Moran: Every day, I love you more

Kuch toh hai tujhse Raabta - 3.1

It had been almost 3 months since Param was arrested. Soon after, from the inputs given by Param, Col Batra's team, headed by Karan, managed to completely neutralise the PRF organization and Mission Samapan was successful.

While on the professional front, things were moving like a super-fast train, the pace in personal life was a bit slow for Karan. Barkha and he himself were still processing with the happenings and coming to terms with the reality. It was very hard for both of them, as they felt broken from within, to see the man they dearly loved, made such poor choices towards his country, duty and family. They were relieved that Param realised his mistakes and helped in the mission while serving his punishment. But the betrayal had broken their hearts in so many pieces that no one could join them again. However, in this journey, there were two pairs of hands - one that was trying to gather all those broken pieces and the other smaller pair that was trying to glue them together with love and warmth, Monami and Baby.

Baby didn't understand anything that happened with her father, nevertheless ensured her Mumma and Chachu always smiled. Monami, on the other hand, understood everything and could see the pain in their eyes even when they smiled. She ensured everything possible in her capacity to give that emotional support to both Karan and Barkha.

Monami had made a rule that every weekend, the four spent time together as a family. Either Moran visited Shergill house or they called Barkha and Baby to the academy. Sometimes, Monami visited Barkha alone too to give her the sisterly comfort she really needed. With all this support and motivation, Barkha was finally getting better. She joined an NGO that worked for women and children of defence personnel.

Karan too had become much better by then. But as he was given higher responsibilities at work after getting promoted, he remained quite busy.

All the 'free' time Moran ever got, they spent with the family and they thoroughly enjoyed that. But in all this, one thing that got lost was 'their time'. Yes, they both stayed in the academy, met during and after the drills, and sometimes also managed to catch a 10min coffee break together. But as a couple, they didn't get to spend much quality time together, away from all the stress and work. And they missed that, dearly!
Initially Monami didn't initiate, because she knew what Karan was coping with, emotionally. And later, he got very busy with his work responsibilities and so did she, as her training was reaching completion and her exams were nearing.

Even in the academy, although everybody knew of their relationship, the couple couldn't even have lunch together as their timings never matched. In fact, Karan almost missed his lunch on most days due to his busy schedule. But thanks to his fiancee's untiring efforts and Ustadji's sincerity, he could never actually miss his meal. On days he was late for the mess, Karan always found Ustadji with a tray of food in his cabin. Karan never needed to know who sent the food. He knew the food was cooked by Dilbaughji (especially his favourite items like kadhi chawal, biryani), served and arranged in the tray lovingly by Monami and brought there on-time by Ustadji. How blessed he felt by their gesture!

Sometimes, he intentionally delayed going to the mess, because he liked receiving his lunch tray in the cabin. Why?
Well, for his fiancee's secret love notes! Monami sent a few tissues in the tray, and always, on the right corner of the second tissue, she drew some doodles - like a pair of hearts with letters K and M ❤️, a rose, different emojis, and sometimes a flower with a smiley in the middle (to denote happy plants and happy Monami). With no words written, they still understood each other. Though they believed this was their secret mode of communication, they weren't aware that Ustadji was the 'eyes and ears' of the academy. He always knew about the tissues, obviously he never tried to read them. But he always kept it second in the stack of the tissues, so Karan would not mistakenly use it to clean his hands and spoil it without noticing the drawings.  Ustadji was gem of a person, wasn't he?