It was a dark rainy night; the sky was roaring ominously, like a lion. A lame body beneath the shadow of a lamp was dragging himself slowly, making its way across the streets.
Some water droplets kissed his cheeks. Opening his mouth, he lapped them up, trying to quench his thirst.
He stopped after a few steps, in the all-consuming darkness, at a small deserted cottage. He noticed that some furniture broken, and covered in a white cloth, just like it engulfed him in the white cloth of emptiness. He sat down on the pebbled path near the cottage and looked at the skies, realizing that they were about to wreak havoc, not just on the earth, but on him too.
He dug into the pockets of his pants and pulled out an old, worn, unfashionable wallet. Flipping the wallet open, he looked at her photo lovingly and kissed it.
It suddenly startled him to see a bride clad in a red lehenga running towards the cottage from a nook in the road. She stumbled as she neared him, and he arose in reflex, reaching forward quickly to grab her to break her fall.
Two years when he found himself on a dark night at the road, a lonely street again. A bride clad in a red lehenga ran towards him. Her scream startled him as he looked up at her, mesmerized. Obliviously, he felt mesmerized by her beauty.
She came running up to him as she stumbled, and he instinctively opened his arms to break her fall, catching her in his arms. His wallet fell in the mud with a thud.
His heart thumped painfully as he was conscious of a sense of deja vu. Was this just his memory of playing games with him? But it forced him to brush aside that thought when he realized the girl was literally in his arms. But she was not the same girl.
Their eyes met. To say it astonished him would be an understatement. Why was it happening to him again, after two years, with a different girl?
Who was she, a runaway bride or a con girl?
And why did it happen to him twice?
Lavanya or Khushi?
