Passion & Dilemma

29. Udaipur

I am very sorry for late updates🙏

Sarthak's POV

"Is this heaven?"

Dipti sighed beside me, opening her arms and embracing the blissful breeze of Udaipur.

Udaipur. The city of lakes and also Prerna's favourite Indian city. The place we are going to tie the knot of togetherness and promise each other a shared life ahead.

The time has passed so quickly but slowly at the same time. It feeks like we got engaged yesterday and now our wedding is just one week far. In one week, I will take a major step ahead in my life and devote myself to the new life, new responsibilities.

"It is." I agreed and saw Prerna coming towards us, followed by her parents. They arrived a day before us. "And here comes my angel." I muttered stepping forward.

She glanced at me before turning her eyes away. I sighed and greeted her parents in the meantime. Prerna has been acting distant after our first and, unfortunately, last date.

After we got drunk the other night, we had fun. Not that type of fun but fun. The normal one. We played games and drank through the night. It was a good time.

I cracked jokes; she laughed. I sang in my drunken voice; she danced. I talked: she listened. I shared my happy childhood memories; she lived them through me.

"Hi," I said after she met everyone in the family and she responded with a simple nod. "How are you?" I added.

She looked weak. She might as well have lost a lot of weight. And that too in an unhealthy way.

"Good." She tucked a strand behind her ear that fell out of her perfect bun.

All of us walked inside, the cousins pushed Prerna to my side and I instinctively wrapped my hand around her shoulders.

"Why so much distance, guys?" The cousins giggled, "you guys are engaged. Act like it."

"We are acting like it." I countered, rubbing a thumb on Prerna's bare shoulder. "Engaged couples are not supposed to be on each other's neck all the time, are they?"

"They are." Bhai argued, wrapping his hand around Bhabhi. "Did you ever see me and Naina away from each other in our courtship period?"

"Never. You were always eating each other in every corner of the office." I said remembering what they were like. "Those innocent walls are corrupted after god knows how many times you pinned each other against them."

The giggles turned into loud laughters and the couple before me looked proud of their deeds.

"You should try the same." Bhabhi adviced pointing at me and Prerna. "These are the days you are going to remember later."

I glanced down at Prerna, she was pressed to my side but her eyes shone with longing and affection when she looked at my family. The smile reflected hollowness but hopes.

Family. She does not even know how it feels like to have a real family.

My chest imploded at the sight. It always aches my heart to remember how her childhood was snatched by the fate. How her family, her supposed safe place, became the enemy of her happiness.

She has a little girl, her childhood self, trapped inside her that peeps out once in a while but never really got a chance to live to enjoy, to live.

How hard it must be to be her. To be Prerna Mathur. The broken yet unbreakable.

From Prerna's side, no extended family was invited. They are not on talking terms with them after Jayesh and Divya's parents cut ties with them after they eloped to get married.