulping down water, choked and spewed it out, making the men jump back to avoid being sprayed. Both of them glanced at her. One with mild concern and another with intent speculation. Even through her sputtering and coughing because the water had gone the wrong way, she saw the wheels turning at supersonic speed in Samar's head. And waited for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.
End of Chapter Four.
© 2025 Atharva Inamdar. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Free to read and share with attribution.