Judaaiyaan

15

With his eagle-eyed vision, Ritwik could recognize her from miles away. Her hair seemed shorter, but there was no doubt it was her. The way she tucked her bangs behind her ear while talking to her father, the way her hips moved as she walked away—it was all etched in his mind forever. So beautiful, yet so devastated. For a moment, Ritwik couldn't bring himself to hate her. Maybe his father was right, after all. But then his eyes darted to where Kunal stood, and he was reminded of what he had lost. He knew his late fiancée wasn't perfect, but she was the woman who had captured his heart.

"This is a beautiful place, Ritwik," Pragati offered as she looked at their surroundings. He invited her to have dinner and asked her to dress nicely because he was taking her to a special – and fancy – restaurant.

Pragati was wearing a vibrant green dress. The dress had a flowy skirt that reached just above her knees and was cinched at the waist with a thin belt. She wore a pair of strappy high heels in a matching shade of yellow. Her hair was down, open, as he loved, and her makeup was minimal allowing her natural beauty to shine through.

"You look beautiful, Pragati. Everything else fades in comparison," he offered as they followed the waiter towards their table. Pragati blushed a little bit at the comment but didn't say anything. She didn't like it when he said those things. She wasn't into corny remarks and Ritwik decreased considerably the cheesy things he used to say to her since they started dating but now and then he let something like that slip. She didn't know how to react. In the beginning, it was easy to ignore but Ritwik was such a seducer and a romantic man. She had no doubts he loved her and she felt more and more dragged to him. The more she fought to feel nothing about him, the harder it became. She didn't know how much longer she would be able to resist but she prayed and hoped she would never fall in love with him. Since they started dating she had decided that feelings would never be part of their relationship, at least not from her side. She had some affection for him, after all, they grew up closely and she knew he was an honorable man. But feelings weren't something she could afford. If she felt it meant she was susceptible to being hurt and she didn't deal nicely with pain.

She doubted Ritwik would ever do something purposefully to hurt her but it wasn't that sort of pain she feared. She knew people made mistakes and were bound to disappoint even their loved ones. She could handle fights and maybe even betrayal but she couldn't deal with loss. Losing Mauli left a hole in her heart that she had never been able to fix and every time she faced any sort of loss it became a little bit bigger. It was like that when her pet dog Bruno died and when Milo the cat her father gave her when she was twelve went missing. She didn't have any other family to lose but her father as her mother's family was never really close but still, when a distant aunt died she felt horrible. They tried to be, especially after Mauli passed, but Pragati always kept a distance even as a child and as time passed they gathered a time or two by year and it was never like it used to be when her mother was still alive. Loss became a problem no matter the proximity or even if they were people or not.

That was why when she found out she had a sister she made sure to never meet her. Of course, she would love to have a sister, she asked her parents many times as a child but she never got her wish. She even resented them for a while after Mauli died. If she had a sister or a brother it would have been so much easier to face another day. Someone who would understand her pain perfectly and just be there for her. She was still too young to understand completely what her father was going through and when she got older enough to understand she tried to help him the best she could but it seemed like nobody knew what she felt. It seemed like nobody could say something that would help because they didn't have a clue about what she was feeling.

Finding out about Mishti had been a shock but also another reason to resent her parents. She had a sister after all and felt bitter about never having a chance to meet her. But she wouldn't let it show. She was a young lady already and she knew her father never recovered from losing his wife just like she never recovered from losing her mother and she wouldn't show him her resentful feelings. Despite the loneliness and the pain of the unbearable loss, she loved her dad. He was everything she had and she knew she was the same for him. She heard him crying so many times when he thought she was already asleep during the first year following Mauli's death. She couldn't bring herself to hurt him even more and she didn't know much about the story except that someone else was her biological mother and that she had a twin sister. She learned about Nandini years before learning about Mishti and at first, she hated the woman. She loved Mauli, the one she shared the first years of her life with, not some stranger who carried her for a few months and then gave her away. She was even mad at Kunal for a few weeks accusing him of cheating on her mother but he had explained how Mauli felt guilty for not being able to give him the children they dreamed about. Pragati forgave her father eventually and loved her mother even more for that but meeting Nandini or knowing anything about her never really crossed her mind.