[COMPLETE] ArShi SS: Cruise Adriana (Moved to Blog) - Page 13

The shrill voices of a little girl.

The chirping of Blue Jays in the woods.

The endless giggles reflecting a beautiful bonhomie.

The shattered musings of a broken soul...

A lot of it resonated in the back of Khushi's mind when Arnav had asked her the question, one she had contemplated within her mind for years and years now.

What makes her sad?.

Was she sad after all?

Wasn't happiness and sadness two sides of the same coin called life, and hence, one had to deal with them both to ascertain that they were alive?

For her, however, one aspect extensively overshadowed the other.

She took a deep breath as she said in a soft voice,

"Mr. Raizada happiness is not really a mystery, we can find it in the littlest of the little things."

"But sadness? Sadness is a mystery right? So tell me, Khushi. Why are you sad? I'm waiting."

Arnav told her..

'So he was stubborn.'

'Just like herself.'

She thought.

The gusts of winds became only more powerful as the ocean liner headed forward, it's legs being stretched at a high speed. Khushi slowly lifted her hand to fix her hair as the winds messed with them, and began in an extremely low tone,

"I was a very blessed child. I got a father who was one of the renowned personalities in the hotel industries, and a mother who doted on me. Everything was picture perfect, a frame that looked as happy from closer, as it looked from far way. No ambiguity there."

Arnav listened to her and for the first time felt everything Khushi envisioned, framed in words, or even brought references from was all related to art.

And it only seemed so legit. After all she herself was a true portrait of art. And so was her voice, that for now, sounded far sweeter than the rhapsody of the ocean waves as she continued,

"But then if it's all about happiness forever, it can't be true right? And same happened with me."

She said rhetorically.

And Arnav hated the feeling. Some part of him was just too agile all of a sudden to turn that crestfallen face of hers merry once again.

Khushi knew that going back on that long-lost lane of hurtful events would only further her despondent thoughts. But then how would it make any difference? Her life had been already so annihilated in a way that she believed it was now only filled with benchmarks of agony and mayhem.

She bit her lips slightly, as if trying to muster some strength as she went on.

"My mother became pregnant and I was overly excited about the thought of having a sibling."

"..Days passed and we got to know it was a baby girl who was all set to enlighten our lives. Both my parents were indefinably happy and so was I. In fact, my mother was so enlivened by the thought of finally having her family complete, that she had already decided my baby sister's name way before her birth. Saisha."

He watched her face lighten up as she mentioned that name. As if trying to join some dots from her past and weave a beautiful vision from those sporadic dots.

"But then that enlivenment of hers died a brutal death with her."

Arnav's eyes widened in shock as he heard her utter those words.

Her mother was dead too?

He felt a gush of dejavu emanate in his veins as some of the horrific flashes of his own mother's dead body came in front of his eyes.

But this time, he didn't let the damage of the past wreck his present like it always had. Calming his nerves, he waited patiently as she spoke further,

"My mother died during giving birth to my sister. And can you even think of the irony, Mr. Raizada? (She chuckled sarcastically) My mom had named my sister Saisha--which means a meaningful life, and while giving birth to a meaningful life, she lost her life itself."

Arnav could feel his muscles clench as he saw a lone tear escape her eye.

She remained silent for a while, as if trying to find solace within herself. And as a minute passed, she wiped the brimming tears from her eyes, and said in a much calmer tone now-

"Saisha was too small. She needed care, attention, and a mother's love. My father had already delved himself in so much work to be distracted from the agony of my mother's death, that he hardly had any time for me and my baby sister."

"And so it happened. He married Miss. Garima Tiwari a year later. She was a family friend and knew us closely. But I do know that the marriage was only a bond on paper. My father did it for his kids, and she did it for his wealth of course," Khushi said.

She looked up at him, only to find him already looking at her. With a small smile, she said,"What Mr. Raizada? If you are expecting me to say that my step mother tortured me, made me do chores, and starve, and threw rags at me in the absence of my father, then let me tell you, you will be disappointed. It is not another Cinderella story."

A faint smile appeared on his face at her relatively calmer words.

But it was only for a tiny moment as he heard her say, "Some tortures are not about physically hurting someone Mr. Raizada. Actions may speak louder than words, but in some cases words make an unalterable effect as their impact can be as deeply rooted as stone carvings.''

He didn't really know where she was getting at. He thought to ask her and before he could even make a move, she intruded, "Saisha."

"I found my happiness with her. Although till months after her birth, a part of me tried to hate her, ignore her, for the 5 year old me back then believed she was responsible for snatching my mother away from me."

"But with time I understood that my callousness towards her was only so frivolous. She was my baby sister after all, how could I vilify such a bond like that? And so I accepted the change, the fate and tried adopting the 'go with the flow' policy."

"..It did work wonders. My faith in love, life was restored. My father's lack of attention towards us still hurt. But it wasn't something that made me go overboard with emotions. My step mother did the duties that more or less were obligations for her and remained involved in her own life with club gatherings, elite-society parties, et cetera.''

"Time passed and things were gradually falling in places."

She now had a genuine smile on her face, narrating excerpts from her past memories, some of which were too dear to her as she lived those frames once again while talking, piece by piece, word by word.

"My love for nature was still persistent at that age, and for that very reason I would often visit the Cicil Woods Gardens that was only a kilometer away from my house in Philadelphia, and spend hours sitting there, scribbling in my notebook, very proudly calling those gibberish sentences my poems. I became a self-proclaimed poet," She chuckled at her own words.

"And then one morning while I was all set to step out of the house to have some me time in those gardens, my step mother's voice stopped me."

~

"Khushi! I'm leaving for a friend's place, will be back in three hours. There's no one in the house, so please take Saisha with you and come back soon."

If there was no one in the house, then why did she even need to leave for her friend's in the first place?

Wasn't she in this house to fulfill the responsibilities of her mother?

Wasn't she living a lavish life already being married to her father? Then couldn't she even return the favor by being at home for just one day when the servants weren't there?

Khushi brushed off her conscience's reasoning as she thought there was no point in pondering over something you could make no amends to. Despite being only 9 year old now, she had learnt this fact the hard way after her mother's demise, father's ignorance, and step mother's lifestyle.

"Okay."

She said normally, as she held the hand of a 4 year old Saisha and stepped out of the house...

The chirping of the Blue Jays,

The tranquility of the atmosphere,

The fragrance of the freshly blooming flowers..

The lush green trees..

This was Khushi's little paradise.

She smiled contently as she leaned her back against a big tree and began doing her conventional task of scribbling random words, which she believed to be her poetic verses.

"Wow Koosh, this place is SOOO naice!!" Saisha said in her 4 year-old voice as she sat some feet away from Khushi on the green grass and looked around.

Khushi smiled a little at her sister's words before concentrating on her notebook once again.

"Kooosh. Let's play na, please.."

She almost begged while Khushi only rolled her eyes, slightly irked at her sister disturbing her me-time.

"Saisha, go and play with the kids there!" Khushi replied, pointing her finger at a place where she could see a group of kids playing.

Saisha made a face at that before getting up and going towards the direction of the group of other kids.

"Phew!"

Khushi sighed as she felt relieved from her sister's incessant chatters, only to be nudged after two minutes as Saisha came back to her and pouted.

"What now?" Khushi asked, irritated.

"They are nooot letting me play." Saisha cried.

Khushi got frustrated now. First, her step mother had ruined her mood, and now her sister was being too demanding. After a brief period of silence, she looked here and there, before she said to Saisha, "Fine! Do you want to go on that swing?"

Saisha looked at that and immediately nodded, a 1000-watt smile plastered on her face.

"Good then. I'm taking you to the swing; you will swing there for as long as you want, without disturbing me. Okay?"

Khushi put the condition. Her baby sister enthusiastically nodded in affirmative before Khushi held her hand and led her to the swing.

Making her sit on it, she gave the swing a slight push from behind, and started to leave before Saisha's voice halted her steps.

"Kooosh, one more push pleaaase."

Khushi let out a frustrated sigh at that, before pushing the swing once more and said curtly to her sister, "Now don't disturb me!"

She went on to her previous place and resumed what she had left.

Completing her poems..

Seconds turned into minutes.

And minutes turned into one full hour.

Khushi finally felt that inexplicable feeling of joy as she finished her poem.

"Phew! How difficult it is to find the right rhymes!"

She thought, patting herself mentally before closing her notebook and looking around.

So much changed in one hour?

She could not spot the kids playing at a distance anymore and neither were the blue jays chirping any longer.

'Strange!'

She thought to herself before getting up from the grass, and brushing off the dirt from it on her frock.

She darted her eyes at the other direction where her ever nosy sister was perhaps swinging like there's no tomorrow.

Khushi laughed at that vision in her head as she walked ahead, crooning her favorite Disney song, only to be stopped at her track and have her senses betray her.

She felt objective vertigo as her legs could no longer help her keep the balance and she immediately fell on the ground seeing the lifeless body of her baby sister, a small bleeding wound etched on her forehead.

.

She was dead.

~

Khushi wasn't caught in the reverie of antagonizing the past dreads as she narrated the incident to Arnav. And this only meant she lives it every.single.day of her life, to even consider it as past.

"Mr. Raizada, you know what the worst part about death is? It's the nothingness that it brings with it. Not just the nothingness that the absence of that person brings to your life, but the nothingness you feel from within yourself."

She said in an intense tone.

Arnav was at a loss of words. His own past had tormented him for so long that he was no person to even remotely suggest the idea of moving on. He still had nightmares of his dead mother, killer father, and he knew of no definite time when that would stop.

And as if Khushi had read his mind, she just said, "Mr. Raizada, take me as wrong to say this, but sometimes, sometimes the nightmares are good than nothingness."

Arnav looked at her with a questioning stance and his question tag soon bore an answer as she said, "The last words I had said to my sister.. were to not disturb me! Seems like she took it a little too seriously and see? She has never ever even come in my dream since then! Making sure not to disturb me, I guess!"

She mocked herself, while Arnav only felt pity for her..

She wiped off the tears that had trickled down her cheeks and spoke with a straight face.

"That day when we hadn't returned home, my father and step mother came looking for us in the garden. It was late evening. I'm sure my step mother would have never made it back to the house in three hours as she had announced, and hence the delay in the vigil to find us."

She paused and looked at the ocean now. Breathing in the cool air, she continued, "Losing a child was a dramatic blow to my father. My mother's death had made him change, change into a robot who worked day in and day out. But my sister's death turned him into an over protective father, whose only concern in life was now my safety. His only child's safety as I was the only blood relation he had."

Khushi had now started speaking in a pragmatic tone. As if these instances in her life had shaped her entire perspective towards it. And hence, she went on,

"My step mother however had deemed me responsible for my little sister's death. Though her mourning period for Saisha lasted only over a fortnight, she never left an opportunity to belittle me for that tragedy. And you know what Mr. Raizada? For the first time I did not find her incorrect."

She sighed.

"It was my fault. My negligence, that killed my sister. She was only four! She must have been struggling with that swing and ended up hitting her head by falling, while I was busy scribbling nonsense in my notebook."

She said in a self-detesting tone.

Arnav felt like holding her hand and assuring her that it was not her fault, but only fate's design, but seeing her lost in a train of thoughts and words, he controlled his actions.

"And ever since then, I gave up writing poems. I couldn't give up writing though. So those poems were replaced by diary entries, as I would pen down each mundane, bad, tragic day and emotion of my life in my journal."

She said as she clutched something in her hand, something that had a very antiquated cover, but was filled with many pages inside. And that's when Arnav realized that she was holding her journal all this while.

.

"You know Mr. Raizada, I never went to school after that incident. I wasn't allowed to. Because my father didn't want to risk my life under any circumstance. I was home-schooled. Inside the confinements of my massive house, which only felt hollow from inside. Because after losing my mother and my sister, my father didn't want to lose me."

Arnav was shocked to hear these words.

He could actually feel the feeling one would get on having their wings cut down and put inside the perimeters of a territory, from where you weren't consented to escape.

"But I didn't complain. I never complained. If that's what kept my father happy, I was okay. I started reading, voraciously. I would finish books in a day. Literature, politics, economics--anything and everything. I wanted to write a book by myself too, but every time that thought would strike me, I would brush it off citing the past tragedy, and so I rather wrote journals."

"I was devoid of the things I really liked. Nature, art, culture, so I only read about them; and that's the reason today when I see any of these for real, I'm instantly pulled towards it like a magnet."

She clarified.

So now he knew why she was so lost in those French paintings last night.

His own mother was a lover of art; precisely why she experimented and made some paintings herself despite being a microbiologist by profession. Those paintings were too precious to Arnav as they were his mother's only close legacy. And that's what had made Arnav bind with art too..

"I made peace with myself. Started living like I was told to, doing what I was expected to, and functioned like everyone wanted me to."

"Throughout all this, I had my best friend with me though. Sehaj. She has been my constant support since years!"

She spoke in a low voice.

"But then two years ago another blow came, as my father was diagnosed with brain tumor and things took a 360 degree turn. He passed away last year though."

She said, as if her tears had dried crying over the end of her only blood relative and her heart had no more space to accommodate the ever growing agony.

"With those chains of shock after shock, I had concluded one thing. Destiny wanted to mock me, punish me for something I had no idea about. Although it was my loved ones who died, I felt all the pain was directed at me, with their deaths being just collateral damage."

Arnav felt heart-wrenched at those words and he immediately held her shoulders while she looked at him feeling his touch.

Sharing an awkward gaze for five seconds, they moved a little away from each other in unison, and brushing away the sudden glitch in the ambiance, she said, "The business went downhill. The wealth started diminishing with time. The banks started mortgaging our hotels and in no time, we lost so much of our property. It was like, I was losing elements of my lineage, the assets of my parentage.

"But in all of this, it was my step mother who was impacted the most. Her parties, social gatherings, high-status involvements, everything started faltering, and she just needed a way out of it, and so she made me-"

Khushi stopped abruptly as she realized what she was just going to blurt out. Her lips remained parted in the trail of the conversation, whereas her mind had already put a full stop.

She looked at her left hand, the ring finger now lying empty, but the dent of that heavy piece still evident on her milky skin.

She had removed the ring after she returned to her suite the previous night, for reasons unknown even to her.

How could she tell him about her engagement and impending wedding to Ryan Roy?

The name made her shiver as tormenting visions from the past just flashed before her eyes. She closed her eyes tight, as if that would erase those haunting aspects of her life.

And that's when she deduced that there were two reasons for which she couldn't even utter Ryan's name right now.

A. For she believed in the theory that spoken fears can come true, and,B. What would be his reaction if she told him about her fiance?

Would he walk away from her?

Or would he pity her?

She hated the last inference because she never wanted anyone to look at her with sympathetic eyes. But why did it even matter to her if he would walk away? Or what his reaction would be?

Who was he to her after all?

Just a mere stranger right?

Her little rendezvous with herself was suddenly interrupted as Arnav's voice reached her,"Made you- what?"

She instantly changed the course of her words as she replied, "Oh nothing! She made me look into the official matters a bit. So yeah, we are hoping things will be fine soon."

Arnav watched her say those words convincingly, as if trying to convince not just him but also herself.

But he didn't want to push anything right now. She had shared so much of her past right now, and he only wanted to give her some time. If not anything, then in less than 24 hours he had known one thing about this girl"She hated people pitying her, for despite the whips that life had given her by taking each of her loved one away one by one, she had still managed to deal with it in a much better way than he did.

.

"So where's your step mother now?"

He asked, casually.

"In the cruise itself. Might be making out with a crew member half her age!"

She spat, making Arnav's mouth flung open.

Okay, he did not expect that.

He awkwardly looked here and there before turning to her and whispered a "Sorry!" while she only nodded.

"So you are only close to your best friend? What's her name? Yeah, Sehaj!"

Arnav asked rhetorically and she nodded, before adding,"Her, and of course, my journal."

He looked at the one of a kind patterned journal in her hand and a strange yet exciting idea struck him.

"So you write diary entries every day?" He asked generally.

"Yes." She answered.

"Did you write one yesterday too?"

Khushi looked at him as he emphasized on the word yesterday before she simply nodded and saw a lopsided smirk appear on his face.

"Did you write a sad entry?"

He asked in a soft tone.

She didn't know what to reply to that. She didn't feel the heart to be rude to him, but didn't have words to frame an answer for his question either. She was only lost in deep thought when she suddenly felt him tuck away the journal from her hand and say in a playful tone, "Okay, I can see for myself then!"

She didn't protest as he held the journal in his hand now, his face curved into a playful smile and for some reason she loved the sight.

He was all excited, his fundamental motive to cheer her up, but he was actually kinda surprised to see her not flinch as he took away the journal from her hand.

His surprise though got a quick answer as he discovered that the journal wouldn't open.

"It is locked Mr. Raizada."

Khushi smiled gleefully at him, while he looked at her surprised, and then broke into a smile too.So she was extremely intelligent and particular about her stuff along with being extremely beautiful.

'Noted.'.

"So what are you wearing to the ball tonight?"

He asked her, shifting far, far away from the whole sphere of past topics.

She looked at him hearing that question as if she was still not sanguine about making it to the ball.

"Don't tell me you changed your mind!"

He averred, hoping fervently from inside that she should not deny him.

He felt a gush of relief soon as he heard her say, "I never said that, Mr. Raizada."

He smiled at those words, before trying to say something more, but then she interrupted him as she spoke, "I must get going now, Mr. Raizada. Sehaj must be waiting for me."

Although he didn't want to let go of her sight for some odd reason, he only helplessly nodded as she got up from the trestle where they had this long discussion about their past, sharing memories they never even bothered to share with anyone else.

"I'll see you tonight!"

He said, and watched her nod her head before she turned and left the spot, and he could only see her retreating back..

What was happening to him?

Why did her presence as well as absence matter to him so much?

Who was this girl who had managed to make such a big difference in his yesterday and today in less than 24 hours?

Arnav was lost in his thoughts when he suddenly realized he was holding something in his hand.

"Sh*t!"He muttered as he caught the sight of her journal in his hand.

Without wasting another second, he walked towards the direction she left, and soon enough he found her standing and talking.

Sighing in relief, he got closer to her spot. Her back was facing him and he could now almost hear her voice...

"No Sehaj. Don't worry. I'm fine. Trust me."

"There's nothing like that na Sehaj. You worry too much."

Arnav didn't really want to intrude in the best friends' conversation, but he felt having her precious journal with him would be a bigger act of intrusion than anything else.

And so he went ahead, all set to call her name, only to have a current pass through his body and feel his vocal chords come to a halt as he saw there was no one on the other side she was talking to.

**