The Unventured Passions

The Price of Love 🖤

🖤 150th Chapter Blast🖤

The white smoke from the yagna bedi twirled heavenward as if it was taking the soul of the earth home, burning everything that's non-pious, impure. It made Bondita cough out her fear a little, her face was veiled, forming a thick red cast over her alert vigilant eyes.

"Water Jhinuk Maa?" A warm motherly voice asked her with a sweet gentleness, and Bondita nodded her head a little in negation, unaware of the danger lurking around.
She was seated at the wedding alter, and beside her was Satyakirth, dressed as a groom.
How would Satya look as a groom! Bondita panic-smiled, but only for a moment, as fumes of apprehension took over her senses once again.

Would Satya not be identified if he takes the groom's place?
A sudden thought re-occured to her, but again, the words of assurance by PushpoMala rang in her ears.
'The Chatterjees have a ritual of covering up the groom's face till the Sindoor Dan!'

That's a solace...
A lot of people in the eastern part of the land apparently still follows these cross cultural rituals, or that's what she was being told. And having little knowledge to defy this fact, Bondita had innocently believed in it.

The smoke was soaring higher, and Bondita coughed again.
A plethora of random thoughts clouded her mind, scaring her mostly, but yet her eyes were at the festoon with tiny red flags.
The relentless thorough chanting of the Vedic mantras made her sick to the core, a little nauseous may be, but it was a battle she was fighting, and battlefields weren't meant to be pleasant.

Time crawled like an agony-strained old soul, unwilling to pass on, and as the pandit poured another ounce of ghee in the pyre, Bondita eyes widened at the sight of the festoon flying loose, swaying gently to touch the ground.

Hurray!!
Her heart cried out, and pearls of happiness formed in the corner of her eyes.

"Satya... Satya the flags, it's done...." She leaned a little to her right and hushed the words, hoping to get a response from him, but instead, she felt him moving away from her.

"Satya... Now, on the count of three... You know what to do." Bondita hushed again, and slowly, very slowly she let her hand crawl to the groom's foot as she pinched him gently.

"Why are you fidgeting so much girl? Sit quietly."
Came a gruff hoarse voice, a bit slurry, and a sudden burst of foul alcoholic stench hit Bondita's nostrils making her gag.

"Satya?" Her voice quivered once more, as a sudden chill of terror ran down her spine, forming beads of sweet on her forehead even in that pleasant spring evening.

"Ohhfff...!"
The groom growled in displeasure and moved aside a bit, and it was then that Bondita's senses came in terms of the truth of her present reality.

It wasn't Satyakirth sitting beside her, and she was half way through the wedding ritual with a man who wasn't her husband!

A sharp pang of fear had engulfed Bondita's entire being... the hanging lanterns, the Vedic chantings, the laughter, the hazy glitters around... suddenly all felt like a Deja Vu... A long lost nightmare, and it was when Bondita realised how scared she was, for those old fears came running through her head. She heard the taunting laughter of years past, when she was a little girl, and the heart-wrenching wails of her mother!
Her mother... Her dear old mother, and her faded smile.
Bondita felt a dry lump forming at her throat, gradually, threatening to choke her any minute, and somehow she felt the monsters from her childhood nightmare coming back, making her shiver in fear. She was scared! And, she knew she was as it was just a matter of time that those bad memories would cut loose their chains and invade her confidence, eroding the person she had built since those dark days...