After The Rain

Chapter One - The Grey Sky

"In the long run, the most unpleasant truth is a safer companion than a pleasant falsehood."

- Theodore Roosevelt.

~

Khushi was lost.

Her mind in utter disarray, she stared into the distance with an aimless look in her eyes. Her elbows were on her knees and her fist was pressed against her mouth. Around her, people hustled away, their conversations drifting into the wind that was picking its pace with every passing minute. But she found herself zoned out to a place faraway as she grappled with her overwhelming thoughts.

This morning, she had left her house with one resolution—to reveal to Anjali-ji the truth about the husband she idolises so much. The husband who, for the past several months, had maintained the pretence of bachelorhood and had gotten treacherously engaged to her. She had been determined to do so and yet, here she was; sitting at an unknown park and carrying the burden of her failure to speak the truth.

Tears of indignation rose in her eyes as she felt another wave of shame wash over her, further abrasing her insides like venom itself.

In the small lifetime of twenty-years, Khushi had dealt with a lot of weighty emotions, including those that were enough to reduce anyone into a heap of misery. She had experienced tremendous grief, loss, fright and the overbearing freight of remorse, but never had she been so broken as she was now as she felt the surge of cowardice overwhelm her—the devastating blow of having to step back from doing the right thing, just because she was scared of the consequences.

A small part of her was reassuring as it replayed the image of Anjali-ji fretting over her broken mangalsutra, terrified for her husband’s safety to a point where she was willing to keep any fast and perform any prayer, even at the expense of her own health. That part of her mind reasoned with her that Anjali-ji, kind and sensible as she was, would not be able to handle the truth. She would crumble beyond repair if the betrayal of her husband were ever to be revealed to her and that would start a chain reaction that would end only when everyone Khushi had ever cared for were ruined. The Raizada Family, the one she had inevitably grown to be a part of, it would shatter in the wake of Anjali-ji. The peace between this family and her own would sour forever. And her sister, she would have to endure the weight of rejection yet again, this time from someone she loved with all her heart.

Hearts would be broken, relationships would crack and at the center of everything, would be her—Khushi—helplessly watching her world erupt into conflict.

But against the reasoning that was intent on hiding the truth, was her greater conscience, the one that was constantly reminding her of her morality and of the importance of standing by the truth regardless of how painful or damaging it is. If she lies, she would undoubtedly preserve peace, but for how long? To cover this one lie, she would have to lie over and over again and when the façade drops, when the truth is finally out in the open, what would she say in her defence?

And then, there was the matter of knowingly letting Anjali-ji live in a ruse of a marriage, fraught with underlying deceit and imminent heartbreak, because what were the chances that Shyam would turn loyal? He had stayed with her family for months and watched as she repeatedly refused to be linked with him in matrimony. Yet, her refusal did not stir up his conscience; he maintained the act of the perfect prospective groom for a girl who did not want him, despite having a wife who would give her life for him. Does this not show the extent of his ruthlessness? Is this not proof enough that he is undeserving of Anjali-ji and that he would most probably going to keep betraying her, again and again?