Treat You Better

Chapter 7

2 Months Later

Raghu sat on the dias dazed. The blaring trumpets and beating drums were mild sounds compared to the erratic thuds created by his own heart beating against his rib cage.
Two months ago, he was a carefree and workaholic bachelor and today he was getting married to the twin sister of the supposed love of his life.
When his sister had suggested the idea, it was met by strong resistance from his soon to be father in law and by him. Radhika silently weeped at her plight and her mother looked like she was plotting something and he soon came to know what she was plotting.
Apparently Mr.Shenoy was as henpecked as he was ferocious. It took his wife all of 15 minutes to convince him to give away his precious daughter's hand in marriage to a person he had despised for years.
His sister was very happy about the arrangement of his marriage. She along with her husband had visited Radhika's house, as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, to formally ask for her hand in marriage and had started planning his wedding with great enthusiasm.
He had in between tried talking to Radhika in order to convince her to not marry him. But as his luck would have it, she always declined his calls and ignored his desperate midnight text messages. He had even tried to meet her in person but was shooed of by his future parents-in-law, stating it was unlucky to meet his future bride before tying the knot. He always knew the Shenoy's were a conservative lot when he used to date Revathy, but he never thought it would be this extreme.
And now here he was, sitting on the dias to meet Radhika for the first time in two months. He was sure he had not said more than one sentence to her the day he met her in the hospital and he was very nervous now about how he would lead his life with a complete stranger.
All the guests turned their heads to get a good look at the bride walking down the aisle with all her male cousins holding a flowered canopy over her head. She looked flawless.
Raghu was breathless. It seemed to him like his beautiful Revathy was walking towards. But he shook his head before he got all glassy eyed and started hallucinating about his girlfriend who had dumped him and disappeared. But who was he kidding, Radhika looked exactly like Revathy and he knew it would always haunt him and he would never be fully capable of accepting her as his wife.
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Radhika looked down meekly as the makeup artist caked her face with make up.
'Make sure she looks very fair and flawless.', Her mother instructed the paan chewing makeup artist.
'Arre Madam, don't u worry she will look like an angel, when I am done with her', the makeup artist reassured her mother.
Her mother was happy with the confirmation and went ahead to make sure everything was in order.

Radhika was not at all sure about this wedding but she agreed to the marriage to appease tensed mother. Afterall she was going to get married to Amit, Her ex fiance. Amit was a soft spoken investment banker and he and she had gone on plenty of dates in order to get to know each other before marriage. She had deduced that he was a sweet and genuine person who would really understand her. But he broke her heart by calling of his engagement to her right after the tragedy struck her. Now it didn't matter who she married, they were all the same to her.
But she had tried to confront Amit by calling him and once her parents came to know about it, they had snatched her phone away from her, convinced she was still in love with him and she would damage the current wedding arrangement with the cop.
She had butterflies in her stomach as she got dressed. Will Raghu accept her as his wife? Will she be a good wife to him? These were the questions that made her queasy.

Soon it was time to walk down the aisle. It all happened so fast. She only got a good look at her husband's face after he tied the sacred thread around her neck and rubbed the blood red sindoor on her hair partition.
He gave her an unsure smile which She returned and They both sent silent prayers to God to bless them with a happy life ahead.