The storm has arrived with a gust of pain and grief, the wild hurricanes blasting as the realities clashes. The war has started as the realities of the present collides with reminiscences of the past. The conflict is rising outside and I was suffering inside as I stood under the cold shower.

The pink colour of my face is flowing as red stain washing away from my face, just like love washed away from me all those years ago, a decade ago, as I close my eyes with agony filled in them, my head leaned against those tiled walls. A love, no that was madness.

A madness that raised a war, a storm against the realities of the universe, an intoxication where I was too drunk to discern the truth, insanity I was engulfed in and he locked me there, for years, for an eternity.

That person with charcoal black eyes, tanned skin and a lean body was a part of the past who should never step into my present. It took me years to cross those lanes alone but a single glance and all my pieces shattered like broken glass, like broken trust.

The war which I thought had ended was only put on hold. And now with each passing second I closing to the battlefield. But the question lies, am I prepared for it? To face the battle of my heart and soul, my past and present. Am I equip for it? No, I am. Never will be.

Tragedies happen when you broke your heart at a young age, tragedies of betrays and broken families.

My eyes keep burning with those unshed tears as I stand under the shower still. My white dress sticks to my body like a second skin, and I am burning in the fire of rage. Anger of pain that he left behind, they left behind.

But my tears have dried for him, for them, for the past. Khwahish Raizada doesn't lose tears over the past anymore.

16th February

10.30 PM

I sit on the cushioned swing gathering my legs together, in the company of shimmering fireflies and chirping crickets. The breezes whispering sweet nothing near my ear as they dance crazily.

The war had subsided a little, the storm hadn't gone completely. A cup of tea on the wooden table as I look at the green lawn and lake past it. I sighed. I need to talk to Reyansh, but about what I don't know.

The din of steps and I close my eyes. Maa is here to talk.

"So, how was your day?" She takes a seat next to me.

Sometimes I look at her and think how time is passing. She is getting older, and even the thought of losing her one day brings bile to my mouth. I can't. Maa had been my sole support all these years, even now she is, it's just, there's this particular topic we don't talk about.

"It was good. I went to Basant Utsav." Amusement fills her face.

"You did? Wow, I thought I lost that part of your when you left for Mumbai." I laughed.

"Maa please"

"What please? Your Baba used to say how he misses you on those days." Baba. Another topic I don't want to discuss, but I have to.

"He was not as bad as you portray him to be, Aish" Maa said looking towards me, I shake my head as sip my tea keeping my gaze fixed at the mist slowly covering the lake, a mist of grief.

"I never get to know him enough to portray him as something."

"You knew him well, more than I ever did." True, and maybe that's why I feel this way for him.

"I don't know what I feel for him Maa."

"You know what you feel, he is your father."

He was my father, a good father who had given me everything, dresses, travels, life lessons, but one thing he didn't give me was respect. But he did in his last years, perhaps he was late.

"I don't hate him Maa." Maa smiles.

"But I don't love him either." She smiles again.

"At least it is neutral now."

"He loved you though."

"Maa,"

"No honestly. He loved you, he was a proud father. Even when his cancer got diagnosed and he asked you to get married, one day he told me he will accept that guy too." I close my eyes.

This is nothing new to me, he told me these words too. And that's why it pained me the most. All my life I had held up this anger against that man, and when he was leaving me, he tried to end that too. So what should I feel about the man, nothing was left. He left me empty-handed of emotions.

"I told you before, that was a mistake and it ended way back, why are you bringing this everywhere?"

The tragedy of my first love, it was fragile in the heavy hands of Honour and dignity. He was bound to his family who would have never accepted me.

Silence engulfs as the wind stops, but this silence screamed a thousand words.

"Maa?" I look at her, eyes already fixed on me.

"Nothing." She walks away, for once I want to stop her and ask her the reason but then again I don't have the energy left in me.

Unknowingly my eyes go to the end of the alley, those charcoal black-eyed boy who shattered my heart under his feet. The guy for whom I had bear all the pain, all his frustration for years, only in a hope that he might be changed but he didn't. I did.

He ruined a pure soul by killing her hope. The day it ended, I celebrated life. All the words that he screamed, all the abuses he had thrown at me laughed at his face when I left him in the middle of the road.

All those years he had told me how I was not enough for him, not a match for his standard, that day destiny laughed when I spoke back at his face, gave him back what he had given me. Some pains stay forever, like the scar I have on my left wrist because of him. I had sinned killing myself, but I had survived, the reason why Reyansh calls me Pheonix.

The ring in the phone catches my attention as I slide the green button-up.

"Hey," I whisper.

"Khwab" He softly said, a smile comes to lips again.

"How's your day?" I ask.

"What happened Love?" I furrowed, Reyansh Bakshi knows me too well.

"And don't you dare to lie to me." I smiled.

"I... I saw someone from my past today."

"Someone as in."

"Someone I used to know."

"Someone as in Him?" Him. I gulped.

"Yeah."

"So what?" He did.

"I don't know."

"Khwab, why are you bothering yourself with a past that doesn't matter." But it does, it pains.

"Ansh, I don't want to stay here anymore."

"Why? Just because you saw him? Oh, please my wife is not that weak that she will run away after getting a glimpse of her ex." His wife is not weak, but the girl who left her a piece of heart with her ex is.

"Ansh.."

"Start trusting yourself Khwab. I know you better than this." He knows me better than I know myself right at the moment, he trusts me more than I trust myself.

"How... how can you trust me like this?"

"Are you seriously asking me this now?" I can hear his laugh, the tone of amusement.

"Yes."

"How can I not trust the girl whom I have trust with my life even before making her mine. How can I not trust my best friend, my wife my only family? And if not you whom should I trust?"

I open my mouth to say something but words have died long before that. His words fill me like the pitcher cold water on those desert noons. His voice wanes the rage of anger inside me, the storm.

"They say the person who saves your life is to be considered an equal to God. And here you not only saved my life but also taught me to live again. Trust is a small word when it comes to you, I worship you." I gulp.

Trust is not a small word for me, and Reyansh Bakshi has enough of that.

"Face it Khwab. Face him, face them and let it all end for once and all."

"It ended a decade ago."

"But the pain had stayed." It had.

"Sometimes we have to bear a pain whole life even if we don't want to."

"You never have to carry anything if you don't want to. Neither pain nor love. And this pain you are carrying was not yours to bear, it's him, it's theirs."

"But..."

"Sometimes to just let go for the person and not the pain, and that's what you did wrong my Love. You let go of the person a decade ago, your love had faded away even before that, but you trapped yourself in the cage of pain, in the curtains of grief, you buried yourself in the graveyard of honour.
     Now let it go too. I am here with you, I know you are in love with me, and I love you more than that, but what I can't do is to free you from the pain, only you can do this."

I can and I will. Am I prepared for it now? I am more than enough.

For I know, love had long bid its farewell but the pain had caged in me as the souvenirs of grief.

Kyuki usse andaza tha mere dard ka.