RiAnsh OS: A Good Day

Very random. Seems too short to be an OS, but too long for a drabble. Leave your thoughts, please❤️

RiAnsh OS | A Good Day |

He lay there on the bed, his eyes half-hooded with still lingering sleep, and watched his wife flitting around the room like a butterfly in a meadow. With her long, black curtain of hair still damp from the shower swinging down her back, and her face scrubbed fresh and glowing like peaches and cream, she looked more like the bouquet of delicate pink rose buds he had gifted her last week, and which she had made a point to put in her hair daily. He could smell the sweet notes of passion fruit and vanilla that made up her shampoo, with faint overlays of musk, pine, and bergamot; Vansh secretly smiled to himself knowing that Riddhima had used his body wash again- a fact that gave him pleasure to no end. She was absent-mindedly humming some tune that he couldn’t recognize, and he knew it was going to be stuck in his head all day long now. Vansh again smiled to himself- he would have to check her Spotify playlist soon.

She hadn’t noticed he was awake yet, and he wasn’t in any hurry to change that fact. Vansh enjoyed these rare moments where he could just watch Riddhima in the privacy of their room without her knowing. When she was just her- truly, genuinely Riddhima. Just his lover. Not a wife, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, or the mistress of the VR Mansion. Vansh had noticed how once she exited the confines of their room, her whole demeanor changed like some magician’s trick or illusion. It was like she unconsciously wore another façade that helped her get through all that came at her throughout the day. Vansh didn’t like it one bit that in just a short span of time, Riddhima had to develop such keen sensory system to simply survive a day. That was his burden to carry, his cross to bear. But, it was also something of an occupational hazard, and Vansh would rather she be safe than sorry. That is why he loved these stolen moments where they could just exist- rare as they were, since his line of business entailed him working long, odd, erratic hours.

She had now ceased her buzzing, and was standing before the vintage walnut and chalcedony dresser getting ready for the day. The dresser had once belonged to his mother, which Vansh had moved to his room for Riddhima in the second year of their marriage. For all the years since her death, Vansh hadn’t even been able to look at his mother’s possessions without feeling like he would drown under the deluge of painful memories. All this time they had been nothing but a reminder of the magnitude of his loss, his loneliness, and his misfortune. Vansh had steeled his heart and stowed away all her belongings in one of the numerous rooms in the house, to languish away forgotten under cobwebs and dust. All her precious possessions- the sarees in rare, expensive silks and chiffons, the kanjeevarams and chanderis, the banarasis and patolas; the expansive jewellery collection passed down from generations made up of rare gems, emeralds and sapphires, the priceless uncut diamonds imported from countries like Botswana, the intricate kundan and meenakari sets befitting some Rajput princess; the handcrafted Italian footwear, and the one-of-its-kind Birkin handbag collection- Vansh had locked it all away like they were bundles of some old read and discarded magazines waiting to be sold. If his sisters had wanted to keep something they had never said anything, and Vansh had never asked. After Riddhima had come into his life, he had realized how careless he had been with his mother’s memories. In a bid to avoid the pain associated with her, he had disrespected and tried to destroy every single thing that she had loved, and that had given her joy. This was all her legacy. Everything that she would have wanted to pass down to her children and grandchildren someday. It was a miracle that all her clothes, and jewellery, etc, were still preserved in a good condition, or his selfishness could have cost him and his family his mother’s legacy. Vansh shuddered thinking how much that would have hurt his mother.

“Stop staring.”

A voice, sweet and tinged with laughter, startled Vansh out of his musings, and he realized he had been unabashedly staring at his wife all this while. A small smile playing on her lips, she was now looking at him with a curious glint in her eyes.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s bad manners to stare?”

His lips quirked up in a smile that came more and more often these days, and he cleared his throat to stave off the growing embarrassment at having been caught daydreaming so early in the morning by his wife.

“And when have I ever cared about what others say? If I want to stare at my wife, no one can stop me.”

Even as he uttered those words, he gently opened his arms in a silent invitation to his wife to come back to bed. And as Riddhima crawled back in his warm embrace, laughing at his arrogant words, Vansh once again happily smiled to himself.

It was a good day.