Anika scanned him leisurely, and her eyes welled up as she peeked on from behind the pillar. He was sitting in his study, pouring attention over his laptop and files: his addiction to work had only increased, and the enjoyment, spark or drive that had occupied his eyes while going over numerous figures was missing; now it was just fatigue, emptiness, and an eerie blankness that made Anika feel restless and guilty at the same time.
What has happened to him? She whispered to herself for the hundredth time since she had come back to the Oberoi Mansion. She knew the answer only too well, but was too afraid to admit it.
You have done this to him, Anika. A constant, asserting voice nagged at the back of her head. In the past three months, she had often wondered what effect her departure must have had on him. Was he as miserable? Had he moved on? Was he back to the SSO she had met a year back? Dreadful thoughts had often clouded her mind, and her dreams, pleading her to go back to him.
But one chain of thought always emerged as the winner: he was SSO, the great wall of Shivaay Singh Oberoi. He would be fine, with or without her. And he would anyway never mourn over someone who had insulted his family, and worse, his brothers. Anika was certain that no matter what they shared, she would never be as important to him as OmRu and Oberois were, never.
Anika let out a wry laugh as she saw a foreign figure in front of her eyes, proving her wrong in every way. I guess I was, as important to him, and pushed away my own destiny.
He was no more the great wall he had been, for its very foundation had been shaken. If Om and Rudra were his shoulders, Anika had resided right within his heart, commanding the centre of control. His family, his lineage, his bloodline: if they all made him the SSO, a single name Anika made him the Shivaay, without which SSO was nothing but a huge yet hanging baggage.
The glaring fact, that she had destroyed the man she so dearly loved, gnawed at her heart like a savage beast. He had never put it in words, and she had felt his love only in his concern, in his boring eyes, in his affectionate touch, in his demanding pulls, in his actions and his promises. Yet, never had all of those collectively made her realize of his love as strongly as this painful indifference did: he might show nothing, but in that nothing Anika saw everything. For she had taken away Shivaay with herself the day she had left him, and the hollowness she had left behind was the most brutal testimony of his love for her.
Damn this irony. All along, all she wanted from him was to be as important as his family, and now that she saw that was a little more, now that she saw he had forgone all he had stood for only because of her, she couldn't even be happy about it.
She was trying hard, to bring back what she had killed, but all in vain. His habits were gone, his temper was gone, his arrogance vanished. A feeling of betrayal was written all over his face, and as he looked her with indifference during her numerous antics, Anika could feel only one word ring shout through his brooding eyes: Why?
There was nothing like Shivaay in him anymore, nothing that she could tap on and get a glimpse of her Baagad Billa. She hadn't felt herself more ditanced than him ever, and yet, there was shimmer of hope that made her resolute that she could win him back, that he was still her Shivaay: the ring. No matter what he says, not matter what he shows, the rings stands proof that he might have broekn ties from his former self, but not from their relationship.
**
Shivaay was glued to the laptop screen, but his mind was obstinately elsewhere. She was back: back in this house, back in this room, back to him. And this was impossible to ignore. He had obviously tried to make sense of this drama. Oberoi Mansion was not a haywire property that could just be sold away, nor were Om and Rudra such dumb-heads. There was something underlying this entire faade, and his suspicions only grew stronger as he noticed Anika's weird behaviour. If she had really moved on, got engaged, and bought this house, what was the point of trying to instigate him time and again? Why did she want to him react, display anger? Why couldn't she just lead her own life happily?
She was throwing water at him, messing up his kitchen, making fun of his hair, and throwing his coffee machine away: all that irks him, or at least did once upon a time.
Ah, only if she knew it doesn't matter to me anymore. Not these things, not anything.
But her.
She was continually asking him that how on earth wasn't he reacting. Only if she would come closer and feel his heart would she know that kind of reactions he was experiencing. He had been watching over her since the last three months: sometimes in the chawl, sometimes at the temple she visited, or sometimes the markets she went to. He used to watch her from afar, imagining for some time that she was still his Anika, the one he trusted blindly, and he would got to her and hold her from the back, making her blush the most beautiful colour. But then he would snap back to reality, get back into his car, and drive away. If there was little life in him in the last few months, it was during these fleeting moments.
It was hard, but this was much harder. To have her in front of him, in a daunting proximity, made his heart race, his breath hitch. He could no longer watch her, and divulge in fantasy. She was now right there, as real as before, reminding him every second of the woman he had somehow lost. While she sputtered about the mansion and money, he was surveying her face for a hint of his older Anika who could not talk long without making funny faces. While she commanded servants in a business like tone, he missed his chirpy Anika whose voice filled his ears every morning like music. While she threw weird situations at him, trying to elicit a reaction, he longed to join the fight and engage in a fun banter with her. While he confidently answered that the water, the dance, all the mess, nothing mattered to him: he ached to explain to her that he was too drained to react to these things, for they all brought back memories, and it was difficult to be with her and those memories at the same time, and not go weak and fall right into her arms, pleading her to stop whatever she was doing.
It was confusing. Sometimes, he saw a completely different woman in her, and he missed his Anika, wondering where she had disappeared. And yet, as he sometimes located glimpses of her older self in her, it pained even more, for it became tremendously difficult to stay away.
And hence he had started to avoid her as much as possible, the absurdity of the entire situation only adding to it. But then again, he would sometimes go and watch her silently, his eyes fixed upon that one thing that comforted him, saying that she was still his Anika: her chaand bracelet. No matter what stunts she pulls, no matter how confounding she appears, deep down she is still the woman who holds on to little, dangling moons for herself while spreading stardust all around her.
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Love,
Arushi.
Vanshaj
Love Friendship Dating and Relationships
