Midnight Drabbles

Santanu: The Love Always Slipped off

One-shot

First of all, let's start with a very untouched idea of Santanu. Let him not be taken as a lusty old man because he married Satyavati(that serials portray him to be). This is a take on his POV. And because it is from his POV, whatever way he characterises Ganga is based on how I believe any person in his position would. Let's go...

Satyavati's steps into his world, often left Santanu confused as to, how was their union even possible.

How was a nearly sixty-years-old man, who had been left broken by his beloved first wife decades ago, able to find love again? That too, from a woman who was no more than thirty-five years?

What was there in him to be loved?

Of course, women still eyed at him as he walked down the palace stairs and through the courts.

He had several affairs in the past years with some of the most beautiful women of the century but love? It was all looks and fame that they eyed first.

Devvrata, his son was nearly twenty and it was his time to fall in love, marry and have a family of his own but that son of his, put off all his plans for love, so that Santanu could marry another woman.

A pathetic father. Santanu often cursed himself.

He was old now. He was here one moment and gone the next.

But Devvrata had his whole life in front of him to live and enjoy, still he could say not a word when his son, brought his Satyavati to the court and asked Santanu to marry her.

He had given the vow to Satyavati's father that indeed, only the sons of Satyavati would rise to the throne and not him. That he would never even marry or procure offsprings, lest they end up in a fight with her grandsons for kingdom.

Humbug. The king called himself to have accepted the tremendous vow of his son.

What was the need? Old men shouldn't rediscover love. It's not their time to be enjoying.

Especially him. Love was never a thing for him.

Ganga's depart had left him ailing.

He felt cheated by her. He felt angry because it hurt. It hurt really bad.

She was older than him. Quite older and it wasn't really easy for him to proclaim his love for her and take her for his wife. People looked down upon them every waking moment.

But as it seemed, she had her own plans. She never wanted a family with him like he did. Rather, it was just the plans of the celestial one, to give birth to the eight Vasus, the demigods who were cursed to take human births and set them free from their curses.

It wasn't ever love from her side.

Should've known. He used to think.

She had approached his father as well, when she was even younger but his father had turned her down, not before securing her marriage with his yet unborn son.

All of it was a plan. He shakes his head in disbelief that he ever fell in love with such shrewd of a woman.

What was his fault? He had never asked a thing about what she did, exactly like she had made him promise.

Even when all other people were bent forward to accuse her of being a demoness as all the seven sons of him had died, right the day after their birth, he had explained to himself that maybe they were stillborn or maybe they were too weak that they succumbed to death and Ganga was just too uncomfortable to show those babies to him.