HAPPILY EVER AFTER...

Rohan sat in front of Sheetal with folded hands. He wondered if it was the worst moment of his life or not. Sheetal was looking at the cup of coffee in his hands.

She had tears in her eyes. She could not cry aloud, as it was the canteen and she could not be quiet as it was hurting. It had hurt her really hard inside when Rohan told her that he had started liking someone else. After being in a relationship for more than a year, it was difficult to hear such a thing from the person whom she had loved the most.

There was stunned silence. They were not talking, but still everything was being communicated. It was the weirdest of communications; the communication through little gestures- of hands, frowns, eye-lids, lips and may be the vibes between them.

To break that communication for a second, Rohan lifted the cup to have a sip of coffee. As he started gulping the hot sip, his eyes met Sheetal’s. They were red, with the veins crying on the white surface of the ball. They were filled with tears. One of the eyes overflowed and a drop of that sad liquid rolled down Sheetal’s right cheek.

Rohan sipped the coffee.

It was the toughest sip of coffee. Sipping coffee had never been such a displeasurable experience.

He was disappointed. He was confused. He had been dishonest. He had no answers to the questions which Sheetal’s tears seemed to ask him. Why why why. It was bizarre.

He wondered how there was stunned silence between the two very individuals who had been chatting continuously about various issues for the last 13 months. It was different. Very different.

He looked up. He didn’t know but he realized soon that his heart could feel the tears in Sheetal’s eyes.

It could have gone anywhere from here now. Sheetal was angry, sad and disturbed but still, somewhere deep inside, she wanted it to go on!

Rohan told to himself, “Getting attracted to someone else can happen, as it’s natural, but not getting flown in that direction is commitment!” On one hand he was proud of the fact that he shared everything with Sheetal honestly, but at the same time he felt guilty of having created that crime.

Rohan did not say this to Sheetal, but it seemed that she heard everything.

There was silence. No one was talking, no one was crying. They were just breathing.

Rohan looked up. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to say that one word, which came straight from the heart,

“SORRY!”

There is a difference between words spoken from the mouth and the ones spoken from the heart; and the difference is always, surprisingly visible!

Sheetal could sense the origin of that word. This word was good enough o break the disturbia, the mute air between them. They hugged each other and this time it was Rohan’s turn. He was crying.

His cheeks witnessed the guilty tears, which flowed from his eyes, on to his cheeks to Sheetal’s shoulders. It seemed that Rohan’s cheeks were telling Sheetal’s shoulders, “See, it hurts!”

And as they say, they lived happily ever after…