Khushi's eyes wandered across the park, looking for him.
Arnav had abruptly left the swing set and gone off somewhere. Khushi had sat on the swing for some more time after he had left, before sighing and getting off to look for him.
"Where are you going?" Akash called out from behind, "Payal will take your swing."
Khushi almost turned to stake her claim to the swing once again, but realised that as Arnav's would-be wife, she had some duties to fulfill. Akash, who did not know that two weeks ago, Arnav had told her that he would marry her when he would have enough money to buy a house, would not understand. She finally found Arnav sulking by the river bend.
"What happened?" she asked as she sat next to him.
"Why are you here?" Arnav pouted, "Why don't you go and play with Akash?"
"Because you're my fiance," she said patiently, wise in her knowledge that boys were slightly stupid and tended to forget such important details.
"So why did you let him take my swing?"
"Because it was his turn, no?"
"It's your turn now, no? So why are you here?"
"Because you're here. I will stay with you, wherever you are," she smiled, in a passable imitation of how her mother smiled at her father at times, and Arnav smiled back.
A part of Khushi realised that in any case, Payal would have already occupied her swing by now, so there was no point going back, but she did not say this out loud. Arnav must have realised the sheer magnitude of her sacrifice because he promptly dug out a highly treasured piece of blue chalk from his pocket and gave it to her.
...
Present day
Arnav stared at his family members, astounded. This had to be a joke!
What century were these people living in? Did they really think that he would agree to marry someone whom he had only known as a child and to whom he had not even spoken for over fifteen years? And that too, when he had spent most of his growing years in the United States, whilst she had stayed back in Lucknow? They were from different worlds altogether. The very idea of them getting married was simply ridiculous.
"Nani," he said to his grandmother gently, trying to suppress a strong urge to laugh, "I cannot agree to marry Khushi. Please drop the topic."
"Chhote," she said just as gently, but in a tone laced with unmistakable obstinacy, "Since you were children, her parents and yours had thought of getting you both married one day. You were so close as children, don't you remember?"
"We were children, playing around like normal, regular children!" Arnav replied, exasperated, "And after that, when Maa and Babuji died, we all left Lucknow to live with Chachaji in Delhi, and soon after we all went to the U.S. Khushi and I have not even been in touch for all these years. And seriously, what were you thinking? You do know that child marriage is illegal, right?"
"Don't be ridiculous," his sister, Anjali, intervened, "It's not child marriage. You'll only be getting married now. Just meet her once, now that you're back in India for good. We're going to Lucknow anyway to meet Mami, Mamaji and Akash next week. You can meet her as well in the same trip. They're still neighbours, you know?"
"A lot has changed, Di. We're not the same people. Please try and understand."
"If Maa and Babuji were alive, they -" Anjali began, but Arnav quickly interrupted her, "Don't you even try and emotionally blackmail me."
But even he knew that it was futile to protest. The emotional blackmail card had already been played and he was hopelessly outnumbered.
A week later, he was on a flight to Lucknow with Anjali, and his feelings were just even more ambivalent than they had been when he was leaving the United States to come back to India. On the one hand, he was looking forward to meeting his cousin, Akash, and his childhood friends, including Khushi, after so many years.
But a larger part of him dreaded having to go back to the place where he had last lived with his parents, and to be confronted with all the memories, all the pain that he had consciously kept buried within him. When his parents had both died in a bus accident, he had felt numb for the longest time, not knowing how to react. And before he could fully realise what had happened, images of Lucknow were speeding past his tired eyes through the train windows, and he was on his way to Delhi. In the beginning, he had sorely missed his old life, but when it had become too painful to cry himself to sleep every night, he had decided to embrace his new life and allow his memories to fade away to the musty recesses of his mind.
And now, every passing minute was bringing him closer to the old Arnav who probably still lived somewhere in the dusty bylanes of Lucknow, whose hair smelt of coconut oil and the loving fingers of his mother, who wore his father's clothes and strutted around the house proudly, and who had once, at the mere age of seven, innocently proposed marriage to his childhood friend.
His lips curved into a small smile as he thought of those times. He wondered how his life would have been if his parents had not died, if he had stayed in Lucknow. Perhaps, their child-like shenanigans would have led him to actually fall in love with Khushi, and he would have himself asked his parents to get them married. But that alternate reality had passed him by, and the truth was that he could not conceive of anything more absurd than getting married to a girl just because their parents had fantasized about it two decades ago.
Not wanting to keep Khushi in the dark, and, knowing that with Anjali around, it might be difficult to speak to Khushi openly, he had managed to find her on facebook and had written to her, informing her that he did not want to get married to her, given how different he had become from the Arnav she once knew, and how they different they both were as people. Her reply had been very brief but she had said that she understood, and that she nevertheless looked forward to meeting him again, as an old friend. It had come as a relief to read her reply. While the distant formal tone of her message was slightly unsettling at the time, Arnav had quickly reasoned to himself that it was understandable that she should be distant. So many years had passed since they had last spoken to each other. They were practically strangers to each other now.
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