Love Punishment

||26. Life Goes On||

Destiny is difficult to concur everything is beyond our control. Perhaps that is why they say life is unpredictable. Swara lay awake in bed, watching the shadows flicker on her ceiling. She was having ordeals coping with the isolation of being newly single. Everything ended before beginning.

She turned onto her side and watched the curtains billow from the night air. She felt miserable and missed Sanskar. There were times she felt to go to him and beg him to stay in her life. Love tormented her, and gave her punishment. The harder it was for her yet she was reluctant. Her heart could not confess.

She lay absentmindedly, watching night turn into dawn and then a day, until a single tear dripped onto her cheek. Before it could mark her pillow, she raised herself out of bed and let the teardrop fall to the floor. She opened the curtains and stared blankly outside. What's her sin that she could not get love?

"Swara... Swara-" Hearing Sanskar's panic-stricken voice, she walked outside the room only to find frightened Sanskar.

"San- Sanskar?" her heart ached calling him by his name, she craved to be in his arms feeling his warmth.

"Father and mother are here!" She felt a ray of hope sluicing through her. The broken relationship has the slightest hope of being fixed now that his parents have come.

"W-h-a-t?" Even if her heart yelled in joy, she confined it to spread on her face.

Sanskar is upset over his parents' surprise visit. Out of all time, they had to visit them now that he and Swara severed ties between them. One day everyone will know the truth, but it is unlike them discovering it. "We are in a separate room. They will know. What to do now?"

"Relax Sanskar. I will think of something."

Swara stood at the door feeling ineffable and nervous in her heart. After taking a deep breath, she opened the door and greeted his parents with a warm smile on her face.

"Once you get married do you have to forget your parents? Do we have to call you always?" Durgaprasad shouted.  

"It's not like that father."

"Shut up!" Durgaprasad scrawled disappointed at his son.

"Come, Anu Ma. You arrived at the right moment. I just thought of calling you."

Bewildered Annapoorna inquires, "Why, dear? What did he do?"

"Who knows?" Murmured Sanskar.

"Yesterday, he promised to take me out for dinner. Ask him whether he took me. No. If he sits in front of the laptop he doesn't need anyone. If I try to call him, he doesn't even receive my calls. He should have married a laptop." Swara's words made Sanskar wonder if had he ever made her feel lonely in his busy schedule. Even if she making a story now had he ever made her feel so?

"Stupid reckless boy! Don't you know family first before everything." His father had always prioritized family over anything, and to hear his son giving importance to office rather than home stunned him.

"Why were you quiet my dear? You should have taught him a lesson that he would not forget for life. If my husband ever did that--" Annapoorna's words interrupt.

"Hey! Are you giving her some advice or taunting me?"

"How could I keep quiet? I have punished him by not talking to him. I haven't spoken to him since last night. But when he didn't care about that, I came out and changed my room." Sanskar thanked her through his eyes for her justification for living in a separate room.

"Now that we have come, you can go back to your room," Annapoorna said patting her shoulder.

"Okay, Ma. But he did not even apologize to me." her lips pouted.