My prediction for Arhi New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve

The scene - Akash and Arnav reach Khushi and Payal’s house, and Khushi and Payal steal out to meet them … after making sure Akash and Payal are with each other, it is barely a few minutes to midnight. Khushi wants to stay and eavesdrop; Arnav drags her away, admonishing her that it’s bad manners!

Khushi is wearing her pink night suit, her hair is open, and Arnav can’t stop looking at her, although he’s trying his best to act as khadoos as always. They have a small squabble about how they don’t want to see each other’s faces at midnight, and so they turn away from each other and look in opposite directions. Then there is a voice from the house … Buaji calling the girls. Now read ahead … 

 Khushi looked at Arnav in panic.

“Oh no! If Buaji sees that Jiji is not in the house, she’s in trouble! I have to stall her.”

Arnav nodded resignedly. Trust Khushi to come up with some plan or the other. He watched as she made her way quickly to the house, calling out for Buaji.

“Buaji! I’m here!”

“Sanka devi! You will be the death of me one day! What are you doing outside? You’ll catch your death of cold! And Payaliya’s wedding just a few days away! If you fall sick who will do all running around for the wedding?! Everything will be ruined! And it will all be your fault. Come inside now …such a useless girl you are!”

Why Khushi’s fault? Arnav thought, slightly indignantly. There were four people in the house, excluding Khushi’s sick Babuji, why was everything the responsibility of Khushi alone? Why always blame Khushi, he silently accused Buaji, quite forgetting his own propensity to do exactly the same thing. 

Khushi was speaking again hastily, trying to stop Buaji from coming outside and seeing that Payal was not safely in her bedroom, and was actually with Akash.

“I’ll just come, Buaji! I just wanted to show Amma and Babuji my new dress – the one you gave me.”

“Haye re Nand Kishore … talking to the stars again, are you?! This girl will never change! Mad she was and mad she will always be. Don’t take that dress outside in the garden, you’ll get it dirty and muddy … and I just got it all washed and cleaned!”

“No, I’ll just take the dupatta,” came Khushi’s voice again, more subdued now, and Arnav felt a pang. So they all knew about the way she talked to the stars? Tried to find her dead parents in them? He looked up at the cold night sky searchingly. To his surprise, three stars seemed to twinkle back at him extra brightly. Were they Khushi’s parents … and his mother?

He shook his head. He was getting affected by Khushi’s craziness. But he remembered the night he had looked up at the stars and asked her if dead people really became stars … she had replied that she believed her parents were there … she believed.  

Maybe his mother was there … looking down at him … on the last night of the old year. And hoping for a new and happy year for him. A fresh start … after all the mistakes of the last year. 

He looked up at the sky again … and one star seemed to smile back at him brightly. He looked back at it wonderingly, then shook his head. Crazy!

Khushi came out hurriedly, holding a red piece of cloth scrunched up in her hands.

“Are they back?” she asked Arnav, meaning Payal and Akash, and he shook his head. Then he gestured to the red cloth questioningly. She flushed slightly.

“I needed an excuse to come outside, so I told Buaji I wanted to show my wedding dress to my parents. I mean … her wedding dress … she took it out for me to wear at the wedding. She got so annoyed with me, she forgot about looking for Jiji, so …”

“Is this the way you will show them?” he interrupted, and she looked surprised.

“What?!”

“They can’t see it properly if you hold it all scrunched up like that,” he told her in his usual brusque tones. “Hold it properly, Khushi, or you’ll spoil it. Better still … wear it … like this …”

Before she could quite fathom what he was doing, he had taken the red dupatta out of her hands. He shook out the folds and placed it gently over her head. The soft folds came down covering her face, as though she was a shy bride awaiting her bridegroom on her wedding night. 

She stood very still. Slowly he reached out and lifted the dupatta gently to unveil her face. Her eyes were downcast, her face bent and he lifted it with a hand under her chin to face him. Her cheeks flaming pink, her eyes lifted slowly, hesitantly to meet his.

They stared at each other in silence … a silence broken only by the sounds of their heartbeats thundering, racing in unison.

Then the sound of trumpets, shouting, cheering, firecrackers bursting broke the silence … cries of “Happy New Year” filled the air, as the people of the mohalla started to congratulate each other for the dawning of the new year. Still the two stood in silence, looking at each other as though caught in a spell.

Rabba ve …

Then in unison, still silent, they turned their faces to the night sky where the stars twinkled merrily at them.

“What do you think my mother would say if she could see you now?” he asked her, quietly, conversationally. Khushi looked at him, her eyes soft.

“I think she would say,” he continued, still in that casual conversational tone, “Devi maiyya, I asked you that please fill my son’s life with happiness (khushi) … and what did you do? You sent this crazy girl called Khushi into his life. Definitely there was something lacking in all my pooja path … never mind, I’ll try again next year … just let him survive this year with her around!”

She glared at him open-mouthed and he quirked an eyebrow at her.

“What, no reply? That’s not like you, Khushi. Okay, let me say it for you … what would your mother be thinking if she could see me right now?”

She quirked an eyebrow at him in a very fair imitation of his own gesture.

“What? I’m sure you’re going to come out with …”

“She would say,” he interrupted, “Devi maiyya, I asked you for someone who could talk more than my daughter so he could shut her up, and you sent this silent kadwa karela into her life, who can’t even eat her jalebis to sweeten his mouth.”

“But I make them unsweetened especially for you!” she retorted immediately, indignantly, and then looked shame-faced. She looked uncomfortably at him, remembering her jibe on the night of the party. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was mean of me … I was angry with you for not inviting me, for not taking my suggestions … but I was wrong to say that. And to do what I did. I’m really sorry …”

“Shhh,” he said gently, and put his finger on her lips. She stopped speaking suddenly as she felt his touch, and stared at him again, her eyes very dark, her hands trembling slightly by her side.

“I was wrong too … I shouldn’t have told you not to come. It was your sister’s engagement party, you had every right to be there … and I should have made sure that Payal was comfortable … she was uncomfortable without you …”

“She had Akash jeejaji there, she would have been all right … it was my fault. I had decided not to come … I shouldn’t have …”

“But I’m glad you did …” he told her quietly, and she stopped, dumbstruck. He quirked an eyebrow at her. “How else would I have got to see your Desi Girl moves?!”

She blushed slightly. “I’m sorry … Did I embarrass …?”

“Khushi,” he interrupted. “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded, looking at him questioningly. He was silent for a minute, looking slightly uncomfortable, as though hunting for the right words. Then he spoke.

“We both got off on the wrong foot with each other. I made a lot of mistakes about you, I wronged you many times … insulted you, called you names, even put your life into danger. Can you forgive me for all that? Can you possibly forgive me for everything I did and put all that behind you? Can we start again, afresh in this new year? I’m really sorry for everything, Khushi.”

She was silent for a long minute. In her mind’s eye flashed Diwali night … the almost-kiss, and then his words, heartbreaking in their deliberate cruelty … “You mean nothing to me.” His engagement to Lavanya. His break up with Lavanya.

Lavanya’s words … “Look after ASR for me, Khushi? You’re the only one he listens to, even when he doesn’t want to.”

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. He was still looking steadily at her, his eyes unreadable. 

“I’d like that,” she said quietly. And thought she saw him exhale, as though he had been holding his breath.

“Thank you,” he said. And something seemed to change in the air between them, something sparked and crackled, and then subsided. Leaving her fumbling again with the swift change of emotions she felt emanating from him.

“I need to check on Jiji,” she muttered uncertainly, and moved away from him, towards the car where Akash and Payal were presumably still seeing in the New Year together. Moving away from that confusion which he always aroused in her, that confusion of emotions which made her uncomfortable, yet which she couldn’t seem to do without …

“Khushi?”

His voice stopped her again. She stood still, her back to him, afraid to face him, afraid now of her own emotions, now that the protective wall of anger was gone.

“Happy New Year, Khushi,” he said quietly.

She half turned to face him, the smallest of smiles trembling on her lips.

“Happy New Year, Arnavji.”