कहते हैं, "ख़ुदा ने इस जहाँ में सभी के लिए

किसी ना किसी को है बनाया हर किसी के लिए"

तेरा मिलना है उस रब का इशारा

मानो मुझको बनाया तेरे जैसे ही किसी के लिए

कुछ तो है तुझसे राब्ता

कुछ तो है तुझसे राब्ता

कैसे हम जानें? हमें क्या पता

कुछ तो है तुझसे राब्ता

The bathroom door finally opened, after what had seemed to Tara like an unreasonable length of time, and her eyes lifted instinctively at the quiet turn of the handle.

Ekansh stepped out wearing a simple grey T-shirt, the formality of his wedding attire discarded along with the layers of silk and embroidery that had made him seem even more distant throughout the evening. The change should have made him look ordinary, perhaps even more approachable, but somehow it did the opposite. Without the structured sherwani concealing the breadth of his shoulders and the quiet strength of his frame, there was something disarmingly effortless about him. His hair, no longer carefully arranged as it had been earlier, had fallen into a slightly tousled mess, a few dark strands resting carelessly across his forehead as though he had run his fingers through them without giving much thought to the result.

Tara's gaze remained on him for a moment longer than it should have before she caught herself and straightened slightly against the couch.

She had been waiting for him.

Not impatiently, and certainly not with any particular expectation, but with the quiet, uncertain courage she had been gathering ever since they had entered the room. For the first time that evening, there was no one else around them—no relatives moving in and out, no teasing voices, no rituals demanding their attention, no endless stream of instructions and conversations that left them with barely a moment to acknowledge each other. It had seemed like the first real opportunity they would have to speak, to exchange something more than the formal words circumstances had required of them. Perhaps an introduction, even. Something small and ordinary that might make this strange new life they had been placed into feel a little less unfamiliar.

But Ekansh did not spare her even a glance.

He crossed the room with the same composed indifference he seemed to carry everywhere, went directly to the bed, and began removing the flowers scattered across the sheets. One by one, he gathered them away from the place where he intended to lie, his movements unhurried and entirely self-contained, as though Tara's presence on the couch had not registered in the slightest. When the mattress was clear enough to his satisfaction, he lowered himself onto it, turned onto his side, and settled there without a word.

For several seconds, Tara simply remained where she was.

Her fingers, which had been resting loosely together in her lap, gradually tightened around one another. The room had not changed; the lamps still cast their soft golden glow over the walls, the flowers still released their faint fragrance into the air, and somewhere beneath it lingered the delicate scent of her own perfume. Everything about the room seemed prepared for the beginning of something intimate, something tender enough to belong only to two people who had just stepped into marriage together.

And yet the warmth she had imagined—not expected, exactly, but quietly imagined—seemed to have disappeared before it had ever had the chance to exist.

A faint glassiness gathered over her eyes.

She had not expected affection from him. She was not foolish enough to believe that a wedding ceremony could transform two strangers into a husband and wife who suddenly knew how to speak to one another, nor had she been sitting there waiting for some perfect conversation to unfold between them. She would have been satisfied with something far simpler—a question, perhaps, or even a polite acknowledgment that she was there. She had spent all this time waiting for him, rehearsing words she still wasn't sure she would have the courage to say, and he had walked into the room without appearing to notice her at all.

The realization carried a peculiar sting precisely because it was so small.

At least he could have spoken to her.

Tara swallowed, carefully pressing down the little knot that had formed in her throat before it could become visible on her face. She rose from the couch and gathered the edge of her lehenga in one hand, lifting the heavy fabric just enough to keep it from catching beneath her feet. The delicate layers whispered softly against the floor as she began making her way toward the bathroom, her movements deliberately quiet, almost as though she were trying not to disturb him.

It was only then that something in Ekansh's stillness seemed to alter.

He did not turn around. He did not say anything. Yet the silence around him no longer felt quite as vacant as it had moments ago; there was a subtle shift to it, the indistinct sense of someone becoming conscious of movement without necessarily acknowledging it. Tara noticed it despite herself and paused for the briefest moment, her fingers tightening around the fabric gathered in her hand.

She could not tell whether he was awake or merely resting, and whatever the answer might have been, she had no intention of asking.

Lowering her gaze, she continued toward the bathroom.

The faint chiming of her anklets followed her through the room, delicate against the otherwise profound quiet. As she passed the bed, she kept her eyes fixed ahead, refusing to let them wander toward him, though the awareness of his presence had become strangely difficult to escape now that she was close enough to feel the weight of it.

There were only a handful of steps between them.

For reasons she could not quite explain, it felt like an immeasurable distance.

The morning light filtered through the sheer curtains in pale, unhurried streams, gradually making its way across the room until a soft patch of sunlight settled over my closed eyes and coaxed me reluctantly out of sleep. I turned my face away with a small, sleepy frown, pulling the edge of the blanket a little higher before finally opening my eyes. For a few seconds, I remained suspended somewhere between sleep and waking, staring blankly at the unfamiliar ceiling while the remnants of last night's dreams dissolved into the quiet of the room. Then, slowly, the unfamiliarity of everything around me returned, and with it came the sudden recollection of where I was.

My eyes drifted towards the bed.

It was empty.

The sight brought back the memory of the previous night with a clarity I hadn't quite been prepared for. I had slept on the sofa, mostly because I hadn't wanted to take the space beside him after he had made no indication that he intended to share it with me. At the time, I had convinced myself that it was simply the sensible thing to do. There had been no reason for me to make the situation more awkward than it already was, and the sofa had been perfectly comfortable once I had pulled the soft throw over myself and settled into its cushions.

Except, in the honesty of morning, another possibility occurred to me.

Perhaps he had been just as uncertain as I had been.

I had spent so much of that evening sitting there, quietly waiting for him to come out of the bathroom, gathering and regathering the courage to say something while secretly hoping that he would be the one to begin. He would ask me something. He would say something about the this, or the house, or simply acknowledge that the two of us were now expected to share a life that neither of us had had the opportunity to understand yet. I had wanted him to make that first step because I hadn't known how to make it myself.

But I hadn't gone to him either.

I had simply sat there and waited, as though he were somehow supposed to know that I was waiting for him.

So how could I be certain that his silence had meant indifference?

The thought brought with it the smallest flicker of hope, so fragile that I almost didn't dare to examine it. He hadn't known what to say either. Or he had been uncomfortable with the unfamiliarity of the situation in exactly the same way I had been, and his silence had been less a dismissal than an inability to find the right words.

It was a comforting possibility.

Unfortunately, it came with an equally inconvenient question.

Even if he had been uncomfortable, he could have atleast tried.

The little hope that had begun to form quietly diminished beneath the weight of that thought. I pressed my lips together and shook my head, refusing to construct an entire explanation around a man I barely knew. It was too soon to decide what his silence meant, and certainly far too soon to turn one awkward night into evidence of anything larger.

I pushed myself up from the sofa, smoothing the creases from my clothes before gathering my loose hair and twisting it into a simple knot at the back of my head. As I passed the mirror, my own reflection caught my attention, and for a fleeting moment the memories of last night returned in fragments—the quiet room, the flowers scattered across the bed, the hesitation that had kept me rooted to the sofa, and those few uncertain moments when I had wondered whether he might turn around and speak to me.

A faint smile touched my lips before I could stop it.

Maybe we had both simply been waiting for the other to begin.

I couldn't decide whether the thought was comforting because it made me feel less alone in my awkwardness, or embarrassing because it meant I had spent half the night feeling disappointed over something I had never had the courage to ask for in the first place. Either way, by the time I turned away from the mirror, I found myself carrying a small, carefully guarded hope that Maybe today would be different.

Today, we would actually speak.

.

.

.

By the time I had dressed, that fragile optimism had been replaced by a more immediate problem.

I stood before the mirror, adjusting the pallu over my chest for what must have been the fifth time, trying to make the fabric sit exactly where it was supposed to. The red saree was beautiful, undoubtedly so, but between its weight, the jewellery, the bangles, and everything else my mother had insisted I wear on my first day in my new home, I felt as though I had been dressed for some grand occasion rather than an ordinary morning.

I smoothed the fabric near my waist and stared at my reflection for a moment.

What was I supposed to do now?

I couldn't exactly remain upstairs all morning. Neither could I simply wander downstairs without having the slightest idea where I was going. I had never been inside this palace before, and its enormous corridors and rooms seemed to multiply every time I thought I had finally understood its layout. Going downstairs and wandering about like a lost puppy hardly seemed like the dignified thing for a newly married daughter-in-law to do.

But remaining in the room wasn't helping either.

What would everyone think if I appeared downstairs so late on my very first morning? Would they assume I was lazy? Careless? That I had already become too comfortable with the privileges of the house without learning the responsibilities that came with them? I had spent so many years being careful about how I was perceived that even the smallest things had a way of turning into questions in my head.

A soft sigh escaped me as I reached for my earrings.

It was better to go downstairs.

Besides, I was already getting terribly bored up here, and if I stayed any longer, I was fairly certain I would eventually start counting the flowers on the bed simply to convince myself that I was doing something productive.

With one final glance at my reflection, I adjusted my pallu properly, slipped my earrings into place, and headed towards the door.

The palace seemed strangely different in the morning.

Maybe it was because the previous day had been so crowded with rituals, relatives, laughter, music, and unfamiliar faces that I had hardly had the opportunity to notice anything beyond what was immediately in front of me. Now, without the constant movement of people, the house seemed to have settled into a quieter rhythm of its own.

As I reached the bottom of the staircase, I slowed, my gaze travelling along the long corridor that opened before me. Polished marble caught the morning sunlight spilling through the tall windows, reflecting it in muted pools across the floor, while the distant sounds of servants beginning their morning duties drifted faintly from somewhere deeper within the palace.

It was beautiful.

There was no denying that.

Under different circumstances, I might have stopped there simply to admire it, to take in the old-world grandeur of a place that seemed to carry its history in every archway and carved pillar. But admiration was of very little use when I had absolutely no idea where any of those corridors led.

I took a few uncertain steps forward before stopping again.

I should simply go back upstairs.

I was still debating the idea when a familiar figure appeared farther down the corridor.

Maa Sa.

The relief that moved through me at the sight of her was almost embarrassingly immediate. At least she was someone I knew well enough to approach without feeling as though I might accidentally break some unspoken rule of the household.

I began walking towards her before I had even properly decided to.

She noticed me approaching and smiled, her attention shifting briefly towards the staff members standing beside her. With a small gesture of her hand, she dismissed them, and once they had moved away, she turned her full attention towards me.

"Tara."

"Good morning," I greeted her softly.

Her eyes moved past me almost instinctively, as though she expected another person to appear behind my shoulder.

"Aap akele kyun aayi niche?" she asked, her gaze returning to me. "Kunwar Sa kahaan hain?"

I hesitated.

The question caught me more off guard than it should have. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that I was supposed to come downstairs with him.

"Vo... Aunty..." I began, already searching for some explanation that would not make me sound completely clueless.

She gently interrupted me, her expression softening with a warmth that immediately made the correction feel less like one and more like an invitation.

"Aunty nahi, ab Maa Sa boliye humein... ya jo aap apni maa ko bulati hain."

The title felt strange on my tongue, not because it was difficult to say, but because saying it made the change in my life feel a little more tangible than I was ready for. I lowered my gaze for a moment before looking back at her with a small, tentative smile.

"Ji... Maa Sa."

Something in her expression brightened, as though she had been waiting to hear me say it.

Unfortunately, the warmth of the moment lasted only a few seconds before her attention returned to the question I had left unanswered.

"Kunwar Sa kahaan hain?"