Evanescing The Facade

7. Wreckage caused by the untamed beast

"She gazed at you like you were all her world, while you kept looking at everything else around, until one day when you realised it's all smoke and glasses while she is what feels home."

They say if you stay silent and still enough, no one sees that you are a car crash waiting to happen because no one's in the driver's seat. Mishti was the ashes that fell after churning the smoke sticks while people kept admiring the blown smoke rings. She kept saying she was fine and they kept believing she was strong. But there's a difference between the two, right? Her silence was screaming for help, her eyes were yearning for someone who would understand how she feels like dead autumn leaves falling just to be stepped upon and crushed. She had a black hole of sorrows in her eyes but all they saw was the illusionary stardust, her laughter was a music they drowned themselves into and failed to hear the whisper of yearning for a mainstay. She was breaking and they failed to see...he failed to see.

Abir was sitting in stillness, staring at what Mishti saw her reflection in, clutching to what he wanted Mishti to see her reflection in. He was at Lakeside, staring at the water, holding on to the pendant that he had ruthlessly yanked off her neck. Nature doesn't lie she had said and it was true for Abir could feel his reflection screaming at him, condemning him about how he failed to keep all his promises. The remorseful breakup was playing with a constant reel in his mind.

"Mujhe kyu apni khushiyaan tukdo mein milti hai?" He had questioned then. Did he even deserve the pieces? He questioned himself now. Ironical isn't it, there was this one girl who loved him unconditionally but he pushed her away. She came back, collected all his broken pieces, glued them with her love and filled the gaps with bits of her broken heart so effortlessly that nobody saw her heart bleed from the holes that were left behind. Effortlessly? Was it really so facile or Mishti was just so good at stashing her sufferings that the pain camouflaged with her skin? Was Mishti really so full of love that forgiveness was a plain sailing or was it her fear and melancholy that stopped her from voicing her agony? Of course she was broken but is it already beyond repair? Even the mere likelihood brought chills down his spine.

She didn't even get the pieces in return of the wholesome happiness she gave him. She kept healing him while everybody forgot she was wounded too. How couldn't he see it?

No body, not even the brother he gave her up for, not his maasi who he believed loved him like her own son, could see the boy yearning for love behind his taut frame and contagious smile but she did. All the family members together couldn't provide him the solace that this drained fragile soul Mishti could. She kept radiating their lives to an extent that she got empty. Out of all the emotions that he has ever felt, the guilt he felt today has to be the heaviest.

"And you promise yourself you will never fall so hard again, until you meet someone who makes your fall feel like flying."

"Khamoshi bhi bohot Kuch kehti hai, bas Sunna Chahiye."

His own words kept pealing his ears while he kept regretting his ignorance. How couldn't he see her pain? With Mishti around he knew he could never fall,he depended on her, forgetting that she depended on him too. Every out of the blue vow to protect him forever was a token of troth he felt, every random confession of love was just an act of adulation he thought but how couldn't he see the fear laced in her words. How couldn't he see that in her attempt to shower him with love, she was actually reassuring herself that she is not abandoned...yet. Why did he have to be so weak? Why did he have to be so impulsive? He cursed himself.

"Tum Mera pyaar ho, Mera pride ho, Mera asmaan ho Abir aur asmaan kisike aage Nahi jhukta."

She loved him so fiercely that she couldn't see him bow down in front of anybody, even for the truth that could eventually cause her destruction. For him, she would go to the end of the world and she did, she was hanging at the edge of her world with a thin tenuous thread which was fraying, slowly giving away and she was just expecting a hand to reach out for at the breaking point. While he asked her to strip off her self respect, something that fueled her existence.