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Note:
As this episode was too long… I’ll post it on two parts… so free gift for all of you, both episode 10 and 11 will be posted!
Enjoy everybody, the story is touching to the end soon… so if any silent readers, I’ll be happy to know your views too
Thanks to all!
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Maheshwari Mansion…
Annapurna comes to Sujatta’s room finding her mourning in her bed, her son’s photo tightly hugged against her, she sits beside her and keeps quite. Sujatta looks to her and says:
“- I know what you want to say jiji, and I don’t want to hear it!”
“- Sujatta, until when will you stay without food?”
Sujatta cries dramatically saying:
“- until I die and join my son ha! I know you’re believing that chore and on what? You want me to stay quiet and accept her bl…”
The old woman is startled, she stops her:
“- SUJATTA!!! sshhh!!! How can you say that ? This is our Sanskar’s child…”
“- NAHI!!!… I can’t believe that! She was married to him for so long time and couldn’t have a baby properly… they are separated, she becomes pregnant! My poor baby… Mere sanskar loved her so much! And she… ”
She burst out crying more holding Sanskar’s photo more, Annapurna feels bad for her, she caresses her hair saying:
“- Bas Sujatta, Bas! You said it, Sanskar loved Swara beyond boundaries… So she does, didn’t you see her, how soulless she became without him? I feel like… May be, may be this baby is the unique reason she’s still with us…”
“- ha let her have her baby while mine has gone forever! No one knows the fire burning in my heart! I had to lost my son twice… No one understands me…”
Annapurna takes her in her arms crying too, Sanskar was her son too! When she breaks their embrace, she wipes her sister’s in law tears saying:
“- Sujatta… You have to know something”
She takes a deep breath then says her voice shaking with emotion:
“- don’t blame Swara for what happened months ago… When she… She left our house with Ragini, she wasn’t in her normal state… She was hurt and angry because… Because… she had a miscarriage when she fell in stairs, remember that day!”
Sujatta stays open mouthed for a moment, she recalls the accident frowning, Annapurna makes her look to her saying:
“- I was there when doctor saved her life in extremis preferring not transferring her to hospital cause she wouldn’t survive the hemorrhage till that…”
“- but jiji…”
“- she refused to tell anyone about that, even hamara Sanskar, she preferred suffering alone”
Sujatta tries to remember those days after that, when Swara stayed at bed weak and her sister was nursing her silently while everyone was so worried for Laksh’, Annapurna continues calmly:
“- This is our Swara, who did always her possible to protect that family… Who hidden her own pain to preserve her Sanskar in the worst moment of her life… The moment she needed him the most! Like today… You should have seen her this morning, for a moment you could imagine that we’re in the so missed times, her smile illuminating our home again”
***
Swasan Academy…
Swara was returning home, sitting at the back seat of her car, she has a small smile noticing that the driver was going slower than usual, surely at someone’s instructions.
The car passes by the tent’s place, Sanskar wasn’t there… Her eyes keep focusing there, turning her head until the car passes the Academy gates. She closes her eyes repressing her tears and takes out her phone, looks for a long moment to the wallpaper, that selfie of her Sanskar and her the day he proposed to her in the most beautiful way ever…
She puts the ear… Playing a song on her phone… That song he played and sung for her the last times she was in his arms…
“Janam… Janam…”
Listening to its lyrics, she recalls last night… Or today, in the early morning…
*** FLASHBACK***
She woke up startled as her usual, her heart pressed by an unknown feeling, choking, in need of oxygen… she drags herself to the balcony. Rain hasn’t stop all the night and she closes her eyes taking a deep breath, welcoming the freshness of the air and refusing to think about the horrible events after doctor’s departure.
Hugging herself tightly, she feels like nothing was able to spoil the moment she’s living… She’s going to be a ma… She blushes at the memory of the reason a sentiment of warmness filling the glacial void consuming her heart! It’s magic…
Opening her eyes, she stretches her arm outside… Playing with the rain drops like a little girl and wondering how for one unique news, her heart and brain are avoiding the whole full of nonsense her life has became since those long months.
She shivers feeling the shilling rain overwhelming her, giving her goose bumps, she smiles retiring her hand once and extends it again.
Suddenly, her smile fades hearing the memory of familiar voice reasoning in her mind:
“- you’ll never change, hai na? what was the need of going out now!?”
“- how can you be so careless!?”
“- don’t you have any pity for me?”
She retires her hand immediately startled… Her heart pounding in her chest as blurred flashbacks emerge in her mind… Familiar voice… Familiar hands… Familiar embrace… Frowning, she Looks back to her room then to herself… Then back to her room, there, at the bedside were some soaked towels and her dress…
She approaches them, they are yet smelling that special odor of rain… And something else… Someone else…!!
In flash backs she recalls herself in her car parking next to the tent… Searching for the old man not finding him… Inspecting the ruins of his tent scolding herself for asking her guards to break it… She’s confused! She remembers herself feeling so bad her memories flowing back to the beautiful moments she lived with Sanskar in their tent… How in the middle of all that mad situation they could smile and laugh?…
Suddenly she felt exhausted, in need of rest… Walking to a near bench she sits looking again to that tent, to the bed’s broken leg, to the traditional stove… It starts raining but she doesn’t move, some unexpected feeling was filling her heart, something alerting her to open her eyes and understand but she has no more forces….
The next thing she remembers, the doctor smiling face when she opened her eyes.. How?
she frowns more sitting on her bed… That familiar voice repeating again and again in her head :
“- you’ll never change, hai na? what was the need of going out now!?”
“- how can you be so careless!?”
“- don’t you have any pity for me?”
It was impossible for her to remember how did she come home?
She holds her head by her both hands closing her eyes tightly… The tent, the bed, the voice, the feeling… The old chacha teasing smile, the music… The flute… A flash back make her remember a discussion between Sanskar and Uttara about the music instrument she took from him… A flash back from Uttra’s room…. A flute ornamenting her desk… the voice again… angry…
“- I should be really dead, may be…”
Broken… shaken with cries:
“- I’m sorry, Swara! Mujhe maaf kidjie…”
Again a flashback from the tent… Burned at some parts… sewn at others… How didn’t she notice it… Knew it… the voice reasons in her head again:
“- haa princess, Sanskar is here… please forgive me… I’ll never scold you again… but… but… just don’t do that to me…”
Her hand gripping her necklace, she feels her heart about jumping out of her chest as a certitude wraps all her being…. she looks to her bedside, Sanskar’s framed photo…
A small hysterical laugh escapes her throat while heavy tears make their way over her cheeks… she looks like a mad woman with her garbled hair and tired drowned face.
Happiness… She’s not able to be sure if it’s happiness which was creating a volcano in her heart… Sanskar was really here? Just in front of her all the day long….
But… But… When? When her sanskar has became so heartless… So cruel?
She takes his framed photo from her bedside caressing his lovely smiles tears accumulating in her swollen eyes, she recalls his harsh words that last night, his promises to punish her… his nagging smile, the anger in his eyes and the last glimpse of his face in his running car behind the flames separating them… The disappearing vision… The sound of crash… The explosion… His framed with flower garland image….
Breathless, anger and sadness submerging her until chocking her heart she feels like betrayed….
“As long as I’ll be alive, you’ll be my princess….”
His last words… She whispers crying until his image was drenched with her tears:
“- If this is you love, my prince…”
Closing her eyes not bearing it anymore, her hands grip the frame tightly and suddenly she raises her arms about jerking it on the floor shouting:
“… then please hate me!!!!”
But at the last instant, she hugs it back on her heart so tightly that she feels its frame scratching her skin under her Sanskar’s t-shirt.
Images of him taking her in his arms, filling her hairline with sindoor, knotting her necklace and mangelsutra on her neck… and so more plays in her mind like an old black and white picture.
At the first lights of the morning… As no more tears are left in her eyes to be cried, she drifts in a deep saluting sleep.
*** END OF FLASHBACK ***
Listening to the last part of that so special song…
“Meri subah ho tumhi” (you are my twilight)
“Aur tumhi shaam ho” (for you, my heart aches)
“Tum dard ho tum hi aaraam ho” (And only you can allay the pain)
“Meri duaaon se aati hai bas ye sadaa » (I have only one wish ever)
“Meri hoke hamesha hi rehna” (Be mine, forever)
“Kabhi na kehna alvida” (Do not leave me ever)
She feels like if it was talking to her, like if he was talking to her, like if that night he was saying something else, a promise that there will never be a goodbye in their story… kabhi na kehna alvida, between them, a pleading to never hear this word from her…
She doesn’t know if she’s right or wrong, but all she knows… She’s sure about is, that it’s was way away from their fights and breaking up, it was so important that Sanskar is breaking so many hearts heartlessly, and still remaining her Sanskar, her prince protecting her behind a veil of mysterious darkness.
Ha she’s angry, she has the urge of slapping him hard on his face asking why he makes her suffer hell on earth, she wants to ask him to go away now that he managed to live without her for so long time…
But, she knows she’s lying to herself, all she wants is to burry herself in his protective embrace and stay there for the eternity just listening to his heart beats assuring her that it isn’t a dream… He’s hers… Just here!
Absorbed by her thoughts, she doesn’t notice that the car has parked at Maheshwari mansion, she’s about going out when she notices Adarsh quitting the mansion, some random car waiting for him behind the gates.