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Chapter 15: A Day Full Of Surprise

~Arushi~

I was sitting in the passenger seat as Ansh drove us somewhere I don't know. He said it was a surprise for me and whenever I tried to ask, he just replied that it's a surprise but he was sure I'll like it. Now if he says I'll like it then surely I will like it. But this word surprise and I never had a sane thing so this somehow always freaks me out.

We're leaving for Kashmir in two days and will be there for six other months as he'll be leading the training of the new batch of para commandos. His batch starting and  my joining in a local hospital there is from the same date, 1st onwards and it's already 25 so he suggested that we leave a day or two prior so I can get along with everything there.

So about these two remaining days, he had planned a whole day of surprise for me today and tomorrow it'll be all that packing and stuff day. I was trying to behave as normal as I could since yesterday after the breakdown I had the previous day. But eventually I was coping up and him being with me was my biggest go through this mechanism.

“We've reached”, Ansh spoke, breaking my trance as we stopped outside some garden type place. We came out and I tried to analyze the place, that's when my gaze stopped at the hoarding board of the place.

It was Mumbai's biggest botanical garden!

“Arushi, you liked the place?”, he asked making me dumfounded. Liked? This place was on my bucket list since so long. Though this wasn't something too extravagant, but everything related to nature attracts me towards itself. But things never came into my favour and after Sid, I was too scared to go to a crowded place like this, all alone.

“I loved it, it was on my bucket list”, I said happily, almost grinning like an idiot. But that earned a smile from him as well and he held out his hand to me, “Let's go then?”

“Yes”, I gladly held his hand as we moved ahead. As soon as we entered inside, the colorful scenery of different flowers and the soft smell of them lingered in the air.

“Which side to go first?”, Ansh asked and roaming my eyes around I replied, “Let's go the rosarium first” He nodded and we went to the rosarium. It had all colours of roses like red, pink, yellow, white, even a few blue ones but unfortunately not the black ones. “They smell so enchanting na?”, I asked him while smelling one of the white ones. Though it wasn't allowed to go too close to the flowers, one could smell it from a distance as well. Ansh took some time before nodding a bit at my answer.

“Don't you like roses?” I frowned at his late response but he shook his head. “It's nothing like that, they're definitely pretty and of course they smell really good as well", he replied and I waited to find something unusual in reply but not finding anything, I shrugged it off.

We moved to the next flower which was tulips, another pretty one. Then sunflowers, some lilacs and a lot more of the flowers. All these while we were walking hand in hand and he was having a tough time to match with my excitement. The way I was running from one flower to another, he wasn't as excited as me but he was looking happy, maybe seeing me happy.

“Arushi, you said you had this in your bucket list then why didn't you come here before?”, he asked. I knew that question would come but I had nothing to hide from him. “The crowd, unknown people, unknown touches, you know it wasn't possible for me to come alone here”, I replied slumping my shoulders a little. Today was a weekday still the garden had a good amount of people so one could guess the crowd it would be having on weekends. And I prefer avoiding the crowd whenever I'm alone.

“It was different with Sid, I had visited some places with him when we were in college but most of them are still on the to-visit list”, I said. “Umm...Sid…?”, he hesitantly asked looking here and there. Really I never mentioned him to Ansh. “I didn't tell you about him?”