Sachin Aggarwal , a middleaged, bespectacled man in his late 50s looked at his niece worriedly...She looked very pale and thin and had repeatedly refused to eat anything since morning...despite his persistence..
Sachin was already grieving the loss of her younger sister and the fact that she had passed away just a day before he arrived in India... He remembered the phone call, she had made to him just days before her death...
"I am so worried about Khushi, bhai", she had said after telling him about Arnav.
"She is not herself anymore...you remember how bubbly she used to be, how full of life...how often I had to scold her to stop her non stop chatter.but now,..I am so worried about her...what if, after I am gone, she does something..foolish", Khushi's mom had said, crying.
Sachin had tried to console her, promising he would always be there for Khushi.
It was 10pm and after booking their luggage and passing through security..they were sitting in the lounge adjacent to gate E4 waiting for boarding to start...Sachin brought her some gatorade. "Atleast drink this,"he said gently. "You will get dehydrated"
As Khushi sipped the gatorade slowly, her eyes caught the images on a TV screen some distance away...a news channel covering Arnav's and Sheetal's wedding.
She closed her eyes quickly...then got up to take a walk...as she passed a cafeteria, she recognized the song they were playing softly.
"Aankhen band kar loo jo mein
dekhu bas tumhe
khwabo mein hi keh sakta hoon
apna tumhe
rehne de mera yeh vehm pe hi yakeen
naa ja abhi
pyar ki yeh raat hain
ab na jaa
chotti si ek baat hain
ab na jaa"
As she bit her lip, fighting tears, she heard the boarding announcement for her flight.
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