Light Upon Light

#19 The Sara Di Wedding Special

Assalamualaikum!

I am very sorry for the extremely late update. I had hoped to push the story forward in my holidays, but unfortunately we had family emergencies and my network had problems and whatnot. In between I had managed to write this chapter which is extremely choppy and not up to my usual standards. Please forgive me if it is not good enough.

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#19 The Sara Di Wedding Special.

With just five days left to Sara Di's wedding, Mom had all of us shift to Dar-e-Rahma. After a particularly hectic day at school which included temporarily shifting to bus no. 8, I had come back home hoping to rest for a bit. But since Mom decided we should leave before Maghrib I had to jump right into packing.

To summarize, I was in a sour mood.

"Junaina didi?" Annu called from the doorway.

"What?!" I snapped.

Poor Annu was startled when I answered her timid address harshly. Seeing her expression I kind of felt bad. She was in no way responsible for anything so she didn't deserve being treated like that. Giving her a small smile I asked her to come inside. She was looking about my room which she probably cleaned a few hours back. It was now a complete mess with all my things strewn about and an open bag lying empty on my bed.

I was still in the middle of deciding what to pack. And for that I needed to see all my things before me. Samir always says that coming to my room when I'm packing is dangerous, you never know when you could get entangled in clothes and injure yourself. Which kind of happened to him. Just once.

"What is it Annu? I have to pack and then rearrange everything so be quick please."

"Your Dadi is calling you Di. She told me to help you pack." She said wringing her hands.

"Relax baba. I'm not going to kill you. You want to help me?" I asked her.

Smiling, she nodded in response.

"Okay. So as you can see, my room is a mess," she giggled at that and I shrugged, "so can you sort everything into piles? Like tops together and bottoms separate and all?" I asked.

"Yes Didi. I will do that. Dadi ji is waiting for you." She said, looking much more confident.

Smiling brightly, I ran out of my room and down the stairs. Dadi was seated on the divan in her room and I took my spot next to her. These meetings of ours have become a regular feature of my days. I loved the little snippets of knowledge she gave me and the way she helped me improve myself one step at a time.

If someone told me two months back that I'd be super happy to spend time with Dadi like this, I would never believe them. I was always afraid of Dadi. And now she's one of my most favorite people in the world.

I was wondering what Dadi was going to talk about today. But she didn't ask me to get her tafseer or book of hadith like she usually did. She just smiled.

"What's up Dadi?" I asked, totally piqued.

"This is for you." She said placing a paper bag in my hand.

My face at that moment was probably comical. Thank God none of my cousin's were around to get a look and take a picture. Eyes open as wide as possible and jaw dropped down to the earth, I couldn't believe that Dadi had gotten me a gift.

"I know you don't really like churidhar sets and all. But I hope you'll accept this from me," Dadi said as I took the dress out of the bag.

It was forest green in color and reached my ankles, almost like a flared maxi dress. Except that it had matching green churi bottoms. The French collar had a golden sequin trimming and little golden buttons went down all the way to the waist. The dress flared out from the waist and had a thick velvet border at the end with the same gold sequin trimming. The same border was on the sleeve too. It was simple and beautiful.