Only Yours - THE VOW | ✓

Epilogue

A sudden breeze passed by, letting a leaf enter through the window. Maithili closed her eyes, feeling apathetic while leaning against the window sill. The sunshine from behind the clouds had dimmed a lot, evening was approaching. Her feet were swollen again today but slow walking still gave her a painful pleasure.

A faint sound of people talking whiffed past her ears and her eyes wandered lazily looking at her father laughing at something. It was a rare sight, watching him laugh. Aman Sankhla has never had such a delightfully leisure time in his whole life. It's been quite some time since he'd been able to spend time with his family members so freely.

His relationship with his old friend was rekindled over a game of chess and kadak chai every morning these days. It was such a fateful coincidence that each and every member of his family were able to spend quality time together. He sometimes wondered if he hadn't accepted the proposal that'd come for his daughter, this day might not have ever come.

From Maithili's perspective, there had always been a ploy of fate between her and Nikshit since forever. No matter how much she tried to get away, they were always coming together at a place in one way or another. From sharing mutual dislikes for the other, avoiding each other’s existence to sharing joys and sorrows according to the vows they'd taken, they'd come a long way.

She still vividly remembers the summer holidays when she'd been on the opposition team of the gully cricket of the kids. It was scorching hot, they were all wearing t-shirts and shorts, some of the kids running around barefoot on the ground fielding and some wearing slippers or canvas shoes. The match had continued from seven in the morning to half past one in the afternoon.

Maithili’s team had won the game and the opposition team had to contribute five rupees per person for buying rasna and jaljeera for both the teams. Those were some of the rare good old days when she did not have to avoid Nikshit on purpose. They were too tired to care about who was sitting beside them on the grassy field while enjoying the cold drinks after a second round of pitto or kabaddi match in the evenings when cicadas could be heard singing.

On some occasions, the Dahiya brothers used to go to their village to spend time there during the holidays so it used to become difficult to assemble enough children for making teams as well. It was like a ritual during long holidays, to play until you were tired enough to not even stand properly. Naturally most of them looked like roasted chestnuts after the school used to reopen post holiday, it didn't matter if it was summer or winter.

Talking about games, they'd recently assembled everyone together in Panvel for a long family holiday of two weeks. Holi was near and they were planning to go for sightseeing together later as well after a cricket match was played by the family members and the visiting places were decided by the winning team. Maithili had ended up taking the role of the umpire.

On the eighth day of their stay in the villa, they'd just come back from siddhivinayak temple after a long day of outing. The festive mood was great until Viren had caught a sudden cold and sore throat once they were back home.

The journey of going from having a big appetite to bigger appetite to no appetite to a picky and abstaining appetite, Maithili sat with her back resting against the soft cushions and a plate of salty crunchy snacks resting on her watermelon shaped 27 weeks pregnant belly, crunching on the bean shaped small biscuits with a frown on her face. She was worried and sad.

Viren had tested positive for COVID-19 unfortunately and the whole family was under house isolation even after testing negative. Although Viren tested negative after fifteen days, they were still cautious about everything. There were two little children in the house, a pregnant woman and two old aged people. It was a scary situation. March had begun with festiveness but with a skyrocketing number of COVID cases, it has become horrible over a short period of time.