Shekar, Shoba and Maheshwaris reach Badi at the same moment at the police forces arrive, they all rush inside their eyes searching everywhere, Gadodias’ door was wide opened and Ragini is the first running there shouting her lungs out:
“- Ma!?… Swara!! Swara!!!…”
She’s closely followed by all the family members and some police agents, their guns pointed out… Others go inside Bosse’ home… Ragini’s scream startles everyone gathering them around her in what used to be her Dadi ma’s bedroom, only to find Sharmista tied to a chair, a cloth covering her mouth and her teary eyes expressing her fear.
She struggles seeing them and trying hard to free herself while a garbled moan tries to tell them something… Ragini and Shekar start untying her when a deafening sound shocks everyone… Sharmista’s eyes widen more while all look up to the source, realizing that it was a shooting sound…
Police run out while finally freed Shomi cries out:
“- Shona!!!”
The seconds taken to register the meaning of her words, a second shooting sound paralyzes all of them.
***
Sanskar, whose heart was about breaking his thoracic cage escaping out, checks swara’s face tears blurring his vision of her closed eyes,
He cups her cheeks, check her forehead, her jaw… Her neck… His eyes travel all over her inert body covered by blood marks, his hands searching the injury which was still bleeding, while his choked voice repeats over and over:
“- Swara!… Open your eyes Swara… Please… Just open Your eyes…”
He was crying aloud unaware of the gun aimed on him, shaking her shoulders before hugging her, he presses his forehead on hers looking closer to her still closed eyelids and shouts madly:
“- you can’t do this to me princess… Are you hearing me?… You can’t!…Shout at me, hit me… Scold me… Don’t even forgive me … Hate me if you want but… But just open your eyes… ”
“- Sanskar!!!”
Suddenly a familiar voice snatches him from the madness world he was plunging in at every instant he’s not receiving any response from the woman he was hugging tightly against his heart, he opens his eyes shivering, not able to take them off Swara, his brain seems not reacting to anything around him, laksh’ kneels close to him saying:
“- Sanskar… It’s okey… Nothing will happen to her, bhai!… Ambulance in on its way…”
Panting, his face drowned with sweat and tears, Sanskar is just looking to Swara’s pale face sobbing badly, she’s breathing… Her chest rising then downing slowly and her heart’s beats pounding against his chest were telling him she’s alive…
But the blood marks on her cloths and beneath them… and her unconsciousness were killing him, his head was spinning, his heart aching like if a knife was digging in it again and again.
Laksh looks around wiping his own tears… The terrace was full of people, police has just arrested ba-ji saving his brother and his wife from a certain death and while they’re still interrogating everyone down taking depositions, family members are relieved to be authorized to go up… He was the unique one not listening to their instructions…
Shekar is shocked to find his mother first, drowned in her own blood, he rushes toward her followed initially by Ragini who couldn’t stop herself from crying out:
“- dadi ma!”
But approaching her, her eyes land on her husband’s worried face, next to him was Sanskar, sitting on the ground, her sister in his lap:
“- S… Swara…”
She runs to them kneeling just at her husband’s side widening her eyes with shock, extending her hand to Swara’s face, she hesitates to touch her seeing how Sanskar was possessively holding her, his tears dropping over her face… Suddenly she frowns :
“- Sanskar…. You’re….”
Laksh presses her shoulder making her look at him, he nods a “no” sadly making her cry in defeat… She looks back to Swara, who seemed like just sleeping peacefully in her husband embrace, thinking that they’re separated for so long time and she couldn’t even enjoy the fact that her beloved Sanskar was alive… Just with her… Laksh side hugs her in comfort as she was inconsolable.
Soon everyone was there waiting for the ambulances, Sujatta who was the last talking to the policeman down, comes at the same time of medical staff.
“- Sanskar!!!! Your arm… You’re injured!!”
***
At hospital…
Swara was laying on the emergency bed, a perfusion nipped in her arm, the doctor explains reassuringly:
“- Mrs. Maheshwari is weak but fine, no reason to be worried. What happened had provoked a shock to her system… Don’t worry if she’s still unconscious, it’s the effect of sedatives we administered to her, she needs to take rest…”
Sujatta enquires:
“- and the baby?”
Doctor smiles saying:
“- bilkul fine, don’t worry…”
Sanskar who was sitting on the bedside hasn’t reacted to any of the doctor’s word, he even seemed not realizing that they were surrounded by the whole family members.
Her hand gripped in his, he just keeps staring at her with concern. The doctor addresses him directly:
“- Mr. Maheshwari, now will you please let us take care of that injury you’re having in your arm… Thanks to God the bullet traversed superficially, but the cut and burn are deep… It’s still bleeding”
Not receiving any response, he looks toward his family pleading for help. Sanskar has been asked a million of times to let the doctors put him in aside room so they could do their job… The injury was in need of cleaning, sterilization and most of all stitches points.
Sujatta begs her son again:
“- challe choree… Swara is bilkul fine hai na… And you know she’ll be very upset with you if…”
“- she’s mad at me for so many things… A bit more, a bit less… What’s the difference?”
Finally he recovered the use of his voice, it was broken… Choked with repressed tears which were reddening his eyes, but at least he gives a sign that he’s still in this world.
But he didn’t move or even take off his eyes from his wife. Laksh asks the doctor with a pleading look:
“- can’t you please do it here?”
“- but… We need…”
“- please…”
The doctor finishes by agreeing defeated, but he asks everyone to leave.
Ragini who was sitting on the other side caressing her sister’s hair like if she was a sleeping child looks up shocked, her tears make their way over her cheeks again, but Laksh shakes his head smiling reassuringly and says:
“- let’s go to see papa… Challo ragini”
Slowly, the room gets emptied as the nurses bring a second bed on what Sanskar is asked to take place.
While the nurse starts tearing his kurta’s sleeve with a medical scissors, his eyes can’t even blink afraid that his caring gaze let her for a moment… Then anything can happen to her… Tears form in his eyes again recalling her image helpless facing that monster he tried hard to protect her from him… And here she is… Lifeless…
He wipes his tears to clear the vision of her angelic face, the woman triturating his injury mumbles a sorry thinking that he was suffering because of the lack of proper anesthesia in such different conditions.
But he wasn’t even aware of her presence and the ache wrapping his heart is drugging any other kind of physical harm.
His memories flow back to all the moments his princess makes him sit and starts healing his injuries along with a long lecture and a dead look from her beautiful eyes.
When he fought with Laksh at the beginning of their story… With Sahil… And lastly again with Laksh that awful day when their life balanced to an obscure path… She didn’t lecture him… Just keeping quite her heavy tears drowning her face replacing the bright first smile she had then at the moment he passed the door…
It was the last time he saw her smiling… The last time that adorable curve shaped her delicious lips… The last time her eyes were shining with happiness…
Whatever she was about to tell him at that moment… On that day… it vanished in the bitterness of what came after that… How much he wished returning back and make things different, but it was impossible…
***
Late in the night, Maheshwari family is gathered in the living room trying to understand all what happened in that endless night, when Ragini comes from the kitchen a trail in hands to serve everyone a glass of water, Durga Prasad enquires:
“- beta, did you talk to your father on phone? Any news about Parvathi ji?”
Ragini looks down a tear escaping her eyes and says:
“- ha papa ji, she’s still in operation block…”
Sujatta who just gulped all her glass contains in once starts again:
“- finally there is a justice on this earth… She has done so much with our family… And with the poor Sharmista ji and her baby… And today… Even today it’s all her fault if my son and my poor bahu are…”
Annapurna stops her pressing her temple feeling a bad headache:
“- Sujatta… Please…”
Laksh comes down frowning, he announces toward Ragini:
“- I dropped ma to Badi… Two policemen stayed back there for security”
Ram Prasad says annoyed:
“- she could accept our proposition to come here; at least for tonight!”
Laksh explains how it has been difficult for him to convince her returning home, if it wasn’t for little Ayush she would never let her Shona and husband alone.
Sujatta exclaims:
“- aree… We would never let my poor Swara alone too… but you’ve seen my mad son… He didn’t accept anyone there…”
Annapurna cuts her displeased:
“- Sujatta…”
“- ha ha jiji… I’ll shut my mouth… Anyways who listens to me… Who I am that I have my word to say… And what have I said?… Kuch nahi ha?…”
“- ma!”
Uttara and her father almost pinched her both arms to silence her.
Durga prasad stands up from his chair saying:
“- it has been a long day and night… Let’s…”
“- San… Sanskar?”
“- swara!!!”
Both Laksh and Ragini who were facing the entry are shocked at the sight there.
Sanskar, a bandage around his left upper arm and carrying Swara in a bridal style, was standing upstairs taking his breath back, everyone’s eyes widen with horrified surprise
Not waiting for Laksh and Ragini who climb the stairs asking what was going on, he turns left and walks to their room.
At the moment he puts her in bed, all the family members join him there, he ignores them arranging the pillows under her head and covering her slowly before sitting at her side and taking her hand in his. Ragini hurry at the other side caressing her hair tenderly.
His mother couldn’t take it anymore, she asks him:
“- what are you doing here! Can anyone of you tell him that he’ll finish by killing me with all his mindless!?… Sanskar!”
His father adds:
“- what’s that sanskar? You should be at hospital… And how have you done to come home?… ”
Facing his silence, Durga Prasad says in a stern tone:
“- Sanskar! Answer your parents!… Why…”
Looking to Swara’s closed eyes, Sanskar finally speaks:
“- her perfusion treatment was over, why to stay there more?”
His voice was low and strangled, his pale face and surrounded with blue reddened eyes and in his stained with blood clothes, he seems like a zombie with the covered with red white bandage.
Laksh replies:
“- but Sanskar, YOU had to stay at hospital under observation for 24 hours… Doctor said that you lost too much blood and…”
“- I’m alive hai na?…”
His sarcastic tone shocks everyone, Laksh takes his phone and gets out from the room, he calls the hospital’s doctor for information.
Sujatta tries to complain again but Annapurna stops her, she represses her tears and says calmly :
“- Sanskar beta… You know that…”
But his monotone voice cuts her again, he seems in trance:
“- she’s scared… I never saw her scared… She needs to be reassured… To be at home… With her family…”
Ragini rises angry drowned with tears face to him and says:
“- really!?… Do you really think that it will reassure her, Sanskar?”
Laksh who just returned presses her shoulder and tries to stop her in vain, she continues :
“- nahi Laksh… Your bhai seems ignoring that it’s not that ba-ji who scares my sister… It’s not the bullet who failed to kill her tonight which scares her the most… It’s not facing the danger again and again which scare her… It’s him… Ha Sanskar… It’s your fault if she’s like that today!”
Sanskar looks up to her astonished, he gulps hardly while she adds:
“- what was the need of all that drama, tell me! Couldn’t you simply tell her the truth and execute your saving the world plan without breaking her heart… Her soul and all her being…”
Durga Prasad intervenes trying to plead Sanskar’s case whose eyes were again concentrating on his Swara, clutching her hand more:
“- Ragini beta… Swara was in danger, he was using Adarsh to return back to Kolkata after all those years… I succeeded keeping him out of our lives for thirty years… who could imagine that the little girl who gave the proof of the crime committed then was our Swara…”
Annapurna adds tears filling her eyes:
“- how could we imagine that our destiny was entangled so long before we met… Swara was born in our enemy’s home to become our savior…”
Sanskar whispers almost inaudibly:
“- our destiny was much more entangled…”
Caressing his way on her face clearing its sight from a lock of hair, he adds choked:
“- hai na princess?… You… You know it Swara…”
Wiping his eyes and nose childishly, he continues:
“- please swara… Return to me… I know you’re hearing me…. Please…”
His tears were drowning her hand he was hugging against his lips begging her , which make everyone cry.
Everyone but Ragini who brushes her tears away and snatches her hand from his grip shocking him:
“- did you hear her when she was calling you madly? Did you hear her when she pleaded everyone to stop her agony and tell her you’re fine? Did you hear her when she begged me to tell her that she wasn’t mad… That her heart was right saying that you’re alive?… Tell me Sanskar, did you hear her when she fell in the stairs that day you tried to kill your brother…”
“- Ragini!!!”
Laksh stops her crying… Hugging her shoulders, he pleads her saying:
“- bas Ragini… please… Bas… We can’t change what happened… Let’s not open the old injuries…”
She breaks down crying:
“- my sister’s injuries are still opened Laksh… they’re bleeding from that night she was said that her Sanskar is dead… look at her… What.. did .. she do to… What was her fault… To… To deserve all that…”
She sobs badly in her husband’s chest who couldn’t stop his own tears.
Annapurna tries to console Ragini saying:
“- nothing will happen to Swara, nothing can happen to her now… Doctors reassured us about both her and her baby… You’ll see, after this night of rest, she’ll be bilkul fine…”
Sujatta’s face is illuminated by a wide smile at the evocation of the baby, she presses her son’s shoulder adding:
“- ha choree… She’ll be fine tomorrow… Now come with me, you have your medicines to takes and to get out of these clothes…”
Durga Prasad agrees at the idea:
“- your mum is right beta… Ragini beta, you stay here with Swara, she has…”
“- I’ll manage!”
Sanskar’s stern voice cuts him surprising them as he kept quiet for so long that he seemed has landed in another world.
He stands up from the kneeling position he was in next to her and takes slowly her hands from Ragini’s. Straightening himself, his eyes still locked on Swara’s face, he orders with a non disputable tone:
“- it’s late for everyone… MY WIFE needs rest, so would you all please…”
His mother stops him her eyes widened with surprise:
“- sanskar!!! What…”
But Annapurna closes her eyes defeated and says:
“- Sanskar is right Sujatta… Let them take rest”
Unwillingly, everyone take a leave… Ragini was the last who quitted the bedroom looking back to her sister… She’s almost dragged by Laksh who holds her shoulders to help her walking.
***
After locking the door behind them wincing from the pain killing all his left side, he goes in the bathroom for few moments returning with a filled with soaped water recipient and a bath cloth which he puts on the bedside table. Then taking a pajama pants and her silk blue nighty, he puts them on the chair and returns next to his still unconscious wife. He sits beside her and takes her in his arms tenderly, undoing her dress’ buttons in her back, he starts undressing her slowly recalling with a sad smile when once she was about to take off his t shirt startling him and how she declared proudly that he’s her husband, he hasn’t to feel shy with her… Shy she has always been with him. Tears cloud his eyes again when he thinks at her reaction if she was conscious… He almost had to lock her in the room and chase her playfully every time she allowed him to approaches her…
His cute shy little wife…
Taking the bath cloth, he washes off the blood traced over her lifeless body not able to repress his tears, slowly, with a mother’s care toward, he takes off all marks of the long awful night they lived before dressing her.
After a rapid shower, taking care to not wet the bandage covering his arm, he puts on a sports pants and his blue t shirt, impregnated with swara’s fragrance, it was the one she used to wear since…
Kneeling on the ground next to her, Ragini’s words reason in his ears as he’s taken back to that funeral third day when he came to wake her, he clutches her hand in his tightly kissing it then laying his head over their both hands at her side, he lets out of all the pain consuming him, and cries silently for god knows how much time, at the first lights of the morning he fell asleep in that same position.
***********
In a huge office, a small boy wakes up startled with a painful cry… Opening his eyes, he finds himself in a puddle of red liquid smelling like blood, his jaw was aching as if it was broken and it took him a nanosecond to register the situation…
Recalling how much he fought with the four men who appeared on his way returning to his camp in the forest, how much he called for his brother who preceded him, he gets up hearing an unknown man’s voice shouting angrily and struggles hardly from his kidnappers’ grip saying that his family will never pay any ransom.
After telling him about a story he was unable to relate to himself, he understands one unique thing, this man was his bade papa’s enemy and he’s turning to be a message to be sent to him…
His both arms forcefully gripped, that man digs his huge fingers in his face’s skin making him look up to him saying:
“- you’re bilkul your lovely aunt, you know? Same fair akin, same defying eyes and I’m sure you have her cute smile too… You don’t know her, hai na?… Don’t worry you’ll soon meet her…”
The small boy spits on his face insulting him which cost him another slap across his cheek…then another from the other side… As he looks up to his tormentor still defying him, ba ji smiles dangerously saying:
“- so bold!!! Hope Durga Prasad is upbringing my Adarsh the same way…”
Wiping his gold ring from blood marks on it, he takes the file he had in hands when he came and starts going, on the door he orders:
“- make it clear how much he suffered before dying… I want Durga Prasad to know what it costs to defy ba ji… I want them to be unable to look at him when they’ll set fire in his stake!”
At his command, the four goons start beating him like if he was a boxing bag they’re training on it… The small boy resists, fights back with his ten years old force and black belt karate skills, but they were just too strong for him, every time he was thrown to the ground by a new punch, he stands up again… And again… And again…
Suddenly, he doesn’t get up… They think he’s unconscious and continue beating him with their feet but he wasn’t… He was just lost in two huge black eyes shining with endless tears!
A small girl was hidden there… Under the desk, shivering with fear and silencing her cries with her sari’s ending against her mouth…
***
“- Swara!!!”
Sanskar wakes up with a startle, kneeling on the ground, his hands still holding Swara’s hand, he takes off one of them to clear his blurred with tears vision of her adorable sweet face, she seems sleeping peacefully in her pink silky nighty, the soft black curls of her hair ornamenting her pillow and her other hand laying across her chest over the bed’s cover. A perfusion needling it’s back…
It has been a whole week since the ” incident “, and what seemed to be an aftershock unconsciousness turned to be a kind of deep unexplained coma. But it was Sanskar’s condition which was worrying the family members.
Since the doctor’s diagnostic after the several blood analyses and rays she passed, locking himself in their room he keeps in that position the whole day and night. People can enter then go… Talk to him… Reassure him… Try to convince him that she would be angry to know that he didn’t eat, he didn’t take his medicines, he didn’t go to doctor for his not yet healed injury… That he has to be strong for her… In vain!
Silent, eyes reddened with tears, drawn with restless marks’ blue, cheeks dig under his beard… Even Ragini’s anger finished by vanishing seeing how miserable he was, like a lost lifeless soul suspended between heaven and hell…
Wiping his eyes and nose, he extends his hand to Swara’s face, touching it with his shaking fingers like to be sure she’s still warm… Still breathing… Still here…
“- when have you become so cruel princess… It doesn’t sweet you, you know…”
Ordering her silky curled locks of hair, tears drowning his face again, he continues his monologue:
“- it has always been so difficult to deserve your love, hai na?… It was a betrayal at the beginning… When… When without knowing how, when or why… My heart stopped beating for me… When my heart… Started beating only for you… Only by you… He forgot the rhythm he had till then… Because of your laughs… Your pouts… You angry eyes… Even your scolds”
Sobbing badly, he explains choked:
“- I thought… I really thought that… That the deception … That killing deception… I saw in your eyes… Swara… When you … left me… Was… Was the worst… The most unbearable thing I would live in my life… ”
He closes his eyes strangled by his tears and adds:
“- but… But it was… Nothing… Nothing compared to that…”
Kissing her hand his cries filling the calm room, he says:
“- ha i made you suffer… Ha i failed to make you happy… Ha you’re surely hating me… But… You’ve never been so cruel…”
Wiping his closed eyes, he’s unaware of the small moves her left hand’s fingers were doing… He takes a deep breath composing himself and says her right hand hugged against his lips:
“- I know you’re like that because of me… You’re not cruel… It’s all because of me… your prince turned to be the villain”
He stands up gripping the bed side with his injured arm which makes him wince with a moan of pain… Her left hand makes a movement in air like sustaining him…
but he already bends over her face printing a tender kiss on her forehead unconscious that it was drawing a smile over her lips…
Pressing his forehead on hers, their noses touching, he closes his eyes making her frown and says with a determined voice:
“- bahut hogaya princess… Bahut hogaya… if I’m the reason of all your pain… then… ”
Kissing her lips tenderly, he says against them:
“- I’m going swara… I’m going my love… Your villain will go away… So my princess can live again… ”
Caressing her belly not seeing that she’s about putting her hand over his, he finishes by saying:
“- I’ll never be away… but… ”
Swara’s hand rises up toward his shoulder but he was already turning around just when her eyelids start beating… He stops a moment at the door.
Her lips mimes his name silently:
“- Sanskar…”
When she finally opens her eyes, he was gone…
***
In the living room, everyone stands up shocked to see Sanskar’s silhouette walking downstairs.
He goes directly toward his bade papa and announces his decision, as everyone’s starts arguing with him, he just bends down at elders feet for blessing and turns his back to them closing his eyes, but when he opens them he’s shocked at the unbelievable vision they were giving him…
“- SWARA!”
TO BE CONTINUED…………