Chapter 2

Arnav returned to Khushi's room to sit watch over her sleeping form. Her pale, tear-streaked face, her limp comatose figure... all seemed to point fingers at him, accuse him of heartlessness, of cruelty beyond words.

He looked at her frail body, his eyes resting on her stomach. Their baby had rested there for a few days before... safe under her heart for a while before... he turned his face away not even attempting to stop the tears filling his eyes.

He had failed Khushi and their baby. He had been a pathetic husband and was now a criminally negligent father, a man who did not deserve a family or the love of a girl like Khushi.

He buried his face in his hands.

Soon it was night. He walked to the window in Khushi's room on unsteady feet and looked out.

He could see the courtyards of other houses nearby, terraces, streetlights, people and vehicles moving along the roads... the Lucknow that Khushi knew and was familiar with. A Lucknow from which his actions had uprooted her and forced her to move to Delhi. He had hounded a simple, loving, middle class, innocent, naive girl into leaving everyone and everything she loved. He had driven her to the inhospitable lanes of Delhi, wrenched her self-respect from her, insulted and humiliated her at every turn, bossed over her, forced his worldview over her, seen her though eyes blinded by hatred and prejudice.

He shut his eyes tight in regret and grief.

And she had suffered for all his sins. Every single time... and still come back for more punishment. On Diwali night... He had to turn away from the window in distress. His harsh words, his callous deeds... she had paid for all of them. Her tears, her pain-filled eyes as he had smeared sindoor in her maang while promising her that she would be his wife only in name and that too for just six months... he clenched his fists. The cruelty he had subjected her to, the tears she had shed trying to regain the family she had lost because of their hasty marriage, the many times he had questioned her integrity, had put her down, had disappointed her, had disbelieved her... till he had been forced to pay for housing the viper, Shyam by being kidnapped by him.

Even then Khushi had to save him from the consequences of his own follies, he mused, his heart feeling as though someone had placed a boulder on it. And he had ill-treated her again. His foul tongue, his harsh words... he drew in a shuddering breath with much effort.

He had wanted to push her away from his life and had failed spectacularly. Then he had wanted to keep her close and failed even more spectacularly. Shyam and Di, his own prejudice and arrogance, his blindness, circumstances, Dadi, his past... all had successfully parted them. He had tried to forget her, but...He shook his head in despair.

He was Arnav Singh Raizada, wasn't he? he asked himself bitterly, contemptuously. A man who made his own destiny, charted his own course, made his own way. A man who did not need her Devi Maiyya to hold his hand and write his future. An atheist, a modern man, a radical thinker, an iconoclast... and what was left of his life now?

A dead baby who had not even had the chance to draw breath in this world, a wife who was broken... no, a wife he had broken inside and out. No, not a wife. He didn't have the right to call her that. He hadn't made it to the mandap, had he? He had left her to the hyenas and the wolves, left her open to the censure of the world if the truth of their sham marriage ever came out...

He arched his neck, battling pain that threatened to bring him to his knees.

Innocents had paid for his lapses, his crimes, his blindness. How would he ever make it up to Khushi? Could he ever make it up to her?

How was he different from his father? he asked himself. His father had cheated his mother, Sunehri and maybe many other women. The man had failed Di, himself, Asha... and who knew if he had sired more children across the country?

And he, Arnav Singh Raizada had given Lavanya Kashyap hope, forcefully married Khushi and made her life hell, left her at the mandap for their real marriage, fathered a child he had known nothing of, and even while staying miles away in Delhi, had successfully destroyed Khushi's and his baby's lives again.

He was cursed, cursed to hurt Khushi over and over again. He had changed his name from Arnav Mallik but had not been able to change his fate or his nature. His father still lived on... within him. He buried his head in his hands feeling lower than a worm.

His baby. His Khushi. His baby. His Khushi. This chant resounded in his head as he sat by her lamenting over his actions, over the hundred mistakes he had committed against the flower-like pure soul lying in bed, over the many ways in which he had hurt her, images of which rushed to his mind's eye to torment him.

What should he do now? he asked himself. Beg Khushi to marry him and then take her away to Delhi? Or... leave Khushi to lead a life of peace in Lucknow, away from his tainting, polluting presence? It would kill him to leave her but this time it had to be what Khushi wanted, what was good for her. His own preferences had to take a backseat. This was the least he could do for her.

He looked at the beautiful face of the sleeping girl who held his heart and soul in her hand, memorised her features, gazed at her one last time with moist, red eyes before turning to leave the room.