It was one of those lazy days when nothing gets done and Omkara Singh Oberoi had decided he was going to get something done. He had a couple of pieces commissioned for an upcoming exhibit that he needed to deliver soon, and today seemed like a good day to get a head start on one.
He'd resolutely slid onto his high stool with a canvas tacked onto his favorite easel and a piece of charcoal cradled in his fingers, and been staring off into the distance for a good fifteen minutes now. Or at least, that is what he looked like he was doing... or not doing at the moment.
What the man was actually stuck on, was the beautiful visage of his not-really-wife, who was visible through the big plate glass window, animatedly talking to her bhaujaai in the next room over. Had it been just two days back, that he'd awkwardly not-really-apologized to her for his behavior and asked her to consider staying back?
Had it been only forty-eight hours since he'd had no explanations to give to any of her valid questions, because he himself didn't have any? He still didn't know what had prompted him to ask her to stay... sure, he'd tried to reassure both himself and her by saying that it was because she'd done so much for his family and he'd treated her badly, but both of them knew that it'd been only part of the reason.
He did want to thank her in some way for what she'd done, time and again, for his family... and in the past, he would've just written her a cheque for any amount of money she might want... something she probably still needed considering her mother was undergoing extensive treatment. But that avenue of expressing his gratitude seemed like cheapening her actions somehow. He couldn't see himself handing over money instead of expressing his gratitude to Gauri Kumari Sharma and somehow, he couldn't see her taking the money either. He had actually tried giving her money once before and even then, she'd refused politely but strongly. This woman had always been from day one, and would always remain, a puzzle to him.
But knowing that she was a puzzle would go nowhere in helping him understand why he, Omkara Singh Oberoi had asked her, Gauri Kumari Sharma to stay in Oberoi Mansion when all that he'd been wanting over the past few months was for her to leave. With the Bua Maa fiasco ending as it did, the family had been shaken up with the thought of one of their own trying to harm, possibly kill Omkara.
When Jhanvi had expressed her gratitude toward Gauri understanding Bua Maa's intentions and saving Omkara's life once again, it had made him think about all the other times she'd put her own life at risk and the time she'd actually stopped breathing for some time, due to her dedication to saving his and his family's lives.
When she'd told him later that she was leaving, her suitcase in hand, the situation had become all too real for him and he'd simply reacted to it by asking her to stay. It could've been that he'd never gotten the opportunity to thank her for all that she'd done but there was something else... something silent but important, something that panicked inside him at the thought of her leaving his life once and for all. It was a something he knew well but had staunchly disregarded for some time now.
He'd fought against it since he'd known about it but Gauri Kumari Sharma had a way of getting to him, getting underneath his numerous layers of protection and making her way straight into the regions of his heart. As Chulbul, with no misunderstandings between them, it had taken her hardly a couple of days before Omkara'd started to consider her a trustworthy member of the workforce and just a week more for him to think of Chulbul as a firm friend.
For a long while after the traumatic revelation of Chulbul's truth, Omkara had found it difficult to make Chulbul and Gauri one in his mind. To him, the differences in their personalities, values and baseline behavior were so sharp that even after seeing the transformation in front of his eyes, his brain had refused to accept that as fact. All through the entire contract marriage fiasco, every time she spoke about Chulbul around him, he'd lost it because he couldn't bear the thought of this one amazing relationship in his life, the only one that to him, had formed on the basis of no expectations from either side, be cheapened by it having been a ruse perpetrated by a woman he held no respect for.
For Gauri, Chulbul was part of her truth, her identity... for him, Chulbul had been as far from Gauri in his mind as possible. They were two ends of an emotional spectrum and trying to merge the two had him starting to disbelieve absolutely everything. Chulbul had become the definition of trust, uncomplaining companionship and friendship with no expectations in his mind while Gauri was considered as the devil to be avoided... there were some emotions attached to her from their previous encounters but they were always shrouded in mystery because his conscience wouldn't let him touch them with a ten foot pole. She'd unconsciously strengthened his opinion of her while playing the role of the Thakuraain in Bareilly.
But all of this and his emotional connection with Gauri had come to a head during the fakelana and her freezer catastrophe. While he fought tooth and nail with her on ideas and execution, Omkara had to give it to her... Gauri was a human dynamo, always charged and up for anything, always bursting with ideas that were as filmy and complicated as herself. She had a way of going about things that were very different from his methods.
To Gauri, the end justified the means and that, to Omkara had been unacceptable for a long time. To him, the concept of going to any length to achieve his goal had been galling but then, upon thinking back at his own actions recently, he perceived how he'd been kind of a hypocrite about that. As a result, his haste in blaming her for every single thing that went wrong took a back seat... but only in his own mind. It wouldn't do to let her know of his inner machinations before he himself was able to understand them in any way.
She certainly was willing and capable of going to any lengths, he recognized... but only for things she believed in or for the safety of his family members or himself. However different from his own, Gauri Kumari Sharma did seem to have her own code of ethics and values... and a slight glimmer of very reluctant admiration made its way into his heart, making a home there at that revelation. Then, she'd been kidnapped by the fake Svetlana and trapped in the freezer and all of his emotional revelations of the recent past went for a toss.
The amount of sheer terror and helplessness he'd felt at that moment, he'd never be able to forget. He'd relived the whole thing in his nightmares for days afterward, each time seeing her lying frozen in his arms and not waking up afterwards. Experiencing her dying in his arms, even if it had been just a nightmare, brought home one important fact to him... he was not as indifferent to Gauri as he'd deluded himself to be. There was something between them that needed to be resolved... whether it was just guilt, a feeling of being beholden or something else entirely, Omkara knew that he couldn't just coast by ignoring it for the rest of their lives. But knowing what he thought he did about her, he still couldn't accept that he'd developed some sort of feelings for her in spite of the kind of person he knew she was.
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