The Distance Between Us

Track Twenty Three - A Sunday Kind Of Love

The youngsters forgotten, Karan made his way to Shashank, who was looking at him wide eyed, unable to comprehend that he was standing right there, in front of him, in the flesh. After almost 20 years. 14 years gone by, without even a photograph.

Karan, though, still looked the same. Yes, he'd grown up to become a handsome man, but Shashank could still see the boyishness in his features. The twinkle in his eyes, the roundness of his chin, just like he'd had when he was 10. For a moment, all Shashank wanted was to hug him tight and then never let go, but he knew that the time to do that had long passed and he didn't have the right to do that anymore.

There was nothing Shashank regretted more than the way he'd treated Karan all those years ago, but then again, at the time, he'd been so overwrought with a myriad of emotions and things were just happening one after the other and he didn't know what was the right and what was wrong. No, that wasn't true. He knewwhat was right, but he'd been too much of a coward to choose the right path and had instead opted for the easy.

Smriti had been the one who was so much braver than he was. She'd tried to right the wrongs Shashank had committed so ago, her forgiveness apparently knowing no bounds as she tried to bring their entire family together, but she'd passed away before she could see her dream come to fruition.

After her death, Shashank had lost all hope of things getting better. And, the things he'd done after that, he would forever regret. But, there was nothing he could do now. He had to live with it. If there was a way to go back in time and undo all that he'd done, he would have, but the truth was there was no such thing as time travel and so he would forever be stuck in a storm of regret and guilt, not knowing how to make things right and knowing it was too late to do that anyway.

"Dr. Shashank Gupta?" Karan asked him, a small smile playing on his lips. Not knowing what else to do, Shashank nodded dumbly.

"I've heard a lot about you!" Karan said good naturedly. Offering his hand, he said, "I'm Karan. Karan Kapoor," emphasising on his surname.

Shashank still kept gaping, not saying a word, not moving his hand to take Karan's. He didn't know what to do, what to say, how to react. Rahul (Mehra) had informed him on the phone that Karan was still living in the same city, even if he didn't live with them anymore, intent on finding his independence, but that Shashank was sure to see him at the wedding because Karan was very fond of both Rohan and Jaanhavi. Knowing this, Shashank had tried to mentally prepare himself for this moment, but standing here, right now, he understood that no matter of preplanning would have been enough for him to feel confident in this situation.

"Shashank?" Padma, who was standing beside him, said. "Woh aapse haath milaane khada hai. Chaliye, haath aage badhaiye," she instructed.

She was so blissfully ignorant of this part of his life and Shashank didn't know how he would explain to her, the situation he was in. No one apart from Rahul, Juhi, Smriti, Smriti's mom & him knew the truth. And, that was the way it had been for the last almost 30 years. He didn't have the guts to tell Padma the truth, to come clean. He'd hidden all this from her for the decade they'd been married, when he should have told her about it before everything happened, but the truth was he'd been so aloof from it all, at times it felt like a nightmare that he'd seen in the dead of the night and forgotten come morning. He didn't think that this part of his life would come back to haunt him in the flesh, ever, even though the shadows of his guilt had scarred him irrevocably.