Chapter 9 - The path of love

IVAN HAS ALWAYS KEPT HIS LIFE unveiling but when Ashna started knowing parts of him nobody knew, he did not feel an itch to forbade like he always had. Even when those were not so simple things.

He realised somehow he had started to accept everything as long as it meant Ashna.

Even his parents knew so little about him. So little about what he wanted, and if they knew, they only hid it.

Behaved like it was not something that needed attention or appreciation or any sort of support. For studies and studies were all they had ever considered important.

They saw him like every twenty year old boy who needed to get into a good college and study to secure a job. And that was that only.

But Ashna saw him like he was. His true self.

She never judged him. She did not even flinch when he told her about how he did not want to study, how he had very different dreams and did not pester him to express those dreams he struggled with.

He thought she should be a little surprised at least for she was the topper of their class, the best at studies. For academics and studies were what she had always loved and still does. It keeps her sane the same way the gym does for Ivan.

But no matter how it felt on her skin, Ivan was the gush of winds Ashna unknowingly learnt to embrace.

Ivan loved to learn. Just that he had no interest in higher academic studies and getting jobs. He wanted to create, he loved to create: beautiful edits, damned poetries, altra youtube videos and information yielding blogs.

But there is a thing with hardwork. It is not valued in society until it yields success.

Ivan was just not there. He was close to it with an involved audience, social media marketing made him some money too but still he was not there yet. He knew he had a long way to go and he was more than willing to.

If let free, he knew he would go far but he was being kept back. He was being left alone in his dreams, and in his pursuits.

Earlier he had his friends help him, but now they were dispersed, busy and taken by life to draw circles of their own. They supported him and yet he felt lone as soon as he came home.

Not that he was not loved in the family. He was. But he had dreams of which they were not ready supporters. And this brought differences.

It was as if one goes long and long but in a spiral, life draws back to that one point. From the beginning, it all needs to be started. Ivan was there. He had started and went a long way, but he was drawn back. To point one.

This sucked all life out of him. New things, new places, adventures and creativity was the core of him. Even when he stayed silent most of the time, his mind painted the most beautiful pictures ever. He was full of art. Skills he had acquired and talent he seemed to be born with.

The only thing that kept him sane now was the gym. It was as if a portal to release all his aggression towards life's traitorous plans, to forget all the sadness that comes with trying to live any differently, which scarred his heart. To let out all which horrified his mind. With intense workouts, boxing and running, he felt every thought that pained his soul to go away.

Strength trainings, endurance, cardio, all of this became a way for him to escape the horrors of his mind and the patched darkness of his life.

Even if it was momentarily, it elated him. Or at the least, it kept him sane.

He was the most intriguing person ever. And his perfectly carved bodily features supported the statement. Ivan thought he could never get out of the spiral. He could never pursue his dreams again, never start, never have a life for himself.

Until Ashna.

She understood him. Asked him to pursue what he had started long ago, to try again. Try to convince his parents and when he told of the numerous times he had iterated this and how every time, it only drove him another step away from them, Ashna knew better than to question.

Because she knew how much Ivanya was desperate to get the same love, the same caresses back from her parents, she understood Ivan. And, Ashna could not ask Ivan to rebel, even when her mind constantly pestered her to ask him to.

She knew, family was important.

Even when she had started to hate her own for some time now, she knew it still mattered the most to her.

She asked Ivan to practice nonetheless. She convinced him to try when he was starting to lose all the trust. He felt sceptical about himself.

The words of his parents ran in his mind, the taunts of how so useless and ungrateful and non-hard working he was. How he was wasting his time, how he did not care about his life. How worried and stressed he made them feel.

All those words that were now dig in his mind by the force of multiple times they have been said. All those unsupportive, doubtful and teary-weary words thrown at him drove him crazy sometimes.

He was starting to feel as if he was really no good. That is what blatant, disregarding and utter negative criticism coming from one's own loved ones does.

But it also strikes a fire to prove. To come out as the best. And every fire needs to be ignited.

He just needed somebody to believe in him because his own trust had started wavering.

Ashna did exactly that, without being asked. She believed in his talents. She believed in him. She was in awe when he showed her his previous works. She was honest, not driven by relations to guide talent. And she knew to appreciate art, to embrace creativity.

Ivan, even when the most silent and self preserved guy as he came out to be, had a lot to share with the world. And each of it, Ashna knew people would love.

She always was supportive of his endeavours and encouraged him to restart. Now when Ivan sat on his table, in the little of his dark room, his laptop screen glaring back at him, he was only thinking of Ashna.

It has been a few months since they started talking. He still remembers the first time she had come to meet him.

He still gets nervous around her sometimes but is more open and talkative now that he has met her a number of times. Yet at times his heart races like the first time in a way like it beats for her.

They started as friends, and have become best friends. And Ivan knew better than to ruin any of it. So he kept his feelings of admiration and love that surfaced sometimes more than they always did, closed in his heart. Even when every time his eyes met hers, he wanted to capture her lips between his own.

He wonders if she ever felt the tension of amour ignited between them, and he feared if she ever heard the way his heart paced in her nearness, or if she ever noticed the blush on his cheeks and ears in the warm nearness of her body to his own.

But Ashna was unaware of his feelings. She, despite all her life being possessed of pain, felt the most at peace whenever she talked to Ivan. Even when they were those little chats, or long hour phone calls, scooty rides and little meets, or Netflix shows and other gossip, it all felt good. Ashna missed her sister less now that she had found a best friend in Ivan.

But all of this, she did in hiding. All of it, she had to keep it a secret from her parents. She kept telling herself he was a friend, and her best friend like Rishika was.

She kept lying to herself.

With Ivan, the complicated things started to seem simple. She found it was not that difficult to feel happy again. To laugh, bicker again and smile a full curved smile like she always had was not that tough. It was all so easy with him.

With Ivan, she was herself. The bold, hard working, confident, fun loving and honest girl like she was in school. Not the defeated and lost woman which the past few years of family turmoil had turned her.

She felt free with Ivan, but at home she had curfew and boundations. Her parents did not want Ashna to go on the same path Ivanya did. They were afraid that something like that would happen again. They felt shamed in society.

Love, as pure as a feeling it is described to be, is shamed in the middle class and orthodox people's society in the world.

Love is celebrated and worshipped in this same place it is disgusted and detested in. Maybe, it is the choice to love which is hated.

Ashna's parents had gone through it once. They had heard taunts, and blatant insults coming from relatives and far friends. Even if they did not say it to their face, they knew there were criticisms. They wanted no more such incidents.

Ivanya, they had married to Shekhar, out of an obligation and show off to the society even when they were against it.

For nobody in the extended family and relation supported a love marriage in the family. But Ivanya, the soft frail flower like Ivanya, was so adamant about it. All because they had no other choice left. Ivanya was pregnant.

She was a compromise they survived. And they desperately did not want Ashna to trace the same path of love.

Halfway of which she had already walked.