Tanhaiyan | neirohi

28. slow

The project turned out to be a success in the market.

Bagging the big shot clients, the company was definitely happy with the teamwork. Steering the whole team into nearest pub, boss made sure that the celebration was grand. It was an easy strategy, keep your employees happy to get good work done. With the fun they were having, no one kept an eye on the time ticking. Finally, around one at night, after all the singing, dancing, eating and drinking, all of them made their way back home. He just had sip of the wine, celebratory purposes. If he were not to drive, he would've joined them for sure. Nevertheless, the dinner was good.

So this is how it felt to have a working life.

Meet more people, different kinds, learn how to get along with them and laugh with them as well. Do something you like or at least do something, also added to the mix. It felt nice, not all rosy as he put it out just now, but with lots of bad in it as well. It surely felt nice.

Whistling he made his way inside the dark hall, pouring himself a glass of water. Walking into their bedroom, his eyes accidentally drifted around, noticing the outline of a human figure crouched in the bed. Jumping back in shock, it was the long nails which gave him a hint. Skeptical, he looked at the glass he filled for himself and then at her. Sighing he walked towards her in silent footsteps, or tried to cause his rubber slippers failed to not quack.

"Chipkali?"

The stretched arm with the glass, yes she saw it. Rolling her eyes half-heartedly, she was very much tempted to smash it. She turned her face to the other side, not sparing him a glance. What could possibly change in a night?

"Aarohi?" he asked, profoundly confused.

She got up and moved past him, not bothering to respond. The silence was killing him. He grew up in a house where problems would be dealt with fights and arguments, sometimes brutal and stressful as well. But to be given silence as an answer was never an option. Shaking himself off it, he went behind her and ended up in the living room.

"Aarohi! Baath toh karlo,"

The girl who was setting up the pillows on the couch looked back. Her red eyes were the first things he took note of, the next were the curled wet lashes which framed the still magnificent eyes. His fingers cupped her face, brushing the wet tear blotches. Grazing his nose with her red Rudolph one, he muttered.

"Kya hua?"

That got her step back and drop on the sofa, clutching the pillow with all her might. Replicating her, he placed himself beside her. Trying to recall whether he messed up in someway or the other, he sat there even more confused. There were potentially no reasons, he had ruled out everything. Yet, the constant long breaths being drawn in told him a different story.

Sweeping her feet off the carpet, quite literally, he relied on the sole tactics which could pacify a chipkali like her. Resorting to her tickle issues before she suspected, in the middle of her tears she was laughing, twisting and turning along with it. Mood slightly better now, she wrapped her hands around his neck as she sat on his lap, almost on top of him. With his hands sneaking inside her t-shirt, he rubbed circles on her bare back, not a single word thrown in the air.

Two-thirty at midnight, and this was the kind of silence he liked. Not the one which invited loneliness. Rather the one which made a person feel less alone. Breaking his chain of thoughts as well as the stillness around them, voice hoarse from all the crying, she spoke out.

"Your brother is an ass."

Mouth opening and closing a lot of times, Neil Birla settled for a diplomatic response.