Bikhre moti (Scattered pearls)

19.4 Just a number - pt4

Over the next year, many things changed in Khushi's life. Her Payal jiji's marriage was fixed with a guy named Aakash who belonged to an upper-middle class family. He was a sweet, kind gentleman and Payal immediately liked him. And after sheetal's assurance that she was fine, payal let go of her hesitance to get married before her Di. Aakash's family also didn't seem to mind that Payal was to be married first before her elder sister's marriage.

However, in their eagerness to match Aakash's family's status in the wedding, Khushi's parents spent a lot of money making it an expensive wedding!

Soon after the wedding, Aakash got an onsite opportunity to go to the US, and he took payal with him.

Then just a few months after Payal's wedding, khushi's babuji got a mild heart stroke due to all the stress from having spent nearly all savings and worried for his other 3 kids' future... It was during this time that Sheetal and the man she loved, pranay came forward to help. Sheetal was working at a local firm with a low paying job by then while pranay had recently secured a good paying job too. Their ability to stand together during this difficult time and pranay's gesture to help sheetal's father finally thawed Khushi's amma-babuji's hearts towards him and they relented for Sheetal and pranay's marriage.

With her both elder sisters now married off within a year, Khushi felt very lonely. Even her best friend samu had moved to another city while she had stayed back in the same college for her post grad. The only friend she was now left with was Nandkishor Tripathi aka NK. He was always a part of her friend circle, but wasn't her best friend. Now that only a handful of her old classmates continued in the same college for masters, NK was her only option closest to a friend.

A point to note here was, she was not totally unaware of why NK was showering so much attention on her. She had an inkling that he liked her, much like the way she had liked Arnav sir! And even if Arnav had refused to pay attention to her, the boys her age had very much noticed the beautiful butterfly she was, and many were eager to woo her! NK being one of them.

Truthfully, NK had liked her since the first day of college. But when he noticed she was not interested in him, he stopped pursuing her and found another girlfriend! After all, he was also an eager teenager at that time who didn't have patience to wait for one girl all his life.

But now that he realized Khushi was finally noticing him, he broke up with his current girlfriend to have a chance with Khushi...

Khushi on the other hand still struggled to push Arnav sir's thoughts to the back of her mind. But she wasn't entirely successful. She couldn't deny that unlike what everyone had been saying, her feelings weren't fleeting. The fact that he was not even assigned to any of her classes this entire year, and she didn't necessarily meet him every day, she still continued to love him, said a lot. Unlike Samu had said that he would be out of sight, out of her mind, he was anywhere but. Every time she watched a Madhuri dixit movie (Dil toh pagal hai been watched a thousand times now), every time she opened her notebook from last year, every time she passed the classroom where she first met him, every time she saw him, she felt even stronger pull towards him.

And this was making her confused and helpless.

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Amidst all this, things were changing in Arnav's life too. Armaan had quit the job in his company and started his own small business. He had requested Arnav to be a part of it as an advisory board member, something which would not result in any conflict with Arnav's job at the college but also have his active involvement in Armaan's startup company.