Originally posted by: Rafa.LunaPotter
Quoting Aish!!!
Its brillaint update...sweet and excellent!U have a great knack \for this Hema Di...:))Lovely..:))I simple enjoyed this part to the fullest!!!Love~Aru
Originally posted by: scratches-head
Hey Hema, I'm sorry for not commenting, was really busy :(
Part 13:I loved it! I see both Prashant and Sandhya slowly falling for each other 😉 I really like the pace at which you're taking the story! It's smooth, steady and absolutely beautifuly written!Part 14:Seriously, girl, have you taken some kind of a course in writing or something? Because words seem to flow as smoothly as water in a river, in your story. AMAZING. I especially loved this line:Amrita felt a cool breeze wrap itself around her lovingly, as her heart unclasped itself from the guilt that had been holding it captive for so longSuperb, seriously! ⭐️ Loved Prashan't convo with Amrita, I'm glad he finally released himself from the misery (and she from hers) and unloaded all that burden. Also, his impromptu realization about his love for Sandhya (although this had been building up, he has really admitted it to himself now) was wonderfully written! Keep it up, amazing work! :)P.S - Is there a minimal chance of Sandhya falling for Shekhar? Yay, I'm on Team Shekhar! 😆
Great part Hema! I love that no character in your story is 2 dimensional. They all have reasons for their actions, real feelings! I'm so glad Prashant and Amrita had a chance to talk. It was finally closure for him.
I thought I would be disappointed when I read that he would never reveal his feelings for Sandhya so as not to burden her, but I wasn't. This is a relationship that's going to go through all the stages there are before they finally become one, and their love is going to be all the more special because of that.
I wonder if Sandhya is going to be yearning for his calls now...😛
Sandhya sighed as the bell rang.
It had been a long week and the day had been longer still. Teaching no longer held its charm. Her students were increasingly distracted and cared far less about the intricacies of language than they once did. And she found it much more wearying to try to translate her own passion for literature onto them, seeing that she did not feel passionate about anything anymore. All she felt was a lifelessness, that feeling of trudging through life aimlessly, dreading every moment to come. The waiting had sapped her very spirit from her, more so, because she did not even know what she was waiting for, and if at all the wait would ever end. She was exhausted from her limbo-like existence, so exhausted that she was unable to hoist herself out of it, and be who she once was.
And then, as she was walking towards the school gate, a hand placed itself, warmly, firmly on her shoulder.
"Hey," he said brightly, smiling. It was a very different kind of smile, one she had never seen on his face before. It was a genuinely, entirely happy smile, that made his entire face glow and radiate with dazzling life. It made him look younger, more refreshed, and suddenly, a lot more attractive than before.
"Prashant?" she asked, incredulous, when she found her voice.
"Last time I checked," he responded, taking a step away from her, suddenly conscious that they had been standing closer to each other than was licensed by the prying eyes of the not-so-innocent bystanders that peopled the small gossipy town.
"What are you doing here?" she said in a gasp.
"Oh, I called at your place. They said you were at work and I remembered the name of your school from our conversation, so I came. I'm really sorry I didn't return your call. I had gone away for two months. I only came back yesterday. That's when my mother told me you had called."
Sandhya smiled. So that's why he had not phoned in so many days. And now he was there, just in front of her, within arm's reach. She almost couldn't believe he was real. She expected him to disappear or to pull off a Prashant mask and reveal he was an imposter, like at the end of those Scooby-Doo cartoons. But he didn't. He really was there. She had been wrong to lose hope. How odd it was, that a mere moment was sufficient to change her outlook so drastically; how, in just that blink of a moment, the heavy clouds had dispersed to allow sunlight to stream into her being and miraculously obliterate any previous moment of despair into blissful oblivion.
"That's okay. So, where did you go?" she asked, as they began to walk out of the school compound.
"Up north. I quit my job, packed a backpack, made sure to forget my cell phone, said goodbye to my parents and boarded the first bus I saw. I travelled for days, until I came to the place I had been looking for. A small village by the Himalayas."
She stared at him, lost for words. She had never thought of him as an adventurous person. She knew him to be kind, humble, honest. But, this spontaneous wild side, she would never have guessed, was modestly hiding away in the depths of his silence. She wondered how many more facets of his personality were waiting to surprise her, enthrall her.
He caught her stunned look and grinned, "I know it's weird. I needed to get back in touch with myself, and life. And I hated my job anyway. I hated Mumbai even more. It was too artificial, devoid of life. I like it here, small and homely. But enough about me. How have you been?"
She didn't answer. They had reached the main road. She felt a jolt in her heart as the realisation of what this meant struck her. A fork in their path. She had an unnatural dislike for such places, places where choices were made, places of parting. He was going to leave. Disappear. Again. Fear gripped her. She didn't know why but she felt she was going to lose him.
She wanted time to stop, to give her time to absorb what was happening. She didn't want to have to look back at what had happened. She wanted the present to go on, and on, and never be the past. She wanted the world to end, there and then, so there would be no future, no time for retrospection.
"What happened? Are you okay" Prashant asked. Sandhya shook herself out of her frenzied thoughts and rebuked herself. What was wrong with her? Why was she behaving in such a stupid manner, entertaining such wild ideas and being so overly dramatic? It was most unlike her. She tried to quell the ridiculous, irrational fears. They were friends after all, and he had come to meet her, hadn't he? Why would she lose him?
"Nothing. I just..." she began, allowing her voice to conveniently trail away into mumbles of uncertainty. She smiled to her little heart, thawed by the concern etched on his face.
"How do you usually get home?" he asked.
"Rickshaw," she said.
"Mind if we share? My parents' house is quite close to where you live. That way we can talk some more?"
"Where's your car?" she asked, remembering the maroon Maruti Suzuki he had driven her to the coffee shop in.
"I sold it before I left. I'm going to buy a bicycle soon. Going green. So uh, rickshaw?"
"Yeah. Yeah sure," Sandhya said cheerfully. She must be bipolar, she thought. A few seconds ago, she had felt close to tears. She must be in love. She looked at him as he stood at the edge of the road trying to hail a rickshaw. His hair had grown. It curled slightly over the back of his neck and over his ears. He was wearing a light brown full-sleeved t-shirt that brought out the brown of his eyes. Eyes with specks that shimmered in the sun, like the ripples of a gurgling mountain stream, pure and untainted by the usual vices of humanity. His Adam's apple went up then down then up again, as he swallowed. She wondered how it would feel like if she ran her finger over it.
Prashant turned towards her when a rickshaw finally stopped for them. Not seeing her for two months had somehow made her even more beautiful. He had forgotten how her curly locks of hair tickled her slender neck, how her dark enticing eyes sang of compassion and innocence. He had forgotten the sharpness of her cute thin-lipped smile, her petite elfish frame that he wanted to enfold in his embrace as eternities swept past them jealously. His jaw tightened as he looked away.
He could not allow his resolve to weaken. He could not subject her to the guilt of being loved too much by someone she would never be able to love. He was not the one. And that was the truth, in all its poignancy. The thought of her with another caused his heart to freeze painfully. This 'sacrificing your love' business was a lot more difficult than what they showed in those syrupy movies. It all made sense from a logical, ethical, and even emotional point of view. But in reality, to a heart in love, it was nothing short of torture. Like dismembering oneself.
He should not have suggested they take the same rickshaw. As a matter of fact, he should not have conceded to his longing to see her. He should never have come. He was only making things more difficult. Never again. He had to distance himself. For her.
"I called Amrita today," Prashant told Sandhya once the rickshaw had set off, wheezing, as it snaked its way deftly through into the noisy traffic. He smiled at her, knowing that this was what she had been wanting to hear when she had phoned him.
"Oh, that's nice," she said, trying to smile back. She wished he had not mentioned Amrita. Somehow, she had forgotten. She had begun to think of him as Prashant, just Prashant. Not Prashant, the suitor who had come to see her but was actually still in love with his ex-girlfriend. She had begun to imagine what it would be like to spend the rest of her life with him, to be Mrs Prashant Joshi, to accompany him on his adventures... But she had lost sight of the most important truth of all: that he might not even love her in the first place. That his proposal that day in the coffee shop was not a proposal, but merely him latching on to what he thought was the only way of escaping his heartache. She had been right not to take him seriously then.
The more she thought about it, the more she realised that he had in fact grown distant from her. He did not look at her the way he once did, intensely, lovingly. He was talking to her as though they were friends, but not like he had, that day in the coffee shop, as though he really, sincerely, wanted to marry her. He had, in those two months, changed his mind. Tears stung at the back of her eyes threatening to spill out. She held her breath surreptitiously so they would not betray her, and listened to Prashant tell her about why Amrita had left, and how, after speaking to her on the phone, he had begun to feel unburdened and free once again.
Sandhya told him that she was happy for him and waited for him to say something about her, about them. But after a smile and a few moments of heavy silence, the conversation turned to frustrating meaningless nothings about the weather, the traffic, his trip and childhood memories.
She was undoubtedly happy that he seemed a lot happier now, but he had changed in so many other ways too. She looked at him sadly, noticing with every passing moment, that he refused to meet her eyes, that his very manner of talking was so different. He was less involved, more detached, than ever before. They were conversing but it felt merely polite. As though they were nothing but acquaintances. There was a wall between them. She could feel it. He was so far away. Out of reach. And she, dumb thing, had been weaving dreams and fantasies into soppy happily-ever-afters.
She could not wait for the rickshaw to reach her house. She never wanted to see Prashant again. It hurt too much to be reminded, in every single second of their so-called togetherness, of her incredible stupidity, and her heartbreak. She preferred never ever meeting him again, to being with him and being made so painfully aware of the insurmountable distances between them. Distances that only made her love him more.
He had moved on, if at all he had ever felt something like love for her in the first place. It was time for her to do the same. At least she was no longer waiting now.
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