RiKara FS - Jo Na Keh Sake Hum Part 5 on Pg 15 (30/09) Complete - Page 3

But all the change provided for Omkara, was an opportunity to understand just how much had changed since Gauri had come into his life. Both as Chulbul and as Gauri, she'd managed to bring a boatload of changes both in the room and in the man who occupied the space. He could only look around cataloguing everything that was different, almost incomplete in some way, and wallow in the various memories of Gauri and Chulbul... and the many things they'd shared in this very space.

It was almost a whole day later, when he found out that even on her way out, Gauri had managed to make him the good guy... she'd told his mother, Dadi and also Shivaay that he was sending her away to Bareilly to be with her mother so that she could be safe from Svetlana and her scheming. He'd felt like an utter fake and a failure when Shivaay and Jhanvi had praised him for his quick thinking, because this was something he shouldn't be taking any credit for. He hadn't even thought about what he would tell his family about her disappearance or how she would feel living in the same house as someone who'd tried to kill both him and her... but Gauri in her usual manner, had thought of everything and protected his ego even as she left.

And here he was, not even able to get through one day without almost calling for her half a dozen times. Since the previous evening, he definitely found himself searching for her subconsciously... it felt as if something was constantly missing. The feeling had first annoyed the heck out of him and he'd resolved to put her and the feeling out of his mind by occupying himself. A stint at the studio had proved even more disastrous, with it resulting in Omkara actually yelling out for Gauri when he hadn't been able to find his texturizer. The smirking face of his younger brother while he calmly informed Omkara that Gauri was presently in Bareilly and offered to be her temporary replacement in just finding the implement for him and nothing else, had made Omkara flush uncomfortably.

Every time he'd searched for Gauri without remembering that she'd left and been found wandering around the house by one of his family, they'd all just smiled happily and shaken their heads at how cute he was being, missing his wife so much. But every time that happened, it just brought home for him how much Gauri had become a part of his life and his family.

And the last time it had happened just a minute ago, Omkara had finally noticed that while he was now aware of just how much Gauri had become a part of his life, he was also very aware of the fact that not once in the entire day had he thought about having to get used to not having her around anymore. The fact that he would go to wherever she was and bring Gauri back, was something his heart and his soul had already established as fact. All that was left was for his mind to catch up with the reasoning and Omkara knew he would be good to go.

This understanding gave him an immeasurable amount of peace. Whatever anxieties had been clouding his thoughts for such a long time, seemed to melt away under the warmth of the realization, making Omkara feel like he was on solid ground after a long voyage filled with uncertainty. Gauri was a part of his life... no matter what. No matter what their relationship was called, no matter what they were to each other, Gauri had been, was now and would continue to be a crucial part of his existence. The fact that he'd committed himself to her without even realizing it, made everything else a lot clearer and a whole lot easier to Omkara.

Om knew that due to his upbringing and the fractured relationship his parents shared, the idea of committing oneself completely to another person for the long term was anathema to him. He'd struggled all his life, to form and maintain connections with people. He was satisfied with solitude, happy being alone, free to create as he liked and loved the freedom that his rebellion against expectations had brought him. As easy as it was for Gauri to interact with people and make them feel comfortable around her, so easy it was for him to shut people out and stay cozy in his little spotlight of solitude.

His brothers had sort of unrestricted access to him most of the time and so did his mom and Dadi. But everyone else were shown the door which got slammed in their faces most of the time. Though Shivaay had always been his older brother and rock, Shivaay's relationship with Rudy and Prinku had grown only after all of them had become older. When they were younger, Omkara had been the Shivaay Singh Oberoi of his branch of the Oberoi family. While his older brother had been busy qualifying himself to run the varied business interests of the Oberoi clan, Omkara'd had to shoulder the responsibility of being the older sibling to a much younger Rudra and Prinku, the oldest child in a very fractured family dynamic and an utter disappointment to his father.

With almost no one he could confide in, Omkara had turned inward, becoming more and more introverted and philosophical in an attempt to deal with his emotions... it was during this phase that he'd gradually learned that what couldn't be cured had to be endured and anything that couldn't be endured could be forgotten given the right circumstances and the right tools. He'd started experimenting with recreational drugs in an attempt to erase certain realities of his father's illicit relationships and the many bitter confrontations he'd had with the man himself... and what had started as a poor little rich boy's unoriginal way to cope, had snowballed into an entirely different monster later.

As he thought back now, Omkara could see himself changing from the happy, carefree child he'd been to the much more guarded and closed off young man he'd been when he met Riddhima. She'd caught his fancy with her idealism and passion for what she believed in... the rebel in him had supported her cause whole heartedly and the artist in him thought it had found its equal in someone equally dedicated to their own ideals. Things had seemed good for a while before Riddhima's true motivations had started to come to light. Add in the fact that Ishaana, another girl he'd met during that time and started to feel a sort of kinship for, was trying actively to break the relationship he had with Riddhima and it would suffice to say that his kinda-sorta peaceful life had self-destructed magnificently.

The fact that both Riddhima and Ishaana had been lying to his face for their own ends and that he'd been taken in by both of them simultaneously had made Omkara reevaluate everything about himself. The Omkara Singh Oberoi that had started for Bareilly to meet with Kaali Thakur was probably the most unreal version of himself he could've been. He'd tried becoming the only person he knew would've weathered the storms he'd been through and come out on the other side without significant emotional damage. He'd tried to become another SSO.

And poor Gauri had met this conflicted and angry with himself, with everyone and the world version of Omkara, that too under circumstances that couldn't have been more weighted against her. Their relationship had been doomed from the start.

Now, that was the only version of Omkara Singh Oberoi she knew, and he was ashamed to say that he hadn't even made the effort during the past six months, to try to understand her let alone try to have her understand him. Fundamental differences existed in their way of defining and respecting the relationship between them but it couldn't take away from the fact that both of them did accept that something intangible but undeniable existed between them.

To Gauri, who'd grown up in an environment where undefined meant unreal, their relationship needed validation by definition and acceptance from her husband. It didn't matter to her what anyone else might think... there was no place for a third person in whatever existed between them. But for a relationship to exist, two people needed to confirm its existence... and so far, Omkara had steadfastly refused to categorize their connection into a relationship even.

True... no facet of their connection had been sought out by either of them but Gauri had chosen to maintain and feed the connection once it had been made, while Omkara had done all he could to deny its existence for most of its lifetime. Then why he'd chosen to ask her to stay after everything with Svetlana was done and she sought her freedom, Gauri still couldn't work out. Though he looked at her with heart eyes every now and then, it was not enough for someone who couldn't live in limbo anymore.

He needed time to think and decide what he wanted out of their unnamed and as yet undefined relationship and she needed a break from having to constantly worry about it. So she'd chosen to leave while she still could, with a silent prayer that Omkara would think about her and their relationship after she'd left instead of choosing to simply move on with his life. It was a gamble she had to play... because she knew that the reward was definitely more than worth the risk.

For Omkara however, their connection was unnamed still, due to reasons he himself couldn't understand let alone explain to Gauri. To him, their complex and multi-faceted bond had transcended the definition of any normal relationship a long time earlier. The bond they shared worked on so many levels, all interconnected in a seamless and beautiful tapestry of mental, physical and emotional interactions that he had no name for it because no such connection had ever existed in his world previously.

While he was sure it wasn't the first time two such different people had connected on so many levels, for Omkara, it was a first... a connection of this magnitude had never before made its presence felt in his life. And he'd fought it tooth and nail every step of the way. Though he was close to his brothers, his mom and dadi, though he'd had a number of girlfriends and even one or two serious romantic relationships in his past, he'd never felt the sort of inexplicable sense of comfort he felt around Gauri. The realization that he now felt comfortable around the tiny woman who he'd thought was a mercenary and greedy gold digger, was as discomfiting a piece of knowledge in the beginning, as he'd ever been faced with. But the persistence of the emotion and the slow but steady understanding of both her and their connection that he'd gained, had forced Omkara to accept what he already knew was the truth.

While she'd been Chulbul, with no prior misunderstandings or any other assumptions tinting their interactions on his part, the connection he'd felt to her had been instant and strong. Within a week of meeting Chulbul, Omkara had come to consider the young man his closest friend and confidante, feeling more comfortable sharing his life and all its drama with him, than even with his brothers. For a long while after coming to know that Chulbul had been none other than Gauri, the feeling of betrayal and anger at being toyed with once more, had kept Omkara from processing just what it meant that he'd become so comfortable around Chulbul within such a short period of time.

Now, with the misunderstanding about Bareilly clarified for him, Omkara knew that she'd been a victim of circumstances and that he'd grossly misunderstood her and treated her much worse than anyone, even someone who'd actually perpetrated whatever he'd accused her of, deserved. With realizations came clarity and with clarity came understanding. Accepting why he'd felt that level of comfort with Gauri had given him much needed peace.

Putting his thoughts into words was however a completely different beast. For someone who'd made it his forte to distill the wonders of life into words of beauty, the very same words had become his biggest roadblock when it came to the little woman who'd blown into his life on gale force winds and brought with her all the colors in existence into his life. With Gauri, Omkara always seemed to either be saying the wrong thing or mostly, saying nothing at all.

But he knew that to bring her back to where she belonged, he needed to make it clear to her just what she meant to him and how important she was to his continued existence. Not only did Gauri need the words, she deserved them.