Tere Liye | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Two - That Day

Sweat beads covered his face and body as he fell on the isolated road - worn out and utterly pained after his failed search for his Khushi. Sobs racked through his body, breaking every single hope that resided in him and in turn, condemning him to a thousands deaths as the devastating possibilities of what might have happened to Khushi settled in him. 

A sudden fear gripped his whole being in a vice-like cage and he shook his head, denying those thoughts vehemently. 

"No.. No Khushi.. Please no.." He mumbled amidst the cries that sputtered out of him, beads of water dripping from his eyes and onto her picture. He traced a longing finger on her smiling face, his insides clenching and twisting at the distance between them. 

He lifted his eyes, his teeth rattling uncontrollably as his chin trembled. He was on the middle of nowhere, slumped on the road which he found after running through the whole jungle like a maniac in search for his wife. His other hand held her anklet - it's silver lining burnt and smeared with blood, narrating him a part of what happened to her. 

A cry bubbled inside of him as he touched the sticky red liquid and he pressed his lips together, not knowing what to feel or think. The remnants of the burning car, the red drops he saw splattered on the leaves and her anklet dressed in her blood all acted like drops of acid, threatening to dissolve his entire being into a pile of nothing. 

His chest ached and he gasped for air, feeling every wisp of that necessity being knocked out of his body mercilessly. Anguish hit him with a force, breaking one by one every wall he had built around himself for protection from pain, and not being able to withstand any of it anymore, he opened his mouth and yelled out an earth-shattering cry, the echo of which resounded in the nearby forest before the wind managed to drift it away. 

He wished for the wind to clear the pain that he was feeling as well but he knew it couldn't. No one can sooth him. No one except for her, who was currently missing and in God knows what condition. 

The emptiness he felt at her absence felt too heavy for him to endure and he sobbed loudly, howling every now and then when pangs hit him with force again. 

Eternity passed until he felt a hand caressing his head and he lifted his face to stare into a pair of sympathetic eyes. 

"Beta, tum theek ho? Aise kyun ro rahe ho? (Son, are you ok? Why are you crying like this?)" An elderly lady in her mid fifties asked. Beside her stood an elderly man in his late fifties with eyes displaying the same worry and question.

Arnav averted his eyes from them and glanced down at the photo of Khushi in his hands. Swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat due to crying, he spoke, his voice trembling like that of a lost child in search for warmth again. 

"M..meri patni...chavaalees ghanto se laapata hai. (M..my wife...she is missing since forty-four hours.) " He blinked back rapidly when tears took over his sight again and continued in a strained voice, "bohot dhoondha usse...mill hi nahi rahi. Mujhe toh yeh bhi nahi pata ke woh theek bhi hai ya nahi.. (I searched a lot for her...but I just couldn't find her. I don't even know whether she is fine or not..)" 

The couple shared a pitiful look and looked down at the broken husband. The woman caressed his head in an attempt to calm him down whilst the man's eyes got stuck on the picture in Arnav's hand the moment he looked down.