A bend in the road - Vol 1

7. Back to you

It was raining again that night when she was standing on the corridor outside her room, under the roof, feeling the droplets of rain that now touching her toes. The roof didn’t cover the balcony entirely, which was good, because she stepped into the rain now, at first with just her hand extended, later letting herself been kissed by it thoroughly.

Strange it was, to hesitate going back to something that had always been her favourite. Then she smiled to herself, as much as Maan Sir had given a part of him, the confidence, and the bullish will to stand through everything that’s going wrong around her, he might also have had given his hesitation to embrace life.

She closed her eyes and wondered why had she, been thinking about nothing but him lately. But then, she knew the answer to that.

One morning, she stumbled into the store room to fetch something, and true to herself, she stayed back, interested about certain things around. The store room had the personal stuff of somebody; it was as if a part of somebody’s life was dumped here. There were a couple of basketballs, now without air lying down somewhere, there were trophies that caught dust, and which in turn had piqued her interest so much. When she went nearby, she had seen that there was one such trophy in there, standing tall, which stood out despite of it being veiled by a thin layer of dust now. She let her finger touch the nameplate, and wipe it and then saw the name.

Maan Singh Khurana.

The man that was an enigma, whose thoughts and actions had always been something beyond her, or so she had thought.

But now, as she had seen him dump something that must have once valued a great deal to him, all she had to do was to leave, and forget it. Only that she couldn’t. She might have been interfering in his personal affairs, maybe she had no business to stay in here for another second, but as she had laid her eyes on an old black and white picture that was hung against the wall, that caught dust, despite of all the common sense whispering in her ears not to, she picked it up and with the veil of her dress, wiped it delicately, with trembling hands.

The drizzling turned into a downpour and the humming in her brain stopped as she felt the fierceness of rain pouring onto her.

The smiling picture of Maan Sir had made her stomach lurch. There was something painfully beautiful about that picture that she didn’t have the heart to put it back in place.

She told herself that it was for the love of photography that she’s stealing the picture to herself, and she wanted to keep believing it.

She could picture Maan Sir smirk and that’s the maximum stretch of lips she had ever seen of his. But this, was somewhere between a smile and a laugh and she knew the photographer had captured a honest moment. He was looking at the camera with such unadulterated happiness, but what stood out was the look in his eyes, while looking at the camera lens. There was a shine in his eyes and the gaze communicated nothing but love, and that had set Geet uneasy. She had to tell herself it was directed at the photographer and not her.

To keep her inner voice mum, she pictured the photographer to be an attractive woman who could turn heads just by being there in the room, not a plane jane like her…

Yet, yet… she couldn’t wonder, a teeny weeny bit of hers that how it would be like to have look at that way by him… when she would feel the only person being present and the rest of the world faded…