Desire ✔️

Part 9 - Day 3 AM: Kaun Ho Tum (Who Are You)?

Raman stretched out and then winced as his hand struck something hard just to his left. He opened his eyes slowly, adjusting to the dim light streaming in from the massive picture windows that took up the entire North wall of the living room.

He sat up slowly, slightly disoriented, as he made out the fact that he was lying on the carpet in the living room, a duvet covering him. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he made out the outline of someone half sitting and half lying in the sofa just ahead of him.

Ishita!! He looked at her with bewilderment and then with dawning recollection. Last night. The memories came flooding back.

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He had really enjoyed the dinner with Ishita. The conversation, the food, her company had all taken him back into a happy time, a time when he was just Raman, an ordinary family man but a contented man and not the Raman Kumar Bhalla, the man about town, the driven CEO for whom money, position and power had taken over as the driving forces of his existence.

Ishita's simplicity and her honesty had forced him to respond with his true inner voice. And that had led to introspection.

After Ishita had left the table, he had cleared up and then moved to the living room with his wine and his thoughts and memories. He could not recollect how much he had drunk, just that he was deep into the memories of his shattered dreams when she had come to him. He remembered now how he had broken down in her arms, had sobbed like a babe, and how she had held him and comforted him.

In all these years since Shagun had left, Raman had closed himself off from displaying his emotions.

He cried, but only when he was alone, only in the sanctuary of his lonely bed.

Even Mihir had never been privy to these bouts of despair, when tears would wrack through him, when all the could-have-beens and might-have-beens of life tortured him through the night.

He had shut out his family, isolated himself from his friends.

And yet last night he had allowed her a glimpse, nay more, he had let her look, at his naked broken soul, had grabbed greedily at the comfort she offered.

He had been drunk but not so drunk that he did not remember the calmness he felt in her arms, the relief to finally let his tears be wiped by a caring hand, the certainty with which he had known that he was safe in displaying his vulnerability to her, that he was safe in her arms.

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He got up slowly, then stood gazing at her sleeping form for a moment. Then gently dropping the duvet over her, he walked away to his bedroom.

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It was almost an hour later when Ishita stirred awake.

Like Raman, she woke slightly disoriented as to where she was, then the memories of the previous night came back to her. She pushed off the duvet covering her, frowning as she remembered covering him with the same the night before.

He was nowhere in sight and Ishita walked off to her bedroom, her mind churning as she reflected on the night before.

She had no idea what had lain behind those tears of his, only that she had never seen anyone in such despair, in such pain.

His pain reminded her of her own, when Subbu had left her after her collapse at their engagement.

She had dealt with her pain with tears just like these - tears which ran rivers of cold despair down her cheeks, which threatened to wrench out her heart as she realised that her long cherished dream was over. But she had cried her tears in the safe arms of her mother and sisters, not alone. She had cried it all out and had resolved to never cry again.