IPPKND SS:The Love Story on Page 3 (COMPLETED) - Page 3

CHAPTER 1 

Khushi Kumari Gupta was fine. In fact, she was better than fine, she was, absolutely perfectly happy. Her smile was as radiant as ever. Dressed in her old suits, bright, with pom poms and gotti work, her chatter added to her personality as she bustled amongst her neighbors every day, making and selling her sweets, just as cheerfully as before.


If sometimes she stared off into the distance between serving customer's at Gupta Mishti Bhandar in Lukhnow's Lata-Bazar area, the momentary abstraction could be excused. The poor girl had had so much happen to her, after all. Since her return five months ago from her ill fated short lived marriage to that Arnav Singh Raizada in Delhi, Khushi was a favorite topic of conversation in the chawl. Whenever a young girl of the area spoke of going out of the house to get a job, or seemed to desire too much independence, they were sternly reminded about their Khushi  Didi, who went out of the home, to work for her family, and ended up ruined.


The gossip was not ill intentioned, even though the general consensus was, frankly, that Khushi was would have been better off dead-- being neither a wife, nor a widow, but existing in some limbo where her husband had not let her go by divorcing her, nor had he accepted her by taking her back. All the families of the chawl cursed the Raizada family, who had married their "phool jaisi larki", and then thrown her away. Mrs Sharma darkly confided to Gayatri Chachi from the chawl that only bad things could come from letting young girls travel and work in Delhi jaise barah shahar. Unscrupulous men with more money than morals could and did take advantage of pretty young things like their Khushi.


The fact that Payal betiya was both married, and happy in the same sasuraal from where Khushi betiya had been ejected was neither here nor there. After all, even between brothers, one could have a Raavan and a Ram in the same family. "Such is poor Khushi betiya's fate," Mrs Sharma said, as she picked up her one kg of laddoo. "Too bad that Arnav Singh Raizada  didn't value the diamond he held in the palm of his hand for such a short time" said Gayatri Chachi as she took home her weekly mithai. Khushi would not have been forced to return to her to Lukhnow with Amma and Babuji like this. Well, it was all fated. Everyone came to earth with happiness and sadness written in their palms. It was all very sad.

But Khushi was not sad. No. Not at all. She didn't cry, she didn't sit and wail and despair, she didn't dwell on her life, on the shattered dreams, the memories, the howling pain within her heart, the feeling of crushed defeat that poisoned her, the sensation of loneliness that made it difficult to draw a deep breath. None of that. No, she smiled, she raced about on her scooter, she helped Babu-ji with his exercises and speech therapy. She bought the rations,  did the cooking, argued with the dhobi, made and served the mithaai at their newly opened store. She came home to help her mother with the chores and spent the evening laughing with Bua-ji. Khushi was the life of the chawl again, singing silly songs, racing about the neighborhood as she used to do just over a year back. So normal!


The young girls watching their Didi with careful scrutiny  learnt to shrug off their parent's dire warnings. They could see how little Khushi Didi was actually affected by whatever mysterious tragedy that had happened to her in Delhi. Independence, a job, falling in love with an unsuitable man, marrying too far above herself-- all of this wasn't so bad! Khushi Didi was just fine!

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Khushi had attempted suicide exactly two times since Arnav Singh Raizada and thrown her out of Raizada Mansion five months back. One of those times was not really deliberate-walking  back to Lakshmi-nagar, the rain swelling and pelting all around her, Khushi had been dazed, and not fully in her right senses. She had been wondering how one went from a normal day of teasing one's husband, and thinking of the food to cook for dinner to having her entire life wiped clean, her heart and dignity ruptured and spilt until they stopped existing within her.


She was dwelling on how Arnav truly had to despise her, to believe Shyam's obsession with her was reciprocated. How he had not believed her denials, even when she had begged to be believed and even after Payal had supported by revealing the whole truth. How Arnav had wrenched her arm and thrown her to the ground when Anjali collapsed after finding out about her husband's betrayal. How cheap and illicit Shyam had made Khushi sound, as  he told the entire family about their supposed love affair. She was wondering if Nani's slaps, which still reddened her face, or  Mami-ji's taunts, or the sight of Aakash jiju turning away from her in disgust-whether all of this could have happened in only two hours. She was wondering whether this was real, or if this was just a nightmare from which she would wake up.

Thinking all this, she had not noticed her steps, and had walked into the middle of a busy intersection. A car had been zooming towards her just as she remembered the exact look of hatred and contempt on Arnav's face as he threw her out of his house, harshly telling her to never darken his door again. That memory held her frozen, and the car's headlights seemed to be a welcome release from the debilitating pain that was flooding her in waves. The bystander who had jerked her away from certain death asked her, after she had been saved-"Marna hai kya?" and Khushi had realized her answer at this point had been "Ji, ji bilkul--hume marna hai."

The second time was when the divorce papers had arrived. By now,the Gupta family had been told everything, why she had married Arnav, being blackmailed, the contract marriage, Shyam's lies, the Raizada's rejection of her--the harassment, the torture. When there was nothing left to protect, when she had already lost her final battle to win her husband's love, or at least to prove her own truth, what was the point of lies and evasion?


The lawyers who had arrived one week after she had been thrown out of Raizada House had offered her a hefty settlement for her quick signature on the divorce papers. Her Babuji had struggled out of his wheelchair then, and thrown them out of the house, and thrown the papers, unsigned, out after them. He had screamed that marriage was for life and a sacred bond, that Khushi and ASR  had never been married, when the marriage had not been sanctified by love or trust or religion or family. No papers had been sent by the Raizadas after this incident, and it was as if they had decided to just'erase her from their memory, their lives.

That night, Khushi had gone to her Babuji while he was asleep, begged his forgiveness, and asked to be allowed to go back to her real parents. He had heard her, but had not been able to stop her from rushing out to the temple. She had sat before Devi Maiyya the entire night, a small knife in her hands, praying for her goddesses' permission to return to her family as well. That permission had not come, and no one spoke of her absence when she returned to Lakshmi-nagar the next day. Her father had smiled at her, knowing, as he did, his daughter had gone through a trial by fire. Her courage had triumphed over her despair, and he had thanked her in his heart for not choosing the coward's way out.

Their move back to Lukhnow had followed the very next day.

Payal's infrequent phone calls were all that remained to tie Guptas to Delhi now. Buaji had come back with them to Lukhnow as well, to help Garima with her brother's slow but sure recovery.

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Once in Lukhnow,  Khushi had, to all intents and purposes, reverted to being..Khushi. The same clothes, hairstyle, the same energy, infectious laughter. She had seemingly erased the one intervening year, her entire Dehli experience, as if it had never happened. Initially it had been difficult going for the Guptas, what with the whispers, outright demands to know what went wrong, gossip, speculation. It had all been a constant swirl of scandal, something they had bravely dealt with for five months through the policy of stoic silence.


It had slowly died out, and things had seemingly returned to how they were before Khushi's ill fated fall at Arnav Singh Raizada's fashion show so very long ago.


Today, however, as Khushi walked home from a particularly tiring day of deliveries, it seemed like the chawl was again abuzz with her name. Faces looked down from windows and balconies, men stood in doorways, children huddled in street corners. The low humming of her name, of Arnav Singh Raizada's name, of the word "marriage" reached her ears and sent shock waves through her body. Picking up speed, avoiding the curious gazes, the whispers and questions, Khushi hurried into her house, and closed the door to the cacophony outside.

"Kya hua hai sub ko? Kyu aise goor ke mujhe dekh raha hai?" She asked her parents. Grimly, silently, Garima Gupta extended a Hindi language newspaper to her, just as Shashi Gupta turned on their TV to a news channel, where the gossip article had been playing all day long in a continuous loop. Arnav Singh Raizada had been right- The news of his marriage to Lisa Kampadia had indeed, been spread, and was being shown, everywhere.  

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