AMARANTHINE

 "Life has a way of testing a person's will; either by having nothing happen at at all or by having it happen all at one time."

~Paulo Coelho~

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For a few minutes, an uncomfortable silence reined; Shaurya did not say anything, he allowed Aabha the time she would need to pull herself together. Grateful for his understanding but worried that he might offer a word of comfort, Aabha hastened on. 

She gave a small smile and continued, "There is more, my mother moved back to this city a few years ago, as the town we stayed in did not have any suitable college for me to pursue my B Tech and by one of those strange coincidences, we rented a house near the place where my biological father lives. His wife had died during childbirth and he has a daughter, a year younger than me. Being neighbours of sort meant we were often thrown into each other's company and soon my parents decided to resume their love story. This time, his parents could not raise any objection, especially when his daughter supported the match."

Aabha's voice softened and her eyes shone, "Ishaani, my half-sister, is one of the best things to happen to me; she is sweet and soft-spoken but can be determined when she wants something. She literally bulldozed our grandparents into accepting both my mother and me. My grandmother did not like me much initially but she is superstitious and when my father's business suddenly picked up after he married my mother, she decided that I was the lucky charm. She did start to love me too, though not as much as she loves Ishaani, I did not care. I finally had a full complete family. Those two years of having a complete family were the best years of my life, Shaurya, it was like I had the whole world in my hands and the cynicism that so clouded my life was slowly relegated to the background. But then as I said, nothing lasts forever.

My father was determined to make up for what he labelled as his lapses and soon went around finding suitable Marwari matches for me and finally selected one, Reyansh Rathore. Nice guy, good looking, decent brains and already working in his family-run enterprise. I did not love him but then I never believed that love existed and though personally did not like the idea of being married, I agreed to whatever my parents said, I just wanted my family to be happy."

Aabha took a small breath and continued in a small, fond yet wistful tone, "Reyansh was fun, easy to talk to and full of spirits, though sometimes I felt the lack of seriousness in him as a slight drawback. I had also met his family when they came over once, all of them except one cousin; he was away on a two-month business trip. It was a large family, bhaiya, bhabhi, chacha, chachi and cousins, a family that lived together and where all the members loved each other. I was fascinated by that family and that I could be a part of that family was one of the reasons I was agreeable to the match. Everyone seemed happy with the alliance.

Reyansh and I rarely went out, and the few times we did, my Baba insisted that  Ishaani accompany us. She was shy; both by nature and on account of her conservative upbringing and Reyansh would go out of his way to make her comfortable. I really did like that side of him and was actually happy that she was there, it made the conversations easier amongst us, in fact, after a couple of times, whenever we met, both of them would talk and I would bury myself in my books.

Around three weeks before our engagement, Reyansh apologised to me, saying that he would not be able to go ahead with the engagement. He was quite frank, he said that I intimidated him a little and he was not confident of being able to keep up with my intellect." 

There was a slight disdain in her voice as though she did not believe what Reyansh said about her. She continued but it was in a subdued voice, "But that was not the only reason, for he confessed that somewhere in his attempts to help Ishaani come out of her shell, he realised that he had grown too fond of her and was falling in love with her. He apologised profusely but said that he could not go through the engagement, he did not even want to tell Ishaani about his feelings and he was sure that his love story with her was doomed even before it started, but then there was no way he could marry me."