Quick disclaimer:
- this chapter onwards, this story will take a significant change from the show's storyline.
- I am not going to make Noor a turning point of my story - apologies if you wanted that angle here. I just can't see in my mind, how a couple that wasn't ready for a baby and fell apart in the aftermath of it would be ready for another one in less than a year. Especially when they spent 8-9 months of that year apart or fighting. Grieving and healing is never a linear journey, it takes time.
- you will need to remember that the some parts of the chapter we are in Manik's head. Then other parts we are in Nandini's head. They are both talking about the exact same situations but how they saw it. There is no right or wrong there, or better or worse.
Thank you.
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“Mai Os ki boond hu, hai kaanch sa tuta tu,
Tujhse jab bhi mai gujru, hai thoda sa judta tu”
Nyonika Malhotra seethed in anger as she walked to her car, after a small one to one with Manik outside the concert venue. Nandini Murthy - the bane of her existence was with him.
How?
She shut her door and banged her hand on the steering wheel, frustrated. Everytime she felt like she was closer to winning, the game changed. And more often than not, it was always because of Nandini.
If this game between her and Manik was to be a chess board, Nandini was the queen piece.
Huffing, she leaned back in her seat. She was very confident that Manik and Nandini were faking it. She hadn't forgotten the note of anger and disdain in Manik's voice when she had first found him in that jungle in Kasol. Accidentally discovered by what seemed like a fan, a viral video had been the reason she had been finally able to trace him down - after he had ghosted the world.
And she had been elated to know Nandini and him had broken up. That anger in his voice that day, had added a sprint in her steps. She was so close to achieving what she had always wanted - to rule The Malhotra Industries solo.
But now, Nandini was back. And Nandini's presence translated to Manik's sanity - which was why she had been counting on her absence all this while.
She needed to do something - anything - these two love birds needed to be broken apart, and sure she might have failed a lot of times before, she wasn't going to fall short of trying, especially when she had a better chance at winning this time.
For before this, she had to try and break them apart, this time they were already broken up, she just needed to find their Achilles' heel and press on it.
And that?
She was the master mind of that.
------
Manik had just managed to finally lay down on the bed when his cell phone started to ring on the beside table. He rolled over and picked it up, only to be surprised to see Mukti's name flashing. The girl had been calling him off and on for the past six months, but between switching his phone off and hiding in the mountains, he hadn't been able to talk to her. More like didn't want to. Now that he was back, it was more or less inevitable and also, very rude to not answer.
Taking a deep breath, he picked it up, trying to sound enthusiastic with his “Hey”.
“Manik Malhotra, I swear to God, I am gonna kill you with my bare hands”, Mukti yelled so loud, Manik had to remove the phone from his ear to protect his hearing. He heard Zubin's voice in the background, asking her to calm down and to no one's surprise - it worked. Manik smiled softly to himself, Zubin had been really good for Mukti.
“I am sorry yaar, things have just been....hectic", Manik apologied after Mukti calmed down, his voice falling off towards the end. More often than not, after everything that had happened since they first met, he was protective of his relationship with Nandini, and he didn't really like sharing the details even if was his friends.
“I am sure it is”, Mukti snickered, catching on the lie, but didn't give a damn - she was done with Manik holing up wherever he was, "And I don't give a shit. I am coming to India very soon to see for myself how hectic it is", she continued sarcastically, before mellowing down, “Manik, you know you can talk to me, right? We are still friends. If you can hold me at my worst so can I”.
Manik inhaled sharply, "Everything is-” but was cut off by Mukti's stern voice.
“Don't dare say everything is okay. I will believe it when I see for myself and then talk to Nandini as soon as she takes my calls or meet me and sort out whatever mess it is, this time", Manik couldn't see her but he could tell she was rolling her eyes.
“It's not Nandini -”, he tried again, but Mukti was having none of it.
“Manik please, there is only one person in the world who affects you so much. You literally went off the radar for six months. I couldn't contact you any which way. And Nandini didn't take my calls either. I am not stupid, and I don't care if you don't want to share. You are my best friend and I am coming there. I was just giving you a heads up, not asking for permission.I will see you soon".
Manik watched the disconnected call for a few seconds before taking a deep breath, keeping it back on the table and rolling onto his side, closing his eyes.
Nandini was coming back to him tomorrow - his entire body was thrumming with equal parts excitement and nervousness. He would deal with Mukti later, right now all he wanted to concentrate on was Nandini's homecoming.
Manik opened his eyes, and his gaze wandered to the ring on his ring finger. If he was to give himself a moment of naked honesty, Manik knew in his heart that he hadn't let go of the resentment he had against Nandini - the buried hurt, the unanswered questions, the pain of being left behind, the sadness of her breaking her promise - their Humesha - none of it was forgotten or forgiven.
But he was willing to work around it, because he had accepted long back that his existence was incomplete without Nandini. All the pain with her was more welcome than the horrible emptiness without her.
And even more than that, he was craving that fire in her eyes that lit up every time he had managed to push her buttons in the last two days. Nandini Murthy was not only synonymous to his hope, or the sunshine to his darkness, she was also a flame of her own. The fire inside her burnt brighter than every roadblock that life threw her way, she fought with a confidence and determination that would put the bravest warriors to shame. Watching that fire douse inside her had been the hardest experience for him, and oh, he had plenty.
Truth be told, Nandini breaking his heart wasn't the only reason he had seeked refuge in the mountains. He refused to seek her out because he wasn't sure he could see her wither away more than he already had, and he didn't know how to help her. Every time he had fallen apart, Nandini knew what to do, how to hold him together. But him? His emotional quotient used to be almost zero before Nandini came, and she taught him how to understand his own emotions and deal with them in a more healthy way than how he used to. He grew up with her by his side, teaching him little nuisances about life and emotions and being ecstatic about his progress with himself. He had loved her in all the loud ways, and she had loved him in all the quiet ways.
He had tried to do it for her this time around, but it had backfired on him, in epic proportions, and it and gutted him. He wanted to do right by her, but he didn't know how anymore. That was majorly why he took a step back, giving her these months despite how much it tore him apart to exist without her close by.
She seemed to be doing better now, but again, what did he know about her right now? They hadn't approached the topic yet. They had met and argued and fought and found each other, but they hadn't addressed the huge elephant in the room between them.
The loss of their first baby.
The loss of them.
Tears welled up in his eyes as the memories hit him, hard. Their first baby, a tiny winy part of them, who didn't even get to see the world. The first and the last glimpse they had of their baby - it was the size of a sea glass. And before he or she could really grow and have a fully developed heart and small fingers and toes, he or she was gone.
Two and a half months, that was all they got with their baby.
Manik sat up abruptly, leaning back on the headboard. A sudden and intense need to hear Nandini's voice took over - it was almost as if he wanted to reassure himself she was okay because he wasn't feeling okay, at all. Losing their baby had broken his heart, and losing Nandini on the top of it was like his heart would stop beating beating any time now, as exaggerated as that sounded.
He picked his phone up and realized it was past 12 in the night. She might be already sleeping. Nandini slept early and woke up early, or she used to. He didn't really know now, but his need was stronger than his hesitation. So he dialed her number and waited for her to pick up.
“Manik?”, she didn't sound asleep.
He exhaled heavily, the little things they knew about each other apparently did not hold true anymore.
“Manik?”, she called out again, something akin to concern in her voice. But that couldn't be true, right?
“Y-yes”, he finally spoke, “I was just -”, his mind ran circles, what excuse could he give her when the truth was he needed to hear her voice, “Just making sure you wouldn't go back on your word tomorrow”.
He expected a bite response, that was quickly becoming staple to Nandini and to their conversations these days.
“I don't go back on my words Mr. Malhotra, you are confusing yourself with me”, there it was, that snarl and the anger that was becoming synonymous to Nandini.
“Rich coming from you, when you were the one to walk out on the one promise you made me repeatedly”, words tumbled out of him before he could stop himself. Maybe it was the memories he had been feeling heavily, maybe it was just his raw complaints he had simmered for months in. He couldn't really tell, he wasn't meaning to throw a taunt but he heard the catch in her breath on the other side. The pause she took before answering.
“You see it as me walking out on us, but there was no us for far earlier. We were lonely while being together. Hum saath hoke bhi saath nhi the, Manik”, her voice broke towards the end, making him hold on to the phone tighter.
“Nandini -”
“Good night Manik. I will be there tomorrow, don't worry”.
Manik couldn't really sleep for a long while after that. He didn't question her words, because he knew she spoke the truth. They were the loneliest they have ever been, while being together in those two months after the miscarriage, or at least he always thought he was.
He had felt the loneliness creeping up on him, while sitting with Nandini. She had stopped seeing him, and he had never felt more invisible. Nandini sat right beside him, and he would feel like he was sitting inside one of those dark closets he would hide in as a child because the world outside reeked of discomfort. Often he held a sobbing Nandini in his arms, trying to cajole her and help her move on, but she would eventually stiffen in his hold and he would feel her rejection burn under his skin.
She wasn't wrong, he was the loneliest he had ever felt with her in those two months.
But threw him out of the loop was knowing she had felt that way too.
How? Why? He couldn't wrap his head around it, he was there with her every moment possible after their doctor warned him about her deteriorating and fragile mental health.
But she felt as alone as he did, he could tell it from the way she had spoken those words. Somehow he hadn't seen it that way at all, he was still struggling to understand that part.
But a shadow of doubt had already made it's way to his brain. After months of not communicating at all, the bits and peices of communication now was beginning to shift his entire perspective about the situation.
Maybe you could love someone to death, and still not know them or understand them at the most significant moments.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamt of Nandini and their baby. And hoped that one day that dream would again become their reality.
------
Nandini signed on Rishabh's hostel forms, and stared at it for a while.
This was happening, he was going to his dream college after all, and she was going to live with Manik.
Again.
Last night's conversation, and the hurt in his voice hit her all over again. Amidst all the anger and push and pull conversations between them in the past two days, somehow she hadn't really seen the lingering hurt he carried, because of her actions.
Hadn't seen, or didn't want to? - her subconscious mocked her, making her shut her eyes and throw the pen away.
It was after Rishabh had packed his stuff, given her a hug, his excitement shining in his eyes and left the hotel that Nandini actually sat down and gave herself a moment to think about what she was just going to do.
Move in with Manik again, in the house they made their first home in?
Her breathing escalated as she forced herself to pack and clear the room. She was supposed to check out in an hour. But her thoughts kept jumbling, making it difficult for her.
Memories began running to and fro like the negatives of a camera roll - her life flashing right before her eyes, all over again.
She remembered the first time Manik had taken her to see that house. She was blindfolded, but Manik's excited energy had the butterflies in her stomach jumping and rolling.
And when he had finally pulled the blindfold off, Nandini remembered gasping in shock.
He had really meant it when he said they would make their own family, and this was a gigantic step forward.
She had loved the house, but she had felt so much more love for Manik, watching how well he knew her. The house had a huge garden - she was touched because he remembered how much nature calmed her and made her feel happy, and there was a huge pool for him, which she knew was going to anyway work in her favor a lot. She would get to ogle at her boyfriend to her heart's content.
Her eyes hadn't missed the large windows in every room, and how the house did not have that modern vibe, rather gave the old school feels.
She remembered his lips against the nape of her neck, while she stood by one of the said windows as he whispered close to the shell of her ear, "I know you miss Mangalore and familiarity of small town houses, this was just a small try to bridge that gap”.
Her eyes had teared up, her throat clogged and she had ended up turning in his arms and kissing the life out of him.
And then she had felt her heart swell up with more joy than she knew to handle when he had dragged her to the backyard, a wide, ear to ear grin on his face with a blotch of pink or two creeping up his cheeks while they stood outside the Glass house.
The one that reminded her of their light house - he didn't even need to tell her the inspiration behind it. She could tell.
“I love you Manik Monkey Malhotra, so so so much”, Nandini remembered hugging him so tight, and him reciprocating by holding her in tighter, before kissing the top of her head.
“I love you too, my sanki scientist”, he had flicked her forehead, and Nandini vividly remembered the giggles and happy sighs that had made their next hour worthwhile.
The next year and a half were painted in Nandini's memories in a vivid detail - every moment close to her heart, every new day adding a sprint to her happy steps, every dinner and banter between them ending with stolen kisses and bear hugs.
Like the fifty five attempts Manik had needed to learn how to make her filter coffee perfectly, after she taught him how to. The fifty sixth cup - the perfect Nandini Murthy filter coffee - had brought with it overwhelming tears, and she had peppered him with too many fletting kisses. His eyes in that moment was something she knew she could never forget - they had come alive for her with more emotions than she could tuck and store.
Or the umpteen tries Nandini needed to wake Manik up every morning. Eventually she had resorted to waking Manik up almost half an hour before he needed to get up, because he was a chronic snuggler whose “five minutes” with her never seemed to run out.
Or the early mornings he would sit in the garden, and watch her gardening. Google random information about roses and dahlias, and their stems, and tell her about the fertilizers they could use to help them grow faster. The efforts she would need to make him understand they didn't need to spend so much money on it.
Or their late nights when she had a long day, or he came in after a meeting that stretched longer, and they would just sit in the drawing room, close to each other and with each other. Mostly in silence, their hearts beating in a sync that always left her overwhelmed.
Or those times when they fought, they would rant and whine and irritate each other worse than kindergarten kids. She would throw the pillow at him and he would catch it and complain about the one hundred and Forty third pillow she had ordered - the entire house filled was colorful pillows and rugs and home decor stuff. She would then taunt him for living a black and white life and not appreciating the beauty of colors. But all things said, she would never let him sleep anywhere but their bed. No matter how angry she was, or he was, she made it compulsory to sleep in the same bed, which in the rue hours of night, translated to in each other's arms.
They had found more than each other in the four walls of that home. They had found a place to the most vulnerable they could be while also feeling safe about expressing it. They had found a place they could always come back to, and a person who would always open their arms for the other when they needed to be held. Or otherwise as well. They had made each corner of that beautiful house a home, together. And they had made the other person their priority in a way nobody else in their life ever had.
Nandini felt dizzy from the onslaught of memories and eventually sat back down on the bed in the hotel room, painfully aware of how empty that felt. Her gaze fleeted to her empty ring finger, and she caressed it softly, feeling extremely conflicted.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about the gutted expression on his face yesterday when he had seen her empty ring finger. And then, without a conscious thought, she wrapped her arm around her abdomen, softly caressing it.
A sob escaped her clogging throat while her breathing escalated again, a thousand emotions hitting her at once.
The date night Manik set up for her, after she cleared her exams for the space mission.
Discovering that they were expecting.
The two months of them taking baby steps together for that unexpected parenthood they were now embracing with open arms.
And then loosing the baby.
Nandini cried out loudly, the flashes making her dizzy with blinding pain. Her breaths quickened as she kept spiraling, the noose around her neck tightening with every passing second. She made tight fists, and kept shaking her head, trying to hold herself back from slipping into the maze of her thoughts.
Voilent sobs wrecked her body as the burn inside her skin kept intensifying with the downward spiral of her thoughts.
How many nights had she cried herself to sleep, hoping Manik would hold her and mourn with her the loss that felt like a gaping wound inside her heart. He held her plenty, but every time he would only ask her to be strong and to move on, and the guilt would hit her ten fold making her entire body stiffen.
She didn't what to be strong. She wanted to cry, and mourn and grieve. She wanted for this pain that would make breathing so difficult to seep out and make her heart somehow feel less heavy. She wanted to scream from the top of the world that she wanted their baby, she loved him or her already beyond her words.
She missed their baby every second with an intensity that made her incapable of registering anything except how much it hurt. Everything hurt, all the time.
Most days, she never wanted to wake up. She dreamt that she wouldn't wake up every night and this torture would end.
The only person who held her back from this edge she wanted to jump off from was Manik.
But then Manik had become someone she couldn't recognize anymore. She had depended on him to express her emotions for so long, and now watching him not being able to understand how terrifyingly guilty she felt or how much the pain had become a part of her was unnerving.
She did not recognize the man who tucked every little thing about their baby in a box and put it away when those were the only things that kept her feeling like a human and not a ghost out of her body.
She did not recognize the man who asked her to join office back when most days she only wanted to join their baby in heaven and cry her heart out.
She did not recognize the man who went on with his life when she felt like she could die instead.
The two months had been the most lonely she had ever felt. All she wanted was Manik, her old Manik who would hold her and be with her in her grief. She desperately needed Manik to tell her that the pain she was feeling inside was okay, that he felt it too, that it wasn't this hard for her because of her guilt - like the voices inside her head told her again and again, all day every day.
But in those most difficult moments, every time she extended his hand, she never found his.
And eventually, she stopped extending that hand in the first place.
The hurt of denial started to shift to anger. Every little action of her started to be governed by anger.
The hot burning lava of anger temporarily snubbed the dark void inside her that was threatening to consume her. So she held on to the anger like a lifeline, until that was all she was left with anyway.
Her ringing cell phone brought her back to reality, and Manik's name flashed on the screen. It felt like a bucket of cold water washing over her, the sudden reminder of what she was supposed to do.
Only, she wasn't sure she could anymore.
She knew there was no way she could go back to their home, and not break down all over again. There were too many memories, too much that was left unsaid.
“Manik-”, Nandini answered the phone and broke into a ramble before he could speak, "I can't do it. I can't walk back into that house - you know so much has happened there, I can't do it Manik, please -”.
A few seconds of complete silence greeted her, even though her heart was racing too fast.
Manik heard her, and it cut him again to hear the anxiety and fear lacing her words.
Their home was their safe space once, and now they both were running away from it.
"Nandini, that is the reason I called. I don't live there anymore. I will text you the new address, just be here soon”, he spoke in a soft voice, hoping to calm her down a little. Then he ended the call, and leaned back on the nearest wall, shutting his eyes, his one chest constricting from the feelings overwhelming him.
Just last night he was wondering if she was doing better now, and this was a clear answer now in his face.
Hardly.
But then again, he was himself doing no better. Why did he expect her to? They were both pretending to be better, and while he had good experience of this pretend game, having played it for almost half his life, apparently Nandini had caught on as well.
Manik opened his eyes and exhaled heavily. What was he doing? Was he actually ready to have Nandini in his space again, with her cutting words and glazed eyes? Was this need to see her be anything but that lost version of herself stronger than the hurt he might have to endure all over again?
That night when Nandini had actually walked away was still too fresh in his memories, so much that he winced every time that blocked memory even tried to resurface. She had called him a monster, and she had damaged something inside him he didn't know how to recover.
What in the world was he thinking?
Well right, he wasn't. All he knew was he needed Nandini back because if a large part of this was about her, an equal part was about him. He was completely incomplete without her, and he didn't shy away from accepting that anymore. Hadn't in a long time.
He looked around the house, shaking his head. He had spent a better part of the morning “cleaning” the house, even if that basically translated to dumping everything dirty in garbage bags and throwing them out. He might not know what he was doing with Nandini, but he very well knew what he intended to do. And if he needed to take a chance, he would. After all, how much more it could hurt? He had already tasted devastation and survived - barely but he had, hadn't he?
Nandini stared at her cell phone screen frozen for a few minutes.
“I don't live there any more”
Their home was as much his favorite place in the world as it was hers, but he had walked away even before this fake dating arrangement ever came into place. She felt her heart squeezing inside her chest, an uncomfortable and errie feeling giving her goosebumps. She had shut her eyes to Manik and tried to pretend she was doing the right thing, but two days with him had shaken her all over again.
She didn't know what more she would find if she stayed with him again but more than that, was she going to be able to see it and withstand this time around? The guilt she was trying to run from was catching up, and this time, that monster apparently had two ugly heads, not just one.
If she would survive the venom and live to see another day, was the real question.