Those Angel Eyes

By Aayush Gupta

Those angel eyes probes the eternal question...... Who wins between Love and friendship? A beautiful and emotional journey spanning more than ten years, told, through the eyes of Dr. Samarth. It’s something that everyone can identify with; it’s something that everyone has experienced at one point in their life.
The Love, heartbreak and finally the Hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aayush Gupta
• Release date: Apr 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458039569

Aayush Gupta

I am a doctor, currently doing my post graduation in the field of dermatology, love writing. Mostly poetry, some prose and some short stories. Am currently writing a version 2 of this novel. Any suggestions/ criticism would be of the utmost value

Book preview

To the real life characters in the novel. You

know who you are.

To Mitali, Akanksha, Shayana and Nimisha without whom I wouldn’t havegot past writing the first page. For their continuous support and motivation.

To myself for actually doing this.

Those Angel Eyes

By Aayush Gupta

Copyright 2011 Aayush Gupta

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PROLOGUE

19TH November 2002 6:30 PM - Dehradun

What if I keep looking for you in every other girl, Avi? What if no one else is able to take your place I asked.

Someone will Sam, Someone surely will. She replied and finally let go of my hand. She kissed me on the cheek and wiped a drop of tear while walking away.

My eyes followed her till she was no longer in sight. Hoping, that she would turn back just once, to give me that final glimpse, to give me that final chance. My eyes followed her till the end, till our love was all but a figment of my memory.

Everything had been so sudden that I hadn’t been able to come to terms with it, I couldn’t let her just walk away, from me, from our future. How could something, as beautiful as love, as good as us, be turned into dust in a matter of days?

I kept hoping that this would all turn out to be dream; that it would all turn out to be a huge prank. But she didn’t look back and I didn’t wake up, it was really happening and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Ironically, it was a beautiful November evening, the sun had just set beyond the horizon and the sky was a deep shade of orange. A cool breeze was blowing and the moon had started showing its face.

But, my heart felt like it would stop beating at any moment. I felt like crying till the tears dried up. I felt like crying till I had nothing left. Life had lost its meaning, suddenly. Life which had been perfect till only a few weeks ago seemed at best a dream.

It was weird, it felt weird. It still does because the day she left me, because the day she walked away, was the day I actually fell in love with her

Chapter 1

14TH March 2010 – New Delhi

It’s almost been a decade but thinking about that incident, thinking about Avi still makes me sad, still brings tears to my eyes. The memory of her last touch, of her last kiss is still so fresh, is still so raw, that it makes my heart shrivel up in agony. Why did I let her go, is the question I ask myself every day, even today.

I am Samarth, Dr. Samarth now but Sam for my friends, 6ft 2 with a lean body, brown eyes and a really soothing smile. I wouldn’t call myself handsome; but I don’t look too bad as well. Not many people take notice when I walk into a room, but when I start speaking, the world stops to listen and that’s the best thing about me. No one can ignore me when I talk.

I completed my D.M. in Endocrinology from Australia a few months back. I chose Australia because getting admission in India was next to impossible, plus Australia totally rocked. The hospitals, the technology in use there was years ahead of India and I really learnt a lot of things that wouldn’t have been possible here. But now that I was back, it was time for me to settle down and put that experience to good use.

I belong to an affluent family from New Delhi, Pitampura to be exact. My Dad is a businessman and my Mom, a housewife. We own a couple of textile mills in Panipat. Nothing manufactured by us is ever sold in India. Everything gets exported – to the states, to Europe and a little bit to the east. The past few years took quite a toll on Dads business. First, the Rupee gained so much to the dollar, the margins squeezed every day and then, just what we needed, the credit crunch, the recession left us, well almost broke, just able to survive, we were able to make even. It was one of the most testing times for the family, but we had come through it – stronger, and closer.

Now there aren’t many Endocrinologists in India. So me being back and having scored a lucrative job at The Apollo Group of hospitals was definitely good news for everybody. Dad had started smiling and the Hypertension he had developed was showing signs of going down. Mom had started baking cakes again, and the worry lines on her foreheads had started to disappear. With our lives back in order, it was time for me to get married. Any more time wasted and I would be entering the third decade of my life, which is definitely not a good age for arranged marriages.

It had to be an arranged marriage because I had just not been able to fall in love since Avi. It’s not like I had given up. It’s not like I had stopped trying. I tried every day but Avi had turned out to be wrong, No one had been able to step into her shoes.

Or I just hadn’t been able to find the right one, someone who could be all that Avi had been and more, perhaps I was expecting too much, perhaps the reason that Avi had given me had just made me fall in love with her even more.

I had started liking girls who were either already in a relationship, or too old for me. The regular available girls had just stopped interesting me anymore. Maybe somewhere I knew I could not move on. Maybe subconsciously, I didn’t want to move on. Maybe in every other girl I was looking for her, or maybe I was interested in these Hard to get girls because it gave me an excuse, to satisfy myself, to satisfy the world that there was more to my life than Avi, that I had at least been trying to get her out of my mind.

Bottom-line–There I was, writing a matrimonial advertisement, describing the person I was going to spend the better half of my life with. Trust me; putting into words what you want in her is exquisitely difficult. I remember it took me more than half a day to jot down the qualities I could live with.

Finally it read –

Wanted – A Tall, Beautiful, Well-spoken Hindu girl preferably a doctor, for a Good looking, Tall male, who has done his D.M. in Endocrinology

I knew adding the D.M. bit would work wonders, and it kind of did.

The advertisement got published in all the leading newspapers the next Sunday. And subsequently the responses started arriving. I started looking at the proposals, the ones which came my way after getting filtered through my parents. Mom always knew the girl I would not like, though she wasn’t sure on who I would like. Even I wasn’t sure about that.

As this was happening I was getting settled down in the country. Medicine there and medicine here were entirely different. In Australia I would see ten patients in a day and still feel at a loss for time. They needed an explanation for everything, for every procedure, for every medication. But here there were hundreds in a day, with no appointments, and no money. It was terrorizing at first, but slowly I got the hang of it. I took my time in India one day at a time, and soon my roots were back in my country. One big advantage of being in India was that you were almost free from the worry of lawsuits. Patients were not as knowledgeable and you didn’t have to explain each and every thing to them. Out here being a doctor was like being God and that feeling of being slightly above the rest was one of the big reasons I had become a doctor.

Things were going as expected on the marriage front; no bio- data had caught my eye as yet. The human mind can never stop hoping, and despite almost no chance, actually there being no chance at all, I kept hoping that Avi’s name would be in one of the envelopes that I received in the mail each day. I kept hoping that Avi was waiting for me, for this advertisement.

As expected there was no Avi, No one like her, no one even came close, I didn’t want anyone to come close, didn’t want anyone to take her spot. I had developed this mental block, so I started rejecting everyone by finding errors in the smallest of things.

Initially my parents left me on my own, figuring that I would come around soon, that I would eventually like someone, but when I didn’t even show signs of selecting someone, they started to worry and finally I was asked, rather ordered to at least meet one. That’s when I decided to give it a try, how bad could it be. I could reject her after I met her, at least it would make my parents happy.

So out of the lot, I chose the one that stood out the most. The first thing that struck me about was her height. She was really tall, attractive and was a doctor as well. Retrospectively, I don’t know now why I had rejected her. There was nothing wrong in her profile that I could have highlighted to my parents. There was nothing wrong in her profile that I could have highlighted to myself.

So despite not wanting to go, I pushed myself to go, to meet just that one girl, to give myself that one last chance. Her name was Mitali.

Chapter 2

13TH September, 1999 – Dehradun

I clearly remember the first time my eyes rested on her. It was the day before my Birthday and I had come to college for the first time to complete the various admission formalities. The college’s campus had