Are you still there?

Chapter 9_Silence before the storm

Aman's penthouse, Delhi

"Do you see her Aman, what have you done to her? I know you didn't touch her, hurt her physically, you didn't speak to her, hurt her with your words, without doing any of these, see what you have reduced her to, all this for no fault of hers. What is your problem Aman? Why don't you see her?"

"You didn't see her Arnav. You didn't... I didn't see her, we didn't see her", Aman said with a faraway look.

"What are you saying, Aman? Cant you see.."

But Aman cut Arnav to it. "I'm not talking about Paakhi Arnav"

There was a brief silence.

"What happened to you with Sheetal was very unfortunate. But when I retrospect, that was bound to happen. We deserved that. For what we did to her"

And Arnav's breath stilled.

The air in the room changed to one of guilt from a tiff between friends.

"Khushi?", Arnav asked, his voice quivering.

Aman looked at the pained expression on Arnav's face but did not have the heart to speak anymore.

He turned away from Arnav and looked at the evening sky through his window. Looking at the city lights in the evening was her favorite pastime.

There was a time when just the mention of her name would bring a feeling of tenderness and calm to him. Now, taking her name itself was impossible for Aman.

Aman

Just the thought of Khushi leaves a bitter taste of guilt and self-loathing and at last pain, all of which is detrimental to human life.

It reminds me how insensitive we have been, how badly I've ended one of the purest forms of relationships with betrayal.

"I always believed water can be thicker than blood, but you proved me what a fool I've been. Thank you", were her parting words, before she disappeared from my life... from our lives.

And the look she gave me when I first met her at Ooty is something I would never forget until my last breath. I never thought I would see that look on her face, the closed deceiving look that every other human being has today. My Khushi's eyes always used to sparkle, always dreamy and curious, most importantly hopeful. And I very well know, this sin of crushing the dreams of a starry-eyed girl and turning her into someone unrecognizable will always hang like an albatross around my neck... always.

Arnav

Khushi... The chaos of life has managed to erase a lot of memories with time. But Khushi is that old melody, thinking of which you are always transported to those good old days, at the same time you dread thinking of, fearing the pain and melancholy of something beautiful left incomplete, scaring you forever.

I knew I've erred the moment Khushi left us, but I never knew the intensity of it. I felt I have wronged her and maybe I'm more responsible for it, but I never knew the impact of it then.

Aman and I had had the biggest fight of our lives at the time when Khushi disappeared from our lives, Aman and I had not spoken for a year. Eventually, things started to fall into place when we had to start working on our company, which has been our life goal for years. But neither Aman nor I ever spoke about Khushi again. But I knew Aman never really stopped thinking about Khushi, he just didn't discuss her with me anymore. It became even more evident, when Aman, who had rejected almost every other girl his parents brought proposals of, agreed to marry Paakhi, who, in many ways was like Khushi.

I, on the other hand, was so involved with Sheetal, that nothing else mattered. But in the recent past, when the fog started to clear, which has blinded me for years, I slowly started to feel the ache and pain and then all blew up when I caught Sheetal red-handed, and what followed was a huge mess.