Hola Peeps.
Here's the next part. It does not really live up to my own standards and it's a shorter update but it's been an emotional day - my father's first birthday after I lost him. Where ever you are Dad, I love you and I miss you more than I would ever be able to convey.
This part is probably the last one before Akshara's path to love begins.
P.S. :Not proof-read. If you have an beta-readers in mind, please PM me.
P.P.S. : Please like this post/chapter and I'll tag you from the next chapter onwards :)
C H A P T E R 4
Naksh really wanted to talk to his niece but Akshara made an excuse about a sudden headache that night and disappeared early in the morning, telling the servants that she had important work to get to.
He knew she was avoiding him, he knew it had to do with Abhi but till he got a hold of her, how was he supposed to help them fix anything? He had never been the kind to impose his wish on his children, instead, letting them find their own way in the world but…he sighed. Maybe his parenting technique was failing yet again.
He was distractedly going through a few files in his office, when his secretary announced the arrival of one Dr. Abhimanyu Birla.
Abhimanyu entered his cabin, his eyes still red, his walk a little dejected, and Naksh waited for him to take a seat before beginning, “What’s the matter? Why do you look like a nomad? What happened?”
Abhi sat there, unseeing the man before him and his surroundings, his eyes fixated on a random piece of fuzz on the table. “Your niece happened.”
************
Harsh looked at the girl before him questioningly. She looked stoic as she sat in his cabin, no fidgeting, no emotions on her face.
“How can I help you, Miss Goenka?”
She quietly passed him a paper. “My resignation.”
Harsh’s eyebrows raised on their own accord as he read the piece of paper she had presented. She was resigning? Months of trying to get her out of the hospital hadn’t worked and now all of a sudden she was just giving up?
“Why, may I ask, are you handing in your resignation, Miss Goenka?”
She looked at him right in the eyes. “Personal issues, Dr. Birla. I’m sure you won’t mind it though, right? It’s what you’ve wanted for a long time.
He inwardly smiled at her chutzpah but sat there looking at her contemplatively. He didn’t understand Akshara Goenka. He didn’t understand what his son saw in her. He didn’t think she suited his son in any way - too mellow, too soft, not academic enough. She reminded him of his own wife, and he knew how his relationship with her had turned out. And Abhi, though he was loathe to admit it, was too much like Harsh. Harsh didn’t know how his son and this girl sitting in front of him would ever make a relationship work.
“Ms. Goenka, even if I accept your resignation, you have to understand that this post was opened up for you. It is in your contract that you cannot leave the hospital unless we find your replacement which will take a few weeks. Just because you are related to Mr. Singhania does not mean you can bend the hospital’s rules. I’ll start scouting for a new therapist but till then, I’m sorry but the hospital cannot let you leave at this moment.”
Akshara hid a groan but didn’t let her frustration at his words show. “Okay, Sir, I understand. Thank you.”
As Akshara left the room, Harsh stared at the door. He thought about his son who was ready to give up everything for this elusive girl. He had seen his appearance yesterday and come really close to asking him about it but stopped himself before he could. He didn’t understand Akshara Goenka but his son needed her in his life like he needed his next breath.
And Harshvardhan Birla might not be the most sensitive father on the planet, but he would be damned if he let his son’s love run away again without giving him a fair chance.
*************
Naksh listened to everything Abhi said and run hand through his hair, exasperated by his niece. She was stuck in a vicious cycle of guilt and stupid decisions.
“Look, Abhi, there are a few things you still don’t know. I’m sure she’ll open up to you in due time.”
Abhi scoffed at Naksh’s words. “This revelation in itself was enough for me, Mr. Goenka. That…that stupid girl uttered all her words so convincingly that for a second there, even I was convinced that I would be better off without her.”
“So, you’re giving up so easily then? What about all that you said about loving her?” Naksh enquired.
“It’s not about loving her anymore. I love her and she knows it. But it’s about her not wanting to be with me anyway. Earlier when I thought it was due to Aarohi being her sister, I thought I could still get through to her. But this….this nonsense about not being able to love me… I didn’t even have an answer for her. Itne conviction se sab bakwaas bol rahi thi.”
Naksh sighed as he heard him. “Do you know about the boiling frog apologue, Doctor?”
When Abhi shook his head confusedly, he continued, “There’s a theory that if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out of the pot. But if you put it in normal water and slowly bring the water to a boil, it does nothing. It cooks itself.”
“Still not understanding what you are trying to say.”
“Abhi, Akshara has been conditioned, from the time she barely even knew what relationships were, to be Aarohi’s keeper. It’s not something anyone asked her to do. She just did it because she saw people around do it. Sirat was…she was a good person. But she was just a very young mother who had two kids from her husband’s previous wife and a new born baby herself. After Kartik’s loss, it became hard for her to give them all equal attention. She was not an evil step mother, for sure, but the cracks in Aarohi and Akshara’s relationship were too hard to mend from the beginning itself. Akshara grew up believing she was grateful to Sirat for giving her love and because Aarohi is who she is, she just asks Akshara for anything she wants and gets it.”
“I know. She told me as such. But….I still don’t really understand it. It’s been twenty years. No offence, Sir, but you should have done something.”
“You have no idea how much I curse myself for the same, Abhimanyu. I tried so hard to explain to her that that being guilty for something you was never in your control was ruining her life, but Akshara has this silent and determined way of listening, but never understanding your words.”
“There are small things that have been in Akshara’s mind and have festered there for years. She loves Sirat and Kartik but she also has some resentment towards her father for moving on so quickly from Naira - hence why she told you that moving on takes just a few months. In her mind, when her father could fall in love so quickly with another person even after having two kids with her, why wouldn’t you? Someone who’s known her for what? Three-four months?”
“She said that?”
“Does she ever say anything? But I made her see a therapist a few years ago and we got to the point in our joint sessions when it all came out. Do you know why I don’t have an amicable relationship with my in-laws? Because they never stand up for my daughter when Aarohi berates her, calls her Sirat’s killer, when she left the city for three years just because Aarohi wanted her gone? She gave up her family, Abhi, for Aarohi’s sake. A family she claims she loves so much. Why wouldn’t she give away her love?”
Abhimanyu contemplated Naksh’s words and asked, “What am I supposed to do then? Give her time to accept me? Because it just seems like she’s running away even faster now. Or am I supposed to just move on?”
“That’s your prerogative, Abhimanyu. I could be selfish and assure you that things will change because I can see you are in love with her. But that wouldn’t be fair to you. Take your time and think about whether you can pursue somebody who clearly needs you, but is less accepting of the fact than you would hope.”
Abhi took a deep breath and started to leave the cabin when Naksh’s word halted him in his way. “What I do find reassuring is that you’re the first person outside of the family she’s shared this part of her life with. She’s convinced that you deserve someone better but maybe you just need to wait and see if she realises that she deserves you.”
************
Three days had passed since she had last seen him, after the fateful night where she had all but make him run away from her life. As soon as the song had ended, like Cinderella from her ball, Akshu had disappeared in the blink of an eye without giving a chance for Abhi to talk to her.
Her phone still pinged with Good Morning texts but that was about all the communication they had had these past two days.
To say Akshara was morose would be putting it mildly. She didn’t know why she was acting this way - she had already rejected the poor guy thrice - all but shoved him from her life but it still hurt her that he had listened to her this time. A part of her was glad that he had left without a fight but Akshara tried to silence the bigger part of her which ached in his absence.
She would tell nobody that she had glanced at the scheduled surgery board and hadn’t noticed his name for two days. She would also not tell anybody that she knew the curtains to his cabin had been closed for the past two days.
She would never tell anyone that she felt lost.
It had seemed easy enough when she had proposed him to stop his quest for her love, but she had underestimated her own feelings for him. Her uncle and aunt had just looked at her disappointedly as she came down for dinner the first night. Her uncle had started to say something but thought better of it and relented.
“I don’t know what you think you are doing, Akshu. We both know you are the one in the wrong, so I am not going to browbeat around the bush to make you come to that realisation. You just need to know that you are throwing away the life your mothers saw for you.” That was all he said.
As the third day came to a close, she sat in her room, with her eyes closed, lightly strumming the strings of her guitar as she tried to come up with a melody. Frustrated at her inability to do so. she sighed impatiently. Huffing at an errant strand of hair that was tickling her face, she grasped her pencil in her mouth and slowly started to keep her guitar down, when a hand stopped her.
She looked up to see Abhimanyu standing in her room, looking down at her face with an unknown expression on his face.
She was startled at his sudden appearance and her eyes widened as she saw him bend down and sit next to her. Before she could ask him anything, he slowly moved the hair behind her ear with gentle fingers, his fingers all but a whisper against her skin. With deliberate slowness, he took out the pencil from her mouth and kept it on the bed, his eyes never leaving her own.
“What’s your favourite book?”
Her frown deepened as she heard him. “What?”
“You love playing twenty questions, right?”
Still confused, she shook her head slightly and closed and reopened her eyes to make sure he was real.
“What are you doing here?”
“Playing your favourite game. What’s your favourite book?” He repeated, his face devoid of any expressions.
“Pride and Prejudice. How did you come in here?”
“I don’t like reading fictional books. In fact I don’t even have a favourite book. Your aunt let me in.”
Akshara heard his reply. It answered her question but revealed nothing. She sighed - whether it was of annoyance or contentment was debatable.
But three days of not having seen him overpowered the rational part of her brain and she smiled as she took in his presence.
Abhi’s eyes flew to her lips as they curved into an involuntary smile.
He had wanted to punish her for rebuking his advances; he’d successfully managed to do it for two days save for the text in the morning, but two days had been his limit. Not for the first time since he had made her acquaintance, he had realised that it was futile to try to go away from her. For two days he had convinced his heart that she didn’t need him, that she didn’t deserve to have all his love. But he had woken up today morning feeling empty. Not having looked into her eyes, not having heard her voice, not having seen her smile - it had been more of a punishment for him than it had been for her.
He hadn’t become a surgeon by giving up. And he knew for a fact that he loved her more than he loved medicine.
And if a cardiac transplant had been no trouble, how much trouble could this woman be, whose heart already belonged to him.
“Guilt is a strong motivating factor, but love is an even stronger one,” were his mother’s wise words when she had heard the whole story. “Akshara is a lost soul, Abhi. Give the child some time and she’ll be yours if she really loves you.”
“The only thing I am sure of, Ma, is that she loves me.” He had replied, a little lost at what to do.
By the time the evening rolled on, his hands had involuntarily made a call to Naksh and asked him if he could come home and meet his niece.
“If not a therapist, what would you have been?” He asked next, ignoring Akshara’s attempt at getting up from the bed and holding her wrist to keep her in place.
“A teacher. Abhimanyu, seriously, what are you doing here? I told you - this isn’t going to work.”
“I would have loved to be a professional footballer. And I told you - I’m not going anywhere.”
Akshara almost smacked him as she heard his answer. When she kept glaring at him as he held onto her wrist, Abhi smiled for the first time in three days.
She looked like every dream of his come true as she sat on her bed, hair pulled back in messy bun with a few strands flying every which way, dressed in a mismatched spaghetti top and shorts, her eyes holding barely repressed anger. It took all his surgeon’s composure to not run his hand up her wrist to her neck and touch that taunting mole on her throat, to not hold her close as his hands wandered down her legs to see if her skin was really as smooth as it looked.
Before she could sense the direction of his thoughts, he left her wrist, instead focussing solely on her eyes.
Akshara felt her anger seeping away as she saw his smile. Three days since she had seen that sight. She realised that he had left her wrist but his eyes held her in her place and she could not make herself move away from him.
“I told you Akshu, I’m not going anywhere. I cannot go anywhere. It’s as painful as it is futile. I don’t know why or how your father moved on from your mother’s death. All I know is that I can’t.”
Akshara listened to his words, a little shocked to hear him talk about her father but she refused to think deeply about the matter for now.
“We’ll never happen, Abhi.” She replied stubbornly.
Abhimanyu inwardly smirked. He was Abhi again. He didn’t reply to her bogus statement and instead said, “Do you think you’re the only one who’s broken, who has problems in her life; who has hang ups about relationships, Akshara? Or are you under the impression that I go around chasing women after they reject me multiple times? Do you know why I can’t move on, Akshara?”
Akshu didn’t reply, swallowing as she felt her throat becoming parched and her heartbeat increasing without reason.
Abhi framed her face with his hands feeling the warmth of her cheeks on his palms. It calmed him down as he tried to reason with her.
“You’re the first thing I think of in the morning. Just seeing you lights up my day. Listening to you sing mends my soul a little every time. You heal demons I didn’t even know I had, Akshu. Every time you go away, a little part of me dies. Every single time. But every time you smile, I’m whole again. I didn’t even believe in love before I met you, but meeting you has opened my belief to the fact that maybe soulmates exist. I know that you complete me. I feel it in my bones, babe. So, I’m waiting for you. I am not going to force you, but I’m not moving on. So if you are waiting for me to move on, it’ll be the wait of a lifetime.”
Akshara didn’t move as he confessed his feelings, staring into his eyes which conveyed far more than his words ever could. She didn’t even blink as they tried to stare into her soul. Her heart rate, which had calmed down when he had placed his hands on her cheek, increased again as his eyes left hers. She involuntarily closed her eyes when she felt his lips on her forehead.
Abhi took in her presence and as he kissed her forehead, he felt functional again. Her calming scent, her soft skin, her mere presence provided him a serenity he had never experienced. His own life had too many problems to even count, but being next to her had a way of making him forget everything.
He pulled away to see that Akshu had her eyes closed too, not even breathing, just staying still. As though she was also savouring the moment between them.
He gently moved his hands away and waited for her to open her eyes before he smiled down at her. “I love you, Akshu. You’re it, baby.” He didn’t wait for her reply as he stood up and made his way out of her room.
Akshara stared at the disappearing figure and closed her eyes. She could still feel the warmth of his touch on her cheeks, the feel of his lips on her forehead. She flushed as she recalled his proximity and his words.
**********
Abhi smiled as he went down the stairs feeling his spirits rise. Just seeing her had improved his mood and her reaction towards the end had strengthened his resolve. For a person who wanted him to go away from her life, she was needlessly happy to have seen him.
As hope blossomed in his heart, he saw Keerti and Naksh sitting in the courtyard drinking tea, with questioning looks on their faces.
“Good talk?” Keerti asked, motioning the help to serve him. Abhi waved him away, refusing the drink, taking a seat next to them and said, “She’s as stubborn as a mule, but I think I’m getting to her, Ma’am.”
Naksh laughed at his words, “You’re not wrong. In fact mules are less pig-headed than she is. Do you know that she once got food poisoning because she stubbornly refused to not eat the food that she had bought from this condemned restaurant. And she once walked seven kilometres in the rain, rather than calling me for help because she forgot to put petrol in her car even after me reminding her a few times.”
Keerti slapped him lightly on his arm, “Stop making fun of the poor girl. She’s just a little shackled by her guilt and promises.” When Abhi nodded with a smile on his face, she added, “And call me Bua.”
Abhi smiled at her and then looked towards Naksh. Naksh shook his head and grinned, “Still Sir for you, Romeo.”
As they sat in the courtyard sipping tea, Akshara stood in the upstairs corridor looking down at them.
Her fingers touched the place on her forehead where he had kissed her. She smiled involuntarily as a small tear escaped the corner of her eye.
**********
Tu yeh kyun kahe humnasheen
Koi qurbat hi nahi
Main ye kahu ishq hai
Chhu le zara dil ki zameen
Likha hai jo dil pe mere
Aaja wo dikhaun tujhe
Tera hu main tera hi hu
Itna bata du tujhe
Dil mein gar ho ijazat chhupa lu yaara
Bin kahe suno o yaara
Jee ke na mil paaye to
Mar ke tujhe paayenge
Chhu kar dekhu toh dil ko yakeen ho yaara
Bin kahe suno o yaara
Humne toh yunhi dil haara
***********
Hope you guys at least got through the chapter.😆
Sorry for the delay. This week's been a bust. The next update will be faster, promise!
Thank you to all the readers.
Bisous,
NeNe
Song: O Yaara (Bin Roye)
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Cricket
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