Vodka on the rocks

Drabble - 2 [Ft. Baby Rao]

Pallavi was chukling seeing the antics of her six month old daughter, Ruhi. 

She had coffee coloured skin and a mass of thick curly raven hair reminiscent of her father. Her prettily lashed marble eyes and a smile which everyone who has ever laid eyes on her had unanimously proclaimed, can melt steel itself was eerily like her mother. 

Ruhi was chirping away, making bubbles and throwing her chubby hands and legs in the air in her mother's lap, taking in nature's splendour cheerfully with her curious gaze. She was a delightfully happy baby. Rarely someone would find their house echo with an infant's cries. Laughter was all which rang in the Rao Mansions numerous walls at present. 

It was like all the pain and ache which this house had seen was a distant memory of its previous life. An eon had passed since those dark dreary days. 

"Look at that.. such a beautiful bird isn't it baby?"

Ruhi started giggling madly as the tiny blue bird flew over their heads and uttered a thousand illegible words in her own baby language while her mother grinned at her mesmerized. 

Suddenly Pallavi felt a pair of arms wrap around her back and literally lift her, along with a happily shrieking Ruhi from the basket chair on which she was seated and found herself being positioned over someone's lap. 

She sagged in the man's warm embrace and tucked her head neatly in his suit covered chest. 

"And what are you up to my little one?"

Ruhi seemed to get charged as always, hearing her father's voice. She giggled and almost threw herself from her mothers arm to reach a thoroughly amused Raghav. The latter adjusted his arms to take his daughter leaving his wife to rest herself against his chest anyways. Ruhi shrieked in delight as her father buried her little face in scratchy wet kisses. 

Initially Raghav had been wary of kissing her, terrified that his beard would end up hurting Ruhi's infantile fragile skin. But on the contrary his mischievous daughter seemed to rather enjoy the tickling sensation from her father's stubble. 

Pallavi smiled her eyes still closed, yet knowing very well what was happening out of her sight. 

Ruhi had clutched her father's gold chain in her tight tiny fists and kept tugging on it with all the might possessed in her miniscule body. That was another of her favourite habits. She would tug and pull at Raghav's chain, his watch, the buttons of his shirt, his beard, his hair... everything within her vicinity. 

Raghav said she had gotten it from Pallavi much to the latter's embarrassed anger.

"Wives need a bit of attention too, Ghamandi Rao."

Pallavi said playfully, her thick lashes brushing the apple of her cheeks gently. 

"What a Drama Queen you are, my Saree Ka Dukaan."

Raghav's husky chuckles melded with his shower of kisses on the planes of her face next. Pallavi sniggered and caught his wondering lips with her own and kissed him as hard as she could, pouring her entire strength and might and soul into it.

 Nowadays, their kisses had become slightly different than it used to be. Previously Raghav would kiss her like he was a man left in the desert and she was his oasis. It was a ravaging affair which managed to set her insides aflame. 

But after Ruhi, her husband's kisses sucked her soul out with a tenderness she had no idea how to handle. 

It was like he was thanking her each time. An overwhelming gratitude he didn't know how to express to her without sounding like a pathetic moron. He had no idea how to say what he felt for her. He had been a corpse for so long that normal human emotions escaped him thoroughly. She had literally breathed the life back into him with a force which had left him stumbling and disoriented. 

And his daughter only seemed to fan the flames of that devotion.

A sharp tug in his chain brought both of them back to air and they chuckled seeing Ruhi almost glare at them through her thick lashes. She was a possessive baby for sure and hated it when the attention would go off her. 

It had started raining outside. A gentle pre monsoon shower had drenched the earth of their backyard beautifully. Pallavi could feel the temperature dropping a little but was unconcerned as she knew Ruhi would hardly feel the cold. 

Her husband was a literal human heat generator. 

Sometimes she wondered whether he had Agni dosha.

"How did the bidding go? Did you get it?"

"It was a tough match. I lost it at the last round. PCJ hankered too hard."

Pallavi looked up at him concerned. Raghav had been working a lot for that deal. He wanted the tender for the crown like anything. He looked a little down but not as upset as she had envisioned. She touched his cheek lightly. 

"I am sorry. You wanted it so much."

He smiled down at her and then glanced at his dozing daughter nestled in the other side of his chest. Pallavi felt one of his arm which was wrapped around her waist tighten and his long fingers threaded through Ruhi's dark curls. 

"I have already gotten what I had wanted the most."

The rain pattered against the glass soothingly and the evening petrichor seeped in throughout their home. Raghav smiled warmly feeling his wife's gentle kiss on the exposed skin of his chest through the open buttons of his inner vest and shirt on the left and as if simultaneously his daughter's even breaths hit on the right.

And that was answer enough.