To Where It All Began ✔

15. His First Love, Her Death, My Fate, And Our Destiny...

4:00 PM, Snehalaya Orphanage, Lonavala

Amna stood up from her chair, taking deep breaths and clasping her one palm onto the other trying to grasp the truth about herself, and muttered, "I am the one... I am the one...", again and again. Jaya shook her, "What happened, why are you behaving like this? Amna?"

She pushed her chair backward, "I have to go and see her, I have to go..." and started walking out of the room in quick succession.

Shreekant shouted, "Amna wait!, Where are you going?". He budged Jaya aside saying, "I have to go behind her, I will tell you everything later" and started rushing behind her.

"Where are you going? Stop!" He finally got hold of her arm and pulled her towards him, "Calm yourself, what are you doing? So you are her sister, so what?"

"Leave me... I have to go see her, leave me, I have to go", she tried to pull herself out of his hold.

"Look at me, where do you want to go? I will take you, tell me"

"Take me to the graveyard where Anna was buried, I want to go there. Now!", she groaned clutching the sleeve of the jacket he was wearing.

He let her go of his arms and held her hand taking her towards the car. They both started driving towards Mumbai. Throughout the journey, she sat like a statue with no expressions, no life, no feeling as if she was already dead, while Shreekant tried to comprehend and understand the cruel play of fate, "So, Anna's sister was all the time with me... Amna is the one Anna was searching for." 

6:25 PM, 1st April, St. Agnes Burial Ground

As they reached, Amna ran out of the car opening the door lock while Shreekant still sat in the car taking a heavy sigh and recalling his own painful memories.

The sky was leaden and was so low that the world felt small and close, the wind was swirling and gusting, and the boughs swayed and creaked in the strengthening gust, surrendering their leaves without a fight, altogether playing a soulful song of painful reconciliation.

She was running here and there in the dark to find the last mortal remains of her lost relation. The creepiness of the night didn't bother her neither her own fears were strangling her anymore. Her eyes reached a far corner and she had finally found her but she had gone too far from her touch, too far to talk to her, too far into the heavens before she could meet her.

She had died in front of her own eyes, those eyes which couldn't recognize her, those eyes which will never see her again. She met her, but only in her last moments in that pitiful condition drenched in blood with death hoarding over to take her soul away.

She winded her arms around her knees as she settled down on the ground near the grave, caressing the name imprinted there remembering the day she came in the ER on a stretcher and she couldn't save her, especially the moment she just casually announced the time of her death as 11:24 PM. She groaned loudly, "Why?"

Above her bowed head, the impervious carpet of vast grey clouds had spread its wings. The thunder seemed to snap the air as if the heavens were ready to split apart and cry seeing her immense agony.

A drop of rain-streaked upon her pale skin and then to her quivering lips where it struggled to drip down onto the ground. Soon, it began sprinkling. Tiny droplets of water started drenching her. The water droplets began growing larger and frequent with each passing second. 

On seeing the rain, Shreekant took the umbrella in the back seat of the car and rushed near the entrance of the graveyard. He could see Amna from a far distance but couldn't dare to go near that grave. He was scared, so scared that he couldn't watch her getting buried that day, and again today he had to decide whether to or not cross that faint line of fear that was holding him back. He took a deep breath and finally decided to go behind her to that place.