EMBER TO MY FLAME

CH 85 || The Bugging Question WHY!

Author

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"It was the year 1991 when I first saw her, your mother Surbhi. It was not love at first sight, we met at a coaching institute in Delhi where we both were preparing for Civil Services Examination. Just like my father I wanted to be a cop and had a desire to serve the country." Shrikant started to narrate his part of the past in front of his daughter who was mutely listening to her father's every word holding her husband's hand.

"We had never talked but one day she approached me asking my help in studies as I was excelling and was scoring good marks in every test being held by the institute. She was demotivated and upset regarding her marks. I helped her and that's how we were introduced.

With passing time we became good friends, to be precise, I started to develop feelings for her, but always eschewed myself from getting involved with the technical term Love as my career was my priority for which I had been living. I had already failed in one attempt and I didn't want the same to happen the next time as well so I kept my focus on my studies only.

I tried to maintain distance from her and in the process didn't notice that she had stopped coming to class until one of the classmates asked me about her whereabouts as I was the only person she used to talk to.

I didn't have any medium to contact her but I was worried. With the exam date approaching, I completely immersed myself in my studies but used to miss her.

After rigorous efforts, I was finally able to crack the examination with an All India Rank of 57. My parents were elated and my success was celebrated everywhere. I went to Mussorie for my three months training and then from there was shifted to Hyderabad for the next phase of training.

After my training, I was posted at my native place Delhi which was my first preference. All the while Surbhi didn't leave my mind. My parents started talking about my marriage, alliances started to come for me through relatives. I was getting stressed with all the pressure my family was putting me into for the marriage and there was only one way to let myself out of the troublesome situation, and that was to agree to the marriage proposal.

I was made to go through the list of girls my family had shortlisted. Going through all the photographs of the girls my eyes caught the picture of the person who had made a place for herself in my heart. I was surprised and shocked as well when found Surbhi's picture. From her biodata, I got to know that she couldn't clear the examination as her profession stated that of a teacher. She was teaching Mathematics in a high school in the southeast region of the state. Without any second thought, I selected her.

We went to her family for the formal meet-up. Even she was startled when she found out that the guy selected by his family was me.

When conversing in private I confessed my feelings to her. I could see the glint of happiness in her eyes as she too felt the same and was not happy when she had to leave the coaching because of the financial issues she was facing. In a few months, we got married and I thought life couldn't be that much happier.

Our days were blissful with each other. The day we got to know that Surbhi was expecting we were on cloud nine. Tears of joy didn't leave our eyes the day we both held you for the very first time."

All the while Saavi was quiet, she had never heard someone talking about her mother with so much love as she couldn't even bring herself to love her, how could she, after all her mother was never kind to her, she never even considered Saavi as her daughter.