Chapter 19

KHUSHI sat on the bench in the park of her parents' apartment building. She need to sort out her thoughts and that was not possible at the apartment with her Buaji's loud voice disturbing her already muddled thoughts. 

After she had packed up at Arnav's apartment getting ready to leave for the US, she had received a call from her mother informing her that they were returning back to India instead and that she should cancel her trip. She had immediately come to their apartment so she could have it cleaned before their arrival. 

She had been glad to see her parents after such a long time and also to see her grandfather looking much healthier than he was before. 

Later, in the confines of her room, when her mother had had asked her if everything was alright in her life, she made a quick decision to keep her problems to herself.

Her mother had revealed that she had a feeling that Akash was interested in Payal and that she wouldn't be surprised if they got a call from his parents in the near future. Khushi had already suspected something on those lines from her talks with Payal recently. But she kept mum knowing that Payal was not one to make hasty decisions about her life, her feelings in the whole matter notwithstanding. Seeing her mother's obvious excitement, she had realized that her decision to keep quite was wise one.

It was two days and she hadn't heard from Arnav. She had tried calling him a few times but his phone was unreachable and after then she hadn't tried again. But then, he wouldn't have been able to reach her; her mobile phone was switched off as she had forgotten her charger at his apartment and she had no inclination to go back there or buy a new one. What was the point?

This morning, she had begun to experience a weird sensation in her body " akin to withdraw symptoms that addicts often experience when their addiction of choice was out of reach. She missed him terribly.

She had the strongest urge to run back to the apartment and get her charger to see if he had called or if he had returned. But she was afraid. What if she found Sheetal there with him?

"Khushi?" She looked up to see her dad standing over her, his face creased with worry. "What happened?" He sat down next to her.

Khushi lay her head on his shoulder and cried her heart out while her father stroked her hair.

"I am sorry my dear." Shashi Gupta gentle voice penetrated into her thoughts. "I know you are upset because of me. I didn't speak to you much in the last couple of months ""

Khushi looked up at him. "No Babuji " it's not ""

"Let me speak," Shashi continued. "I think your grandfather's sudden appearance back into your life made me very insecure. Suddenly, he was making major decisions regarding your life and I couldn't take that.

"When I heard that you were ready to get married without waiting for us to get back I just couldn't believe it. It's just that I was so worried about who you were marrying. Even though I had enquired about your husband I wasn't completely sure if he was the right man for you. I felt so helpless."

"I am sorry Babuji," Khushi sobbed, "Nanaji was so sick and I didn't know what to do."

Shashi wiped his daughter's tears. "Don't cry Khushi. I know you did what you had to do.

"I guess with Payal already working in a foreign country I wasn't ready to let go of my little girl so soon." He smiled at her affectionately. "But here you are " a married woman. I just can't believe you are all so grown up."

"I sometimes wish I hadn't grown up." Khushi said softly.

"I know I have been very hard on you Khushi," Shashi said, "I had forgotten that each child is different and it is the duty of a parent to recognise that instead of comparing one to the other.

"Your mother has always tried to explain it to me but I was too stubborn to listen."

"Babuji "" Khushi hesitated.

"But it was only when a third person showed me the mirror that I realized what a fool I have been." He said raising Khushi's curiosity.

"Your husband " he called me a few days ago. He first apologised for not calling earlier. He wanted to know your full name for the school he was buying for you. He told me he wanted to surprise you. He also told me about the work you were doing there. He was so proud of you." 

"After I had a talk with him I realised how much I had underestimated you," Shashi said with a sigh, "I am sorry for forcing you to do something your heart wasn't in and for making you feel like you weren't doing enough ""

Khushi was still reeling with the information that Arnav had talked her father."Babuji please forget about all that," Khushi urged him, "I am happy that I have found what I want to do."

"I am also happy that your grandfather chose the right man for you." Shashi said with a smile.

More tears streamed down Khushi's cheeks.

"Khushi?" Her father's face creased with concern, "Is everything okay? "

By the time she could answer, they got called away by Garima saving Khushi from answering her dad's question.

That night Khushi pondered over the question her dad had asked her. Was she okay? She didn't really have an answer to that. She had fallen deeply in love with Arnav, had experienced ecstasy in his arms and she was miserable without him. Now she was desolate thinking if Arnav was with Sheetal, if he was planning his future with her. 

She had wondered many times in the last 48 hours if she had made a hasty decision to leave Arnav without actually waiting for an explanation. But at that moment all she could think was that Shyam was right from the beginning and that  Arnav had married her only to cover the fact that he was in an affair with Sheetal - a married woman. 

She couldn't stay in the apartment anymore. Every room there reminded her of the intimate moments they had spent in each other's arms. She had needed to get away from there, in order to think clearly without falling into the trap of Arnav's enchantment.

The next day Khushi sat in the living room of her grandfather's Haveli in Jalandhar, a cup of hot tea in the hand. Her grandfather had insisted on going back to his Haveli and after a lot of debate her parents had agreed. 

They had arrived in Jalandhar around lunch time and when they had landed at the house, Khushi was taken aback to see that the house was being maintained by a male house keeper by the name of Parmeet. He had informed her that Arnav had hired him for the upkeep of the house. Khushi wondered whatever had happened to Satpal, the caretaker of her grandfather when she had arrived here. All that seemed so long ago though it wasn't more than three months.

After lunch, her grandfather had retired to his room for a siesta and she had decided on a cup of tea. She heard a car pull up in the driveway.

She hurried to the door and opened it, managing to hide her disappointment when she saw Manav instead of Arnav.

"Come it Manavji." She let him in. "When did you come back from Singapore? How is Di?"

"I came in this morning. Where is Arnav?" He said urgently. "I haven't been able to reach him or you in the past couple of days. Both your phones are switched off.

"I wouldn't even have known you were here if Akash hadn't called me. Why is your phone switched off?"

Khushi was nonplussed by the barrage of questions. "I " I lost my charger," she said knowing how lame that sounded, "I haven't been able to get another one. I was busy " my grandfather is back from America and I just brought him back to Jalandhar."

"I know all that Khushi but where is Arnav?" He said patiently, "you were with him in Delhi, weren't you?"

"Three days ago he " Arnavji left when he got a message "" Khushi made a quick decision to tell him whatever Arnav had told her, "The message was from Shikha. He told me it was an emergency."

"What emergency?" Manav demanded.

"He didn't tell me."

"You havnen't heard from him since and you are not worried at all?" He raised his voice. 

"I tried calling him a few times but his phone was unreachable."

"Unbelievable!" Manav bit out.

Khushi remained silent. The secret about Sheetal had to remain between Arnav and her and she couldn't reveal it even to his best friend. 

"Please Khushiji " please tell me what the hell is going on here," Manav said desperately, "I need to find Arnav as soon as possible because I think Anjali is missing."

"What?" Khushi was shocked beyond words. "Wasn't she with you?"

"Anjali left Singapore for Delhi yesterday," Manav said, "She called me once after she reached Delhi airport and after that I haven't heard from her at all."

"I am sorry Manavji." Khushi said earnestly, "Have you called Naniji? She is in Lucknow."

"Yes I did," He replied, "The people in the Ashram told me that no one has come to meet Naniji. So Anju is not there either."

Manav stood up. ""I will go to Delhi and find Shikha."

Khushi racked her brains wondering if she should tell him about Sheetal and then decided against it. What if Arnav had in fact gone to meet Shikha? She would let him know  only if it was absolutely necessary.

 "Unfortunately, I don't have her or her mother's numbers. I will check with Naniji if she has them. Looks like that's the place to start." He left the house as suddenly as he had come.

A strange feeling began to fester in her.

"Khushi?"

Khushi turned around to see her grandfather standing at the door of his bedroom.

"Nanaji, did you need something?"

"I heard everything you were talking," Satyaprakash Patial told her. "You haven't heard from Arnav in three days and you never mentioned all this to us. What's happening?"

Khushi walked up to him and led him back to his bed. "Lie down on the bed Nanaji," She  propped the pillows on the headboard so he could sit up. 

"Is there a problem " in your marriage?" Her grandfather said.

Khushi hoped and prayed that he would be able to give her some answers " finally. It was high time.

"Yes there are problems and that's thanks to you!"

"What are you talking about?" His eyebrows creased confusion.

Khushi told him what she had overhead him and Arnav talking at the hospital on the wedding day.

"How could you arrange my marriage because of some old debt you owed the Raizadas? Khushi demanded, "Wouldn't your debt have been repaid if you had just handed back that plot of land? Or this Haveli?" 

"Oh God!" Satyaprakash Patial looked pale. "You have got it all wrong Khushi!"

"Or even if you wanted me to repay your debt by marrying into their family, why didn't you tell me?" Khushi continued without hearing what her grandfather had said. 

"The debt that we were talking about " I didn't owe the Raizadas. It was the other way around "" He paused, "I was collecting."

Khushi felt like someone had splashed a bucket of cold water on her face.

"What?" Khushi couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Are you trying to tell me that Arnavji was repaying the debt and not me?" 

"Well, let me start from the beginning." Her grandfather began, "When Arnav's grandfather Arjun and I were young boys, I had saved him from getting punished " a hundred lashes to be precise."

Arnav words came back to Khushi at that moment. It was her grandfather who had saved Arjun Singh Raizada!

"My uncle Ramprakash Patial belonged to Royalty and was the owner of a lot of land. Arjun's father worked for him. His men had caught this young boy stealing some flowers from the garden and taken him to my uncle. My uncle, a very cruel man, had ordered them to whip him. He would have died that day if I hadn't interfered as he was a very puny under-nourished fellow."

"We became friends after that and being a proud boy, Arjun declared that he would forever remain in my debt and that I could collect on it anytime I wanted."

For someone who was two generations down the line, Khushi couldn't accept the fact that her grandfather had chosen such a regressive method to collect his debt. "Nanaji!" Khushi lamented, "Why did you have to collect your debt this way?" Arnav had been forced to marry her to keep a promise that had been valiantly made my a young boy. "It wasn't fair to him."

"I had no choice Khushi," Satyaprakash said making Khushi curious, "there was another strong reason why I wanted the alliance between you and Arnav."

"No choice?" Khushi said, "what do you mean?"

"I was worried for your life." He said in a whisper, "I was worried that they would kill you just the way they killed your parents."

"What?" Khushi's eyes went wide with shock. "My parents were killed in an accident, weren't they? Why are you saying someone killed them? Who killed them?"

"Years ago your mother Gauri met a boy from Himachal Pradesh and fell in love with him. In those days it was a scandal. We " your grandmother and I were against the match."

"I know." Khushi nodded. "I got to know from a friend of mother " Santosh Gill."

"It was Santosh who informed your grandmother about your father Ishwar and Gauri. Your grandmother was devastated and insisted that we stop Gauri's education. We began to look for alliances."

"Then one day, Gauri eloped with your father. All hell broke loose."

Santosh Gill's shrill voice she rang in her head. "You said you didn't approve of my father. Was he a bad man ? " I mean did he brainwash mom into eloping with him?"

"No titiliya," Satyaprakash Patial revealed, "He came to our house to ask for Gauri's hand in marriage and after talking to him I realised that he was educated and was running his father's handicraft store while doing his higher studies through correspondence. He had plans to expand his father's business after completing his studies. He was one of the most hardworking and earnest boys I had ever seen."

"Oh!" Khushi heaved a sigh of relief. Santosh Gill had painted a completely different picture of her father! "I am so glad to know this. But if my father was eligible why didn't you and Nani approve?"

"As I told you earlier, the times were different then Khushi," Satyaprakash said, "The boy belonged to a different community."

Khushi understood what had happened. Her grandfather was a broadminded man. He had saved Arnav's grandfather and had become friends with him. He wouldn't have had any problems.

"It was Nani who didn't approve of the alliance." 

"It was her upbringing. She was made to think that mingling with people from a different caste was below the dignity of true Rajput royalty. She didn't know how to change." He paused. "But it wasn't just her. Even the people of our village condemned us."

Khushi remembered Santosh Gill saying something to that effect. "So the Panchayat banned my parents from entering the village forever."

"Yes, that was a mercy actually." He nodded gravely. "The farmer community demanded that Gauri and your father be brought back and punished. However, since I was in the Pachayat, the members just declared a ban on the two of them and left it at that. But some members in the farmer community rebelled against the ruling. They swore that they would make sure Gauri would pay for her sins."

"Oh my God!" Khushi exclaimed in horror, "Did they actually go through with the threat? Did they kill my parents?"

"I am afraid they did."

"How can people be so cruel?" Khushi sobbed, "what did my innocent parents do to deserve this?"

"They didn't do anything Khushi," Tears rolled down Satyaprakash's eyes, "Your mother paid for my sins."

"Your sins?" 

Satyaprakash explained that a year before Gauri had eloped, a similar incident had occurred in the village. A girl belonging to the farmer community had eloped with a boy belonging to the upper caste community. Unfortunately the couple had been caught and brought back to the Panchayat for justice by the girl's father. The Panchyat had ruled that it was the girl's fault and her family were outlawed from the village. The boy had been quietly packed off to another city by the boy's family. Unable to see the plight of her family the girl had committed suicide. A rumour spread all through the village that the girl had committed suicide as she was pregnant further defiling the memory of the dead girl. 

"I was dead against the ban against the family but I was part of the Pachayat and my hands were tied. I was contemplating resigning from my post when this incident with Gauri happened. It was the father of the poor girl who had threatened me publicly in the Panchayat."

"Oh my God!" Khushi's voice quivered with sadness for the girl who had lost her life just because she had fallen in love. The rigid norms of the society has claimed an innocent life. 

"Your grandmother couldn't bear all this," Satyaprakash said, "one day she blacked out and fell down the stairs. That's when she damaged her spinal cord and was paralyzed for life."

"Three years later, I got a call from the hospital in Manali where your mother and her husband were admitted. " Satyaprakash's voice shook as he narrated , "When I reached there, I found out that Ishwar was no more. 

"Garui was lying on the hospital bed in bandages. She couldn't speak much but she managed to tell me to take care of her baby. I was so shocked because I didn't know." Tears streaked down his cheeks as the talked about the loss of his only child. "When the nurse brought you, she mentioned that the accident was caused by a truck with a Punjab registration. I knew."

"Nanaji?" Khushi said, "Did you file a police complaint? Did they find out who was responsible?"

"Of course not!" Satyaprakash exclaimed, "I didn't want them coming after you too."

"How can you be sure then?" She insisted.

"I was too distraught at the time to think too much." He said, "I only knew that I couldn't take any risks."

"I knew that your aunt and uncle were visiting from Canada. So I gave you to them so you would be safe and sound away from this country " away from all the dangers that lurked here."

She had been so angry with her grand father for abandoning her but he had done it so he could protect her.

"Why didn't your friend Arjun help you during this whole ordeal?" Khushi asked the question that was nagging her for sometime.

Satyaprakash hesitated. "After he came back to our village it became very difficult of us to be friends because your grandmother didn't approve of our friendship."

Naniji's words came back to Khushi.

"Arjun was in a dilemma. The girl who had killed herself had worked in his house and he was shocked by her death. He chose not to interfere in any of the proceedings. There was nothing he could do. I don't blame him."

Khushi understood why Naniji didn't want to talk about the fall out between her husband and his friend. She wanted the old secret to stay buried.

"When Devyani came to your grandmother's funeral, she told me that he had expressed his regret over his decision to remain neutral and wanted to make amends. That was when she told me that the debt that Arjun owed me still stood and that I could collect on it as I wished.

Satyaprakash looked at Khushi with his sad eyes. "When Devyani was talking to me that day we happened to glance out of my window. I saw a boy pulling you out of the old well. Devyani told me that it was her grandson Arnav. An idea began to form in my head."

"From that day onward, the relations between Raizadas and myself resumed once again and I began to keep an eye on Arnav's progress in his life. I was highly impressed with the grit and determination with which he had taken over his grandfather's lands and business and turned them into a profitable entities.

"I had mortgaged this Haveli in order to pay for your grandmother's treatment. A few months ago, when I went to my lawyers's office to sign some papers I was informed that Arnav had bought the Haveli but he would let me stay here as long as I wanted to. I realised he was acting the way his grandfather would have wanted him to."

Arnav had acquired the Haveli by legal means and Shyam had told her that he had seized it from her grandfather. 

Her grandfather continued. "It was then I decided to send your proposal to Devyani Raizada. I thought that since Arnav belonged to the farmer community, it would send a message across to the people of that community that you were to be left unharmed."

Maybe her grandfather's fears were not unfounded. Was her kidnapping by the old Sardarji related to this?

"Arnavji knew about all of this, didn't he?" Khushi said even though she knew the answer to that. Of course he knew. Was her kidnapping the reason why Arnav had immediately agreed to the marriage when her grandfather had asked him at the hospital? "He didn't say a word all this time."

"Don't blame your husband. I made him swear on his grandmother that he wouldn't tell you anything. I wanted to protect you Khushi. I didn't know that this would cause you so much pain."

Khushi remembered something. "Naniji told me about the plot of land her husband had given you as token of friendship." Khushi informed her grandfather. "I have given it back to Arnavji."

"I suspected that you would." Satyaprakash smiled, "I had loaned Arjun some money when he left Punjab to start a new life in Mumbai. He gave me the land in exchange. The land had absolutely no value at that time but now it's priceless I believe."

Khushi hugged her grandfather and wept in his arms. Since her grandfather was visibly exhausted Khushi persuaded him to rest while she went back into her room. 

Sitting on her bed, Khushi sent a silent prayer towards the heavens. She finally knew the truth about her parents. Santosh Gill has painted such a vile picture of her father and finally her grandfather had vindicated him. Her father was a good man! 

She was sad that she didn't have the chance to know her parents, that they were taken away from her in such a cruel way. But she was also happy that they had the courage to believe in true love and had fought against all odds to be with each other, however short their time on earth was.

She couldn't believe the chain of events that had led to the marriage between Arnav and her. It had started so many years ago. Would they have been able to escape this destiny even if they had tried?

But the bottom line was that, Arnav had sacrificed his own happiness to fulfil his dying grandfather's wishes to reconcile with his friend. She had misinterpreted the whole scenario and had behaved atrociously with him. She had accused him of marrying her for her lineage. Tears filled her eyes.

The doorbell rang and Khushi went up to get the door. She was surprised to see Manav once again standing at the doorstep. It was very clear from is face that he come bearing bad news.

"Manavji?" Khushi's voice shivered a little. "What's happened? Is it Arnavji? Is he alright?"

"Arnav is in police custody," he said, "He was arrested for the murder of Shikha three days ago."

Khushi's heart stopped for a moment when she heard what Manav had said and she held onto the door for support. Oh God!