Chapter 6

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Hello, hello! This is the ultimate chapter and it goes out to each one of you! No amount of gratitude will ever be enough to express what my heart constantly flutters about! Thank you SO SO much! This chapter and the epilogue combined are probably my longest updates, so please don't complain? :P Just kidding! Without further ado, I present to you,

Chapter 5: Castle Of Glass

"The day I met you, I knew I wanted to make you smile for the rest of my life. If I could possibly make you as happy as you make me, the sun would stop shining, the moon would stop glowing, the earth would turn upside down on its own axis, the stars would stop twinkling and my heart would stop beating."

"Good morning, Sanyu," he whispered as the sun gilded her face.

"Good morning, my hero!" she greeted back and nestled her head in the crevice between his neck and shoulder.

"Why were you up so late watching me sleep?" he asked, noticing dark bags under her eyes.

"Because I'm Edward Cullen," she said, causing him to chuckle.

"Very funny. Was I talking in my sleep that kept you awake all night?"

"No! In fact, you were so quiet that I had to keep checking your pulse to see if you were okay."

"I don't accept such derogatory jokes on myself," he said sarcastically.

"If it makes you happy, my tequila bottle left me the day after I met you," she said and they both chuckled.

"What did you do after leaving the agency?" she asked.

"I opened a restaurant in Juhu."

"Really? That's amazing! With the way prices are going up, even a meter square plot of land in Juhu is worth a fortune!"

He smiled an all-knowing smile and asked her what he wanted to for so long. "What did you do after you finished college, Miss Big Engineer?"

"I tried working in my Dad's company and quit the job just this evening after I realized I didn't enjoy it."

"What do you plan on doing now?"

"You might want to laugh at this but I want to become a mechanic. My love for cars wouldn't let me do anything else."

"Then, I have a proposal for you. Become the mother of my children and the eldest daughter of my parents and you and I can work in the restaurant at night and in the garage in the day. Though you'll have to teach me everything there is to know about cars."

"Would you do that for me? Really?"

"Yes, I would but you missed the entire point of the statement."

"And what was that?"

"I asked you to marry me."

No other bunch of words had left Sanyukta as stunned as those had. Randhir was the only real family she had and making that official shouldn't have to wait for too long.

"Will you marry me, Randhir?"

He tried to look into her soul through her eyes and he only saw honesty and endearment.

"Do I really have to answer that question being the one that asked you in the first place?" he said with an eye raised in wry amusement.

She smiled the happiest smile she could muster and thought of the time when she had touched snow for the first time.

~/~

Her entire family had taken a trip to Kashmir. Pahalgam was the place where she had felt snow turn into water for the first time. The mountains were encased in white, seeming to belong to a place that almost felt like heaven. White and wondrous. She was four, afraid of the white expanse that lay in front of her. What if it ate her whole like monsters ate kids in the stories she was told?

Her father took her hand in his, in spite of her constant protests and dug it into the snow. When he brought it out seconds later, her fur glove had found a home in the snow rendering her hand cold and frostbitten. But she didn't seem to mind it so much. Slowly, her hand turned from blue to deep red and then returned to its untouched, primeval shade of light pink.

She watched the iota-sized specks of snow turn into water as the heat from her body did the magic. Instantaneously, she threw her other hand into the ground and out came a ball of snow, as big as a four-year-old's hand could hold. She threw it in her father's direction, who was ready to catch it in advance. But it was no ordinary ball that would hold its own shape once it took flight. A ball of snow would dispel on the form of the person who would be at the receiving end of the throw. That day it was her father. There wasn't an inch of his body that the snow didn't reach. It was on his coat, his trousers, shoes and hair. Sanyukta ran forward to hug him out of instinct, causing all the snow to fall on herself. She was drenched in it from head to toe. She was the happiest person in the cosmos in that moment. The way the snow tickled her skin made her ecstatic. She understood how ironic that moment was, at the tender age of four. What gave birth to fear and panic in her heart was the very object that made way for sheer happiness. How could that be possible? She realized it was possible because it gave her inexplicable happiness.

~/~

That day, they met his parents and got their approval for their marriage. Sanyukta informed Kaustuki and her maternal family of her decision. They were almost as delighted as she was.

~/~

Both of them being forty-five, ten years after their wedding, Randhir and Sanyukta were as happy as they could be. Their children, Roya, Viaan and Pratidhi were the centre of their world. They had inherited all their virtues from their parents.

Roya, the eldest, was named so because her name meant "a dream come true" in Persian. And she was Randhir's and Sanyukta's dream come true. At the age of 9, she was as definitely Randhir's daughter. She was as empathetic as her father, if not more. She had his all-consuming eyes and benevolent aura. The only feature of Sanyukta's that she seemed to inherit was determination and grit to get what she wanted. They were in the supermarket one day and Roya spotted a delicious piece of orange candy on one of the many racks. She cried and wept till her very reluctant parents handed it to her. From that day, there was no stopping Roya and her strange antics.

Viaan was named so because he cried with all his might and laughed in a similar manner too. His name meant energy and vitality. He was his mother's son. He had her feistiness and restlessness. If he was carried by a person in their arms, the aforementioned person would end up with disheveled hair in less than a minute. This caused him to be the parcel to be passed between several people other than his family. It was one of the many ways in which he would channel out his bursts of energy. Another unusual thing he would do would be to fall asleep with his legs in the air. He was only 6, but he had the resolution to sleep in such a manner of a trained sportsman.

Pratidhi, the youngest aged 2, was a mystery to her parents. Which is why they named her so. Her name meant a verse from the Vedas. The ancient scripture was cryptic in itself, as was Pratidhi. She loved being in water, she was a born hydrophile. Adding to that, she loved the rains too. She learned to swim in her tub from natural instinct. Neither Randhir nor Sanyukta were too fond of water or beaches. They were the kind of people that loved the mountains over the seas. Another peculiar thing about Pratidhi was her love for books. She couldn't read them, of course, but she held on to them as if her life depended on it. Randhir never had a chance to be too close to books and Sanyukta was never interested in them. They wondered each day whose genes she had. Randhir would joke that she was the progenitor of another kind of Shekhawat and Agarwal combined.

Life wasn't easy for them even after the wedding. But they saw it through. Both of them had the will in themselves to work hard, really hard. They would be up at 7 am, cook breakfast and lunch and finish the other household chores till 8.30, as they lived separately from Randhir's family. The garage and the restaurant were too far away from their family house, so they bought a place close to their workplaces. The house and garage were brought collectively from their savings.

At 9 am sharp, the garage would open, not to the public but for Sanyukta to teach Randhir about each vehicle that existed. With the passage of time, he too had come to love machines as much as Sanyukta did. She taught him from the basics about each vehicle for an hour and a half and the garage would open for business at 10.30 am. From 10.30 am, they worked with and supervised their team of four mechanics till the lunch hour, 2 pm. They would return home to have lunch and rest before heading back to the garage at 4 pm. From 4 pm, they worked till 8 pm.

At 8, they would open the restaurant and let all the chefs and waiters begin their work, as they would return home to freshen up. From 9 pm till midnight, they made sure their guests enjoyed their food and the ambience of the restaurant, which they had named "The Ninth Aroma".

When Randhir had just opened the restaurant, he had no particular name for it, so he called it "Fun and Food." When Sanyukta came, she added her own touch to it, explaining that a restaurant in Juhu needed an upscale name resulting in Randhir's profound amusement. She explained that any kind of food had eight distinct aromas, if one were to try and segregate them. She explained that at their restaurant, the food would be so exquisite that it would have a ninth aroma and hence the name. Sometimes, Sanyukta's worldly knowledge and rejection of material wellness surprised Randhir. Sanyukta knew everything there was to know under the sun. Which actress was dating which actor, which politician was caught in which scam, which footballer won the Ballon D'Or, how many colors the praying mantis can see, what is the body structure of an eagle. You name it and she would know.

Both of them were testament to the fact that hard work and diligence aren't just lone ideals in motivational speeches. They put those ideals into practice and rose from the ashes.

People talked about the odd pairing that they were. It was ubiquitous in the air that Randhir married Sanyukta for her money and Sanyukta because she would make him subservient because of her financial upper hand. Who didn't know the number of jobs that Randhir had taken up to be able to hold his family together? Who didn't know the amount of inheritance that Sanyukta would receive from her father's multinational company, even if she weren't an employee?

"Tongues are meant to wag" and "one must practice selective hearing" were the two primary principles that Randhir and Sanyukta followed. They knew none of the talks that did the rounds were true, so why bother? Yes, it would hurt when their entry into a place was welcomed by hushed whispers and furtive glances, but their minds were made of steely resolution that wouldn't let their peace quiver.

When the children were born, Randhir and Sanyukta could make no sense of the situation. They had no schedule to be followed, no fixed roster duties, nothing. Soon, they incorporated the children's daily timings into their own and brought their life back on track.

Roya and Viaan, in the 4^th and 1^st grades respectively, were picked up by the school bus each morning, while Pratidhi slept in during the day when her parents were in the garage and was alert as an owl in the evenings and nights. They took her to the restaurant with them, while Roya and Viaan spent the afternoon and evening occupied by extra-curricular activities and sports. The hour after school was spent having lunch together and on Sundays, the family took trips to various recreational spots in and around Mumbai. On Sunday evening, the family was back at the restaurant, as it was the weekend and people were always looking for good places to eat.

They were a unit, an inseparable and unbreakable family. The sort of life that human beings lead is like a castle of glass. Beautiful to look at from a distance, but so difficult to build if one is the architect. It is so delicate that a small, insignificant stone could hit it with slight force and it would all crumble down. It is in the hands of the concerned people to preserve their lives and family from the forces that exist in the world outside, ever ready to feed on the happiness of families, leaving them bereft of each other and of life itself.

Life moves too fast and distances itself from the people who possess it. It passes right in front of them, separated by a wall of glass, tantalizing them to catch it while it knows that it is at an unattainable speed. Such is the cruelty that life is capable of and the people living in castles of glass have to be ever vigilant.

Always,

Through and Through,

Arushi