A bend in the road - Vol 1

Prologue

Geet was all but a normal girl, with a normal life, until one fine day, her world had changed, beyond repair.

When he had come into her life, through an arranged marriage fixation nevertheless, she had heard her friends, those young teenagers just like her telling her that she got her prince charming.

She had not wanted a prince charming. All she wanted was to study, and be independent.

She was not ready to get married yet. Not when she was in her first year of graduation.

But then, she had met him. Dev was his name.

He sat in the humble abode of her house, amidst the elders, answering them patiently.

Next to him, was a woman so beautiful that Geet felt she would pale in comparison. She introduced herself as Dev's older sister who is back from Canada to find a suitable match for him.

In the ten minutes she got to speak to Dev, she felt a strange sense of trust fill her. He had listened to her, paid attention to every word she spoke, made her comfortable, made her believe she had a choice in this entire ordeal.

"You do not want to marry" he said observing her silence.

She looked at him aghast. "Is it so obvious?" she asked him.

"Not for an onlooker, no" he smiled, making her wanting to trust him. "But for me, yes" he said gently.

"But I am not a monster. Treat me like a friend, won't you?"

Growing up in a small village like hers, she wasn't allowed to speak to boys her age, forget men like him.

Used to being shushed, and spoken down to, it was a breath of fresh air, when someone treated her like an adult.

By the time Dev was leaving, he told her that a marriage would never stop her from being what she wanted to become.

And that, he would be a good friend to her, before everything else.

And it warmed her heart.

When their families agreed on fixing up all alliance, this time, although Geet did felt nervous, it was no longer about Dev. She knew, she could grow to love this man. She already likes him anyway.

If marriage meant being with someone she would care, then maybe she could do this.

"We don't believe in an elaborate wedding. Let it just be a family affair" said Dev's sister. "And Dev has no other family but me". Upon asking if her husband would fly down, she had saddened. "He is a very busy man" she said, not wanting to talk about it.

The hurt in her eyes moved Geet's parents. They wondered what sort of monster could ignore a woman like this.

They had understood and although a little uneasy, had finished the wedding in the house.

Come morning, Geet dreamt of moving to Canada, the city where they would live together. Come morning, Dev and his sister were gone. Never to be found.

On inquiry, they realized the company Dev was supposed to work in Canada, was farce. So were their identities.

They realized that they were duped, and for dowry. The lands that were written off to Geet were sold to a contractor who hired a construction agency to build a mall right in the middle of their fields.

As the world fell apart, Geet had only thought of this as a nightmare. Because this could not happen. Dev told her that he loved her.

That was what he told her on their wedding night, when he made love to her.

It can't be a sham.

What they shared can't be a lie.

But it was, and she had to pay a price for not realizing it earlier.

She had time and again tried to find out where Dev was, sneaked out from her house so much that she was forcefully house arrested.

She was forced to marry another stranger before rumors spread out, but she had had enough.

She retaliated, and her cousin, who couldn't take that the family's honor was at stake, slapped her hard across her face, and had vowed to protect the honor of the family, and if it takes him to kill his sister, so be it, he had said.

Terrified, she wanted to sneak away from her home that day, and when she struggled with the gate in her backyard, she felt someone's presence behind her and saw her father who opened the gate for her and asked her to leave, before it would all be tied as a noose around her neck, and she would be pushed for doing something she won't be happy with.

She ran away from home that night, leaving behind the house that was decked up again for a marriage, not a hush hush one this time.

Her cousin's men followed her and when she thought she was just apart from the sword to touch her skin, she had felt the man she had met in the past week over her land custody, Maan Khurana tried saving her and in the process had his palm slashed with a deep cut.

She managed to get out of the nightmare somehow with the help of Maan. When she got into a train that night, cramped in general bogie, she had finally let the agony come out of her as tears, and muffled sobs as she realized what had her life come to.