Contradiction & Reality

Chapter Sixteen

"There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness."

― Charles M. Schulz from You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown!

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Malhotra Mansion was buzzing with excitement, lit up with colorful wedding fairy lights and beautiful flowers as everyone kept roaming around to get ready while the servants were running around here and there on the commands of their masters to get the last things done.

"Pushkar, go up and see if Shravan is ready," Lala Ji told his younger son before turning to his sulking wife who was wearing in a designer saree of latest collocation and heavy jewelry yet stood beside him with an annoyed expression on her face, forcing him to continue with his attempts to mollify her.

"Okay, Lala Ji," Pushkar yelled before climbing the stairs in a hurry and barged into the room without knocking.

"Ah, this is the last time, for me to enter into your room without knocking, I am going to miss this," Pushkar faked his sadness, making his cousin smile, but a smile that didn't reach his eyes, it never did these days.

"And look at you, such a handsome groom you are," he made in another attempt but failed. If it would have been old Shravan, he would have gotten an arrogant smirk, or an eye-roll or a laugh, but what he got now was just a smile, an empty smile, a forced one, just for his sake.

Pushkar looked at his cousin, in his red and gold sherwani, he looked every bit of a groom he was supposed to if it wasn't for the expressionless face and cold empty eyes. He never had thought Shravan's warm brown eyes could look this cold, dead and empty. As if they have lost all hope and have given up on everything...

"Do you really want to do this?" He asked with hesitation, "I have been observing you during the functions, what is happening? Please, tell me the truth," he pleaded.

"Please, Shravan Bhaiya," he pleaded once again, making Shravan exhale loudly.

"It's just...Nothing. When I wanted something to happen, it didn't and it felt as if I was fighting a lost battle and now no matter how much I had fought it off, it seems like it's meant to be," Shravan whispered in a brutally honest manner, adding an indifferent shrug in the end.

"Suddenly everyone is saying that I and Suman are meant to be. Can you believe that Pushkar?" he asked so quietly that Pushkar could almost not hear him.

"I always did, Bhaiya. I always thought that you both will end up together," he answered with conviction.

"I never could. I still don't," Shravan said with a sad smile that broke the younger's heart.

"Why not? Are you not happy, Bhaiya?" He asked, concerned.

"It doesn't matter, Pushkar, there are many things greater and far more important than my happiness," he whispered with a shrug.

He had realized that truth in between somewhere when he had felt mind-numbing rage and the defeat he had before refused to accept. There always had been just so many things, so many people's will and desires that had been and were far more important - the greater good, far greater than him. And it had been given that he would never be able to achieve the happiness he always craved for, he had been irrational in fighting, for thinking otherwise, and has gained nothing but more wounds, has gotten to know the truth that hurt more than the lies he had been told. So now he shall try to find some peace in other's happiness, that's what he had been telling himself ever since he had given up in saving his heart from any father damage and accepted the loneliness he had been destined to and could never escape from...