Love Along With Heartache

Chapter Twenty Four

Her Home

Vashma looked at the passing scenaries of Calcutta from the car. This city was beautiful. With people of all social class frolicking in the streets.

Britishers walking like they owned the city, a look of arrogance evident on their faces. Her own countrymen rushing to get to their work or to their homes in their cars and cycles.

Who knows, what is these peoples actual destination?

This city had brought immense joy to her soul a few days back. Because then, she had been here with the ones, who had truly mattered to her.

But today, it only made her desperate for her mother's arm.

Calcutta only made her angsty today.

She wanted to run back to her Lahore. Everything here was only suffocating her, making her feel breathless with an acute desperation for her family and their joyful faces that only brought her peace.

She felt conflicted.

Anirudh saw her gazing at the window with a sad look etched on her face. He could understand her agony of leaving behind her loved ones. But, he knew that his words won't give her any satisfaction at this moment.

The upset ones barely register the words of comfort meant for them.

Because for them, their heartbreak makes them a situational deaf person to the words of their loved ones.

"Vashma, we've reached..Vashma..."-Anirudh had to take her name a few times before she responded.

Anirudh got down from the car and quickly walked to her side of the car to open the car doors without waiting for the driver to do so.

Vashma controlled her thudding heart at his sudden gesture and composed herself before getting down from the car, ready to face her now family.

She quickly looked at the haveli again after days and this time, the exterior of the haveli seemed different to her. This time, it felt like her destination and not a mere stop in her journey.

The last time due to being night time, she didn't get the chance to properly understand just how grand the house actually was.

The mansion screamed opulence and grandeur. The front garden leading to the heavy grand door had lovely bushes of different coloured roses along with plants of oleandar, jasmine, silk cotton flower, tulip, morning glory, tube roses and many other varieties of flowers.

There were many native Bengali trees in the garden as well. Their leaves creating a soft chiming. The noise reminding Vashma of the tranquility before the storm. The rough exterior of the trees were creating a sharp contrast with the soft flower beds.

She looked at the two storey mansion painted in pure white and sighed. The structure of the building reminding her of a marriage between the past century and the current one.

The house had an open terrace in the upper floor that was visible enough to be seen from the roads outside.

She soon noticed a swing resting on one of the tree trunks. It was built in such a way that it was not visible easily to the onlookers.

The swing reminded her of the times, Amrit would push her onto the swings back in Lahore.

Anirudh saw her curiously looking at each and every part of their new home and smiled to himself at her first display of emotion. A happy emotion, he told himself.

He had brought this house with her in mind. Remembering to plant tube roses and many different coloured roses in the front garden of the mansion. As he remembered her words.