If only Chapter 1

This is my next novel and I have been working on it for a long time now but havent written a lot so will keep posting it as and when I pen it down.



If only...Chapter 1

It was 2 am in the morning when the phone rang. Roshni was too sleepy to answer the call but she picked it up anyways mumbling a sleepy “Heeelllooo”,

“Hey, been long. I hope you know who this is?” said the voice at the other end. It was a guy and she knew that voice but she was too sleepy and irked to recollect.

“Moron! You call someone up in the middle of the night and you play guessing names? Are you out of your mind? Hang up!” saying so she slammed the phone down.

“But, listen Rosh...” the voice at the other end pleaded in vain.

Roshni was a nice person but when someone disturbed her while sleeping for no apparent reason she was a charging bull.

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“You knew this and you still made me call her? Dhruv, what were you trying to do?”
“Oops! My bad!” Dhruv chuckled.
“She will eventually figure it out, and you will be in soup”
“I shall take care of that when she finds out” Dhruv said.

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Roshni drank some water, turned down the ringer on the phone and slipped away into slumber land. She did not hear the phone ring the second time.

The next morning she left to work as usual. Roshni was an interior designer, following the footsteps of her father and she was now in charge of international operations. She had earned it. Her father had setup business a long time back and was now thoroughly established, even though she wanted to break away from the chain and start out on her own, she still felt that taking up her father’s business and promoting it on an international scale would be a tough challenge. She put her mind and soul into it and she was now slowly seeing some results. They were headquartered in Bangalore and Roshni stayed there for the time being, though she kept traveling internationally to meet with clients and for promoting business.

She was supposed to meet AD for lunch. Aditi Pradhan, popularly called AD and Roshni Shenoy went a long way back. They were buddies from fairy tale times.

“Rosh, did you get the invite email for the reunion?”

“What invite? What reunion? Don’t tell me that you and DJ are planning something cheesy and make a mess out of it”, Rosh queried in a concerned tone.

“Come on Rosh. Give the guy a break. Honestly,tell me if it wasn’t for DJ we would never be laughing so much. He is an adorable devil isn’t he?”

DJ was short for Dhruv Joshi who was also one among this crowd.Roshni nodded in approval.

“Alright, here’s the deal we were talking to our school and decided to have our ten year reunion of our tenth class after ten years, as planned” AD went on. Roshni was lost in thoughts. Just the mention of school brought back so many memories.

“He used to be so nice, what happened? We all used to have so much fun together. Why does it hurt now?” Roshni wondered.

“…and so we decided to have it on Christmas so that everyone would be able to make it. So now after listening to the long history…you better make it. I won’t take any excuses ok?” AD warned her.

“What? Oh on Christmas I might be busy. But let me see if I can work around my schedule. I can’t promise, but I will surely try” she smiled as they wrapped up lunch. She carried that omnipresent smile that was irresistible.

Roshni came back home and checked her messages. There were so many unheard messages and she decided it was high time to listen to them and erase them all. There was a message from her brother Suraj and some marketing calls and a blank call from Dhruv who just said…

”This is a blank call. Blank!” she laughed as she erased it. When she heard the next message she could not believe what she heard. It was the same voice from yesterday night. She knew who it was now. “Why did he call?” she wondered and did not listen to the message. “Of all the people in the world why did Vividh call now?” She replayed it.

to be continued...