Lekha (Completed)

Lekha 35

I was lost in my thoughts and didn't notice when we reached the estate. Rudra helped me down in silence. Though we had made a pact to be friends the kiss had made the things awkward between us again. I moved towards the entrance without looking back.

"Lekha "called Rudra.

I halted but didn't turn around, still unable to look at him.

Seeing that I wasn't going to turn around he said "I will be taking your riding lessons from now onward".

I clenched my fists on the side feeling annoyed that even after the agreement he didn't trust me. I simply nodded my head and seeing that he had nothing more to say I walked away.

Suraj and Vasundhara were sitting in the veranda chatting with maasa and Lajo.

"O here is Lekha jiji. How was your ride with bhaisa?" she grinned naughtily.

I looked towards Vasundhara who smiled widely, while Suraj looked curious. I could see that he had accepted the news of my betrothal.

"It was fine" I said not wanting to go into details.

"How is your ankle dear?"asked maasa.

"It's good and not paining much" I said.

"Where did you go jiji?" asked Lajo.

"We had gone till the grove" said Rudra coming from behind.

"I was supposed to have taken her" pouted Vasundhara.

I tried to give some kind of excuse but Rudra beat me to it.

"We had not entered the grove, just came back from the periphery of the grove" he said.

"Oh! That's good, now I can show you the place and we can have lunch out there like when we were kids" smile Vasundhara.

"Are you going to be teaching jiji to ride bhaisa?"It seemed Lajo was not able to contain her curiosity any longer. She would have made a good press reporter in our time I thought.

"Let them rest a bit Lajo. Go bring them each a glass of buttermilk" interrupted maasa seeing that we were not in a mood to go into the nitty-gritty of the matter.

"Come sit beside me Lekha you must not put too much strain your ankle on the first day itself" said maasa scooting over to make space for me on the takhat (a low seating bed like furniture) where she sat.

Rudra sat on a chair across me.

"Tomorrow onwards I will take over the riding lessons of Lekha "said Rudra looking at Suraj.

I instantly looked over at him too as I felt bad, even if he didn't know the real intent behind Rudra's change of plan. To my relief Suraj didn't seem fazed by it but just grinned and nodded at him. Rudra in fact looked a bit taken aback by his casual attitude which only I could make out as I knew the inner workings of his mind.

"I had some free time so thought that I could give her the lessons... I mean Suraj already has so much to do " he tried to clarify awkwardly.

"She will be your bindani (wife) soon so you can do whatever you want. We don't want explanations now ... Do we? " said maasa her eyes twinkling with humor, making both of us blush.

"No it's nothing like that... I just wanted Suraj to..." Rudra tried to explain further without noticing that he was further falling in his own trap.