The Elite Bride ( I was enchanted to meet you, princess )

《 40. Getaway To Greece - IV 》

R A G H A V

Something was wrong. 

Something was gravelly wrong. He felt  his gut twisting. Not that he was a believer in six sense or spiritual messages sent by the universe or god. But what was a long imprint memory of his mother flashed in front of him, her patting his head and sweetly smiling at the seventeen year -old Raghav while laying on her deathbed and saying :

"Always trust your gut feeling, Raghav. Its me telling you what to do in a situation."

His lovely and warm Maasa who had showered him and his younger brother with all the love she had in her pure heart, her death had created a hollow in his already dark heart. After her death, nothing had felt right, it was like she was a domino and her death had led to the falling of all other dominoes and perfectly upending his life. First the loss of her, then his father's coping methods by leaving his children in India and going abroad in the name of  expanding his business. He hadn't appreciated that, leaving your children alone to fend themselves to their own demons while coping with your grief separately was selfish as they were a family and they needed to overcome the loss together. That loneliness and hollow had led him to make one of the worst decisions of his life, that woman. Then followed the gut-wrenching, harrowing and tormenting fallout with his brother who still hadn't forgiven him and somehow Raghav had an intuition about that matter too. He felt that there was more than anger to which Adi held on, than the mere propositioning of Tanya. Oh, and the infamous and brutal attack of the media, how could he ever forget that, them framing him for a rape, their brutal questions, the darkness and dearth of the grey prison walls and the sting of the slaps, punches, crunching of his bones, the burn of his skin on being constantly hit by the police's baton, their kicks, the cigarette burns at the inside of his thighs and what not.

Since then the only thing that rocked his ship was Janaki, the only woman who shook his world, she had unknowingly taken him out of pits of his damned mind which was no less than a hell. She was somehow the only one who could bring him out of his pain, a flame in which Raghav willingly, like a moth, wanted to burn himself. She was the anchor to his drowning reverie of thoughts. Ever since she had entered his life, he longer had confined himself within the four walls of his office or overexerted himself in playing golf, he no longer felt the need to escape something, which was essentially the dearth he had felt for nearly eight years. It was shocking and surprising at how she could put him out of his misery, the ghosts who had haunted him for nearly a decade had started to vanish, their noises no longer tormented him. Everything changed with him, fortunately for the good.

Whiskey replaced white sarees with golden borders and her long united hair adorning a gajra.

 Golf clubs replaced the curve of his wife's waist.

Studying documents got replaced with counting the moles on her wife's beautiful body.

Fake smiles to business partners got replaced with heartfelt laughter at his wife's jokes.

Gradually, Janaki had warmed him. She was slowly yet delicately taking out the pieces of the old and afraid twenty-one year old Raghav and replacing him with a stronger and territorial twenty-nine year old Raghav. She was unknowingly healing the boy in him who had been used and thrown away and she had picked him and dared to get lost in his monstrous stormy eyes. She was making him a man, like he always wanted to be. She was the wave that drenched his dry sand with her holy water. She was the North star that even vowed to stuck with the darkness of his night when the moon was busy hiding.