thanks buddies, to all of u who read THE FIRST PART and praised it in spite of its incompleteness...before you go further and read this final part of it, would like to clarify 

THAT THIS STORY IS ALL ABOUT THAT...BEING HONEST...

I HAVE TRIED TO RAISE FEW QUESTION THROUGH IT, IT IS NOT MEANT FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES....

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As they sat in car, Aakash, trying in vain to resist his teasing advances, placed a quick kiss on Devika’s cheek before starting the engine. Though it aroused Devika’s pulse and her heart leapt, she looked at him as if a toddler with severe burns looks at someone trying to tend him.

Aakash was shaken but he suddenly felt he loved her more than before. She didn’t need saying anything as he wanted to cherish her. There was something in her eyes as if they are only meant to keep a promise but the look scared him at that time.

As both of them were engrossed in these thoughts, a sudden blast of horn behind made him turn on the engine and they soon drove off heading towards their favourite restaurant, both of them embracing a silence with heavy heart. Devika’s mind was running back, every time she had thought she had found a rainbow, she had committed a mistake. Had she been colour blind?? How could she have simply forgotten the greys and blacks of her life.

What were these grey and black hues in her life which Devika wanted to share with Aakash?? Before she could think straight, she found the car stopped and she slipped in his arms. It seemed like a return, being installed in those steady arms. Suddenly, everything seemed so right.

Sitting there in the dark, listening to the crickets chirping, she told him about her being raised by an NGO who rescued her two years back from a group of "sex workers". She was an orphan raised by a maternal uncle who died right after she finished school.

Devika was forced to walk into a dark world anticipating no acquittal. But at that time, sex work seemed to be a smarter option than dying being raped by the mean wolves of the streets. A sudden relief came in form of help from the women’s home and later she had found her way to earn a respectful earning.

Aakash wished to hold her up, high up in his arms for the whole world to see that women like her existed and that he really adored her more for her strength and zeal for life. He looked at the distant moon as if mourning to him to shine so brightly so that no dark corners remain in their minds. He simply uttered, “Oh stars!! Shine on my queen as the way you shine on a desert too and make her happy. Devika, do you think they will listen to me?”

Are you sure?? Devika asked Aakash as if for what seemed the hundredth time to him.

He kept his cool and patiently replied once more, "Yes, Devika. I love you. There is nothing more important to me than marrying you."

They soon tied the knot, both were anxious and edgy but they both were brimming over with love. Devika already cherishing her first taste of family, simply yielded to him in every way she could think of.  She always thought life is a bitch, but now everything was rosy. Aakash too, fully high on his self exaltation and Devika’s total submission, felt too strong and blessed all the time.

Days turned into weeks and a month soon turned into two, sixteen months into that bliss, and the first nail was driven into the coffin of this relationship!!

It was Friday evening, a particularly easy workday and as Aakash sat there at his workstation, staring at his machine, lost in his fancies to spend another lovely weekend with Devika, a friend dropped in with a cup of coffee. Mundane talks soon changed into married life talks and as casual references and insinuation to sex with lots of backslapping are acceptable amidst friends, as he was leaving, he threw a crafty wink at Aakash saying, your love life, needless to say, must be great.

Aakash felt the laughter dying on his lips. His friend, oblivious to the harm he had done, walked away but he sat thinking. What did he mean? Did he know about Devika’s past?? As he entered his home, his mind still in fury, he carried an irritation that day with him. He was pensive and moody and as Devika looked at him, she just let her passion withered in her mind.

Soon lovemaking was erratic, warm smiles of Devika, started getting violent reactions from Aakash and whenever he looked at her, his brain screamed and Devika looked at her world crumbling down.

Something was gravely wrong in her life now, she found him now even incapable of enacting an interest in the act. 

Aakash had been suffering from an enforced impotency. The man who had felt macho marrying a girl of her stature to boost his own flaccid sense of self but was unable to support it with his own virility!

That evening, Devika stood waiting for Aakash. Tears escaped her eyes without any control and she wiped them away surreptitiously before turning towards him with the sternest face she could muster. Aakash could read a thousand accusations in her expression and he exploded. He rushed towards her and slapped her.

The movement was so sudden that Devika reeled back. She slumped against the wall and heard confused mumbling of her lover, her husband, her nemesis!

“Your impotency is your own brain beating you. Your desire to be superior to mere a human being has been your enemy. You married me for the wrong reasons and the macho thing would have been to accept the truth, come out in the open, and tell the whole world about it.”

“I am sorry to leave you but I tried to keep my promise and I loved you the most candidly I could.” For you I was all pure and virgin !!!

Aakash sat there crushing his thumbs. His rage swallowed by the shame he felt. He still didn’t have the courage to apologize, to tell this woman that he did wrong. In her eyes, he could witness “for the first time” a woman trapped in a body who felt used and humiliated.

He simply sat with his head hanging on his chest, all his false conceit flowing away with his tears as the one woman who could have helped him get in touch with his male core walked out of his life forever.

Today I was more restless than usual while I was trying to catch my hard earned nap after a long hectic night shift. After turning in bed for more than an hour, when I did snooze off, didn’t realise until I was woken up the eerie ring of my cell which died before I could answer it. I looked at it, it was some unknown number. To my dismay it was already 7 PM, the time for me to get up, yet I switched it off and again covered myself with the sheet.

There was a cold chill in the air, something unusual at this time of year, when everyone else had been complaining of heat.

I finally stepped out of my bed to switch off the AC and felt as if something was in the wind, and the "something" would undoubtedly bear fruit. At first I was certain I was losing my mind due to lack of proper sleep, but when objects in the room began to shift, changing from place to place by an unseen hand, I knew I wasn't mad. 

It was really happening and someone--something was causing it. I could really see shadows come out of the corners of my room and there were smoky wisps of mist hanging in the air, only to vanish when I turned to view them head on…

What is actually happening to me?? I broke into cold sweat; a fear gripped my mind, a fear unexplainable, a fear not only of dying but loosing my eternal soul to the devil suffocated me. I struggled hard to move out of my bed, shouted my roommate’s name and whole time I felt a pain in my head, and this horrible fear..i prayed to God over and over and I could really see a devil’s face manifested in front of me.

I closed my eyes tightly, reopened them to find my roomie holding a cup of coffee for me, it was just 7:04 PM, and I was asleep only for 4 minutes. I asked her if she could hear me and she said yes, she was in fact scared of waking me up.

Over the cup of coffee, I told her about the dream I had, and soon we were talking about one of the weirdest happenings which occurred during the same month two years back.

Our cab had arrived before the scheduled time and since ours was the first pick up that day, we had to board it. As soon as we boarded it, I noticed the driver, same driver, but was looking cranky that day, or was he drunk.

I asked him for the roster to see the rest of the pick ups, a thing which I usually never do as the route and other things usually remain same. There were only two more pick ups to be done, a boy who lived near our apartment only but his pick up was cancelled. There was another name “yamini” scribbled in poor handwriting of the driver, she stayed somewhere in interiors of dwarka. Apparently her pick was added on at the last moment. I always hated such add-ons.

With noticeable frustration in my voice I asked the driver for her phone number to confirm her pick up and the location of her house. The driver was himself upset about this and said that he didn’t have the phone number and only address was given to him by someone in the transport. I was however calmed to know that he knew the place.

I was just surprised that why I haven’t heard of this girl before, I turned to my roommate to tell her but to find that she had already dozed off, her head already comfortably rested against the seat.

To distract my mind, I asked the driver to put on the radio and was soon found myself singing loudly even those songs which I hated most.

Anyways, after a tiring drive of 45 minutes we entered dwarka, my anxiety piling up and my roommate was now almost snoring unaware of anything. After another drive of 10 minutes, we soon entered a lane, it was a bumpy road leading to a dark trail outlined with many houses which looked rather uninhabited with very few windows lit up during that that time of the day. 

Our cab finally stopped near an old looking house, it looked depressing almost morbid as if most of the people who reside there were dead.

Even after honking for five minutes, when nobody came, I asked the driver to go and report at the house. From a distance in that darkness, I could figure out an old decent looking couple standing at the doorway, looking startled as if not expecting anyone at this point of time.

I heard the driver asking about the girl and nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the old man telling in a very upset voice that yamini was their daughter but she lost her life two years back in an accident while she was going to her office in the cab and today was in fact her birthday. I recalled hearing about this accident in the office.

In that darkness too, I could see the driver almost turning white out of fear looking scared out of his wits. In fact, I was also freaked out completely but kept my composure and just sat there as calmly as I could. He came back trembling out of fear, as if someone had just sucked his life out.

Before he could say anything, I told him that I have heard everything and someone from the transport who apparently knew this girl and was aware of her birthday must have just cracked a stupid joke on him. My mind is quite quick to stumble on the reasons which sound more realistic.

I asked him about the name of the person who added this pick up at the last moment, but he said that in hurry he forgot to ask his name. I simply handed over him my water bottle and asked him to take water.

Dismissing the whole incident as a prank, I asked him to take the cab to the company, looking apologetically and sadly towards yamini’s parents from a distance. The driver drove the cab like hell and obviously perturbed by that absurd silence which had descended in, my roomy woke up rubbing her eyes, asked me what happened, we are now more attuned to sleep amidst noisy surroundings. I decided to tell her nothing at that time and told her only when we reached the company. We tried to find out from the transport but no one knew about that call made, who would of course confess of doing such a thing.

We still joke around about this but today also when I remember that night, I have my hairs pick up and get the shoots of cold run down my spine. Was it just a prank done by someone or yamini really wanted to celebrate her birthday in the office??

It was Friday night like any other. I was caught up with the last of my weekend chores in the office which included preparing a large tricky report which I had to show to my manager on coming Monday. I quickly finished it, hurriedly calculating and setting scores of my team agents to the likeability of everyone. This time I was seemingly too easy-going with them.

Between all these calculations, I was finding my mind struck up somewhere else. I was in a kind of rush one feels, as if getting late for a date. I wasn’t very content with the report, still decided to save it and closed it down, planning to rectify the errors on Monday, if any. With mind, little calmed down due to that borrowed time, I was relieved for a while.

I left my workstation, scurried past one of my colleagues, he gave me a queer look. I tried hard to smile back at him, hoping he didn’t sight that limpness on my face. I came back fetching a large mug of black coffee, holding it close to my nose to capture the aroma of the coffee, to fill my nostrils with freshness, I had been hankering after, the whole night.

I placed the mug on my table with a loud thrust, with coffee nearly spilling out on the papers which were carelessly strewn everywhere on it. Ignoring the mess, I grabbed my chair and hurriedly opened the website, I had been spending most of my spare time these days. 

I logged in hurriedly to see all the messages I received that day, and there it was, HIS MESSAGE, lying among the heap of messages in my inbox.

With all the excitement and anticipation, I quickly opened it, with a sudden eagerness, as if destiny was about to announce its most awaited result. I looked around with stealing eyes and saw that colleague of mine asking me from a distance if everything was okay. I nodded with a sheepish smile. He had probably never seen me sitting so silent, with that painfully awkward impatience clinging to the screen as if it held the secrets to existence.

Well, it was just a customary message, sahring his discernment on daily matters of life. We had started writing to each other more often recently. I could envisage a smile beaming on my face. Suddenly, all the unease and culpability vanished away and I was soon immersed replying to it, forgetting all about that dreadful report.

I was completely lost in those dark reaches of internet, when I was suddenly woken up by a touch on my shoulder.  I turned around to see my SPECIAL FRIEND now almost leaning over my shoulder, looking at the screen with amazement. I suddenly realised, we had been spending great deal of time together these days. In addition to those breaks together, we shared the same cab and on the way, talked out our daily woes, discussing everything in hushed voice, among those jarring numbers playing on the FM.

He was visibly shocked to find me in that tranquil mood, in fact looked rather surprisingly disappointed. He was expecting to find me seated there sharing the same dishevelment which was all around me, with those papers still scattered everywhere, that empty mug of coffee, now lending a sickening, stale smell and that wide screen glaring almost over my head, giving me a more maniac look than ever before. 

Few minutes back, I had gone to him, howling about this report, taking toil on my mind and he vowed to help me out. In fact he was quite eager to leave his own work to come with me to my workstation.

Now, with a quizzical look on his face, he reluctantly asked me about the report. I simply shrugged my shoulders and with a chuckle in my voice, told him that I would see it on Monday. He even tried to remind me of the manager’s wrath in an annoying voice. but my mind was too net congested to answer.

Anyways, I had to scuttle the conversation and find a way to salvage his bruised ego, I looked deeply into his eyes, telling him that with him as my best buddy around, do I really need to be worried. 

Then something magical happened. I was watching him in bewilderment, did I see a bright light flashing in his eyes which died quickly too? I don’t know what was it exactly?

Anyways, I gulped hard and quickly buckled down for another turbulent voyage with this cab mate into triumph. On the way towards our cab, we were soon talking about the movie we were going to watch that evening with our other friends.

My mind still captured with that unknown admirer on net, I could really visualise a message popping out in front of me with those smiley-face words: “Would you like to go out with me?”

 “Isn’t it going to be lovely spending an evening with a guy like you?” I promptly uttered without wasting any other moment. With words moving clearly on the screen of my mind, I would never stutter. I knew now I had perfect answer to every question, and the perfect response to every flirtation.

My words of wit literally zoomed and my skilfull romantic hint perked him up. I knew that look well, when I saw his thousand-yard stare changing into his favourable grin. I was really wondering who says that virtual love is just a fluke, in fact you're turned into a connoisseur to click with whomever you meet.