Lost and Found.
May be it was destiny. May be it was a result of all the hours he prayed. Might even be because someone out there took some pity on him. He liked to think it was his own stubbornness. After all, what Abhishek Mehra wanted, Abhishek Mehra got. No matter that, more often than not, what he wanted left his life and his heart hollow.
So when Abhi saw Pragya browsing through books in a small bookstore in Pune, he knew that whatever the reason, he had been granted a chance. Not to get her back in her life. Even he was not that delusional. There was not even a little chance that she would even consider coming back to him.
But a chance to just look at her. To drink her in. To see her smile with complete abandon. Because she never did things half way. When she smiled, it always reached her eyes. Except the fake smiles she had been carrying around him, of course. But then he had never given her a chance to be happy about anything, had he.
To watch how the wind caressed her hair. They were wild, her tresses. Not like Tannu's. Not styled down to that perfect curl.
No.
Her hair just was.
Wild.
Like her.
And yes, she was wild. It had taken him a long time to understand that. People mistook her because she did not speak much. That might be because Bulbul was always the extrovert. And Pragya liked listening. She would observe. She would listen.
But she was fun where it counted. She was wild in her thoughts. Hadn't he seen a glance of that when she had been drunk? She was gyrating to some music, and he had just watched her body move. Seen that when she finally let herself go, she was more beautiful and sexy than any woman he had ever been with. And he had been with many.
But most of all, he finally had another chance to see her eyes. Those eyes which were always hidden behind those glasses of her.
Chasmish.
He smiled. What had started off as an insulting term, had changed into an endearment somewhere down the line. Wasn't it why he had felt restless when anyone other than him had called her that?
Because it wasn't meant for them.
It was theirs.
His and Pragya's.
And they didn't have a lot of things between them which didn't reek of pain and sadness. Of tears and disappointment. This one term was the only thing that had a little bit of tenderness between the whole joke that their marriage had been.
So why then, would he have wanted to share it?
But today, today he had found her again.
And in finding her, he had found those things that he had lost.
He found his smile, even though he knew he would lose it as soon as she left.
He found contentment, even though he knew that the restless would come and find him when he went back to his empty room with the colourless walls.
He found hope, knowing that despair was just biding its time. Waiting to swoop in when he would least expect it.
But most importantly, he found himself.
But may be that was the wrong way of putting it.
He had finally lost himself.
In her. In all that was her.
And he didn't want to be found.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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