Desire ✔️

Part 56: Heere Meri....

Two weeks later
Friday 10 October 2014

The sounds of shehnai hung in the air, competing with the vigorous bhangra beats emanating from the opposite flat.

It had been like this for the past two weeks. Both Mrs Iyer and Mrs Bhalla had taken to the wedding preparations as if this were a personal battle for the supremacy of their respective cultures, with the Akash Ganga Society their battlefield, their maidan e jung.

Mrs Iyer had the upper hand of course, with the actual wedding ceremony to be held in the Shivaswaram temple according to Tamil rites. Mrs Bhalla however, had fought for and secured the rights to hold the reception "Punjabi ishtyle".

Both Raman and Ishita had kept out of their mothers plans and preparations. They both considered their court wedding to be the moment when they had trothed their selves to each other, their vows sealed by their night of passion in Rajasthan.

That passion was but a distant memory now alas, with Raman determined to keep to his promise to the Iyers that Ishita would be his only after their temple wedding. He had tried to keep his frustration at bay with work and with Adi's custody issue.

All papers had been signed and Adi was to come to them as soon as his school term ended, three weeks after the wedding. Raman considered that timing would give Ishita and him a chance to spend some time together, alone, and give Ishita the chance to adjust to life in the Bhalla melee before the next big change in their lives. He was under no illusions.

The transition for Adi from life with the Khanna's to life in the Bhalla family would be difficult. Aid had been spoiled with material things, but ignored emotionally. He was starved of love, and yet he did not know it. His mother professed to love him, but she had not hesitated to give him up in return for her husband's freedom. He would be devastated when he came to know of his mother's perfidy and Raman was determined to be there for his son, to make him see how much he was loved.

Shagun and Ashok had left for the Carribean as soon as he had been released on bail. The case would now wind on, but with Raman giving a statement that the gun had gone off by accident, and Ashoks goons paid off well to develop amnesia regarding their boss, Ashok would get off scot free.

It had pained Raman to participate in this travesty, but the pay off had been the exclusion of Shagun and Ashok from his children's lives. And that, as far as Raman was concerned, was a good exchange.

Ishita had not been quite as lucky as Raman in being able to subdue her passions with work. The first week after the accident had been spent at home, recuperating. The second week, when she had insisted and returned to work, her mother had shown up at her clinic most days, dragging her away to chose a saree or jewellery, or calling her back home to seek her opinion about one thing or another, and then forcing her to lie down and rest.

Her pleas that she was fine had fallen on deaf ears and in her enforced inactivity, her thoughts had returned time and time again to Raman. She missed him. She missed him with every pore of her being.

They had been unable to spend any time alone - his visits every evening being conducted under amma's hawk eyed gaze, her plans to slip away to his office from hers thwarted by amma every day. Ishita knew that her ammas overprotectiveness was borne out of love, but it still irked her so much.

And Raman had been so determined to conform to amma's dictate that she had been unable to spend any time alone with him. She craved for his touch, his lips on hers, his breath warming her face, his fingers caressing her.

Tomorrow was their wedding for the world to see, but for her, it was simply a renewal of the vows she had already taken. And before that renewal, she was determined to see her husband alone for a little while, to reassure him and seek reassurance for the journey ahead of them.