Silent Whispers
-CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE-
Blood Brothers
They said a brother was nothing less than a superhero, a
thousand blessings all magically rolled into one. But Akash knew, as early as age
thirteen, that blessings were like fairy tales, told to please, but not to
believe.
Just like his brother.
Growing up in an affluent family, Akash learned very quickly
what status and power could buy. Growing
up as the youngest son of an aspiring
father and a doting mother, however, taught him something else entirely.
He was perhaps ten when it happened, or maybe even younger.
He had run home from his school, carrying a palm-sized trophy for coming third
in a local pottery competition. He could barely contain his excitement as he
rushed inside their ancestral haveli
in Lucknow, looking for his mother. Back then she was the only one who he could
count on to appreciate his achievements, no matter how insignificant they were.
After almost half-an-hour of searching he finally found her
in the drawing room, standing next his father, gleaming at the trophy -almost
as tall as him- Arnav had received for winning a state-level mathematic
championship. It would be an understatement if you said Akash was disappointed.
The years that followed that incident were no better. Far
from impressing his parents, Akash couldn't even save them from embarrassment.
By the time he was a teenager, he gathered what life as a Raizada meant. It meant being clever, distinguished and not to
mention, classy. Everything that defined the mere form of Arnav and nothing he
could ever even hope of attaining.
He was emotional, foolish and utterly ordinary; so ordinary that his father, the ever so successful Alok
Singh Raizada, ignored him, pushing him away from everything that was family. That
was the first time Akash picked up a paintbrush and he was yet to set it back
down.
"Bhaiyya?" called the voice of Om Prakash, the family's most
loyal servant. "Should I call Anjali Didi?"
Akash snapped out of his reverie. After two long months in
Jaipur, he was finally back in Delhi. He had just stepped inside Shantivaan when he was hit with a wave
of nostalgia. Even with its humongous size and expensive furniture,the mansion was his home and he had
missed it dearly.
"No," Akash answered. "I will go see her myself."
Dismissing the obedient servant, he crept up to the second
floor, taking in the fresh Sunday morning breeze wafting through the open
windows. He was just about to turn the corner and enter Anjali's room, when he
noticed the doors to Arnav's study, a vast and strictly out-of-bounds room,
wide open.
"Bhai?" Akash called, peeking inside. As a general rule,
neither he nor Anjali were allowed inside without Arnav's permission.
Upon hearing no reply, however, he made a split decision to
enter, confident that his brother wouldn't
murder him, especially on his first day back. Just as he stepped inside,
however, a gust of wind blew through the wall-sized window unsettling many
loose papers on the desk.
Akash rushed forward, slamming his hand on the ruffled
papers when he noticed a familiar face staring back at him from the stack he
was pinning to the desk. Curious, he pulled out the photo to realize that it
belonged to an article from the New Delhi
Times. The face was none other than Khushi's, dressed almost unrecognizably
in a coral-colored gown.
What shocked him more than seeing his girlfriend on the
front page of the local newspaper, however, was the arm around her petite
waist. It was Arnav's, who also was dressed elegantly in a black tuxedo. The
heading read: Love and scandal; ASR never
fails to stun the city.
Dread cold as ice began to freeze his veins. Something was wrong,
very wrong. Akash could feel it in
air as he began to read the article, knowing that he would probably regret
every word of it. But he did it anyway, because if there was anything in the
world worse than knowing the truth, it was not
knowing it.
But that wasn't nearly enough to prepare him for the
shattering numbness that struck when he finished reading. The very ground
beneath him shook as he tried to comprehend what was so casually splayed out in
front of him.
His brother was dating
Khushi? The same brother who taught him the very meaning of love?
Surely it was a joke! A big cosmic joke, meant to simply
torture him. What else could possibly reason why two of the closest people he
had, decided to turn against him?
"-yes, Jai. I need the contract now," came Arnav's voice from faraway. "It better be in my inbox in
the next ten minutes!"
Akash distantly heard footsteps as Arnav entered study and
froze. "Akash?!" he called, disbelievingly.
"You are back? I thought your flight was in the evening?"
He didn't answer, his mind whizzing away in circles.
"Akash?" Arnav called again, this time standing right behind
him. "Are you okay? What's-"
"H-how long?" Akash murmured, trying to find a way out of
the haze his head was caught in. "Was it because I-I left? Or... or maybe even
earlier?"
"What?" Arnav asked, grasping the latter's shoulder and
turning him around.
"Were you going to keep it a secret? Is that why she stopped
picking up my calls? I-I thought maybe she was busy..."
"You are making no sense at-" Arnav broke off, his eyes
falling on the article, still clutched tightly in Akash's hand. He paled.
"But now it makes sense," Akash continued, dazed. "It's
never like her to not talk to me... to push me away. But she did... because of you."
"It's not like that," Arnav finally said, his voice ringing
through the study. "It's just a big, big
misunderstanding. You have-"
"So what was it about her? Her attitude? Her ambition? Or
was it her eyes and maybe even lips too?"
"Akash!!"
And he snapped. "SHE IS MY GIRLFRIEND!" he roared suddenly,
feeling fury like no other burst through him. All sense of reason vanished as
betrayal raw as fire and blunt as ice overtook him.
It was as if the image of Khushi and his brother was hotly branded
onto his mind.
Arnav flinched, not having expected the outburst. Only, it made
Akash yell even louder.
"I LOVE HER BHAI," he bellowed. "WITH ALL MY HEART! AND YOU
THINK IT'S OKAY TO JUST TAKE HER AWAY LIKE SHE IS YOUR PROPERTY?! DID IT EVEN
OCCUR TO YOU-"
"-but she doesn't love
you! In fact, she never-"
"-yeah, because she loves you," Akash interrupted, his voice descending like a whiplash,
eerily silencing the room. "Just like everyone else."
Arnav was too stunned to speak.
"You think I don't notice... but I do. I always did. Maa,
Papa, Anjali, Nani... they all love you, they literally worship the ground you walk
on. And now, so does Khushi, the only girl who brought some sort of normalcy in
my messed up life."
"It's not like that," Arnav murmured.
"But it is Bhai,"
he replied, looking out the window. "It is just like that. Don't do this, don't do that...
that's what I have been told all my life. Study
like Arnav, behave like Arnav, be responsible like Arnav... it's like I have
no identity. The only thing that matters to anyone about me is that I am not
like you - the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect heir."
Arnav listened, pale.
"You know what I think of every time someone asks me about
my childhood? I think of how much Papa hated me and wished that I was never
born, because I was a big let down... Whether it be my grades, my ideas or my
goals... I used to spend hours trying
to figure out how to impress him, how to be a good son. But no matter what I
did, he couldn't get past loving his older son, the heir to his pathetic notion of a legacy!"
Akash looked away from the window to notice that Arnav
hadn't even moved an inch. He was too horrified to talk.
"I won't lie," Akash continued, having no mercy whatsoever.
"When he left, a tiny part of me was glad. Glad that I wouldn't have to live
with his disappointment, glad that I could live on my own terms. But what do I really end up with? You - the spitting image of Alok Singh Raizada."
Arnav closed his eyes.
"But you know something? Even with all your stupid rules
about family business, I knew that
you cared, that you were just doing the best you can. I know it's not easy raising
two kids when in many ways you were still a kid yourself. That is the only reason I stayed all these years and
listened to all the bull*hit you threw my way."
Akash paused, expecting Arnav to object, to refute all the
accusations. But he didn't. He stood there defenseless, almost as if asking to
be beheaded.
"I couldn't have been more wrong," Akash finally concluded
venomously. "This isn't about you fulfilling a dead father's wish, or helping
us survive in the big bad world. It's about you getting every damn thing you want!"
"Stop it!" interrupted a foreign voice.
Akash turned to see Anjali furiously walk into the room, halting
only a few feet from him.
"Stop being a jerk Akash!" she continued. "You have no idea
what you are talking about!"
Akash looked Arnav. "See? I told you - she worships the
ground you walk on, because even after knowing what you did, she is telling me to shut-up. Loyalty at it's finest,
don't you think?"
"Akash!" Anjali
rebuked. "You got this all wrong-"
"So what is the correct version?" he asked coldly, keeping his
eyes trained on the frozen Arnav. "I am
coming in between the eternal lovers?"
"Please!" she begged, distraught. "Just listen to me, okay?
All of this is just gossip. You know better than to trust the media!"
"Save it Anjali," he fumed. "There are no more excuses left!
The truth is, he cares about no one but himself. If he was my brother, he would
have understood my passion the second I told him and supported it until his
last breath. If I really did mean the world to him, he wouldn't have an affair
with my girlfriend behind my back!"
"But that's what I am saying! Bhai and Khushi are not together-"
He glanced at her. "Oh really? Give me one reason why I
should believe that?"
"Because he is our brother.
If it weren't for him, you and me would have been on the streets right now!
Just think about it Akash - if he really wanted to hurt you, he could have done
it ages ago, in ways more painful than this!"
Akash snorted. "You know what I think? Instead of badgering
me, you should ask your saint-like big brother. Ask him if everything written in that article is a lie?"
"Wha-"
"You have so much faith in him right?" he interrupted icily.
"Then ask him why he hasn't said a word in
the last ten minutes. Ask him why he is not denying being in love with Khushi. Ask him."
Anjali wordlessly turned to Arnav, who remained as silent as
ever.
"That's what I thought," Akash muttered. "I guess I should
be glad that he didn't have the audacity to refute what I said."
That seemed to be the end of Anjali's patience. "Enough Akash!" she said, her voice cold.
"I get it that you are hurt, that you are in pain, but you have no right to
take it out like this. Whether you accept it or not, it's not Bhai's fault. So stop blaming him for a crime that he
wouldn't even dream of committing!"
"Oh he dreams of it all right," Akash said, putting as much
venom as he harbored into his voice.
"But you know what, there is no point talking to you. You were always a
part of this family Anjali, the perfect sister
to the perfect brother. You will never understand what it feels like to be in
my shoes."
She opened her mouth to object, but he didn't let her.
"And after today, I don't even feel bad about that. You know
why? Because you guys are nothing but a pretentious family without a shred of
conscience. Maybe you don't think it's a crime to date the girl your brother
loves more than anything, maybe you don't think it's wrong to squash someone's
dreams as if there are worth nothing, but that doesn't mean you are right. So,
I'm done. Just done with this brick-wall of a house and the namesake family in
it!"
Looking spitefully at his brother, he added, "Congratulations
Bhai. You win. I'm sure Papawould have been very proud of you."
And he stormed out, without looking back even once at the
stricken faces of his siblings. Time had proven again and again, that he was
neither a brother, nor did he have one.
Today was the day he believed it.
_________________________________________________________________________________
A big welcome to all the new readers 
(I accepted all the buddy requests I got). 
I know... many of you are probably hating Akash right now, but this is the rudest shock of his life. It's not easy knowing your girlfriend left you for your brother, especially the brother you have been trying to beat all your life. All the years of pent-up frustration is bound to burst out.
Comments (86)
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Jai Shri Ram @SoniRita
+ 32
6 months ago
Akash has too many insecurities gosh poor guy
Jai Shri Ram @SoniRita
+ 32
6 months ago
Akash said so many bad things to ASR n anjali uff so sad.
Jai Shri Ram @SoniRita
+ 32
6 months ago
What a huge mess. All thanks to Khushi not talking to Akash
coderlady @coderlady
+ 8
1 years ago
Akash just had a rude awakening. He has not even talked to Khushi yet. He will feel even worse.
Jai Shri Ram @SoniRita
+ 32
1 years ago
Akash overreacting, he didnt even listen to Anjali damn.
MorallyGrey @WildestDreams
+ 32
1 years ago
Very good chapter! Maine bola tha…Akash ko bol do😅🫠
Archita @archita_59
9 years ago
Nice chapter! Akash's insecurity was soo well written!Hope u are exams are going well
ZN @flowers4u
+ 2
9 years ago
awe totally get akashs pov...poor lad...wicked update...keep it up
Oliver.Queen @Oliver.Queen
+ 5
9 years ago
Nice update. Do update soon!
yoga123 @yoga123
+ 2
9 years ago
Amazing chapter...thanks for the PM