Endless Nights

Peace Treaty or Not

When Saransh opens his eyes slowly, his head is throbbing hard in pain. He in vain tries to lift his head. His head feels like a stone. He puts his hands on his head and finds a blood stained bandage on it.

When he looks at the room, he finds him lying in hospital bed. His father is sitting beside him clutching his right hand.

"Easy, son. Take it easy." His father says to him.

A single tear drops from his father's moist eyes. Saransh looks at his father softly. He looks so old, so fragile and so broken hearted.

He tightly holds his father's hand. He wants to confort him. Shivam gently pats his son's hand.

"Who has done to it?" Inspector Jatin enters into the room in a great hurry and throws him this question.

Saransh looks at him vacantly. He don't want to answer him. He don't want to put an unnecessary pressure on Tania at this very moment. She is carrying his only hope - his baby.

"Why are you not telling me? Who are they?" Jatin asks again.

"I don't know. I don't see them. They hit me from back." He tells him only half truth.

Jatin narrows his eyes in suspicion. He does not trust young Raijada and his evidence at all.

"Okay, I will record it in my report." he looks at him in suspicion.

Saransh looks at him more vacantly. He is staring hard at the ceiling at the next moment.

"Inspector, you please get out of the room. The visiting hour is over."

After hearing this familiar voice, he looks at the doctor with a jolt. An electric current runs through his vein.
He knows him very well. This is Tani's father, Dr. Sashank Doshi.

Sashank smiles to see Saransh looking at him. He knows that he will look shocked to see him here as his own doctor.

Shivam is looking at them one after one. He knows something is seriously going on but can't understand what. It is beyond his thought that all of this is already a pre-planned scene of an ongoing drama.

"Why don't you ask him what he was doing at midnight infront of our house, officer?"

Another sweet yet cold female voice rings in his ears. What a luck??!! She also has to come at this nick of time!!

Saransh closes his eyes too tightly on hearing Anuja's voice. She puts down a fruit basket, full of different juicy fruits, on the bedside table beside his bed.

"Yes, yes, what were you doing there?" Jatin asks him with interest.

But he is not reciprocating. His head is aching too much. He knows that this stage is well-planned beforehand and he is not so naive to fall for it.

"I think, I know the answer" Anuja tells that to Jatin who is open to any suggestion at hands "He has keen eyes on beauty. You know, all Raijadas has this quality of chasing behind pretty faces." She tosses her hair softly to her rightside of face and by waving her hands rushes out of the room.

Both ofSashank and Jatin's eyes meet together and a silent wave of laughter passes through them.

Shivam's ears turn red in humiliation.
He never expects her to declare this suggestion so openly infront of all.

Saransh feels deeply ashamed for his own foolishness. He should not try to underestimate her capability. After all she is his biological mother. Now on he has to pay special attention to her.
..........

"Really??!! Is it so?? But why??!! That girl is not suitable for our family." Mrs
Damayanti Singh Raijada asks her husband.

"I know. But I don't think there is any other option left to us. Ansh had done everything." Satyam drinks his wine from his glass while sitting pensively in his bar stool.

"He is a damn fool like his father." She shouts in anger.

Her husband is not agreeing with her. "Uhhu" he shakes his head violently by saying this firmly "He is far more intelligent than Shiv."

"Then why don't you kill the girl?" She suggests.

"Don't put wrong ideas on your head. Killing her will make your brother our mortal enemy. And we may be accussed for her murder: indirectly or directly. It will be a false move and Satyam Singh Raijada never makes a false move." He utters this to her.

"Then what Satyam Singh Raijada will do??" She asks in irritated voice.

"Satyam will anmounce their lavish engagement and then bang" He lifts his index finger to shoot her "Our hero will be martyr of his own love saga."

"Our hero??!! You mean Ansh??!!" Her eyes pops out in shock.

"Yes" He camly tells her.

"But why him??!!" She asks again.

"Because then neither your brother's daughter will enter our family nor we will be deprived from the remaining property of our forefathers. Most of all your brother will be accused for his murder and my fool brother, Shiv will die broken hearted." He explains his reasons superbly.

His wife looks awestruck. "You mean killing four birds in one arrow??!!" She asks bewiderly to him.

"Cheers!!" Without answering her, he lifts his glass in cheering way and touches his wife's glass with it.
......

"Are you okay??!!" Someone puts her soft hands on his warm forehead.

Since that day Saransh was mostly unconscious with high fever and brainache. Doctors got scared and they made a through check up of him. They feared of any kind of concussion but thankfully that did not happen.

Tania comes to see him regularly in vain. Her father never permits her to go near of him.

Today in the absence of her father, she enters into the private chamber and asks the previous question to him.

His eyes are moist and head is still dizzy but he lifts his hands to touch her face. His right hand roams over her face and then by taking her hand in his own, with a deep sigh of happiness, he falls fast asleep.

"What can we do know??!" Sashank asks his sister who is also watching this emotional scene from the door.

"Nothing. We have to wait for proper time." She answers him by shrugging her shoulders.

Till now she is seeing no way to save Tania from being future Mrs Saransh Singh Raijada.