*originals*
'But they will kill me,' said Suri to his wife.
'I don't care if they do,' she lied. Just like he had been lying all these days. He told her he had found a job - in a way he had.
But it was not long before Sarla aunty from the neighbourhood basti had come shouting to her one evening, 'Malti! Malti! Your husband is a goon. He is working for Yunee Khan, the local don. Has been, I'd say. For five months!' She had said it with such sadistic pleasure, Malti just couldn't digest it. As if this wasn't enough to give her a headache, she unflinchingly added, 'I have also heard that he is now Khan's special man. Khan will not sacrifice him for anything.' As her voice reverberated in the scanty room of the basti and the congested lobes of her ear, Malti made a firm resolve. Suri would have to stop doing this.
That night, that very night she confronted her husband and asked him to leave the job, or whatever it was he was doing. She had loved him with all her heart and had eloped home to marry him several months back. She knew him inside-out and it was so clear that Suri himself hated what he was doing. The pressure of running a new-found family, however, ruled his choices and that must have lead him to give in to whatever came his way.
'But they will kill me,' said Suri to his wife.
'I don't care if they do,' she lied. It was so hard to say this. Her own dialogue gave her jitters when she thought about it. That night was a sleepless night; the next morning would be dreadful.
'Sir, I want to quit, I cannot continue,' he said, head bent, standing opposite his apparent master, Yunee Khan.
'You are making a mistake, Suri,' Khan's gruff voice commented. He spoke in a tone which sounded more like a father speaking to his innocent son.
'I am bound to, sir.' Suri coherently saw what was coming. He knew it already. Khan looked up, his deep black eyes piercing into his own. And then he spoke again.
'So what would your last wish be?'
Even as a chill ran up Suri's spine, he said it without a lapse, 'I want to die in my wife's arms, sir.' He had this answer prepared, he had said it over an over in his mind all morning till it became a cinch. While a section of the thug crowd that surrounded them gasped, a few others sniggered. Suri could not care less, not in the last few breaths of his.
Malti was brought in. She came running up the stairs to the terrace. The same terrace where her husband stood and mindlessly heard praises for his hooliganism, all day; and thought about her and her well-being, all day. Malti was not aware of what was going to happen. She just rushed forward as her eyes caught the sight of her husband's back, with open arms.
While the familiar sound of his wife's anklets in swift motion hit his ears, Suri turned back with a jolt and opened his arms the next instant. His strong body took a backward jerk as Malti's chest almost bumped into his. Both set of arms locked instantly and both pair of eyes immediately shut in passion.
What Malti saw when she opened her eyes shocked her. Yunee Khan, with his back to a grandiose chair, rather sofa, had his arm straight, the hand of which held a magnificent GLOCK pistol pointed right at the nape of her husband. As she saw his finger moving in slow motion, without another thought, she jerked the entity in her arms around. Still in her gyrate motion, she felt a sharp bullet penetrate the back of her head which caused her to fall forward, further into the arms of her beloved.
Khan's eyes popped out of their sockets as he got up off his chair, his left arm pushing the arm of the chair down. Suri's closed eyes smiled at him over his wife's living corpse. Khan aimed in the middle of his forehead and sent him falling to the ground on his back.
Suri's lips curved upwards even as his back hit the ground beneath hard and his wife fell over him, still curled up in his arms, her arms around him. His lips still smiled, his senses, all, smiled. Had he opened his eyes, they would have smiled for sure. But never once did he open his eyes - the last thing they had seen while living was his wife and that's how he wanted it to be.
With whatever voice he could muster off his dying throat, he whispered into his wife's ears, 'I told you I was destined to die in your arms.' As their bodies steadily stopped the struggled breathing motion, her closed eyes twitched and her lips managed to smile, too.
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