She was helpless. Her marriage was fixed in her father's business circle, and their reputation was at stake. He was just an employee her father could never have agreed to give his daughter to. She heard a week before the wedding that he had resigned on receiving her wedding invite. He was going to another city to try his luck. A city where her memories won't haunt him every day, where every brick in his apartment and every alley in the city won't bring back memories of pain. He had to move on. She had wanted to meet him one last time and tell him how helpless she was, but to him, she was the one who broke things off, who chose the richer husband over her father's employee. Twenty years had passed since then.
She was a lady of forty-four now, widowed, single-handedly managing the business of her husband after his sudden death in an accident. Her nearest relative now was her pet dog, Bruno. All she thought of now was work. A pendant hung from her neck. Heart-shaped and the letter S carved on it. She had had it since she was in her twenties when she fell in love.
The Business Union meetings were the dullest place to be in, but it was far better than her lonely, haunted bungalow. She was in a black formal dress, sharing a drink with the Mayor's wife. Right across the hall, there was the bar. A man in his late forties sat there with a glass of expensive champagne. That man took her back twenty years.
He had just vanished from her life, and she tried his friends, who claimed to know nothing about his whereabouts. Maybe they were just protecting him from the woman who left him for a future. And here he was sitting right across the room. Her gaze was followed by the Mayor's wife, who informed, " That is Mr Singhania, he is the new member of the board, from Delhi."
" What is his business?"
" I dunno that, all I know is he had a very tragic life."
" Why?"
" His wife died of cancer a year after they got married. He is a lonely man. He was an employee at the Mayor's Business First, but then rose using the contacts he made. He is still a dear friend. Tell me, Sweta, why are you so interested?"
" Nothing. Just that I never saw him."
Her mind asked another question: Should she talk, or will he refuse to know and recognise her... She took a deep breath and stepped forward. He turned back, and their eyes met. Everything in them had changed over the years except his eyes and hers. He smiled.
" I knew you would be here."
" You did?"
" Yes, I wanted to see you."
" Why did you disappear? I wanted to tell you that I..."
" I know, I was a young, angry man then, over the years I have heard of your time and again."
" Yet you decided to leave me alone?"
" I waited for the right time."
" I heard of your wife..."
" I married her because she had nobody, and she was ill."
" My husband died within two years of my ..."
" I know, I was busy nursing Anisha then."
Their eyes shone in joy, reunited after so many years among strangers; they had so much to share and so much to talk of. He noticed her pendant, which he had given to her on her birthday. Circumstances may have driven them away, but love had grown, not even expecting anything in return.
" Let's get out of here."
" Where are we going?" She couldn't stop smiling.
" Does it matter as long as you are with me?"
" No, Never." They went out with separate excuses and met at the parking lot. He drove her across the city. It was what they often talked of when travelling by auto across town twenty years ago. They went to the Dhaba they always went to, it was a restaurant now, and they had what they always had, only the dishes seemed tastier with each story. They had twenty years to fill in, lots to do.
Six months later, the Mayor's wife came into his chambers.
" You won't believe what happened!"
" What happened?"
" Sweta and Mr. Singhania..."
" What about your friend and Singhania?"
" See this, I made them meet and..."
She put forward a card... It read:
You are cordially invited to
The wedding and Reception
of
Sweta Gerewal and Anant Singhania
on the 26th of August, 2014 at 7PM
at the
Grand Palace Hotel, Delhi
