FROM NEVER TO HAPPILY EVER!

14.

Mohsin Baig.

I have gone nuts. What the fuck was I thinking when I barged into her room like that? But it was her fault. Why did she have to ignore me for two days straight? The only time I get to have a proper look at her was in our bedroom, where she is not thinking of that bastard. Then suddenly after that philosophical lunch  in my study, she didn't even come before me. She was avoiding me like a plague.

What am I supposed to do? We have been married for a long three years already and I can't even have my own wife's glimpse? How cruel is that.

First when we got married three years ago, she barely even looked at me. That day, she was so heartbroken it felt like I am the last man she would want to even lay eyes on, marrying me would be tragic.

Flashback.

I curse under my breath as I feel another shoulder brushing past me in hurried footsteps. This time, the man was stronger considering his shoulders left me wincing. I turn around to give him a piece of my mind, to find him looking at me with an apologetic expression. He is wearing a linen white shirt, black pants with a waiter's tag and his hands holding a tray which surprisingly had a packet of tablets instead of refreshments.

I frown slightly, rethinking if I am at the correct location. I was supposed to be at Khan Sir's daughter's wedding, then why on earth are the waiters here carrying medicine instead of juice. I change my words  in place of the scolding I was initially going to give him, "Is there a problem? And can you direct me to Mr. Altaf Khan? "

The waiter goes from anxious to scared, gulping twice before settling with satiating my curiosity. "I apologize for my hurried ways Sir. There's an altercation. The apparent groom is nowhere to be found when his Nikaah was supposed to be read thirty minutes ago."

I gasp in shock, surmising the position it must have left Sir in. This is my first time witnessing a groomless marriage, perhaps that's why I stand there flabbergasted at the news. The waiter seems to catch up on my numb state and shows the courtesy of continuing, "Sir Khan was just as shocked as you, if not more. His blood pressure shot up, hence the medicines. If you still wish to see him, kindly follow me. "

I wordlessly begin following the waiter, worried about Mamu's health. As the door opens to what I was assuming would be a crying bride and raging family, the Khans took me by a load of surprise as I witness Sir in tears and a feminine figure claded in red rubbing his hand. It would be a great sin to not take a moment to appreciate the beauty sitting beside the bed. Another woman in her fifties can be seen hovering over the two.

Three pairs of eyes snap towards us when they hear the door creaking with different reactions but what caught my eyes was one set of black eyes marring a painful look which turns to confusion at my face and the next moment she turns her head away, not bothering to spare me a second glance.

That nanosecond of eye contact was so prominently mind boggling that I felt my knees weaken. The world disappeared as I took her in, the puffy red rimmed eyes lined by kohl, high cheek bones donned with a blusher and sinfully red plump lips that were now smudged. The hair from her neatly made bun were now sprouting out and her henna clad hands were shivering, from the shock of her fiance or the deteriorating health of her father, I could not say. She looked like a tornado has hit her, leaving a shattered mess behind. A beautifully shattered mess.

Amidst all the chaos she struck within me, I could faintly make out Mamu's voice of whisper, one that held half parts longing and half parts relief. "Monu, you came!" Even though he had to persuade me a lot to attend the wedding, I didn't expect such a welcome. I stepped in, walking towards where he was currently laying on with a doctor holding his hand, whom I just saw, the tension in the room could be detected from a mile away.

"Mamu, what have you made of yourself? I did not expect a welcome as intense as this, even though you promised to take me by surprise", a low chuckle emerges from his throat and the two most concerned women sigh in relief. The bride in red tightens her hold on him, still not looking at me. Though the calm moment lasts just for a second, as they again relive what just happened to them.

Mamu grabs my hand with his free one, and I step closer sitting beside him, rubbing his hand in soothing circles. Once the doctor has given him his medicines and is escorted out of the room, Mamu turns to me.

"Mohsin! Tragedy has struck my family. How will I save Hira from the vultures out there in the hall? I was foolish, deciding to give him a chance inspite of my sixth sense alerting me. What will I do now? " I never imagined I would find Altaf Khan in a vulnerable position, but I guess being a daughter's father can do magic.

I did not give him words of sympathy, I knew he did not need them. What he needed was a solution to the problem, what he needed was to save him daughter from being tainted. I thought and thought hard about what could control the damage and when it struck me, I instantly offered help.

"Mamu, you have to stop moping over a lost cause. What you need right now is a groom to marry your daughter, even if his name was not printed on the wedding invitation. The Nikaah should take place as planned, just an error in the invitation cards for the groom's name should not stop the wedding." This time, two pairs of startled eyes snap my way, and I wish so badly the third did too.

So my traitorous eyes, instead of focusing on Mamu's reaction, trail towards the beauty in red who seems to be in a world of her own. There are no tears in her eyes or anger in her expression, still the air seems suffocated with her pain.

"You are right, Mohsin. You are extremely right. But who would save my daughter's honour willingly?" He closes his eyes again, as if in deep misery. But the next words from my mouth bring the light back into his eyes.

"I will."

But she does not buzz, not one cell in her body reacting to my words. Nothing seemed to work on her. Was she that deeply in love with a coward? I do not know him, not by any chance. Still, the emerging hatred for him tells me I do not need to know him to form an opinion of him. My hands fist, an unknown sting breaking my trance of her. Anger bubbles up in me, as I try to comprehend the shit I have put myself into in a span of few minutes. Stability was never my thing, yet this sudden turn our life has taken is going to be a bumpy ride, I can tell.

Throughout the next ambiguous three hours that the ceremony lasted, I tortorously wait for a small acknowledgement from my new wife, the smallest there exists. Apart from the three words of acceptance, she did not utter another word not ate anything from the buffet. Even the whisperings of the people stating she was forced into this bond did not get a reaction out of her. That's when I realised this gorgeous fairy would never really be mine in  the truest sense.

Even so, I stupidly went to her room to speak to her after the event was done, only to be paralyzed in my steps as I finally heard her sweet voice but instantly wished I shouldn't have heard it. "No, papa! I do not want the rukhsati. Not now, not ever. You got me married to a kid, I did not question you. But I refuse to be associated with him any more when I already love Amir. "

"Mahira!! How could you? In spite of what that man put you through , you still claim to love him? Lanat hai aise ishq par."   

" I am only speaking facts papa. Tell him to go away. The last thing I want to see is that kid's face."

Blank. I am blank. No, you are a kid, my sub conscious mutters.

I inhale sharply, walking backwards. With the new determination to become a man as fast as I can, I exit the Khan Villa with a broken heart and  a pair of pitch black eyes lingering in my brain.