by Atul Todi
Abhay had no answer; he had never thought about it. But, deep inside he knew the answer to that question. He told Khushi: "because she was the only one who called me Bugsy."
CHAPTER 12: THE PHONE CALL
Next morning Khushi was not in her room. Her suitcase was missing; no one had seen her.
Panicking, Abhay did not know where to look. They searched the whole plantation, around the lake and the nearby areas. They even went and checked with the bus depot and the railway station that was 10 kilometers away.
Khushi was nowhere, and both Abhay and Anna were worried. Where could a little girl disappear in that wilderness? Where could she have gone in the middle of the night?
Abhay had himself put her to bed. Before going to sleep, she had given him a hug and told him to follow his heart. She was a little quiet, but she said nothing about leaving.
With the sun setting and a jungle all around, it was not safe for Khushi to stay out at night. The local police were informed and asked to look for her. Doing whatever was possible, they all waited for her to return or contact them.
At around 9 pm at night, while Abhay sat with Anna, a couple of local plantation helper and a police officer, his phone rang. Hoping that it was Khushi, he hurriedly picked-up:
"Hi! Sorry for bothering you, but, can I talk to Khushi, please. She is not picking up my phone call, and I was a little worried. Is she around? Can you please call her?"
Abhay felt silent; words froze in his mouth. He could have recognized that voice even if the whole world was screaming at the top of their voice. It was impossible; it was really her. Khushi was her daughter.
"Hello, why aren't you saying anything. Is Khushi ok? Please call her. She is with you, right? She had called me from this number a few days back. Please call her…”
Abhay could not force a word out of his mouth. Life was playing a strange game.
“Say something please..."
There was complete silence, only a nervous breathing sound of a worried mother.
Abhay could not say anything. With tears rolling down his eyes, he wanted to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth. He wanted to ask her how she had been; he wanted to tell her how much he had missed her. He had been waiting for years to hear that voice once again.
He had waited for that phone call for years, but it came at the worst possible time. Finally, with a muffled voice, he said, "she is fine Tia."
The phone slipped out of his hand.
Shaken up by the turn of events, he stumbled as he rushed to take out his gun. He had to go out and look for Khushi. Tia would not forgive him if anything happened to Khushi.
The police officer tried to stop him, but he wrestled his way out.
Going into the dense jungle at night, driving his jeep all by himself, he knew he had to find Khushi. He could not let anything happen to her.
The team of policemen followed him.
Along with the police, they searched everywhere tirelessly for forty-eight hours straight. With photocopies of her picture, they went and asked local people if they had seen her.
There were no signs of her; she was gone.
While Abhay continued looking for Khushi, tracking the phone number, Tia took a flight and came to India with Rajiv, her fiancé. She could not believe what Khushi had done. She had been lying to her the whole time. She had been in India the whole time looking for her father.
It was the toughest 48 hours for Abhay and Tia. Their minds were overwhelmed with emotions.
Reaching Cumbum Valley, as fast as she could, she banged on the door. She was furious. She could hardly control her relentless anger.
Abhay opened the door with a worried look on his face. He had never imagined he would see her again, at least not in a situation like that. His mind was screaming with uncontrolled emotions.
She had not aged one bit, but she looked a lot more serious than the girl he remembered. Years of stress and hard work were clearly evident by the dark circles around her eyes and strands of grey hair.
Tia had not slept since the time she called Abhay; her eyes were swollen, but there was resentment on her face. She was fuming with anger.
Grabbing his collar and tears flowing from her eyes, she screamed at him: "Abhay where is Khushi, I want my daughter back.”
She repeated herself, but Abhay stood there like a frozen statue. Her screaming turned to pleading, “I want my daughter back Abhay. You can't take her from me, she is all I have. Please give me my daughter back."
Beating on his chest, she yelled at him. Abhay stood there helpless.
Tia broke down and fell on the floor; she was inconsolable.
Khushi had suddenly disappeared, and there were no signs of her. There were no reports of a missing girl anywhere. It had been more than 2 days.
Anna stood in the corner, shocked. She had no clue what was going on there. She never heard about Tia and what relationship she had with Abhay.
Abhay tried to console Tia and tell her that he would find Khushi, no matter where she was. She pushed him away and cried on Rajiv's shoulder; she wanted nothing to do with Abhay. She just wanted her daughter back.
Tia hated Abhay, and it was evident. She wanted to let out years of pent-up frustration, but all she did was cry. She wanted to know where her daughter was.
While Abhay was ecstatic to see Tia after ages, with Khushi missing, he did not get a chance to realise that she was really there. Tia was right in front of him and did not know how to react. It all happened too quickly.
The only thing he cared about at that moment was to make sure Khushi was ok.
Later that evening, while everyone tried to find ways to search for Khushi, there was another knock on the door. Jolly was standing outside the house holding Khushi’s hand. She looked miserable and did not want to talk to anyone. All she wanted was to go back home.
Taking Khushi in her arm, hugging her with tears rolling down both their faces, Tia told her, "Khushi how could you do this to me, you lied to me. I would have died if something happened to you."
"I am so sorry mom, please forgive me. I just had to do this. I had to find the truth. Can we please go back home now? I don’t want to be here."
Kissing her all over her face, she said, "Yes we are leaving right now, but you are so grounded, you are not going anywhere ever again. And don't you ever lie to me ever. Promise me Khushi."
"I promise mom, I won't. I am sorry."
Holding Khushi’s hand, Tia rushed outside the house and sat in the car with Rajiv. She did not want to talk to Abhay or hear his side of the story. It was evident that nothing he would have said could heal the years of pain she was hiding.
Tia left in the middle of the night and did not look back at Abhay. She did not want to wait there for a minute.
Abhay felt like a culprit who had broken her heart. After all those years, she had still not forgiven him.
She just wanted to get away from him. The wounds of her past had healed, and she could not bear to live through the pain again. He too had no plans of meeting her, at least not like that.
Watching them leave, Abhay wanted to stop them and tell Tia how much he loved her and had missed her every single day. He wanted to ask her how she had been, but he just could not. She had moved on in life and he had no right to stop her.
He just had to respect her decision; it was only fair to let them go. So he stood there emotionless.
As the car drove by, Khushi looked back at Abhay. With no expression on her face, her eyes were fixed on him. Abhay wanted to run after the car and give her a hug. She had made a little space for herself inside his heart in the little time she had been around.
Standing by the gate, Abhay watched the car light slowly disappear in the darkness of the night. There was silence everywhere.
With her gone, he felt hollow again. The emptiness inside him felt like gravity sucking out his soul and taking him towards complete darkness. All those years of running from his past, suddenly felt pointless.
Once Khushi left with Tia, Anna consoled Abhay. She knew that there was some painful history attached with what had happened there in the last twenty-four hours. Finally, once Abhay looked a little more in control of himself, she helped him to go back inside the house.
Later that night Anna asked him who Tia was. She wanted to know what was going on in Abhay’s head. For them to go ahead with the relationship, it was important for him to be honest with her and trust her.
He told her the whole story; he revealed that he was Bugsy, the tragic romance writer and his own tragic love story with Tia. He told her about his failed startup and his wanting to commit suicide. He recounted the circumstances that made him become a winemaker.
Anna was shocked to hear his story, but was not sure how to respond.
Jolly had known who Khushi was the whole time. He was the one who had been helping her with her plan the whole time. He waited till later that night, when he was alone with Abhay to finally reveal to him the part of the story he knew.
He sat with Abhay and told him everything.
He was sorry for having hidden the true identity of Khushi from Abhay, but he had no other option; he had promised her he would not tell Abhay anything, until the time was right.
After Abhay left the US, Jolly had been in touch with Tia. She did not want to get married, but with Abhay gone she was left with no option. Her parents forced her to get married, but that marriage never happened.
A very tragic incident took place before the marriage date.
Few days before her marriage, there was a major car accident that killed Tia’s brother and his wife. Tia too was in the car and had to be hospitalized for a month.
Tia’s brother left behind his little daughter, Khushi, who was just a few months old back then. After recuperating from the accident, Tia put her foot down and said no to the marriage. She adopted Khushi.
Her heart was still hurting, and she was still very much in love with Abhay. She and Jolly looked for him everywhere, but he was gone. There were no clues and nowhere to look for him. In the end, giving up on her search, Tia decided to dedicate her life to raising Khushi.
She did not have the strength to fall in love with anyone again and had stayed single all her life.
Abhay was in shock; he could not believe that Tia never got married. He felt miserable for having made her suffer all those years and not reaching out to her. He could have fixed everything if he had just known.
Jolly told him that after a few years he moved to London to become a designer and lost touch with Tia. Having given up on looking for Abhay, she focused on her career and stayed single. Her parents reluctantly gave up and accepted her decision.
Tia never told Khushi who her father was; Khushi was under the impression that Abhay might just be the one. She wanted to get to the bottom of the story before her mother got married to Rajiv.
Khushi did not know that Tia never got married, and she was Tia's brother's daughter. Jolly decided not to tell her anything; he could not break the little girl's heart. He was just hopeful that the little girl’s prayers would get answered and they would find Abhay.
Jolly had continued to look for Abhay after Tia's marriage got cancelled, but he had never heard from him or about him. Even Abhay's family told him that they too were looking for him, but they did not know about his whereabouts. He had lost all hope, so when Khushi told him that she had some hint about Abhay's whereabouts, he could hardly wait to hear about it.
He flew down to San Francisco to meet her.
Khushi told him that Tia had decided to marry Rajiv, a heart surgeon based in the US. He ran multiple hospitals in California and had known Tia for years. He had proposed to Tia many times and a few months back, she reluctantly agreed to get married for the sake of Khushi.
Khushi was not too fond of Rajiv. She wanted to find her real father, the one she knew her mother still loved.
Khushi wanted her mother to be happy and from whatever little she knew about love, she was sure that her mother did not love Rajiv. For some reason, she believed that her father was out there somewhere, and he was the only one who could love her mother. Yet, there wasn't much she could do, not until that one night.
During her mother's engagement, Sophie had come down. She had been in touch with Tia throughout and had been invited for the occasion. Drunk and a little emotional during the after-party of the engagement, sitting alone with Khushi, Sophie blurted out something that got her curious.
Sophie told Khushi about her college days and how her mother was in love with Abhay, a guy who broke her mother's heart and went back to India. She blamed Abhay for Tia's never falling in love again.
Khushi had never heard anything about Abhay before. Tia had buried her past life deep in her heart. She did not want her daughter to ever find out about him.
Curious to know more about Abhay and Tia's love story, and what happened between them, Khushi hacked into her mother's Facebook account.
Her social online profile had been dormant. Surprisingly Tia had not checked her Facebook account for ages; even her profile picture was one from college days.
While Facebook had evolved and changed over the years, Tia's profile information was intact. There were photo albums from back in college and threads of messages from all her friends. Amongst all those photos and messages, Khushi found the clue she was looking for.
After going over all her mother’s photo albums, filled with pictures of Abhay and Tia, Khushi was convinced that they both were deeply in love. They looked happy and alive together. She had never seen her mother smile like she did in those pictures.
Khushi was intrigued by Abhay and made it her mission to find him.
There was not much information about Abhay on Google. His Facebook profile, just like Tia's, had not been active for years. He had deactivated his account, but his information was still there in Facebook's database.
As if they both had gone dormant on the social network, there were no news posts, messages or updates from either of them right around the same time. It looked a little peculiar and Khushi was sure something tragic happened that involved both of them.
The last message from Abhay said:
"You know I love you, and I would love you forever. But for now, I need to go."
To find out more, she started reading all the messages shared between them. Reading them one at a time, she tried to decipher the relationship her mother had with Abhay.
Starting from the beginning, she read it all. Right from when they first became friends, got close to each other, got intimate and the time when Abhay left for India to start his venture. There was always a happy element in their messages, as if they knew each other very well.
They were both dorky like two teenagers in love. Sometimes talking in riddles, sometimes sharing their deep feelings, they seemed connected at a higher level.
The messages after Abhay left for India got a lot more emotional and intimate. It was like he had just discovered how much he missed Tia and treasured every moment they shared. He promised her that once his startup was successful, he would come back to her. They made plans to move in together, get a house away from the city; they both wanted to go traveling and explore the world.
Tia and Abhay even had put together a bucket-list.
The last few messages between them made it clear that they were indeed in love and wanted to get back together. Abhay's insecurity was growing, and he was getting nervous about losing Tia. Tia, on the other hand, was getting impatient with the endless waiting. She wanted him back, but he seemed like he was perpetually stuck in India.
It was not clear from the messages what happened between them in the end. The messages got mean and Abhay started to act weird, often leaving Tia in pain.
Neither of them ever talked about getting married or having a baby. Khushi was not really sure if Abhay was her father, but she wanted to know more. She wanted to find out why they stopped talking abruptly. She needed to know why Abhay left and if he eve
r came back to meet Tia.
After reading through the messages for the second time, towards the end of the messages, something in those Facebook conversations made Khushi light up like a bulb. She found the clue she was looking for.
In some of the messages, Tia referred to Abhay as Bugsy. That name sounded very familiar to Khushi. She had heard the name before.
Khushi realised that her mother, who hated reading novels, was very fond of reading books by only one writer and his name happened to be Bugsy. While Tia never read any fiction novels, she never missed any of Bugsy's books. She would hide those books from Khushi and cried every time she read them.