Fated To Be Urs ( Formidable Billionaires - 1)

Chapter 29

Anya's POV

         
              I opened the journal and started reading the next entry my mother made. She did not write the journal in a chronological order, so every entry filled me with anticipation to know more about her and her life. I found a grey monochrome of a woman running in the rain with an umbrella in her right hand. The picture was taken from behind and so the face of the woman was not shown. But the photo was a very old one. It was obvious that my father was the photographer. Though I was not sure who that woman was I had a doubt that it might be my mother. The words written on the bottom of the picture, confirmed my doubts.

DEAR UMBRELLA THIEF,
YOU STOLE MY HEART TOO.

I smiled thinking about the way my father expressed his love to my mother. I was excited to know about their love story. According to my brother knowing about their love story was my favorite pastime but after their death I subconsciously buried all the memories related to them. So every small detail about my parents was a new information to me. I started reading what my mother wrote.

           I remember very clearly the first time I met Suresh, my husband. The sky was gloomy with dark clouds that were acting as a thick curtain blocking away the Sun that day. As per my daily routine since two years, I picked fresh flowers from the valley near the town and reached Diman Uncle's cafe. It was a very popular coffee and tea place catering to the various interests of people, both natives and visitors of that town. The walls of the cafe were lined with books, portraits of history of our country and especially the town. The tables of the cafe were adorned with the beautiful flowers I pick for his wife Grisha everyday. As soon as I stepped under the shade of the cafe, it started drizzling. I went inside and handed over the flowers to Aunt Grisha, for which she thanked me by offering a few sheets of paper and winked at me with a huge smile on her face. I took them from her and gave her a warm hug to express my gratitude and my happiness to her. I took a notepad from the counter and started making a copy of what was written in those sheets after sitting at the nearby table. This was the secret agreement between me and Aunt Grisha, an agreement which I decided to make the best of, atleast for the time I stayed in that town.

The papers were filled with the recipes I gave to Aunt Grisha. Cooking was my passion but I was not fortunate enough to embrace it or share it with anyone. So I hid it from everyone but Aunt Grisha. She promised to keep it a secret from everyone, even Vinika on the condition that I give her new recipes which she would try in her cafe and give me the final successful recipe. She was also passionate about cooking and she helped me in giving life to my recipes as I couldn't try to cook. I was so immersed in writing those recipes that I failed to notice that the drizzle turned into heavy downpour outside the cafe. The sheets of rain were blanketing the light emitting from the street lamps. I realized that it was past my regular time by which I was supposed to be back at my house. I just hoped Vinika was not worried about me for being late that night. I folded the papers on which I noted down the recipes, placed the bunch of them in a plastic wrap and tucked them neatly into the pocket of my dress. Aunt Grisha bid me good bye and asked me to take the blue checkered umbrella from the stand beside the entrance. Since I was talking to her, while walking with my back towards the door, I ran into someone. That someone was Suresh. He was wearing a yellow raincoat, with a camera peeking from inside it. I apologized to him and took the first umbrella my hands came into contact with from the stand and started running in the rain. The umbrella  protected my upper half of the body and I was drenched from waist down as the skies were showering the earth from all angles. I realised while running that the streets were very sparsely populated. There were very few pedestrians, who like me were racing through that rain to reach their destinations. Once I reached my house I carefully placed the umbrella on the porch and tiptoed towards our bedroom to find Vinika busy with her stitching. I made my presence known without startling her. She didn't scold me for being late as I expected her to but her words dampened my mood worse than rain. She told me to be careful before we left that town in search of a new place to live for the next two years or so. Even though I liked that town a lot, I couldn't stay beyond two years at one place for I might be putting myself and the people who knew me in danger unknowingly.