Nurture And Love (BOOK #3) ✔

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Long long ye-ars ago, there lived a warr-ior in the city of Hastinapur. . .", narrated Sanchi to a ten-year old boy seated across the table to her right. She was cladded in a maroon saree and her hair tied in a bun. Looking very intense and thoughtful, she looked behind her and instantly fell surprised with the view before her.

Her husband Vihaan was standing there and staring at his wife and the child, admiring the scene before him. All the years that had passed by, Sanchi never left his side. All she did was to hold his hand and pray for his wellbeing so that he recovered from all the pains which had been inflicted upon him a decade ago.

"Mom..." The child called Sanchi and she turned to him some seconds later. By the time she attended on the queries of the boy, Vihaan made sure that he took a chair and sat beside her, listen to her mesmerizing voice which never failed to stammer even to this day.

While Sanchi refused to leave the sight of her husband again, Vihaan exchanged an assuring smile with her and said, "Listen to what Prajwal has to say, hickory. You can gape at me later."

"But Vih, you we-re. . ." Sanchi was again interrupted by the voice of the child again.

"Mom, will you listen to me?" Prajwal spoke annoyingly before looking at Vihaan. "Dad, please tell her that I don't want to read now."

"He is right, Sanchi. You have already been making him read the Mahabharata the whole afternoon. He must be tired by now." Vihaan supported Prajwal. "Let him go and play with his friends. Evening is when you ought to spend some time with your friends and games."

"Yes, dad is right," Prajwal added. "Can I go, mom, please?"

As Sanchi nodded, Prajwal made no mistake in wasting any time and quickly escaped through the door. As disapproved as she was, she muttered, "For how long are you going to pro-tect him from my str-ict rules, Vih? He needs to learn who Abhi-manyu and Arjun are. . . He needs to learn who had plo-tted to kill his mater-nal uncle. . . He needs to know who kill-ed his father and. . . ."

"Please relax, hickory." Vihaan caught hold of her arms and shifted his chair closer to her. "He doesn't need to learn the characters from the Mahabharata. He should learn about the individuals who are present in his real life instead. I will protect him till he earns his legal rights that he deserves."

"He lost his fat-her when he was only a day old and since when his mo-ther left him with us, he treats us as his par-ents. He doesn't even know that not I but Tejal is his mo-ther." Sanchi choked back a tear. "We will be relie-ved of our duty once we are able to hand over Praj-wal to his right-ful family."

"We won't be relieved unless we get a hang of the one who had spoilt everything for Prajwal and us." Vihaan's voice roared in the air. "Hadn't Arjun put in the efforts of making his father confess and send him to the prison, we would have faced more of the troubles. Though Abhimanyu Rana had accepted his plotting of the car accident to harm me, he also said that he had later forbidden his driver from tampering with my car's engine when he found out that his son Pratyush was accompanying me. "

"This is wh-ere the mystery strikes me, Vih. Most impor-tantly, we then barely knew that there was also some-one other than Abhi-manyu Rana equally looking out for rev-enge on you." Sanchi conferred with a frown. "But I clearly reme-mber that before you fell uncon-scious after the accident, you had cauti-oned me about someone else who was try-ing to harm us and you wan-ted to keep our twins and me safe. How did you know this before-hand even though Abhimanyu Rana confe-ssed it afterwards?"

"Minutes before I spoke to you over the phone call, some masked men had attacked us on the way. I had received a threatening phone call and Pratyush was injured on the head some moments later after the call had ended." Vihaan recalled all of it. "Someone had thrown me an open challenge of choosing either Tejal and her baby, or our twins at the Shimla camp. He also knew Prachi and Rehaan's name. How could I have chosen either of them?"