Yuhn Hota Toh Kya Hota- Rikara FF

Chapter 16: Calm after the storm

They touched down at Delhi long after midnight. Omkara was ready to leave for Mumbai immediately, but seeing how dead on his feet he looked, Khanna bullied him into checking in and sleeping off for a while at their luxury suit in The Oberoi hotel (part of Oberoi group of hotels). Khanna would've never taken this liberty with his boss, Shivaay. But since Omkara and Rudy often conspired with Khanna against Shivaay, to annoy their elder brother, the three of them shared a kind of 'partners-in-crime' camaraderie. Not to forget that though Shivaay had always been slightly lenient towards Khanna, he was a strict classist (though thankfully meeting Annika had changed that gradually). Omkara and Rudra on the other hand, didn't care for class. Omkara on principle was a firm supporter of equality and humanity, while Rudra was generally oblivious of such prejudice and bore no ill-will to people.

Omkara never thought that he could sleep after witnessing all he did in the last two days, but miraculously he did. He descended into the realm of dreamless sleep they moment his head hit the pillow. The human nature was strange this way, when it would seem that a person can no longer eat or sleep due to the world pressing from everywhere, suddenly fatigue and hunger would overcome them. 

Omkara woke up refreshed a few hours later. After making sure that Khanna and the other guards had some sleep too, he chartered a private jet, and they all took off for Mumbai. The two hours flight to Mumbai presented him with some 'me' time finally, time to ruminate, time to think back to what happened to him, with him. 

As the flight soared, his thoughts flew back to the train. Omkara had been contemplating whether it was unfair of him to blame Gauri (along with Kali Thakur) for the Thakurain's suicide. True, from what all he saw, Gauri was partly to blame, maybe she had no malicious intention, but her callousness did contribute to it. But if she was as thoughtless as it seemed, then how did she figure him out in two meetings? How did she know that when the pain became too much it consumed him like fire? 

'Its difficult to live without love, but impossible to live with hatred.'  Her words echoed in his ears. If she could understand him, a stranger so well, then how could she not grapple the repercussions of her actions on the Thakurain, who was a woman like her? How could a woman not understand another woman? But the answer to that came quickly to his mind: Svetlana. There were women like Svetlana, selfish, greedy, thoughtless. But was Gauri another Svetlana? Omkara was lost in these thoughts, when he turned to see Gauri literally running towards him. This girl always confounded him, now why was she running to him? 

Then he noticed that she wasn't running to him, she was running from someone. The goons, Kali Thakur's goons. But before Omkara could make any more sense of the situation, Gauri pushed him and they both ended up in the river. 

Omkara, for once, in his life, was glad for those swimming classes, among many more, that the Oberoi children had been forced to. Of course, swimming in pool, was starkly different from swimming in a river, but the river was not too deep in this part, and he managed to reach the bank without much difficulty. He peered around for the girl, but she had reached before him. Of course, she lived here so tackling this river must not be tough for her. Why did he think her puny size would come in the way?

And then Omkara's annoyance took over him. He was thrown off the train, with his luggage still back there, and only his wallet and phone in his pocket, stuck in the middle of nowhere. And the cause for his misery was this girl, who kept colliding with him wherever he went. This girl was bad luck. Omkara didn't realize that he had said this aloud, but instead of taking offense and avoiding him, the girl sought to get her revenge by annoying him to the maximum. Omkara was sure she was doing this to annoy him, because it cannot be that she is amicably teasing a person who she was so angry with just a while back on the train.