PEHLI MOHABBAT

# 46

【 F O R T Y - S I X 】

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Seven Years Later

The old painting leaned against the wall, dusty and unloved. Heer ran a finger along the gold framing, her pink nail polish almost purple in the half-light. In the grime that must have taken years to form there was now a streak of gold. She held it up. With the light that struggled to make it through the grime on the window the colours subdued, but she could already tell it was a country scene. The hills rolled green, interwoven with the golds of autumn.

Her eyes fell on the date, written at the bottom- 7-6-1997. She read the name -Meera. It was her mother's painting. Heer had never seen her mother, with paints, it was only during summer vacations that she would take her daughter's watercolors and complete the then ten year old's projects. But otherwise, her paintbrushes lay amidst the layers of dust, in the storeroom, now beside her daughter's.

Holding the old painting, securely under her arm, and taking the paint brushes, Heer walked out of the room, locked it and before her mother could see, ran down to her room. Placing it on her desk, she opened a drawer, taking out a cloth, covered in dry paints. She had just began dusting off the dirt from the frame, when the door burst open and her sister walked in.

" Finally I'll be living alone, all by my own!" She heard Tara, slumping back on the bed.

"Finally I'll get to sleep in this bed, all alone." Heer said, resuming back to her work. Since her younger sister was going to live in Delhi untill the completion of her MBA course, Tara would no longer have to follow her elder sister's orders while Heer would be free from the job of listening to her younger sister's rants.

"Only for 2 years. Plus I'll be visiting during holidays.. isliye am not taking all my clothes, so don't you dare take the whole cupboard." Tara said. She watched Heer sitting on her desk. The desk which was perfect in its imperfections, made more wonderful by the passage of time and the age in the wooden swirls. There was a piece of folded card beneath one of the legs to keep it sturdy and stable, just a fragment of one of the paper cutouts, Heer had kept, away from their mother's reach.

All in all it was a place, her sister could entice her dreams to dance, to take the stage and never care for a bow or to hear the applause of an audience. It was a place to let the shy-creative diva twist and land, always gaining confidence, always growing stronger. When their father, had enrolled Heer's name for the web designing course, Tara was the second most happiest person, only after their mother.

From drawing those digital designs for herself, to creating them for her clients, Tara had seen Heer grow from an amateur web designer to now an established digital art creator.

"God knows best, Isn't that exactly what you did when I had to stay in hostel? Mera samaan storeroom mein rakhwa diya thha." Heer said, she moved to the glass that covered the painting. "It's time to face karma kidoo."

She took a flat brush, moving it swiftly over the plain glass. She saw her reflection, her long hair swishing over her face. The pink streak had disappeared, replaced by her natural blacks. The bangs, she had cut by herself, now covered her brows, touching her long eyelashes. Her cheeks had grown more chubby. She lifted her neck to hide the skin that was on the verge of becoming double chin.

She made a mental note to remove the jar of biscuits that sat on her desk. Custard creams and bourbons. With a gentle bite of her inner lip Heer recalled splitting them in half, eating the dry side first, savouring the half with the cream filling. She missed naan khatai.