stitches

008

Sanjay parks his car in front of his parents' house. He grips the steering wheel and shuts his eyes. He has to let go as he told her, and he opens the door and gets out of the car.

Sanjay hesitates before pressing the doorbell. The door opens in seconds and he is engulfed in a hug before he can react.

"Ma, Jaya Bachchan didn't hug Shah Rukh Khan this right."

Gayatri slaps his head. "I don't care. My son is home after a long time." She looks at him. "I have made every one of your favourite food. You won't even think about going back to your nasty apartment."

Sanjay chuckles. "Really."

They both walk inside the house with Gayatri's arm tightly wrapped around Sanjay.

"I'm not going to run." He says but it didn't reach anybody's ears.

"The apple of Ma's eyes is here!" Rahul shouts coming down the stairs.

Sanjay punches him in the stomach and he dramatically falls to the ground.

"Why are you picking a fight with your brother, Rahul?"

Rahul gets up and rolls his eyes. "Of course, you'll say that. Now I'm a nobody in this house. You love your eldest son, Papa loves his youngest daughter and I'm a nobody." He starts to walk to the door. "I'm leaving."

Gayatri looks at Sanjay. "He is going to play football with his friends." She turns to Rahul. "Don't play your games with me. Be here before 7."

Rahul smiles and gives her a flying kiss.

"Why is he never changing? You should take him to Bade Papa."

Gayatri laughs. "He is a cardiologist."

"Exactly. He might have traded his heart."

"I can never win against you."

"But you never stop trying." He says hugging her from behind as they walk to the kitchen.

"I missed your Biryani," Gayatri says placing her hand on his cheek. "I missed you."

She turns around and hugs Sanjay. He holds her as she cries in his arms.

"Dad is not well." She tells him. "His pressure went up two days ago." She looks at him. "You should go and see him."

Sanjay looks at his mother for a second and then turns around. He had said awful things to his father. To his mother. All they did was try to help him.

He saw how Aditya and Jhanvi are each other's life when he saw them yesterday. That made him sad. Of course, they didn't need his pity and can take care of themselves but Sanjay cannot picture his childhood without his father and he realizes how lucky he's been.

Sanjay raises his hand to knock on the door but seeing the door ajar he pushed it slowly. Yash, his father sleeps on the bed snoring peacefully.

Sanjay chuckles going to the bed. He lays on the bed without disturbing his father and looks at him.

"I can understand your fake snore." Sanjay smiles before looking at the ceiling.

Yash continues snoring.

"You were right Dad." Sanjay looks at Yash. "Everyone deserves a second chance. And I have taken the liberty to start mine. It's been a few days now. I motivate others to move on and I've decided to apply that in my life too." He looks back at the ceiling. "I started flirting."

Yash starts laughing and looks at his son. Sanjay smiles and breaks into laughter.

"What?"

Yash chuckles. "You can never flirt."

Sanjay scoffs. "Oh, I can. And I did more than flirting!"

Yash shakes his head. "I don't want to hear that."

The father-son rant continues while Gayatri stands by the door and watches them reconcile in their way. She wipes her tears and silently thanks, God.

‿‿‿‿‿‿‿‿

Jhanvi always wanted people to know her name in a good sense. Her name should give people something to talk about. Her example should make every woman proud.

So she started her own cosmetics company. MEHRA. Her father had suggested taking the family name so that they could grow their MEHRA empire. He and her brother are already invested in their luxury hotels, constructions, and much more.

The other reason for her to enter this business was because of the insecureness of people for their skin tone. She had seen too many advertisements everywhere on how a tube of cream can make your face fair within a week.

MEHRA COSMETICS was launched months before the death of her husband, Nikhil. He was the one who always pushed her to go for it and when he suddenly left, she couldn't control herself.

Medication, time, and Aditya's laughter helped her.

She's been managing this company for years now and has successfully made the brand famous and achieved high levels.

"Aisha! Aisha! Aisha!" Jhanvi calls her assistant through the phone.

Aisha opens the door within seconds holding up her phone. The hijab-clad woman held so many files in her hand that she ends up making every one of them fall. She smiles at her boss and starts to pick them one by one.

"Aisha!"

"Yes, Jhanvi." She stands straight and keeps the files on Jhanvi's desk.

"What happened at the shoot?" Jhanvi asks.

Aisha purses her lips. "I'm afraid, it didn't go well. The director was making the models stand according to their skin colour and one of the models spoke to him and it ended in a fight."

Jhanvi shakes her head and stands up from her chair. "I knew he was bad. Only because of his experience did I hire him. God!" She sits back. "What do I do now?"

"We need the ad ready before summer and there are only a few weeks left." Aisha begins. "You have a friend who's a director, right?"

Jhanvi widens her eyes. "No!" She shakes her head. "Harshad will be busy."

"Ex-boyfriend or Summer sale?" Aisha asks holding her palms out.

"You always cut my tongue," Jhanvi says rolling her eyes. "Don't we have anyone else?"

"I don't think so. We contacted most of them and they had no dates and what we got turned out to be a pig. So-"

Jhanvi let out a sigh. "I'll give him a call."

Later that afternoon when she's having her lunch, Jhanvi decides to call her friend Harshad.

"Hey!" Jhanvi smiles awkwardly.

"Hey Jan! Long time, ha! How are you doing?"

"Good. Good. How are you? Hope you are not busy." She fixes her AirPods and scrolls through Harshad's Instagram feed.

"No. I just finished having my lunch. Have a flight to catch to come to Mumbai. I'm here with my grandparents."

Jhanvi smiles. "How are they? They are the faces that come to me when I think about you."

"So you do think about me?" He asks and Jhanvi could imagine him smirking.

She remembers back to her high school and could see right in front of her how the seventeen-year-old Harshad used to flirt with her.

"Yeah, when I'm showing my son my class photos." She wants him to remember that she's not that young teenager anymore. She is a mother and is someone's wife or was someone's wife.

"I'll come to his next birthday party and introduce myself as the high school hot boyfriend."

Jhanvi laughs. "It was a small party. You didn't even come to Jen's wedding, how was I supposed to know you would come to this party."

"Because it's you who's calling me."