AdiYa OS: A Love To Love

Sweeping the filthy roads of the city was the train of her wedding gown as she sped past bewildered spectators who turned critics and started rumors spreading like wildfire but she didn't give a damn. She couldn't enter into a wedlock with someone she didn't know at all, even if the man had agreed on a church wedding because she wanted it to be so. He cared for her but wasn't in love with her. Not that she loved another or had ever been in love but she feared she would possibly never fall in love with him. All she wanted was to love first and marry after and was prepared to wait for as long as it required her to. A complete stranger was in no way worthy of spending a life with, even if he respected her choices and if at all he did, he would respect this one too and that she was confident of.

And then the unforeseen happened. Things she had never given a thought to vandalised the sense of pride she had associated with the decision that suddenly looked not sufficiently thought of but not wrong, no, not entirely, where was she supposed to go. With the setting sun instilling terror in her heart, she helplessly looked around for a ray of hope and it found her, taking the form of a park bench and nothing had ever felt more welcoming than that inanimate log of wood, chiselled to provide comfort to the passerby. And so she went ahead and occupied it with a heavy thud as she thought of the parents that would've been first offended, then dejected and lastly heartbroken at not finding her where she was supposed to be on her wedding day. She hadn't given this a thought either, foolish that she was. She was yet to discover love with a man she would want to spend her life with but she had a mother who had borne and nurtured her and a father, clinging to whose finger she had learnt to walk and live and perhaps she loved them both deeply, was only questioning it because her thoughtless deeds disgusted her. Their fallen faces soon came haunting her and she closed her eyes, let her face rest on her knees and began to weep inconsolably as all of her ego gradually melted away.

"Zoya?" a familiar voice had her taken aback and up again. It was him. The man her parents had finalized to be her husband, the one she had stood up earlier that day and the very fact that he was there made her tremble with fright.

"Wh.. what...why are you here?" she asked briskly, wiping her tears in a hapless hurry.

"Calm down, girl," he exclaimed softly and cautiously, "my sole purpose of being here is to let you know that I am ready to wait for as long as you wish and to ask you to come home to all those who love and care for you, your parents, sisters, cousins, the whole of your family and friends and dare I say, me. Don't stress for the reactions and cold faces you would be met with for I will tell them this was not yours but our fault and with mutual consent are we dismissing this marriage for the time being until things settle."

Ready to take all the blame, was he? Her eyes bulged out in wonder at this revelation. Startled, she leered into his eyes and saw endless, peerless love. A love she could very well fall in love with. Or, had she already fallen for it? And there went her staged composure as her eyes moistened up at his kindness. She was ashamed of her actions of all she had put him through but nothing ever brought him to complain! She felt love fill her, love that knew no bounds.

"I am sorry," was all she could utter until the rest of it came tumbling after, accompanied by realization "I found the love I was looking for."

"You did?" asked a flabbergasted Aditya as he appeared joyful, clueless, distressed and hopeful, all at the same time.

His innocence therein awed her, she was finally able to see the chivalry and equanimity he was formed of and his seamless charms and her feelings for him grew to such an intensity that she caught hold of his cheeks, reached up and kissed him passionately. An astonished Aditya responded sloppily and when they separated, she found herself laughing at his naivety.

"Yes, yes I did," she said at last hugging him tightly and this time he did hug her back.