A bend in the road - Vol 1

45. Butterflies

They both weren't asleep even at the middle of the night. She couldn't see his face as he turned facing the other side on the bed, yet she knew he was nowhere close to sleep.

Ever since that evening when he had gone to her whilst she was painting and ever since he took her in his embrace, something has changed between them.

It was not something either of them planned, but the connection Dev was talking about had happened that moment when she tilted her head up, with her chin touching his chest, her eyes looking up to him.

She realized how tall he was, and he felt the heartbeat of his jump at where she touched him.

But then like everything was ever between them, it stretched out like an empty void, and a painful wound, both at the same time.

"Dev..."

"Hmm?"

"How did the meeting go?"

"It was okay"

She remained silent for a while. Just when she thought she understood her husband, he did something out of the blue and surprised her.

Dev had proposed to the board of directors to have a CEO be appointed to run the Canada wing of the constructions company that Dev took care of.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Continuation of the 36 questions?" he had asked turning on his back, only his head turned to look at her.

"Nah" she said "I think those standard questions are limiting my creativity. Also, so far you get to know everything about me and I don't know anything about you. You play your cards well Sir, so I am improvising"

He smiled at her.

"What do you want to know?"

She remained quiet for a while.

"Why are you giving up on the business now, out of all the times?"

"I think there are far more equipped MBAs who could run the business better than I, whose only qualification is to be born with the Khurana surname, in which I have no control"

She let out a half smile, and Dev thought there was lurking sadness under it.

"I think we can never separate ourselves from part of what we are. We might think, would people be the same with us say, if you aren't a Khurana, or if I--" she trailed off.

"That you weren't this beautiful?"

Tara seemed surprised he could be so on point. She could have avoided it, but then she thought she could at least respect his intelligence.

"Well, one would be curious and most importantly suspicious of everybody's intentions, thinking if it is me or just this" she said pointing at her face.

"I think it has to do something with this also" he said making a quick gesture from her head to toe, meaning her figure, to which she only laughed.

"Yeah, that too" she said with the same easy going smile.

"But Dev, I think it is a tiny part of what we are. By questioning the non-existence of it, we are making a version of us that never existed. Maybe if you were not a Khurana, you wouldn't have faced the same set of experiences in life that shaped you to become what you are today. You wouldn't be the Dev Khurana. You would be someone else, with some other story. Won't the total what if scenario nullifies then, because if you aren't you, why worry about whatever happens with some other version of you? Won't you have another set of new problems?"

Dev thought about it.

"There I go, talking nonstop, not giving you enough to talk about yourself"

He smiled again, this time, his body turning to face her.

"Well you have to try harder to extract information then" he said.

Although it was dark, since his entire attention was focused on her, it made her toes curl. Why was there this weird sense of nervous energy in her belly? It wasn't like she was nursing a school girl crush for crying out loud. This man and she had been married for years and had shared bed enough number of times, but still... today he felt different. She had never felt those butterflies people wrote about. But today, she had.

"You still didn't answer my question" she said trying to keep talking something to stop the nervous butterflies. "Why give up now Dev?"

"I don't see it as giving up" he had said. "It is a business decision which I should have done much earlier"

Tara still wasn't satisfied but decided to let it go.

"Aren't there too many what ifs?" she had asked.

"But no point thinking about them, because they nullify the effect?"

"Absolutely" she had said and he had grinned at her.

She felt a tiny thump inside her heart and to cover it, she had wished him a good night and turned to her other side.