"The choice is yours." Raziya Sidhiqui's cold and cruel words made the hair on the back of her neck stand. Raziya slipped one of the two metal guns to Zoya's hand. The cold metal made her skin go hot with fear. With trembling hands she enwrapped her fingers around it. The world seemed to fade into oblivion under the weight of the dangerous weapon in her hand while in the backdrop Raziya's hollow demonic laugh echoed in every direction.
Zoya looked up; facing the choice she had been presented with. At the edge of the cliff, three people stood. Asad Ahmed Khan stood at one end while at the other end Raziya stood with the gun's nozzle placed at her Aapi's temple, threatening to blow her head any second.
"Shoot him."
Zoya sobbed as she outstretched her hands, the gun pointing towards the love of her life.
Asad. When their eyes met, it was as if the world had become iridescent. He was the color of her life. It was his presence that added the sparkle, the magic, the charm to her uneventful existence. Those eyes, with so much of love, affection, tenderness and passion, they had so much life in them. And now she was being forced to close those very eyes forever.
"No..."Zoya broke down, lowering her gun. How could she kill him? Killing him would be like stabbing herself.
"Do it. I understand." Asad said to her. Those enchanting eyes, with so much of force and will in them that they seemed to bore through her skull in spite of the distance between them. They almost coaxed her into pressing the trigger.
She suddenly heard a gunshot. Her head immediately turned towards the other side of cliff where her aapi was struggling against the clutches of Raziya who had fired a shot in the air.
"I don't have all day girl...I'll count to ten.One" Raziya was the cruelest and coldest woman Zoya had ever seen in her life. She was the kind of the devil who could murder someone in cold blood without even batting an eyelid. Zoya knew that very well and so she took her threats seriously.
"Two."
But just as she looked at Asad, all the incentive vaporized into thin air. She closed her eyes, all her life's happy moments flashed in a jiffy. She remembered dancing with him in the middle of the night around the kitchen in the refrigerator light. His hands were tough but they were where her belonged in.
"Three"
Her eyes, blinded with tears, she looked at aapi. God had taken away her mother but had given her more than she could have asked for. An angel in disguise, her aapi was Zoya's guiding light.
"Four."
Zoya screamed. It drained her heart's blood and ripped her veins apart to even think of living without anyone of them. That moment she realized how much she loved both of them, more than her life.
"Five."
If she killed Asad, her life would be a gray rainbow-stripped off its colors. But she could not led Raziya kill her Aapi, her conscience and morale would never let her do so. Living with the guilt of killing anyone of them for the other would itself rot her soul to death.
"Six."
Zoya cried. Her agonized doles spoke of some great inarticulate sorrow that hung like a weight upon her delicate heart.
"Seven."
She looked to and fro,
Aapi.
Asad.
"Eight."
Aapi.
Asad.
O! How mercilessly had the vicious fate brought her to the crossroad of her life? The choice that would alter the course of her life forever. The choice was excruciatingly difficult. She would rather die than live with the guilt and the pain of letting anyone of them go.
"Nine."
She loved both of them too much.
A thought, fast as lightning struck Zoya. Maybe she didn't have to choose anyone of them. There had always been a third choice. This choice was the one she went for.
She put the nozzle on her forehead and pulled the trigger.
Kumkum Bhagya
Anupamaa
