Posted:
Wow just superb. Just love ur writing . And especially the last few lines. Update soon.
I just had to write this, to get it out of my head, because it's seriously interfering with my revision:s Yeah, I've been working on this in bits and pieces since tuesday, and it's finally ready:)
Oh and yeah, I guess I won't update at all next week, unless economics gives me too much stress and I really need to vent some steam, so heads up:)
Chapter Fourteen
She's coming.
He had been leaning against the side of his four-wheeler, unable to handle the wait and finally abandoning the driver's seat. The car was parked just outside the hospital steps. It had been hard enough for him to let Akash drop off Khushi and Payal to meet their father this morning, but he had some errands, errands of equal importance to run, and had spent the past two hours in a state of extreme agitation, caught between restlessness and eagerness. It struck him fleetingly that after having spent nearly every single moment with his wife for the past twelve hours, the short space of time when he had not seen her could breed such unease in him. He did not allow himself to dwell on that for too long though, urging himself to focus on the task at hand, a jittery feeling making it hard for him not to flash back to her blush, or her heavy breathing, every so often.
Once satisfied with his handiwork, he had driven off to pick up Khushi's mother and her aunt from Laxmi Nagar so he could take them to the hospital again. Although such mundane chores would on any other day have irked him, and he would probably have barked orders at the driver to carry them out instead, Arnav had felt an odd sense of belonging, of being at home, as he listened to Buaji animatedly prattling about the sweets she was going to make with her own hands for her Shashi Babua while Amma tried timidly to interject with protests that the doctor had laid down a specific diet plan for them to follow. Arnav briefly remembered thinking that these two were just like an older version of Khushi and Payal; Khushi the chatterbox would be chirping away to her heart's content and Payal would quietly insert a comment here or there.
At least, that's what it used to be like. The thought made his smile fade just a little.
Waiting outside the hospital, Arnav had felt a pang of uncertainty catch him unawares. He wondered whether his surprise would be worth it. He wondered whether she would like it. Whether it wasn't too late.
His thoughts had floated upwards to the hospital ward, where he had entered to find Khushi alone with her father, who seemed to have just woken up. Payal had been in the doctor's office going through an extensive list of do's and don'ts she had to explain to her mother afterwards, minus the medical jargon, while Khushi had stayed behind, speaking softly to her father about every insignificant thing in the world as though they were the most important issues to mankind. The weather. The traffic. And how Lucknowi jalebis would drive Delhi sweetmakers out of business any day.
A part of Arnav mourned the fact that she did not have such meaningless conversations with him. She has no conversations with you whatsoever, the small, cynical voice in his head reminded him primly.
But as remorse prepared to grip him again, as he continued to wait outside his car, Arnav felt his heart flutter. His breathing sped up. The air whispered soothingly around him as all the surrounding cacophony, of car horns honking, engines revving, the hum of conversation faded completely, to be replaced by a melody. A melody that Arnav knew very well. A melody he could not name, but seemed to have known all his life.
She's coming.
He knew even before he saw her emerge through the huge glass double doors of the building he stood in front of. Unconsciously, his body lifted itself off the side of his car, as he stood in anticipation. His heart hummed away in his chest to the melody that played around him, while his eager eyes strained to catch a sight of her.
There she was. Clad in pale green, like this morning. Wearing barely any jewellery, but looking so strikingly beautiful no jewellery could do her justice. He could vaguely make out the black beaded necklace he had himself clasped around her neck, a month ago. Although then it had been nothing but an irksome formality, the sight of the mangalsutra, the sign of their union, a symbol of the fact that she was his, made his heart soar.
Her hair was still down, a wavy curtain of dark velvet. Just the way he liked it.
Arnav was so transfixed by this simple, yet breathtaking sight that it took him a while to realise that she was just a few feet away from him. Coming to his senses, feeling rather disconcerted, Arnav just managed to catch sight of a flash of green disappear around the side of the car. In a split second, he nearly broke into a run as he darted around himself to the passenger side.
He practically jumped in front of her as her hand made to reach out for the door handle. Khushi's hand stalled and she looked up at him, her eyes wide with confusion and mild shock, which slowly began to transform into hesitance, and then back to confusion. Arnav watched those eyes, those pools of wholesomeness which let him look straight into her soul, and he knew what she was thinking.
That he did not want her to sit by him.
Before she could react further, Arnav abruptly stepped to one side, taking the door handle into his hand and tugging it open gently as he moved aside. The door swung open slowly, Khushi watching its progress with an almost unreadable look on her face. As though she did not know what to think.
And Arnav had no intention of letting her.
'Let me', he heard himself say, his voice barely above a whisper, as the door parted to its entirety, welcomingly signalling her to take her place. Beside him.
Khushi did not move for the smallest of seconds before looking down slightly, her hair sweeping forward over her shoulders to gently caress her cheeks, as she carefully lifted up the hem of her saree and then with equal attention hoisted herself up and into the seat. Arnav felt a smile make his lips twitch; he knew the elaborate ceremony was just an excuse not to have to make eye-contact with him.
***
They had been sitting in traffic for nearly fifteen minutes and Arnav's nerves were stretched to breaking point.
Beside him, Khushi sat looking straight ahead, clearly somewhere very far away. She was immobile, sitting disturbingly still, as though she existed there only physically, but her spirit had fled to some distant realm beyond his reach.
That thought only served to twist the tension that had laid siege on Arnav's body into tighter knots. He was completely rigid, his back completely straight, his hands clutching the steering wheel as though his life depended on it. It was almost as though his body was braced for impact, as though he knew he was going to go hurtling into something very hard and very jagged very, very soon.
It was a strange feeling. Like running around trying to catch something very fragile, very delicate, extremely breakable, which was falling, slowly but surely, spiralling out of the air. Headed determinedly for the ground. Where one touch and it would shatter completely. The expectancy. His senses tuned in sharply. All his nerves on edge. Waiting. Waiting.
It was like being suspended in midair. He did not know when he would fall, or whether he would be stuck forever caught somewhere between the sky and the earth. Between air and land. Between life and death.
Arnav realised with a jolt that it was this same feeling, this same trepidation, this same dread that he had mistaken for rage on so many occasions before. It was these same feelings which had made him lash out at the girl who was right beside him and yet so far away. These same feelings which he had felt on so many occasions before. When she had told him she was engaged. When he had gone nearly senile looking for her on the night of the havan. When he had felt his heart being cleaved into at the sight of an impudent little piece of glass that had pierced her wrist.
On each of those occasions, he had burst out in fury, all directed towards her, never bothering to stop and think, never bothering to peer closer at the nuances of his own tumultuous feelings. What he had taken to be anger had in fact been something else.
An inbred reaction to warn him that he was losing her. That she was moving further away from him. That she would soon be out of his reach.
As natural as snatching his hand away from flame. Or holding his breath when diving underwater
His body warning him that Khushi was slipping farther and farther away from.
Panic, with icy fetters, materialised from nowhere and lunged for him. His arms. His neck. His heart.
With almost careless haste, Arnav's hand shot out and twiddled the knob of the radio, switching it on. Even before it could find a frequency and emit any sound, Arnav blindly found another knob, twirling it to its extreme, pumping up the volume. Willing the noise to break the glass wall which had emerged between them, to splinter it in to non-existence. Praying that it would pull Khushi back into reality, the reality where the two of them were together.
Neither of them could have been prepared for the song that began to blare through the speakers, flitting through the silence which hung like a limp blanket over them.
Khushi's eyes refocused. Her lips set themselves in a tight firm line. Her tiny hands fisted into the cloth of her saree as the hideously familiar music catapulted itself at her.
Arnav felt his muscles slacken as each note permeated into his skin, mingling with his blood. He felt his heart shake off the cold chains which had bound it moments before, as, rejuvenated, it picked up the staccato of the song. A song he knew so well.
Teri meri, meri teri, prem kahani hai mushkil,
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa naa ho paaye...
Ek ladka aur ek ladki ki yeh kahani hai nayi
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa naa ho paaye...
Arnav was suddenly glad they were caught in the midst of unmoving traffic, because he was sure he would otherwise have ended up causing an accident. He could barely see through the windshield, let alone see anything else around him. It was as though he had suddenly been transported back to another day, another night, so long ago...
Where Khushi had been wearing green, but not the type of green she was wearing now. A deep, emerald green. A satiny, seductive, emerald green that had given his heart hopeless palpitations.
Teri meri, meri teri, prem kahani hai mushkil,
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa naa ho paaye...
Nothing else registered in Arnav's dazed mind except the music. Just like on that fateful evening. When the rest of the world had ceased to exist. When it had been just him and her. She had existed just for him. He had held her like he had owned her. He had drowned in her fragrance, sent to the every epitome of bliss at the feel of silk, her ivory white skin...
Ek duje se huwe juda,
Jab ek duje ke liya bane...
Khushi's breathing turned rapid, and she drew in quick, ragged gasps of air. She could hear the roar of the sea in the distance, leering at her menacingly, warning her it was only a matter of time before it came back in a torrent even more deadly than before. To break the dreams she had not even dared to dream yet.
Teri meri, meri teri, prem kahani hai mushkil,
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye...
Arnav felt the words sink their way in slowly before nestling somewhere deep within him. He felt the chords of the song, the tremor of the voices, strum away at his heartstrings. Those voices had simply lent a tune to the words. But his entire being was living them, breathing them, feeling them.
The music rose and fell, his blood pounding in time with every quivering note.
Tum se dil jo lagaya, toh jahaan maine paaya...
Kabhi socha na tha yeh, meelo duur hoga sayya...
Arnav felt his throat constrict painfully. He could not swallow. He tried vainly to gulp in air but his windpipe seemed to have shrivelled up.
That one night, when they had shared this song, shared its words had changed so much. It had broken down the unspoken barrier which had existed between them since the first day they met. Arnav felt so alive, as though reborn; he had felt the frost melt away from his heart, had let it take over his mind. He had lived, relished, drunk in every new, fresh, revitalising sensation which descended upon him on clouds of light. Ever since that crack in that wall appeared, ever since he took those few steps to transcend the distance between them, Arnav had felt an iridescent glow flood into his life, lighting up the corners of it which he had neglected, ignored, for so long.
And yet, even while the light shimmered and summoned him towards it, shadows lurked so close by, threatening to douse the flame that promised to bring him life all over again...
Kyun Khuda tune mujhe aisa khwab dikhaya,
Jab haqeeqat mein use tor na tha...
Khushi felt each word, each treacherous word, drill cleanly through her defences before landing on her flesh like cold, steel needles.
Why? Why? Why did Devi Maiyya let her dream those dreams, when she knew that she would get nothing but pain, nothing but misery, nothing but a life time of nightmares in return? Why did she have to show her those mirages which painted a picture of a world she would stake her life to have? Why?
What had she ever done to deserve it? Why had she been enticed to dream beyond what she had been taught to dream, beyond the reaches of her reality, only to be brought crashing back to earth, thrust headfirst into a mire? What sin was she being punished for?
Teri meri, meri teri, prem kahani hai mushkil,
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye...
Ek ladka aur ek ladki ki yeh kahaani hai nayee
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye...
Teri meri baton ka har lamha sabse anjaana,
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye...
If ever a song had been written for someone, this song had been written for them. The pain that the song merely suggested throbbed fiercely in Arnav as he blindly gripped the steering wheel, afraid that if he let go he would sink, sink into a chasm he had dug himself. Yes, their story could never be described in words. The bonds they shared could never be put in words. There could no words in this world, in this universe, that would be appropriate, fitting, could possibly do justice, to the relation they shared. They were bonded through their knowledge of loss. Through their familiarity with pain. Through their acquaintance with betrayal.
And an even deeper, stronger, recalcitrant bond which kept pulling them together every time they had tried to push each other away.
Har ehsaas mein tu hai
Har ekh yaad mein tera afsaana
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye...
Her head was spinning, in giddy, dizzying circles. Her hand, frozen on her lap, refused to budge. Her heart clamoured against her chest, unable to breathe within the confines of her mortal body, seeking to break out of its prison, as it pounded in time with the music, as it soaked in the music.
Could she deny that he could provoke the most earth shattering of emotions within her? Could she deny that, battling between the nightmares of sleep and the nightmares of her existence she succumbed to memories, sweet memories imprinted with his name?
Saara din beeth jaaye
Saari raat jagaye
Bas yadh tumhara, lamha lamha tadpaye...
Yeh tadap keh rahi hai mith jaaye faasle
Yeh tere mere darmiyan joh hai saare...
Something squeezed his heart painfully, as tears gathered in his eyes, stinging behind his eyelids, threatening to cascade from his eyes but torturing him by lingering there. Yes, torture. That was exactly what it was. Every moment in the past where he had tried to hate her was torture. Every moment he had hurt her had been torture. The distance between them tormented him as though he was being burned alive. Every glimpse the fear of him in her eyes tormented him as though he was being drawn and quartered. He clawed desperately at every strand of hope that danced in front of him, just outside his reach, taunting him. He strained himself, every particle of his existence trying to catch hold of something, anything, that would let him pull himself closer to her. He had to be with her. At one with her. He did not how long he could live through this agony.
Teri meri, meri teri prem kahani hai mushkil...
Do lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho payee...
The last strains of the music faded away, swivelling in front of them like steam above hot water, swirling and whirling gently as they mingled and disappeared into the air. Leaving behind two souls, wounded, alone, frightened, and desperate for each other, but with a world of devastation lying between them, keeping them apart.
I don't know why I just had to write this, but I couldn't help it. All I can say is, it's laying the foundation for the next chapter:p Yes, I know I chopped out a few of the lyrics. Plus, my hindi may not be the exact best...at any rate do leave your comments:) I've been reading everything you guys posted here since the last update so yeah...
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