This what I could come up with after nearly three hours of the biggest writer's block ever! I can only justify this as a sort of foregrounding so that whatever happens next is not totally random. Also, THANK YOU to everyone who liked the previous post and wished me luck for my mocks!! I just sat two exams and this is my personal stressbuster:)
Chapter Seven
Arnav felt miserable.
It was a feeling that, he mused, he was not wholly familiar with. Arnav had been in close contact with a wide range of emotions and passions, disregarding some as pointless and becoming only too familiar with others. Some accompanied him at all stages of his life. He had known grief, loss, fury, desperation, hopelessness, exasperation, numbness... throughout his life he had schooled himself to deal with these emotions as objectively as he would deal with a new business contract or another hostile takeover.
But what he had gone through yesterday had been an exception he could not so lightly brush away. Within the short space of just a few hours, Arnav had been plunged to the very depths of darkness, then pulled out and left floating in nothingness, dipping and rising as guilt, remorse, shame all took their turn with him, punctuated by little rays of hope breaking out in his horizon when he least expected it. Up till yesterday, Arnav would never have believed a person could feel so much at the same time, and continue to breathe as though life had not changed.
But today, now, in fact, as he sat dejectedly behind the steering wheel, he felt distinctly morose. And misery was not an emotion he could relate to. There was a certain helplessness he related to misery that he had never allowed himself to feel. Over the past few years, Arnav had felt helpless only on a handful of times- he had otherwise had his life in a perfect iron-grip. Even then, on those moments when he had felt helpless, like when Di had left home, or when he thought Khushi had had an accident, it was usually infused with other strong emotions, like panic, or fear, which had built up the adrenaline in his body and spurred him on. There was something curiously inactive about misery, he realised; one could only sit down and wallow in it.
And that was exactly what he was doing.
He shot another half-hopeful glance at the rear-view mirror for the umpteenth time in the past five minutes, but all he was rewarded with was a glimpse of the pale blue of her saree. Arnav's hands clenched on the steering wheel as he fought with himself not to slam his foot down on the brakes and demand that Khushi look at him.
She had been avoiding him ever since their brief encounter in the kitchen. Even when they were in the same room, she found some loophole in the situation to keep out of his eyesight. By the time everyone had come down for breakfast, Khushi's dishevelled appearance had been replaced by the sight of a pale young girl in a neat, plain ultramarine saree devoid of any embellishments, with her long dark hair let down, straight and swept over one shoulder.
On any other day, Arnav would have been thrilled to see her with her hair down, her velvet soft tresses framing her face, the cream of her skin standing out breathtakingly against the dark curtain of her hair. But today he almost wished that she would wrap it back up into the messy bun it was in this morning, or even better, into those ridiculous pom-pom decorated plaits she used to wear her hair in before their marriage. At least then he would get a clear view of her face.
For whenever Arnav attempted to sneak a peek at her, he found her face shielded completely from view as she stood with her head tilted slightly to one side, so that her long locks hung down like silk drapes over her shoulder. And with every passing minute, he became more and more convinced that she was doing it on purpose. Even when he purposefully strode over to where she stood conversing with Di, pretending to interrupt them to ask Di whether she would be joining them that morning on their visit to the hospital, he noted how she instinctively turned ever so slightly away from him, so that the most he could see would be the side of her neck. Even at the breakfast table, she had somehow managed to manoeuvre Mamaji and Mamiji into the seats next to him, so that she ended up sitting at the extreme end of the breakfast table on the same side as him, but out of his line of vision, what with Mamiji's constant touch-ups and Mamaji shaking open his newspaper with a flourish every time he turned a page.
As the four-wheeler hummed away patiently at a traffic-light, Arnav took a moment to pass his hand over his brow, closing his eyes in an attempt to get a hold on himself. He had at first supposed that she was simply shy from having woken up in the morning to find herself in his arms, and then after the hints he had dropped to her in the kitchen, but as time passed by a nagging conviction settled heavily in the pit of his stomach. This conviction consolidated into firm, albeit displeasing, belief, when Khushi had practically dashed out of the house when they were leaving and had planted herself directly behind the driver's seat in the car, her head bent ever so slightly so he could not see her face. Anjali had laughed and teased her warmly about being unable to wait to see her father as she got into the front passenger seat, but Arnav had to stand outside his own door, taking in a series of quick, calming breaths to quell his frustration before getting in himself.
He knew exactly why she was behaving this way.
It was nothing unusual, in fact, he told himself wryly, glancing up to see the light turn green again. It was just that he was noticing it now. Khushi and Arnav had both tried to avoid each other as much as was possible without arousing the suspicions of their respective families in the past few weeks. She in particular seemed to have developed a knack of fleeing wherever and whenever he turned up, so discreetly sometimes that it took him time to notice her sudden disappearance. Before yesterday though, Arnav would have been thankful for her absence, knowing only too well the self-control it took to ignore the overwhelming magnetic pull which made it so difficult for him to hate her, and ended up each time with him breaking her a little bit more. But his newly found resolve to keep her back, to furnish the place she had created for herself in his heart with all the devotion he could muster, had changed all that, and for the first time in so many days, Arnav allowed himself to observe the damage he had managed to inflict on Khushi.
I never want to see your face again. You disgust me. Pretending to be so pure and innocent while your nothing but dirt- dirt! Your existence means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me.
A thousand fine needles of pain cleft through his flesh cleanly, leaving him behind bleeding freely with new cuts upon his self to tend to. The afterthought of how much his words could have stung her, no, injured her, had never occurred to him, as he continued to derive ghastly satisfaction from punishing her for deceiving him. Now, unable to see the face that he wanted to begin each day of his life with, Arnav felt strangely like a man plagued with scorching thirst, surrounded by water but unable to reach out and quench it.
His jaw clenched as the car pulled up in front of the hospital. He had to set things right. He had never bargained for it to be so hard, but he himself had been responsible for destroying perhaps his one shot at happiness. And therefore it only made sense if he was the one to make up for it.
Losing was not an option.
As he watched Khushi almost leap out of the car and bound to the other side to help Anjali out, Arnav's mind went into overdrive as he formulated what he was going to do next.
Obviously, his first attempt had failed miserably. When he had walked into the kitchen to find a highly disconcerted Khushi next to a steaming pile of jalebis, he had nearly been knocked backwards by how endearing the sight was to him. It was almost his right to demand that his wife make him a cup of early morning coffee to start off his day. He had felt a curious warmth settle about him when he had made that request, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do, as though he had done so numerous times before.
It was only after Hari Prakash had come in bearing a cup of coffee, as was his usual custom, that Arnav realised that what he had been asking for was not merely coffee. He had wanted something concrete, something he could commit to memory as a conscious manifestation of Khushi's role in his life. He had a right to ask things from her. He had a right to expect that she would fulfil such common, insignificant, mundane requests. He craved for the contentment he had tasted briefly when he held her in his arms, a reminder that she would do something, whether it was simply making coffee, for him, only for him. Evidence that she had a part to play in his life.
Disappointment, he noted, as he drove out of the hospital's parking lot to go to Laxmi Nagar, was another emotion he was not overly familiar with. He realised he had been hoping only when hope's wings had been clipped and it had fallen slowly and steadily, growing heavier every moment, until it rested at the soles of his feet and made movement difficult. He could not have, in fact, should not have expected anything else. He could not expect Khushi to swallow her dignity and forget every scathing remark, every scorching word he had hurled her way. He could not hope to heal the marks he had left on her with just a few words he was sure she would not believe.
But he had hoped, and now hope lay somewhere at his feet, twitching its feeble wings.
His phone began to ring. Arnav switched on his Bluetooth. It was Hari Prakash. He listened intently to what he had to say before curtly nodding his head once, saying 'Good'. Then, as Hari Prakash was about to hang up, he said, 'The coffee you brought up this morning...it's in the room. You can throw it away'.
Hari Prakash's voice promptly turned into a frightened squeak.
'I'm extremely sorry- when I came into the kitchen Khushiji had finished making it already- I told her you like yours in special way but she just told me to-'
The poor man was almost trembling when he heard a strangely calm voice interrupt him through the phone.
'Don't you dare throw that coffee away. I want it first thing after I get back'.
Back inside the pearl-white four-wheeler, hope was soaring round and round in dizzying circles.
Please like and leave your comments. I read each and every one of your comments and they are what encourage me to continue writing at the end of the day...I promise I will get back to replying soon:) Hope you enjoy, while I go and study the Korean War (again):(
Oh and another thing----I thought I might as well warn you:p It would be totally unrealistic, and almost character assassination, if Khushi just forgives Arnav easily after everything he's done. She's been scarred, as I hope to show in the coming chapters, and it'll take time for her to heal. But don't forget that the SS is called Mohabat Door Jaane Na De, so for all those who have Arhi-Obsessive-ness syndrome, there will be romance, blossoming love etc soon:)
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