14. Ties
It's a soul fractured to the bone, its a life falling forever endlessly in a bottomless pit, its a mind sharing a bed with insanity, its a limbo made up of leaky dreams and faulty decisions; gone to gallows, fallen into trenches, drowned in marsh. But...but when a sliver of hope glimmers at
the edge of despair, its everlasting light dredges all the things dark and corrupt, cleanses charred residues left by scarring hurts and rejections and...frees. Just frees.
*****
He finds her in her room carding through piles of clothes and instructing a
dhobi patiently. He stands in doorway and watches the way she interacts with the man and the seriousness behind her action. She takes everything that comes to her way seriously and its one of those things she has managed to rubbed off on him. He wonders idly, watching the clothes moving from pile to pile, when he started taking things for granted. She looks up from her chore and dashes a smile across and stands up giving final instructions.
"You seem...happy," she says carefully. She reaches out and touches his face when he walks to her, her thumb grazing across his dimple. Her smile widens when she feels the dimple deepen.
"It's strange considering what I am about to tell you." He eyes his sister. He feels like a jackass for feeling this exhuberent but since he is going to hell anyway, he doesn't care.
"Is everything okay?" Anjali asks, taking a step back looking at him. Her conflict plays in the slight uplift of her lips, the frown and the mild panic that sets off in her eyes.
He grabs her hands before she assumes the worst and squeezes its gently. "I wont marry Lavanya." He says clearly. Loudly. His heart doesn't change its pace and that for him is a testament how strong his decision is.
As expected, Anjali's face crumples. "I thought...I thought you were ready for..." Her voice stops supporting her thought. Her disappointment is palpable on his tongue.
"I don't want to marry Lavanya, di." He isn't in mood for metaphors or long winded amalgamated responses.
Anjali is momentarily taken aback. "You threw tantrum like five year old and acted like a child when Naani refused to accept Lavanya. And now, after all this, you don't want to marry her?"
Disbelief in her voice pinches him. "Di-"
She barrels over him. "Is it marriage you are against or was this all one giant game of power for you?"
It shouldn't have hurt but it did. He didn't know when everything he did start becoming a backhanded way of getting back at people or just...mean.
He goes for the jugular. "I am in love with Khushi." He says, as a matter of fact.
"So what? Now you are going to ditch her post-engagement?" He takes a step back at the harshness of her tone. Tears glaze her eyes and anger tints her cheek red.
"Isn't it better if I come to terms with what I feel for her rather than living in a lie for the rest of both our lives?" His tone hits a nerve.
The slap reverberates in her room as an ugly reminder of the moment she lost sight of who was in front of her but only the words which moved like an ocean.
Arnav holds his ground and it takes every ounce of willpower not to reach for his cheek and rub across it. Not to mention the hurt her response has generated.
"When you tell Lavanya that you don't love her anymore, I will be there right next to her holding her hand. Because fifteen years ago a man said exactly the same thing on my wedding day and left me at the wedding alter.
So since I have a first hand experience in last moment rejection and earth shifting life changing moments, I think I will be standing next to Lavanya to see the man you have become."
Arnav swallowed thickly. He doesn't have a response ready nor will he ever have one at his disposal. He was so far deep in his own mind that he hadn't realized the body count he left in his wake. His lack of miscalculation only showed the extent of his involvement with Khushi and how wrapped he was in his self-generated misery and complexities that simplicity had completely escaped him.
Without answering, he turns around and walks away from her room. They were going to be alright one day. After all this was over and Lavanya understands what his decision truly meant. He wants to tell Anjali that Lavanya is much stronger than she ever was, but he doesn't.
*****
Strength of character doesn't come with grading system. Extent of grief doesn't have levels. They just are. They exist next to our bones, inside our flesh and in between laughter. They work along with us, sometime grows and sometimes dims with passing time. Memories bring them to surface, scratch an old scar and bleed it a little. But again with time, it heals.
******
He hopes, one day, that this moment gets stuffed amidst loaves of good memories. And when either she or he remembers, they would only sigh in momentary grief.
And he would wait patiently for the day to come, his salvation in its wake.
Happy Pongal / Sankranti / Lohri everyone!My apologies for the delay. I have no valid reason for not writing but just that when I did have some time to write, the words that I wrote didn't satisfy me. The initial words written is what I was looking at, in the first place. I wanted Arnav to draw parallels between her and Lavanya or at least is made aware of. Hope the wait made sense :-)Will post respond to comments through out the day :) Have a good day! Edited by greenteaholic - 11 years ago
Shiv Shakti
CID
24