Discovering shades of love

I twirled the engagement ring around on my finger. I was getting married. The feeling was yet to sink in.

I looked at him from across the room, from the corner of my eye. There he was, making lame jokes with dad, both trying to make the other comfortable and all I saw was the cute boy I fell head-over-heals for, in the third year of engineering. Raghav, 2 years my junior, had grown up, I smiled at the very thought.

No one in the entire college expected us to last a month. & when we did, until the end of the course, they said marriage was out of question. Now, here we are, and the very same people are wishing us all the joy & happiness in the world. Pretty ironical J

He was the one who made it work, though. I give myself no credit, for the moody, opinionated, arrogant, ambitious, spoilt brat I was am. But he’s proved it every time that he was here to stay, taking all the crap I threw his way. And once I cooled down, the very same crap hurt me, kept me grounded. Raghav came home and asked my family for my hand in marriage; the old-world gentleman’s charm worked its way through everyone’s heart. He put up with the whiplash of my aunt’s tongue when they kept questioning about our future. He was also the one who never let me out of his sight, & stayed by my side all the while I’d gone to meet his family. All the time, mind you!

To this day, he holds my hand while crossing the road, walks on the side of the road to keep me away from the oncoming vehicles, buys me paani-puri from the road-side stalls, chai from the road-side eateries, never comes to see me without a bar of Snickers. Ever!

I just have to thank my stars for being lucky, so very lucky.

But it still nagged me. Like a tiny worm in the fruit, at the corner of the fruit’s heart. The thought haunted me. The fear gnawing in my mind, eating away my happiness, in wee bits.

I hated myself for this and knew that Raghav would be very sad if he got to know about this, the only secret I kept from him.

4 months earlier:

I got down from the train, tied my hair high into a ponytail. The summer had begun burning in, the sweat-soaked clothes clung on. The bus stop was madly crowded, thanks to the summer vacation. I stood there for a minute, a whole minute, making up my mind, questioning my sanity. But this was something I’d always meant to do.

Firming my resolve, taking a deep breath, I put on my best smile & began making my way out of the CST. I had studied and memorized the map a hundred times ever since our families has accepted our relationship & given their blessings. The way from CST to the Siddhi Vinayak temple. Raghav has been a devout believer in Siddhi Vinayak & me, an atheist. I had vowed to walk my way on foot, just like he did, every year on this day.

I walked to the temple & met Raghav just when he was about to enter the temple. Shocked he was, to see me there. Happy too, that I was at a temple. Happy that I did it for him. We made our way out after the darshan, giggling like teenage lovers. And that’s when I noticed it. I had lost my bracelet. Raghav had saved every bit he could from the first 3 months of his first job’s salary. I steeled my will, not knowing how to tell Raghav about the loss. I had no idea where it could have slipped off, in my journey from Pune to Mumbai, when I got off the train at the busy CST station, on my way to the temple, or at my temple. I was standing there, numb and totally clueless. The cute little platinum bracelet, with our names on it, tiny little pendant-like-hangings with our pictures on it was LOST. The sacrifice that Raghav had to make, the love with which he had brought it, had meant the world to me.

To this day I have been practicing my confession about the loss to Raghav but not once I could steel my nerves enough to do it. I meant to do it before our marriage, so I don’t live with the fear. 

I walked up to Raghav, asked him if he could step out for a while so I could talk to him in private. He agree saying he too wanted to talk to me. I waited at the balcony for him, going over what I meant to tell him. But once he was there, I could feel the fear spread to each of my frayed nerve ends & I went all blank. He asked me if he could go on first. I could just nod.

He took me in his arms, slipped a bracelet in my wrist. The same design, the same pics. My eyes just welled up with tears, and all I could blurt out was “Did you?” He kissed away my tears, and told me how he noticed the missing bracelet, saved up the money again to buy another bracelet for me. It isn’t just a piece of jewellery, its all of Raghav’s love for me, of what he’d do just to keep the smile on my face and let me live a fear-free life. All I could do was just hug him in return, with the tears steadily flowing from my eyes.

Did I just hear you say I’m lucky? Not just lucky, I’m blessed!