FF:Something About You Thread#3 *COMPLETED* - Page 42

Khushi had been very busy actually to actively feel sorry for herself over the heartache that almost felt like a part of her existence now. A wedding meant thousands of preparations. & for a sister, whose only brother & only sister were getting married at the same time, leaving the only person to be married next in the family to be herself, the impending wedding became THE wedding of her life. So Khushi had no real time to spare, not even for herself.

Well, she didn't really spend all of her time on wedding preparations. She did spend a lot of time making a lot of Jalebis. Piles after piles of them. But that wasn't Khushi's concern, it was her family's. It wasn't at first though. At first, all of her family members had put her increased Jalebi making to the stress due to the stress from the wedding preparations & her studies. They had also taken great pleasure & pride at distributing the Jalebis made by their Khushi, which they consider to be the best Jalebis made in the whole wide world, with the invitation cards of the wedding. A wedding, which was getting bigger & fatter, by each passing day. It was only when the Jalebi-making continued to go on for days after days & Khushi continued becoming more & more chirpy, that her family really started getting alarmed.

But as much concerned as they were for Khushi, nothing could put a dampener on the wedding that was slowly approaching the grandeur scale of a 'Sooraj Barjatiya-Karan Johar Joint Venture of Great Fat Indian Wedding' proportions. & that was a cause of concern for Khushi.

She had seen Bauji pay off the jeweler for Anjali's wedding set, & she had almost gasped to think that he would have to make another similar payment for Payal's set too. On top of that, the wedding trousseaus that the Raizada's had prepared for the brides was amazing. Khushi had seen enough of it to know, it was worth a fortune. & while, no one was even attempting to compare the two families in terms of wealth, but still, some things just had to be arranged for, when the only son & the eldest daughter of a family was getting married.

& the more Khushi saw the service charges & the delivery bills piling up, the more she started thinking about the deed of Nikunja with her name on it. She knew her Bauji & Bhaiya were sensible people & they were cutting their coats according to their clothes. But still she knew, this wedding was gonna snag the last of Bauji's savings & it was also gonna take out a lion's chunk from Rohan's savings account too. The other day, she even heard Bauji, Amma, & Buaji discussing selling off their sweet shop in Lucknow, & trying very hard to sound offhand about it. But Khushi knew how much the shop meant for them.

So, Khushi made up her mind. Two days after she heard them discuss the potential gains from selling off the sweet shop, she tip-toed her way into her Amma's room. It was Wednesday. Rohan was in his office. Bauji, Amma, Buaji, & Payal were selecting the stage designs for the engagement party. Khushi just wanted to see the deed one more time, to make sure it was really her name on the deed, because she suspected, that's why no one ever contested her when she violently rejected the sale of Nikunja. & if that was the case, then Khushi was going to tell everyone that, it didn't matter that much to her anymore.

Yes, Nikunja still held some very precious memories for her. It was 'Home Sweet Home' for her. But somehow, in the last few weeks, with the impending prospect of living in the house with only her parents & maybe her aunt, & both her siblings moving on to living their own lives had made her realize that, Nikunja was her second home & her first home was her family. & they didn't deserve to struggle so much for these happiness that they deserve, when they could be going about the experience a lot more comfortably.

Khushi opened her Amma's almira carefully so as not to make any noises. She remembered where she had seen the deed last. In the drawer with all the important documents. She rummaged through the drawer once it was opened. Some Kundalis, all of their passports, some papers about property taxes, & then the exam certificates of the three of them. But she couldn't find the deed she was looking for. To look more thoroughly for a second time, Khushi took some documents in her hand to get a clear look at the bottom of the drawer. But as her focus was on the contents of the drawer, she couldn't stop it when she felt the papers on her hand slipping through her fingers & spilling over the floor around her feet.

Khushi let out an irritated noise as she bent swiftly to pick up the essential documents. As she gathered the papers up carefully, she looked up in the middle of it & her eyes caught on to something. The second shelf from the bottom contained her Amma-Bauji's winter garbs. But that's not all they housed, contrary to what she thought before. There was a weather-beaten, square, wooden box peeking out through the gap between a few of Bauji's jumpers. The box looked mundanely ordinary to Khushi, & the only thing that made her curious about it, was the fact that, she had never seen the object before in her life.

They had never been a very secretive family. In fact, in Khushi's opinion, they had been the exact opposite of that. Hence, she did feel a bit of a shock in addition to the curiosity towards the box. Has it been there for long? Khushi didn't really know what went on inside her Amma's almira. No one did, she guessed. Garima was the one who would take care of the organization of all of their cupboards, & not the other way round. & maybe the only reason, Khushi was getting a peek at the box now, was Garima's current absentmindedness resulting from anxiety over the double wedding & the unexpectedly sudden fall of winter around Delhi this year. Maybe she had taken out the warm garments hastily & then had forgotten about tidying the remaining contents after her?

Khushi didn't realize till she actually felt the rough wood against her soft fingertips that, she had unwittingly reached out to touch the box while still lost in her thoughts. Khushi thought for a moment, & then remembering again how she believed there were no secrets in her family, she pried the box out hastily from behind the cluttered clothes. When she held the box in her hands, she looked it over carefully & discovered a small latch on one side of it as a result of her inspection. The latch had a small brass lock on it.

Khushi hesitated a bit, then started looking with a vengeance through the bundles of Shawls & Sweaters for the key to the lock. When she found none even after creating a wrinkled & crinkled mess of the garments, she took the box in her hands & stared at it in real frustration. For some reason, Khushi felt she just couldn't put the box back to its secret hiding place. She didn't know why, but it felt like she had a ticking time bomb in her hands & she couldn't feel more reluctant to put the box down anymore now than if there was an actual live bomb in it.

Khushi squeezed her eyes tightly shut & pondered for a moment, then her eyes flickered open & she blurted out in a determined tone, "Well, I can't find the deed to the house anywhere. & it's imperative that I found the deed. & it could very well be inside this box!" & with that, she banged the small lock upside down on the edge of the shelf the box was on earlier & heard the sound of the small lock breaking with a satisfied smile. Then she examined the broken lock quickly. Upon seeing that it was broken beyond repair, she said with a suppressed sigh, "Well, now that I am in trouble for sure, I might as well know, what I am gonna be in trouble for!" Saying that, she lifted the slightly heavy lid of the box open & peered inside. Papers, quite a lot of irregularly shaped, very old looking papers. Most of them were news paper cuttings, but some of them were hand-written letters & applications of some kind.

Khushi rummaged through the contents of the box. Yellowed, inks faded with the passing of time, frayed at the edges, ancient paper cuttings. Some with pictures. Some under headlines. From Lucknow local news correspondents. None of them bore the name of the Daily's they were published in, Khushi saw when she searched for them, but they all bore the dates they were published in. The clippings were from more than 19years ago. It was about a man. & his wife. & their baby daughter. A family, actually, of three.

Khushi furrowed her brows as she started to read a small clipping at random. She felt her mouth falling slowly open as she read on. She took a big gulp of breath as she read again, & she felt the clipping falling through her numb fingers, getting strewn across the floor at her feet. She read the clipping for the third times, & slowly uttered the five or six names written on the article. Then she suddenly scrunched over the floor & fumbled through the clippings scattered there with shaking fingers. Then she found it. The headline news with pictures. The picture of a small baby girl, with her name written under caption: Khushi Kumari Yadav.

"Khussi, rotate your hand like this' That's right! That's how you write Kha in Hindi! Now write-"

"Amma, why am I Khushi Kumari Gupta, & Bhaiya is not Rohan Kumari Gupta & even Jiji is not Payal Kumari Gupta? I want a name like Bhaiya & Jiji, bas!"

"Chhutki!! Because you are our Laadli na? A special name for our special one!... & Rohan Kumari?? Bhaiya is not gonna play with you anymore if he heard that!"

Khushi came out of her trance with a jolt & looked down at the papers in her hand. Then turning 360 degrees with the box on her lap, she leaned against the still open Almira & started reading the contents of the box one after other with undivided attention.

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Khushi came down to the living room twenty minutes later with a rather detailed & elaborate news paper clipping on her right hand, her dragging bare feet barely making a sound on the floor. She hesitated a bit as she stood on the landing looking out at the 'happily busy with preparing for a wedding' faces of her family & licked her dry lips. She had read it all. She knew her subconscious had already connected some dots, but her conscious mind refused to acknowledge the results of her deductions. No, till Amma-Bauji said so, she won't let some pieces of papers shake the foundation of her world like that.

Khushi spoke up with a determined shake of her head, "Bauji, who was Surya Shankar Yadav & Pratima Yadav?" & even as she spoke she saw the person beside Bauji to whom she had not even spoken getting white faced & then a pained cry left her trembling lips as Garima stood up shaking visibly & asked in a high-pitched voice, "Khussi, what's that you've got in your hand?!"

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Shashi quickly stole a glance at Khushi, who was observing the exchange between her parents with keen eyes, & said in a defeated tone, "Garima, Chhutki will always be our child. We will always be there to protect her. But she is not a baby anymore. We can't hide things from her anymore. Besides, we did decide na, that we would tell her everything once the weddings were done with? We decided right, that we couldn't marry her off with hiding it from her future in-laws, & thus we would have to tell her of it all first?"

Garima tried to free herself from her husband's grasp by shaking her shoulders, & cried out, "No, we didn't decide anything. You suggested we tell her everything, like you've been doing for long & I disagreed like every other time! I don't-" But before she could finish, this time she was interrupted by the very daughter she was fighting to protect, as Khushi almost yelled in an exasperated voice, "Amma, you can't hide anything anymore! I already read it all, OK? All of it! Now I just want you to tell me the one thing I know only you can confirm! I already connected the dots in my head Amma! I just need you to say that I have got it all wrong. That I am not who I think I am, Amma!" She finished in a desperate plea.

This time when Garima started to answer her in a flustered note, both she & Khushi were forced to remain in a calm state when the most respected person in both their lives said in a tranquil voice, "I keep telling you Garima, our bitiya is more mature & responsible than you give her credit for." & then Shashi turned towards his bitiya in question & held his left hand out for Khushi to take it, while his other hand stayed around his wife's shoulder, as he said in a grave voice, "& I keep telling you bitiya, you're more perceptive & intelligent than you give yourself credit for."