Becoming Sweethearts [✓]

Part Fifty Four

Cleaning the furniture, check.

Sweeping and mopping the house, check.

Doing the laundry, check.

Doing the dishes, check.

Prepping for dinner, check.

Freshening up after all the household chores, double-check.

Presently, Gauri and Omkara were lazing around in the living room with both of them seated next to each other on the bean bags in the balcony, enjoying each other's presence in absolute silence. Both were seated facing each other, with their feet propped up on the other's bean bag. Gauri had placed a novel in her lap holding it with one hand, while her other hand was absently caressing Omkara's foot. Omkara, on the other hand, had decided to sit with his sketchbook and a charcoal pencil, trying his hand at sketching to see if he still had that talent in him. Minutes ago, Gauri had encouraged and then pestered him to no end, that he had finally decided to give in and see if he could still sketch after all these years of not practicing.

"You drew something?" Gauri asked yet again curiously, and he shook his head, "Not yet," although she could see that his fingers were running back and forth on the canvas. Before she could ask yet again, he gave her a pointed stare and said, "When I'm done, I'll show it to you. I cannot sketch without concentration, and you, madam, are not allowing me to concentrate if you keep asking me every five minutes if I've drawn something." Gauri would have fumed if the chapter of the novel that she was reading wasn't so engaging. She frowned at Omkara for a moment, but then quickly looked into the book in her lap and began reading again.

Omkara stealthily glanced at his wife and studied her features. He was trying to sketch her and was done with the outline, but since she kept moving about and her expressions kept changing every second as she read her book, he couldn't mirror down on paper what he saw in front of his eyes. So, he had decided to sketch her expressions from his memory, and the face that came to his mind was from his fondest memory when he had first kissed her in the dim candlelight. He smiled to himself and kept sketching, while she had buried her nose into her book.

Two hours passed by, and Omkara was finally done. When he looked at his final artwork, he wasn't as impressed as he would've normally been, because whatever he'd drawn was very rustic and rough, compared to the artworks he had created years ago. His lack of practice was evident to someone who had a keen artistic eye for detail. But overall, it was good, he mused, knowing that his opinion was biased because of whom he'd sketched: His Gauri!

To his eyes, she was the most beautiful creation, and falling in love with her had made that truth all the more solemn and evident to him. Even now, where she was wearing a pale pink noodle-strapped top and a faded blue pair of shorts, she looked every bit of drop-dead gorgeous. Her hair tied up in a bun and those loose strands that were tickling her neck, the soft creases of her forehead as she concentrated on reading her book, her soft lips gently parted as she breathed slowly, her whole body curled up into the plush bean bag like she was a little kitten, her soft skin glowing even if she was devoid of any makeup; Omkara sighed, wondering how he'd gotten so lucky marrying a woman so pretty. What made her prettier was the fact that she wasn't even aware of how beautiful she was. And to think that she dared to call herself unattractive and ugly, which was so far from the truth.

Gauri sighed as she read the book realizing the turn of events between the characters in the story, but then suddenly glanced up when she felt his gaze on her. She furrowed her brows as she smiled and asked him why he was staring at her. "I finished sketching." He said, and she immediately leaped towards him, grabbing the sketchbook, chanting a "show me, show me." Omkara felt his ego boost up when he heard her gasp of complete awe as she looked at the sketch. "This is me!" she said unable to believe how fine he'd sketched her, and then looked at him with widened eyes that were in total disbelief. He shrugged and, in all modesty, he said, "I tried to make it perfect, but it's still not up to the mark. I still need to practice a bit more so that I -"