"I just felt the peak of euphoria as my whole body moved with the tunes🪈🍀"
Like every day in the last month, Arsi is again standing at the door of Ahan's room with her school bag on her back.
She knocked.
"Again?"-Ahan turned round to face her. He had selected this time as usually between 6-8 pm his uncle is out gambling or drinking in a bar with his 'drinking friends'.
She smiled as she came in.
"How come a day doesn't go by when you don't face a problem in your studies? Tell me truly, all this is a facade right?"
She nodded smiling as she took her designated chair beside him. He had brought that chair from downstairs for her.
"I just like being with you!"-she said as she kept her bag on the table.
He sighed and closed the laptop on which he was working.
"I have work you know?"
"You have all day to do that! Can't you lend this poor girl just two hours of your day?"-she said in fake begging mode. She had never asked anyone for anything, not even to her own family...but she had always wondered how come she could easily ask for two of his daily hours so easily? Is it because he made her feel comfortable enough to ask?
"What is it this time?"
" Just some linear equations..."-she said taking her book and copy out.
As Ahan turned the pages, she asked-"What is the use of doing these?"
"These can make a blunt brain like yours sharp."
"But how will I know it is sharp enough?"
"By taking an MRI."
"What that?"
"Magnetic resonance imaging...it...kind of scans your brain and shows you what's inside."
"How can I do it?"
"By spending money."
"How do I-"
"You have to earn it."
"How-"
"By getting a good enough job."
"How-"
"By studying and getting good results and then passing interviews."
"How-"
"By focusing on this!"-he said taking his eyes off the answer he had just solved.-"Focus!"
"Hmm!"-she smiled and looked at the copy.
Ahan's mother stood near the door with a plate of bhajis(snacks). She couldn't help but smile after seeing her son talking normally after almost 2 years.
No...this won't do...she needs to bring this to an end...if Ahan's uncle somehow gets to know about this, he will make a scene again and like always, his brothers will take his side. They had always loved their brother, more than required as their mother had died while giving birth to him. She needs to talk with Arsi.
It was around 8 pm. Arsi came down the stairs with her bag. In the study room on one side,the older brother, Mahindra and Jasminder was there along with some more old people. Four more women were sitting in the main hall and five men, two with tabla, one with harmonium, one with flute and one with sitar.
Mahindra came out of the room.
"Are you all ready?"-he asked the woman, who appeared to be their head.-"You need to start in one hour."
"There's a bit of a problem...one of the dancers has fallen sick, so we are one person short."
"So what?"
"The formation won't look good..."
"Don't you have more dancers?"
"Most of them have regular customers to attend in the night, so..."
"This won't do...those old men are really picky about these things...they must think they are royal or something? They want tawaifs to attend to them...huh!"-he said these more to himself than the women.-"You! If I don't get this deal, I will cut off your head and throw it to the vultures..."
"But vultures are almost extinct..."-Arsi said.
Mahindra glared at her but in a moment his eyes blinked brightly... there it is...
"You...come down, come down!"
Arsi trembled in fear as she covered the rest of the stairs...she and her lips..uncontrollable knowledge is really dangerous...
She went near him and looked down.
"They taught you how to dance in the school, right?"
She nodded.
"Words!"
"A bit..."
"Okay...you!"-he pointed at the head dancer.-"Teach her within an hour!"
"If you make any mistakes...I won't go easy on you even if you are a would-be family member."-he said and went in.
"Okay."-she said even though she knew teaching a classical dance with beats from musical instruments would never be easy.
"Dance is not an art that can be learned in a hurry..."
"They have taught us some basics in the school...I don't know if that will help."
"Watch me and learn!"-she said as she signalled the men with instruments to start.
(One hour later)
"No need to be nervous...stand at that side...they mostly focus on the centre..."
They took their formation. Arsi stood as far away as she could from the viewers, wearing the dress the main dancer had given her. She had memorised as much as she could...
One of the old men signalled the starting.
Slow notes of sitar filled the room as the dancers one by one freed their arms and legs and let them follow the road the music led them to...sitar was followed by tabla...then flute and harmonium...one low its sound while another took the lead...while sometimes all of them lead together in a smooth flow...
Nothing to stop them, they are flowing like air in a rice field...and with the tunes, danced the dancers...
Ahan came out of his room hearing the music and clinking of metal...he leaned from upstairs and looked down... within the clinking of heavy metals in the dancer's ankle(gungur), he could hear the faint sound of a thin anklet that had came to disturb his loneliness every day for the last month...
His eyes followed everyone to stop at the girl at the far end...there she was...the infiltrator...he smiled as he watched her first trying to keep up with others...
But soon enough she matched the others and danced smoothly, moving her arms with the beats and also sometimes letting the beats move her body...though she missed some beats, no one noticed as they were more focused on the centre...but without her, the formation would have looked unstable indeed.
His eyes were fixed on the side dancer...the swan which was giving her whole heart and strength to keep up with her friends and the flow of the water...minutes passed without his knowledge as the resonance of the music filled the room along with the harmonious sound of gungur and he drowned in Arsi's dance, the dance of the mirror...
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Shattered Beauty
العاطفية"You destroyed me! Broke me into pieces! You made me the wreck I am...all of you! Now what more do you want?-she snarled as she remembered the monster she had just seen on the mirror. "Jump off the cliff! that is the last favour you can do to me!"-t...
