Endless Nights

23 Years Gap: Second Half of The Story

Shivam's Story:

Remincencing the past seems nowadays his favourite passtime as in his mind he knows that he has to go through those painful memories which could bring back his Shivangi to him. Not in literal sense of course, because now she is long gone. Deep down his heart he sympathises with her and admits the reasons of her unending hatred for him are quite valid. But in those days his arrogance, naivity as well as hurt male ego totally destroyed a relationship that could be blossomed. By staring at the image hanged on his office chamber he, now a man of 53, sighs hard. 

Today's Shivam Singh Raijada is completely opposite of his past. He lost the agility, vitality, vivacity, liveliness, happiness and peace of mind along with the strength of body. Time has took a great toll on him. He looks so tired, so timid, so broken now. He looks so dead. His deep blue eyes lost their charms. Only when rarely he became satisfied with any good thing happening around him his eyes sparkle like past. You can rarely seen him smile this days. At past whenever he smiles a small dimple could be seen on his right cheek which made him more charmingly attractive to anybody. In these days they are also very rare.

He is deeply in thought. His desk has heaps of files but he does not want to look at them. His business, to his total dismay, is flourishing rapidly. Raijada Enterprise nowadays consists of the Raijada Traders, Raijada Tea Estate, Raijada Cotton Mills, Raijada Diamonds and Merchents along with Raijada Shipping Association. With the help and underlined guidance from his brother Satyam, who is now the honorable Home Minister of the State, he has established himself as the topmost industrialist of Bikaner.

His personal life, on the contrary, goes through several turmoils. His brother Satyam and he hardly talk nowadays. His sister-in-law Damayanti also becomes surprisingly aloof about him and his business, except several casual greetings at breakfast and dinner table. But the main headache is related to the question of the upbringing of his son. They did not get along at all. They quarrel a lot. Even this morning he had a fierce fight with his son, Saransh. He is  afraid to see his once happy-go-like always smiling boy to grow just as a spitting image of himself. Shivam hates his own past now. He does not want his son to make the same deadly mistakes that he made once. But what to do? Saransh is also taking the same road of his father. Being a 23 years carefree and recklace boy he is already known as a playboy casanova in his college from the very first day of his entrance. Shivam wants to stop him but cannot face the look of distaste and disgust in the face of his only child. Saransh hates him as a father from the bottom of his heart. Shivam knows that from his looks.

He sighs hard. Nothing left in his life. Pain, agony, misery, loneliness, repent, frustrution, depression and shame rule his heart now. Shivangi was right. He is neither living nor dead now. His past hunts him even today in the form of his only child. Whenever he looks at him, he gets soft. Saransh has the same hazel eyes of his mother.

He looks once again at the picture on the wall. The picture of a happy family. That could be his own too. But he lost the chance to reconcile with his love. She died. Died in childbirth. That day in the hospital must be his hallucination. He could think of no other justified reason though. Perhaps he was missing her so much or he wanted to see her once more. That is the reason his goggy brain halucinated the whole situation. He sighs again.  Whatever happened that day was still an unsolved mystery. That assassin was killed brutally by his jail-mate on the very same day, so anybody till now could not be able to discover the motive of his attack or the main culprit working behind him. Still an unsolved mystery.

He clutches his head in both of his hands and stares at the picture in teary eyes. It is indeed a very painful experience for anybody to lose someone whom he loves tenderly. Now he know where he was wrong. He, in Past, thought mainly due to his ignorance of women psychology, he could conquer over her if he could just force upon her. Being utterly helpless, she would surrender to him.
But the truth is that you could not force a person to love you or fall for you, instead just pray for this miracle to happen soon. With age he realises this truth now. He sighs again. Why on earth could not he be more patient in those situations? Why he lost his self-control? Why he was so callous, so impertinent at that time? Why did not he listen to his brain, instead of heart? Could he avoid this type of lonely end then?

But there is another persistent crisis that he can not avoid now. He is on the verge of losing his own son in the similar way he lost his wife. But he has to stop it. He has to. Simply has to.