Arylie FF: I'm Happy Here With You

thirty-five ~ prem disha

kitne baraswa ye jeeyara taraswa

aaj milo ha rama, haq se balamwa

... ... ...

"Amma!"

"Imliya!"

They had landed near the lone resthouse in the outskirts of Pagdandiya. When Imlie had called Meethi after the whole chaos, she'd asked them to come here instead of the house. Why, Imlie didn't know, she didn't care either. As soon as she saw her mother in reachable distance, she ran towards her and hid herself into her mother's embrace and sobbed loudly.

"Hush, Gudiya, it's all fine now. See you are here with me, my child."

"Amma, I was so scared."

"Nothing to be scared of anymore, I got you. My poor baby, what happened?"

"I'll explain in a bit," Imlie replied. "We can't stay for long. Why did you ask us to come here instead of our home?"

"Imliya, what can I say? There was a storm recently, high wind actually, and a part of the roof of our house fell down."

"What! Is it fixable? Do you not have money? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Calm down, it is fixable. Builders are busy repairing the worst damaged houses first. We are okay, but I thought it wouldn't be appropriate for a celebration. Plus you know how our bathroom is, I thought Arpita bitya and Narmadaji would be much more comfortable in the resthouse."

"But we are not staying," Imlie repeated. "Aryan is not okay."

She hugged her mother again and blabbered about his ill health and what a scare she had. "Imlie, you are not making sense. What happened to Aryan? Why don't you all come inside for a minute and tell me what exactly happened?"

Meethi proceeded to greet the Rathores with her usual warm welcome. Imlie looked at Aryan anxiously, who nodded. So they went in. Meethi informed them how they had arranged with the manager to use the reception room for Imlie's party. It was not a big room, but it looked comfortable enough for a village rest house. Aryan made a beeline at the biggest sofa, and went to lie down there. The doctor and nurse Arpita had bullied to come along, started asking him a few questions. Imlie fidgeted, "we really need to head back, Amma."

Meethi's face fell. "I made your favorite foods. I even baked a fruit cake on the stove. I had called and asked Arpita for the recipe. You have barely even looked at the decoration. Will you at least tell me?"

Imlie sighed and began telling her mother what happened in short, taking time to explain Aryan's condition. She felt her anger grow as she spoke about what Aditya did, how cruel he was till the last moment.

When local police finally appeared, they refused to take Aditya into custody. As Aditya had predicted, him being her legal husband was the trump card.

"If he is your husband, then he is your husband. What kidnapping?" The sub inspector had questioned her while chewing betel leaf obnoxiously. She'd wanted to break his face, and the constable's too, who'd nodded like he possessed all the knowledge on earth.

Arpita's logical demands had aggravated those guys more, especially the sub inspector. He had the charge of three villages under his station and fancied himself to be a very important person. This is what happens when you give a narrow minded guy a fraction of power. He was not very knowledgeable about the who's who either because he didn't know who the Rathores were. After all, they were not film stars.