Chapter 1

~ Crescendo ~

"Sometimes when someone goes out of the sight; you feel your soul crumbling under the weight - the weight of that person's absence - and you feel it rising, heating up with every breath you take. You struggle and fight and battle - but you can't get yourself free from the weird feeling that rocks your entire being. And then the crescendo reverberates though the vacuum that couldn't be defined anymore. Maybe the vacuum was called her heart before. Now you don't know what it is."

*

She stared at the photograph hung on the wall as she stood alone in their room. Her hand still hung mid-air over the visual of her husband, caressing the faint-flowing breeze that flew in through the large window to her left. The wind weaved through her out-stretched fingers; the hazy, stunted salt-trails became visible as the moisture evaporated. She probably had forgotten the source of the dampness on her hand. She just knew that it felt cold against her heated skin. She didn't know if she would call it pleasurable. She wasn't sure that she was sane enough to comprehend her surroundings. She wasn't even sure she knew what time it was. She had lost track of everything. Her husband was made to leave her. She made her brother leave her.

Nothing was more real; nothing was more surreal.

She wasn't being selfish. She was just being her. Alone.

***

"Sometimes someone needn't really be there in person to hurt you; the memories alone suffice. But then sometimes you just can't object their presence around you, around the people you love. And the burden just keeps piling on you until you fall to your knees; helpless. And when you see your love with his back on you, the reticent lament of that crescendo echoes in your heart - miserably. And now you don't know how to fight it; you don't know how to face it."

*

She stood in their room; her towel she held in her hand forgotten for long. She didn't realize when she dropped it on the recliner by the French windows that opened into some kind of a paradise. She stared at the lonely figure that stood in the humid chill that lay draped over the poolside. Droplets of perspiration made their way down from the misty sky above her - they had the liberty that she didn't. Lazy ripples across the water splashed around the edges, breaking the flawless shell of the icy fluid that was yet untouched.

She didn't know when Hari Prakash handed her a steaming cup of tea for him. She looked on as the hot steam disappeared into the quiet hush of the night - dissolving as its arms snaked through nothingness that stretched itself in front of her. She didn't know when she stepped into the reserved frost of the poolside with a tray in her hands, wanting desperately to thaw the rime that she could see slowly slithering over their lives - wanting to freeze the enviable tangle of relations.

She needed him to comfort her - just like she needed relieve him. For her.

She was selfish. She was trying to. For him.

***

"Sometimes you feel the velvet you put over the thorns would protect you forever. You don't seem to realize the frailty of the cover. Maybe you choose to ignore it, maybe you don't wan to accept it. You don't realize the mistake you are making. And then you learn to live your life - no; not life - you learn to live a lie; assuming you would get through. But when you watch yourself fall, you hear the final crescendo as the thorns rip the velvet apart. The heavy pitch ricochets across your life, uprooting everything you had held dear - like a struck chord of the verdict, marking the end of your world as you knew it."

*

His fingers twisted and turned the soft, cottony fabric of his tracks. He flinched as the occasional coarse buds slashed across the inner-side of his pockets rubbed against the small cuts scattered on his palms. He closed his eyes as a gentle breeze engulfed him in its arms, enveloping him in the soothing elements from nature that he never really understood. A strange feeling of bliss washed over him.

He felt her from behind; he never really had to see her to know her presence around him. He had always wondered why. And when life had given him the answers he had thrown everything away - along with him - shattering everything into pieces. He didn't know how he had survived all these months knowing somewhere that she might be innocent, and still doing nothing about it.

He turned and he saw them - her tears, threatening to break the tenuous restraint of her eyes. He cursed himself for ever ignoring them. Only if he had looked into them before... He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. Or maybe she collapsed into him. But that was secondary. She loved him. He loved her. Over and above many things.

He had almost lost her; and he didn't know if he still had his sister with him.

He was afraid but he wanted to be selfless - for once in life. Maybe for the only time in his life. For his Khushi. For his Di.

For him.

*

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Don't ask me what this was! I don't know... I'm just riding higgghhh on emotions after today. Hats off to the entire cast and crew of the show for delivering one of the best episodes yet!

If you like it - even a bit, do let me know by hitting like or dropping in a comment. Your opinions are very precious for me...

And ohh - this hasn't been proof-read yet! So please please please ignore any typographical errors! I'm super-prone for such things!

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Pearl_mystic2012-07-09 21:52:54