Nandini looked at the grimly set face that was concentrating on applying a little medicinal plaster on the cleaned up wound on her wrist.
Prithvi hadn’t spoken a word after that frightful moment in his room. And neither had she.
She hadn’t been able to speak or tend to him. Though both their hands had stopped bleeding quickly once the pressure lifted, the sight of his blood had resurrected a bevy of nightmarish memories that she was still struggling to deal with.
While she was staring at his injury in panic, he’d gently grasped her other hand and led her out of the room. Feeling cold and ill, she had followed without thinking.
He had taken her to the gleaming sink fixed in an enclave outside the bathroom. There, he’d swiftly washed away the blood from his palm with a roughness that made her wince. After that, he hadn’t given his wound another glance.
Taking her unsteady hand, he had held it under the stream of water, tenderly cleaning her wrist.
The break in her skin was very small externally. She had mumbled that it didn’t need antiseptic or a band-aid on witnessing him taking the items from a functional unit fixed on the wall above the sink. He had ignored her completely and used both.
He was replacing the items in the case now.
Uncertainly, she mumbled, “What about your hand? It’s hurt worse than - ”
“It’s fine,” he said tersely, closing the unit. “You should go. Your family must be waiting.”
She lingered uneasily. “Are you coming to the wedding?”
“No.” he said curtly.
The reply didn’t surprise her. But though she didn’t want to force him to attend the wedding, she also couldn’t endure the thought of him sitting alone and brooding over unpleasant thoughts.
Sankatmochan’s whisper slithered up the stairs. “Nandini, I think I heard your mother calling for you.”
She paid no attention to the warning and gazed at Prithvi. “It’ll be nice if you attend,” she said softly.
And before inborn shyness and timidity could dissuade her, she walked up to him. Keeping a hand on his shoulder, she rose on her toes and kissed his cheek lightly.
Her heart was pounding as she withdrew and met his startled gaze. Blushing uncontrollably, she turned and fled.
***************************
Restraining the folds of her lehenga and dupatta, Nandini gingerly kneeled down on the floor in her room to peer into the dusty darkness underneath the bed. In between a suitcase and a small bag, she could see the outline of a reproachful pitchfork. She pulled out the soft toy from its gloomy dungeon and stood up slowly. In the bright light, she looked remorsefully at the kitten’s sweet face and softly dusted away tiny bits of grime on the toy.
She would clean it more thoroughly tomorrow morning, Nandini decided. She walked to her open cupboard, placed the soft toy on top of her clothes and closed the doors. As she started to hurry out of the room, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror.
She moved nearer to the mirror and scrutnised herself critically.
She had made minor adjustments to conceal the stinging signs of her meeting with Prithvi. The hook of the necklace was shifted to the very first loop, so that it became a choker. It felt uncomfortable, but the necklace now concealed the bruise between her neck and shoulder. In addition, she brought a thick lock of her hair forward and did her best to arrange it in way that would obscure the mark completely.
To make up for the broken bangles and mask the plaster on her wrist, she had inserted many gold-coloured bangles in between the pink ones. Then she’d applied a light coat of the pale pink lipstick, which she’d timidly purchased yesterday, to disguise the state of her lips.
She couldn’t be sure of what other changes love had triggered in her nature, but it had definitely made her skilled at deception, Nandini thought guiltily.
**********************
The big square-shaped hall, with entrances on three sides, was decorated very attractively with flowers and lights. Rows of chairs were arranged on all four sides of the mandap, where the bride and groom were seated docilely, obeying the instructions of the priest who was conducting the rituals under the supervision of Bhoothnath. Hypnotic chants resonated in the atmosphere, and the smoke from the sacred fire made the air hazy.
The loud crash startled everyone in the teeming hall. It sounded especially loud to Nandini, since the noise had originated barely four feet away from her. Like each person in her group, she immediately turned in her seat and giggled.
A short young man was emerging clumsily from a tangle of rotting garlands and filthy ropes. Some chairs had fallen on him too.
She knew it was mean of her to laugh but she couldn’t help it.
The fellow named Virat, whom someone had identified as Neelu aunty’s nephew, had been hounding her like a pesky insect. He had chosen a seat behind her and launched into an uninvited monologue about being rich and famous and had pestered her with questions about her name and other personal details. The sanctity of the occasion and the joyful atmosphere had made her stifle a cutting response. But she’d made her irritation obvious through her looks and silence, as had her friends. It had not deterred him. He’d left his seat some minutes ago, and had apparently tripped on the garlands and ropes on his way back.
Nandini’s gaze fell upon a gang of children. They were poking fun at the young man as he grouchily brushed off decaying marigold petals from the black silk shirt that was stretched tightly over bulging arms and an abnormally brawny torso.
Prakash was standing at the forefront of the booing gang. He caught her eye and smiled naughtily. Then to her disbelief, he gave her a secretive thumbs-up and scooted from the crime scene with his friends.
Grinning in amazement, Nandini turned to the front. Her brother had earned his right to gobble a whole bunch of chocolates tomorrow.
As she patted a lock of hair to ensure it remained in place, the girl at her side whispered, “The white clown’s mother is making him sit with her in that corner.”
She cautiously looked around. Uma Raheja was yanking her son towards a seat at the back, scolding him soundly.
Nandini heaved a sigh of relief. She could enjoy the function in peace at last.
As the other girls began gleefully discussing fitting punishments for the pest, she muttered an excuse and rose from her seat. Nandini made her way towards the mandap, halting frequently to respond courteously to friends and acquaintances.
She could see Sumer Singh sitting in the last row on one side, and Sankatmochan hadn’t budged from the buffet table in two hours.
When they had arrived, she had vainly looked for a third figure, and felt hurt on realising that Prithvi hadn’t cared to heed her request.
**************************
The small commotion over the man had just died down, when someone nudged Sarojini on her left.
“Do you see that woman walking towards that corner – the one wearing the ugly diamond necklace and holding that silly golden purse?” Mridula highlighted with patent jealousy. “She’s Neelu’s sister, and that boy she’s dragging is her son. The Chawlas don’t know her properly, but you know Neelu’s nature. She made them invite that woman and her son.”
“I’m glad. Aarti and her groom will get more blessings,” Sarojini said serenely.
“That is true,” Mridula accepted sullenly. “But what I wanted to tell you was that she has been making enquiries about Nandini. Yesterday, during the mehendi, I heard her asking a woman about Nandini’s nature and your family’s background. I’m sure you understand why.”
“She wants our Nandini for that boy?! Ridiculous,” Manju said disapprovingly. “I’ve seen him up close. He’s so short and pasty. And there is something wrong with his overall structure. His arms and chest are oddly bulky and disproportionate to the rest of his body.”
“I noticed that too,” her daughter-in-law Jaya grimaced. “He has a very misshapen look.”
“He must be taking steroids for building muscles,” Asha, the local doctor’s wife, contributed knowledgably. “Not suitable for Nandini at all.”
“I won’t think about the proposal even if he’s suitable,” Sarojini said doggedly. “I intend to look for alliances only after Nandini completes her studies.”
“Two or three years later, you may feel differently,” Mridula said astutely. “Don’t refuse in haste if she approaches you with a proposal. They are a very rich family. Nandini will live in luxury for the rest of her life.”
Sarojini took up a stoic silence and looked across several rows at her daughter. Nandini wasn’t sitting with the others girls. She examined the hall, and then noticed her daughter standing near the mandap.
Sarojini relaxed in her chair. Though the other girls at the wedding were dressed beautifully as well, none of them could hold a candle to her radiant daughter, Sarojini acknowledged with a mixture of pleasure and anxiety. Though Nandini wasn’t being her vivacious self for some reason, her prettiness and inherent sparkle had been sufficient to attract excessive attention.
It was the same case yesterday. In the morning, Nandini had spent two painstaking hours etching gorgeous mehendi designs on Aarti’s hands and feet. Every person who had seen the end result had praised Nandini profusely. Their words had thrilled Sarojini, and her maternal pride had quietly escalated during the mehendi function later in the evening.
The Chawlas had hired three professional mehendi artistes for the event, and while the women waited for their turn to have their hands beautified, song and dance programmes had begun. Nandini had danced gaily with her friends for a few minutes, and then she’d retreated and become part of the chorus singers.
The women sitting nearby had noticed the entrancing quality of her voice and pestered her to sing unaccompanied. Giving in reluctantly, Nandini had shyly sung a folk song that expressed the hopes and fears of a bride as she travelled to the home of her husband in a palanquin. Her soft, melodious voice had enchanted the crowd, and later, the women had made her sing many marriage-based folk and movie songs in succession.
Watching her daughter silently from a corner, Sarojini’s heart had swelled with joy and gratification. But the intense focus on Nandini was also making her feel concerned. First thing tomorrow morning, she would remove the evil eye from Nandini.
**********************
Secure in her unobtrusive spot, Nandini gazed deferentially at the mandap, where ancient, beautiful rituals were uniting two souls in the bond of marriage in the hallowed presence of the sacred fire.
She was aware of every ritual and its significance….had seen them being performed more times than she could count…and yet, this was the first time that she truly sensed and revered their stirring beauty and power.
While she loved the gaiety and colourful vibrancy of traditional weddings, she had never shared or understood the excitement shown by other girls her age about matrimony. To her, the idea of being separated from her family and starting life afresh in a stranger’s home had been unthinkable and depressing. Finish studies, secure a good job, and do everything possible to help her family. That was the future she had envisioned. Marriage was an unpleasant event that would be postponed for as long as possible.
Then she had fallen in love.
Her dreams had not changed. They had simply multiplied crazily and become a confused, multihued tangle.
She no longer knew what to hope for. All she knew was that she desperately wanted a life where she could always be with Prithvi. To be able to see him every day…talk and laugh with him…hug him…revel in his caresses and the touch of his lips without feeling like she was betraying her family’s trust….Or even just hold his hand and stroll by his side on the roads of her sweet but conservative town without the fear of being judged wrongly…
Feeling world-weary, Nandini looked at the flames of the sacred fire. And amid the leaps of their fiery tips, she saw Prithvi.
Her jaw dropped.
In a quietly classy cream kurta, he was breathtakingly handsome. And the extremely annoyed expression on his face as he glowered at her from the doorway was somehow making him look more adorable.
She grinned delightedly at him.
At the same moment, Sumer Singh jumped up from his seat and started rushing to him, Chawla uncle and her grandfather greeted him affectionately from their designated positions near the mandap, and Neelu aunty began pushing people from her way to get to him.
Sumer Singh changed track midway to protect Prithvi and tackled the determined woman with a cunning dexterity that must unquestionably have saved his life in the battlefield on several occasions. Then for a second, it almost looked like Sumer Singh would become a martyr, but then another woman materialised as his saviour. Uma pushed and prodded her hefty sister back to their seats.
Laughing, Nandini glanced at the cause of the chaos. Looking highly amused, Prithvi looked at her and grinned back.
He saw her smilingly move towards him, but then she was instantly blockaded by a few people.
As he and Sumer Singh sat down in the last row, the latter furiously demanded for his recent adversary to be admitted to a mental asylum. In his agitation, he didn’t realise that his lord’s attention was elsewhere completely.
Prithvi’s gaze was fixed on a petite female figure chatting with four females and a male.
He watched Nandini listening to each person with equal attention and respect and responding graciously. There was nothing forced or fake about the sweetness of her smile. Warmth and affection for people came to her as naturally as breathing….
….while brutality appeared to be installed in his genes.
Absorbed in his own fury and desires, he hadn’t realised he was hurting her until the cloying wetness of blood had brought him to his senses. He felt sick to the stomach every time he remembered the way she had paled and her hand had trembled on seeing the blood.
He was no better than an animal…
***************************
Nandini expelled her breath only after stepping outside the hall into the compound. She unwrapped the small bowl containing two delicious, hot gulab jamuns from the folds of her dupatta and looked at it victoriously. The sneaky journey from the buffet table to this point had been accomplished with finesse.
The next step was to locate an anti-social male who had disappeared after giving ordinary beings a glimpse of his godly presence. She lowered the bowl again and scanned the compound.
Some men were loitering restlessly. Prithvi wasn’t amongst them.
Back in the hall, Sumer Singh had opined that he had probably gone back home. But she wasn’t convinced. Prithvi was somewhere close by…she was sure of it…
Nandini speedily walked along the wall towards the nearest corner, holding the small bowl tightly against her side. If he hadn’t left for home, he would be in a place where he could avoid seeing or interacting with mere mortals.
************************
Her hypothesis proved correct.
Prithvi was sitting comfortably in a quiet, dark corner at the back of the hall, fiddling with his phone.
Trust him to find the sole dimly-lit and deserted area in the brightly lit compound...
He glanced up as she approached, then indifferently returned his attention to the phone and continued typing the firewall program a friend had requested.
Nandini halted a step away, and softly said, “You haven’t eaten anything here. Sumer uncle said he had made food for you before leaving. Did you have it?”
“Hmm.”
“You could have a little food here,” she suggested hesitantly. “It will make uncle and aunty happy.”
“They don’t need more happiness,” he retorted. “They’ve already struck gold with my presence at this crappy thing.”
Nandini mentally throttled the urge to empty the bowl on his head. “This is an auspicious function,” she said coldly.
“For the economy, maybe,” he snorted.
This time, she strangled him in her mind. “You shouldn’t leave without having something sweet at least,” she said austerely, and extended the small bowl.
He gave it an uninterested glance.
“I don’t want it.”
She’d foreseen the response, and his infuriating attitude made her want to give up and return to the hall. So she wasn’t sure why she moved closer, used the spoon to slice a soft gulab jamun into two and scoop one piece up to hold it to his mouth. Or why his disinclination to eat vanished immediately and he promptly took the bite - unless he’d been waiting for her to realise it was her mortal duty to mollycoddle him.
“Even Arjun isn’t as much of a baby as you are,” she said resentfully, replenishing the spoon with a big chunk and holding it to his lips.
“I’m cuter too,” he distinguished in between pieces.
She rolled her eyes.
When the last bit of gulab jamun had vanished from the bowl, she muttered, “You should go home if you’re getting bored.”
“Thanks for the advice. Now get me more of that,” he ordered.
She glared furiously at his bent head as he presumably continued to chat with one or several of his ex and current girlfriends. “Get it yourself, you brat,” she snapped.
He grinned into the phone as she stalked away in a veritable storm of jangling ornaments. She would return in eight minutes or less. Three minutes for her to calm down, two more for feeling guilty about not getting him more dessert, and an additional two or three for returning with a fresh round of those sweets.
A stench in the air pulled his gaze to the other side of the hall.
A white, deformed creature was lumbering towards him. It stopped at a metre’s distance and craned its neck in every direction like a loony owl. Then it looked at him and started talking in a low, guttural voice.
“Did that girl in pink come here?” Virat petulantly asked the man sitting in the shadows. “I thought I saw her talking to you. I’ve been looking for her everywhere. I tried to make friendship with her many times in the hall. I told her how famous I am, but she just stared at me angrily,” he moaned. “My mother also got irritated and told me to behave properly. She doesn’t understand! That girl is the hottest thing I’ve seen in years! I’d give anything to meet her outside and - ”
Virat stopped talking. An icy sensation was pervading his marrow. And it was emanating from the broad-shouldered man seated on the chair. He stared into the stranger’s face. He couldn’t properly decipher the man’s features or expression because the lighting was poor. When the man spoke, though, his tone was quite friendly.
“No girl like that came here. But I know what you could do to improve your chances,” Prithvi said thoughtfully.
“Tell me! I’ll try anything!”
Prithvi pointed at an opening in the wall at the edge of the compound. “You see that gap? Go through it.”
“What’s on the other side?” Virat enquired eagerly. It was completely dark on the other side as far as he could see.
“A steel pole. A wish-fulfilling steel pole,” Prithvi disclosed seriously. “Women have to pray in front if it. Men have to dance around it five times. Take your time to decide which one you are and act accordingly,” he advised. “And also don’t forget to maintain a distance of 10 feet from the pole while doing the dance. Do this…and it’s very possible that whatever you deserve, you’ll get immediately.”
Virat felt vaguely that stranger had said something offensive and puzzling. But his thrill in discovering the miraculous steel pole was overpowering.
“Can I make more than one wish?” he asked elatedly.
“As many as you want,” Prithvi said benevolently. “Just remember - five dances around the pole for every wish.”
Virat attempted to calculate the number of dancing rounds he would have to make. It was too big a number. He gave up the mental maths. He would dance till he dropped. He excitedly said, “Thank you, dude! Err I didn’t get your nam -”
“Don’t waste time. You should start right away,” Prithvi incited heartily. “You may not see the pole immediately. Keep walking to the left till you find it.”
Virat nodded vigorously, and with an ape-like gait, ran towards the breach in the wall and went through it.
Prithvi saved his work indolently and slipped the phone into his pocket. Then he rose to his feet, flexing his fingers in grisly anticipation.
A worthy punching bag had sought him of its own accord on an evening when he badly wanted an outlet for the anger he was feeling at himself.
If that didn’t qualify as a happy coincidence, nothing else could….
************************
Nandini kept the dessert bowl on a vacant chair in the compound and approached the man who was enjoying a smoke under a large lighting apparatus.
“Kedar uncle,” she addressed pleasantly.
The man swivelled with a smile. Nandini pulled the cigarette from its snug place in between his fingers, threw it on the ground and put it out with her shoe.
Then she looked up at him frostily.
“This is the first one I’ve smoked today,” Kedar said hastily. “I arrived at the hall ten minutes back and came outside for this a moment ago! I’m not lying! I’m honestly down to one a day.”
“You told me you had quit completely,” Nandini said angrily.
“I tried…it’s difficult,” he sighed.
She aimed strict eyes on her father’s friend. “That cigarette on the ground was the last one. Not just for today. Forever. Okay?”
“I’m not brave enough to disagree,” Kedar confessed.
Nandini grinned at his abashed face. Then a movement around the corner captured her interest, and Kedar turned around as well.
Prithvi was strolling along the compound with an enigmatically pleased expression. Nandini was definite she had left him in that shadowy site only around seven minutes back. What miracles had occurred in that period to make him so cheerful that he’d given up his solitary meditations, she wondered in surprise.
Nandini didn’t wait to find out if he was heading towards her. “Prithvi, could you come here for a moment?” she requested cheerfully, and then bit her lip. Why had she called him when she knew he liked meeting people as much as she relished spending time with rodents.
To her surprise, though, he walked over to them, albeit with an impatient air.
“What?” he demanded, ignoring Kedar.
“This is one of my father’s oldest friends - Kedar Narayan,” she smiled. “Kedar uncle, this is Prithvi. He and his family have rented Ayodhya.”
Kedar didn’t grasp a word of what she said. He had gone into shock the instant he had seen Prithvi. And to actually see both together again…after all these years…
He stared uncomprehendingly from Prithvi to Nandini and then back at Priyamvada’s son. There were innumerable incidences and stories to recollect, and yet, his mind couldn’t go beyond one specific memory at the moment.
A joyful three-year-old boy with a wriggling earthworm in his hand….the laughing lad was chasing a terrified, squealing little girl around the small rocks outside the old temple, yelling gleefully that he was going to put the long worm in her hair…
In a stupor, Kedar numbly murmured, “When did you two start behaving like civilised people with each other?”
********************************