Crushed and Created- Tangled series (Overprotective famous brothers)

Date gone wild

“Alisha I didn’…” I shut him off and continued on my own rant.

“Yeah, your life sucks a lot more than mine. You have parents, ones that don’t hate you. You have a stable career, a son and wife living with you. You’ll be moving out with them, leaving me alone with my two brothers. But why do I care, I’m so used to people leaving by now.”

The last sentence must have hit him in the gut, because all I could see was him frozen. When he was frozen, it only meant that he was heartbroken. I got down on the pavement and walked around aimlessly. We were at Kalla Ghoda, literally translated into Black Horse. This was one of the oldest and finest areas of Mumbai, with the High Court, the Police Headquarters and the biggest railway station. The specialty was all the buildings were of the Victorian era, and were a mix of western and eastern culture during the British rule on India. The buildings around me felt unusually gloomy and depressing, just like my mood.

“You are right.” Arbaaz was suddenly besides me, but I didn’t look up.

“Your life is worse than mine is. And you do a better job handling it.”

“I don’t. I feel like I’m going mad all the time. A part of me doesn’t trust anyone anymore, not even my reflection.”

“I promise you- it gets better.” He hugged me and I melted down. He wasn’t the one to hug for the heck of it, and hugging in the middle of a busy road meant even more with him.

“And remember one thing, I’m just moving out. I’m not leaving you, I’d never make that mistake.”

“I know, that just slipped. I was just pissed, and scared. If my birth parents can leave me, so can my adoptive brother, right?” I chocked at my own words. The lump in my throat hadn’t gotten any better and I thought about my parents again. If I could, I’d yell at the top of my voice for them to reveal their identity.

“If they did, they are the biggest morons in the universe. And your brothers will never, ever, in a million years, ditch you.” His phone rang before I could reply and he just replied with ‘Ok, sure.’ But just that few moments gave me the chance to get my head straight and forget about the little drama session we had. And I actually looked around and registered our surroundings.

“You know, everyone in India recognizes you know, post your record breaking movie. And they’re gawking.” I changed the topic, highly uncomfortable by every pedestrian staring and starting to form a huge circle around us. In NYC, you could walk without being hassled by most people. In Mumbai most people didn’t have the time or temperament to see who was walking next to them. But even if one spots you by mistake, they’d cause a chaos. It was like the culture was affected by actors in this country.

“Alright, let’s go.” He caught my hand and we walked a little distance, again disappearing in the crowd.

“So, you wanna have some fun?” he asked, pointing at the gate way of India.

“Of course.” We went over to the tourist spot and I was the east interested in the monument itself. I mean I had seen it gazillions of times, everytime a crowd around it.

“Bubbles.” I saw them rising into the air and went to its origin. I saw an old man selling the bubble mix for something like Y(Rupees) 50, which was just a little over $1. I handed him a Y 100 and he gave me two vials of bubble mix and a bubble blower. It was easy- dip the blower into the mix, and blow lightly to form bubbles.

“Here.” I handed him his mix and started to blow bubbles. He hesitated before trying, and failing epically.

“Uff, you manage a company, a NGO and produce movies but can’t make bubbles?” he chuckled and I shook my head. Then I showed him how to go about it and he finally learned how to make bubbles. Atleast he made one. Slowly, he started getting better and we turned into a bubble making and bursting machine.