Emotional Ramblings: MaAn

Soulmates Reunited - 1

Anuj hesitated at the entrance of their room and paused to take in the sight. The sight of his lifelines, his loves; curled up into a tight ball in the middle of the bed. Anupama's saree billowed out around them and her slightly still damp hair cascading on the pillow as she rubbed her Bebli's back. Tear stained cheeks were smushed against each other as Mother and Daughter silently healed each other under the warmth of this hug. The Daughter, shaken to the core of recent events and reeling from its effects on her mental health as she cried in vain for the Mother who had been her everything, who she believed had left her forever.The Mother who had sacrificed everything for that child, including the child herself at one point so that her daughter would remain forever happy with whomever she chose. But the Mother had returned, breaking her lifelong dream, to be with that daughter when she needed her the most.

Anuj sighed out a long breath, his entire body relaxing seeing them both finally sleeping peacefully after the long day they both had had. He hesitated briefly, unsure of whether to disturb them. Perhaps he should sleep on the couch. He dared not let either of them leave his sight, he needed them now more than ever. Destiny had given them this opportunity to be once again in this room of theirs together and he would ensure that he was here for every single moment. Unsure of when destiny would change its course once again.

He let his gaze fall over her sleeping figure. His Anu. His eyes wandered over the room recalling the last time they had been in this room before all this mess. The words uttered, the silent breaking of each other and the final silence as he left. His mind shuttered out the images of her face, the words he had spoken that day and the sound of her weeping as she pleaded with him to stay. Her hair had also been left loose that day, still damp from her shower as she scrubbed off the remnants of the holi rang he had so rudely colored her with. Anuj's legs faltered as he remembered those moments and he sat down heavily on the couch and gazed at her sleeping form once again. Her soft pink cheeks had been decked in the color red that day, the color for a Suhaagan. But that day, nothing had been more red than her eyes. Not the color staining her cheeks nor the sindoor spread on her maang. His mind grappled with the events of the day he had left her. He remembered the abyss inside him during that day as he processed the loss of Choti from their lives. The unending despair he had felt and the urge to run away, to not see this place that reminded him of her so much. He couldn't think, he just needed a place to breathe. And so he had left. He had left but he had taken her breath along with him unbeknownst.

Her presence had followed him and the further he went, the more his memories of her haunted him. Taunting him with their memories as they tantalized him with the sweet remnants of his old life that was slipping away. As she slipped away. Like sand slipping through his fingers. He had come back by a twist of fate. Nothing was the same but then again everything was the same all at once.

Like a figurine stuck in time, there she was-resplendent as ever. Her silence that had driven him insane, her eyes that he could usually read in a heartbeat - shuttered to him as she had closed herself off from the world upon his departure. The only thing he had been able to read, from glimpses into her soul, were the flashes of pain and the unuttered questions that she had cast his way in a wary look. But the silence had ultimately been what drove him mad. Her acceptance of it all; his silence, his decisions, this new dynamic in his life. Everything she accepted without a single word uttered, without a question or an accusation thrown his way. But he hadn't been able to take it anymore. Even now he remembered the tired lines etched into her face as he first gazed upon her that day in the alley. The sindoor she had still worn despite the marital uncertainty she was facing in her life once again. The mangalsutra that she guarded with her life even as she gazed upon his new life with a sadness that permeated the aura around her. The aura that burnt him whenever her shadow fell across him as she weaved by those that were once her own, now supposedly strangers.