Shrishti Reborn

Chapter 16. Shrishti and the Office adventure

Shrishti spent the whole morning in her room, leafing through her diary. It could not be called diary per se. Some pages had random scribbling written by a twelve year old Shrishti and some had school homework listed. One page even had a list of all her favourite songs of those days. And one page had a list of her favourite dishes. Shrishti read through the list and was amused to see that her tastes had not changed at all. But in between were some ramblings about how a tween Shrishti wanted to become a model after looking at a famous male model and having a crush on him.

Shrishti laughed out loud at that. How silly was she! Then as she turned the page, she saw that there was almost a whole essay written there. She started to read through it feeling amused. But as she read, the amusement turned into sadness. Little Shrishti was missing her mother and had talked about it there. The girl had felt lonely and lost without her mother's guidance. Shrishti shut the diary right away at that and threw it away before falling on her bed. She closed her eyes as she remembered that day. Someone had teased her about not having a mother for the first time. It was right after she had shifted to C section from A in her sixth standard. Her classmates were new and had teased her.

Shrishti sighed as she realised that it was the time things had changed for her. Right after that day, the teasing and bullying had increased till one day they had targeted and tried to take her things and Sharad had interfered. She checked the time and realised that it was lunch time. She finally got out of her room for lunch.

After lunch, Shrishti was back in her room, going through that diary. She did not expect much out of it. After all, she was already being teased. Soon Sharad would walk into her life and then Shrishti had no hope to find anything not related to Sharad in the diary.

But as Shrishti read, she noticed something else. As she got bullied, little Shrishti started to fight back. She even became more determined to work hard and make something of herself to prove to them her worth. Little Shrishti wrote one day that her only wish was for her Pappa to be happy.

Shrishti smiled at the wish. Didn't she have the same wish? Isn't that why she came back to the past? She wanted her Pappa happy and healthy. That's all she wanted. She smiled before reading further. Little Shrishti continued to fight against her bullies. She even complained to teacher once and got the bullies to back off.

'Did I really do that?', Shrishti asked herself in shock, 'I did not know I was so amazing then.'

Sometimes Shrishti wanted to go and shake the Shrishti obsessed with Sharad. She wanted to ask her; what happened to that amazing Shrishti? Why did Shrishti turn into a crazy obsessed girl?

'I wasted so much of my life over that one guy!', Shrishti shook her head with disgust, 'And I did not even win his heart or something. What a loser I was!'

Shrishti sighed and went back to the diary. Another day, little Shrishti wrote that she would continue to fight back because if she could not do this much, how will she be her Pappa's support in his old age and bring his company to new heights as his heir!

Shrishti stared at the page in shock. Was that her dream? Was that what little Shrishti wanted to do? Shrishti could not remember. She could not help but remember Raghav taking over the company after her father fell sick in her first life. Her father's health had gotten bad after her scandal came out. Even after Raghav and Shrishti got engaged, her father did not recover fully. By the time, Shrishti was twenty four, Raghav had stepped in and taken over everything while her father had fully retired. That is when her father started to nag her to get married to Raghav. And then a year later, she was dead.

Shrishti pushed those memories away. Those memories were useless. She had already changed everything. There was no scandal this time. So there was no engagement between her and Raghav. Now instead of Raghav, it was Arpit that her Pappa had taken under his wings. And her Pappa became Raghav's mentor in the last life after Shrishti turned twenty. Because then Raghav had just finished his MBA abroad and had come back to join Pappa's company. This time, Arpit got her Pappa's guidance before he even graduated from college. So many things had changed. So many things were different.