ArShi SS: If I Were You Just For A Day [COMPLETE]

CHAPTER 1

There's only little you can do,

When the limits of tolerance cross.

How long can you take it after all?

To circumvent the love lost?

Constant there can't be anything,

Changes will always adorn the air.

Speak up my little darling,

If you want an end to your despair.

.

The entire Raizada family was caught off guard as they heard their naive and beloved daughter-in-law throw a question like that.

Khushi didn't know why she framed that question, but what she did know was that she didn't regret it, despite the puzzled expressions that now adorned the faces of her family members.

Sheetal looked at Khushi with a dazzled expression, while Arnav too had the tinge of shock etched to his face.

When Sheetal saw that Khushi was still looking at her with a smile, waiting for an answer, she awkwardly lowered her gaze and said in a hesitant tone,

"Four- Four months."

Arnav didn't really know what Khushi was trying to get at, especially in front of the whole family.

First the DNA test reports had vexed him, and now this?

What was wrong with her?

.

When Sheetal worded the answer, Khushi widened her smile for a moment only to replace it with a calculative expression five seconds later.

.

"Oh!"

She exclaimed, the thoughtful expression quite braggingly sitting on her face.

While the family members still appeared clueless and thought that the haze of the hour was only going to prolong, they met a sudden interim when they heard Khushi's voice once again.

"Arnav Ji and Aarav are so bafflingly similar, isn't it?"

Although the family members had been voicing the same thing since pretty much DAY ONE of seeing Aarav at their place, but today that their sweet and kind Khushi bitiya said it, it took them by utter surprise.

So Chotte and Sheetal bitiya were in a relationship back in Harvard?

They suddenly felt the presence of this new black window in the chain of many white windows, all of which had previously hosted a bevy of parrots that only iterated and reiterated "Arnav aur Aarav bitwa toh ek dum ek jaise hai."

And now that the black window pointed at the whole theory in a completely different light, they felt an unexpected jolt.

And it felt like their moment of haze wasn't simply going to end there, because the next thing they knew was,

"Your last name is Sheetal Kapoor, right? But Aarav is ASR. What a baffling coincidence again, isn't it?"

She paused before continuing,

"You know nani ji, there's a book called baffling coincidences that mentions some really, really shocking happenstances. If they would come across this coincidence that Arnav ji and Aarav are like carbon copies of each other, and that too with thesame name frame, they would have pakka included this in their latest edition."

.

Call it bowled by shock?

Na-uh!

That would be an understatement.

Raizada family was tongue-tied.

.

They felt this peculiar stream of guilt show up in their system as they realized the true context of their daughter-in-law's words, and very rightly so.

Arnav felt anger gush in his veins as he looked at Khushi's face that neither denoted insecurity nor disappointment. She appeared callous, no longer holding on to the timid branch of staying conservative when vocalizing an agenda likethat.

The Raizadas now looked at Sheetal who was in no way able to lift her gaze and look into others' eyes, completely spellbound by whatever that apparentlyingenuous, seemingly gullible wife of Arnav singh Raizada spoke.

.

As Khushi examined the faces of her family members she knew that what she intended to do for the starters was done.

She wanted these people to look at this whole agenda through her eyes, and then feel what she feels.

And now that it was done, she had no interest in sitting in the hall with them.

She was going to leave them to their own thoughts, battling against the possibilities of whatever she brought into light minutes ago could actually mean.

Well, they are family, right?

Then they do need to know what the others feel, what she particularly feels at least for once after all. When they could all always be a part of Anjali bitiya's days of troubled thoughts, then it was only legit that for once they empathized Khushi as well!

And so Khushi got up from the sofa, pretending that she got a phone call from her close friend Preeto, and started heading towards her room.

She still had the casual smile on her face, not even for a moment letting the others see the kind of turbulence she was dealing with from inside. But after whatever had conspired in the living room sometime ago, for the first time in life, it wasn't really tough for her family to guess what she truly felt from within.

And that was something that hurt them.

.

.

As Arnav watched her retreating back, he didn't know what to say.

He wanted to admonish her for whatever stunt she pulled sometime ago, but a little part of him was somehow pitching the thought that he too was accountable for this.

Not wishing to aggravate the already aggravated conundrum in his head further, he too started walking in a rough pace upstairs.

And in that very moment Sheetal felt this strong tinge of embarrassment as well as disappointment cloud her mind, her inferences of having Khushi suffer in silence and take a hasty and nasty decision that would be in her mighty favor, evaporating into thin air.

The Raizadas only watched the retreating back of their Chotte, and then darted their eyes at the stranger-turned beloved Sheetal bitiya-turned shady character that she now seemed to be.

And for the first time it struck them. Maybe the lovely college friend of Chotte wasn't really that lovely after all.

Trust and goodness are all it takes,

To build castles with hopes and smiles.

And trust and goodness are all it takes,

To build a bond that goes miles and miles.

But don't take one's goodness for you,

As something obvious and their first choice;

Because stupefied is how you will turn out to be,

When the taken for granted raise their voice.

**