Chapter 77

                 Part - 77

Geet hurries up and goes to her room as if someone would trespass it…

But Maan is a gentleman, Geet ko bhi ye patha hona chahiye…

Or she is not ready to share a room with him because of the latest developments in their relationship… specially the feelings that Geet is trying to ignore would be disclosed in front of Maan, which is the last thing she wants to happen…

Nanaji can see Maan as he is half way up the stairs…

Nanaji: Geeeet, ye ladhki kahan hai?, damadji aap andar jayiye

Geet comes out to help nanaji get down… .

Geet: aap ko aane ki kya zaroorat thi?

Geet gets angry with him like a rightful grand daughter…

Nanaji: damadji bahar kade the

Geet: aap unki chinta mat karo

Nanaji: Geet, woh hummare mehmaan hai, woh hummare ghar aaye hai toh humme hi unka khayal rakhna chahiye

Nanaji indirectly advises Geet…

Geet: mujhe patha hai, aap sojao

Geet leaves him in his room…

Maan is still waiting outside…

Geet notices his bags lying there…

She picks them up to take it inside… that’s her invitation for Maan too…

Its pretty heavy and she struggles…

Maan tries to get it from her and he accidentally catches hold of her hands…

Geet turns and looks at him for the first time…

Maan looks into her eyes… they let their eyes converse for the moment…

They have learnt the trick to read each other’s eyes…

Their eyes instantly convey their longing and concern…

Maan: mein lekhe aatha hoon

Geet lets him take the heavier one as she tries to take the other…

Maan snatches that too from her…

It’s a big deal that Geet has let him enter her room.. she was not ready to let anyone in that day…

After keeping the bags in and having gazed her to his content Maan takes a look around the room…

There is that cry baby picture hanging on the wall along with many of Geet’s pictures…

She has placed them in order from her childhood to her college days…

Maan is amused to see most of her pics from childhood where she is seen wearing only boy’s dress..

Nani who had a single daughter is very fond of boys. After Pari too disappointed nani, Nani expected the second child to be a boy so much..

Nani then consoled herself by raising Geet as her potha rather than pothi…

All this freedom that Geet is desperately looking for was given to her by her Nani, but after her Nani passed, Geet who lived at Beas had to go to Hoshiarpur where all her freedom was snatched away from her overnight…

Nanaji fully supported Geet when she wanted to get into college… that’s why though Pari has only finished school, Geet had the privilege of going to an engineering college, that too a co-ed one…

After the Dev fiasco, the whole Handa family blamed poor Nanaji and Ranno entirely for that and from then on nanaji lost whatever little little he had on his pothi…

He also realized his mistake and has lost trust in Geet’s capabilities of managing her life on her own…

Maan’s eyes are stuck on her college picture. .

It’s a group pic with a lot of boys too…

Maan automatically looks for Dev in the picture anywhere near Geet, but Geet is standing in-between two girls to his relief…

And Maan carefully scans the entire group and is surprised to see Dev missing…

Geet knows what Maan is looking for in the picture…

Geet keeps watching him… but she fails to see that wee bit of happiness on his face when he found out that Dev is yet to get a place in her wall of fame…. That’s good, but there is no picture of their wedding too… Maan is ready to compete for a place on that wall though…..

Its her batch pic, only her classmates are there…

Going by the pics from her life from childhood to present, she has not yet included Dev part of it… that itself gives some hope for Maan…

He is happy after confirming that Dev is not there…

Geet easily guessed what he was looking for in that picture but neither of them is ready to discuss about it now and invite unwanted trouble…

Geet quickly corrects the shabby bed for Maan to sleep…

She quietly retires on the floor saving Maan from any kind of embarrassment…

Both of them just try to let the other’s presence in close proximity sink in ,after having been separated for a long time…

This time even Geet is affected by the presence of Maan in her very own bedroom, which she strictly keeps very private for herself…

Dev’s picture didn’t even make the wall, but Maan is here in her room sleeping with her… that’s a good progress…

She didn’t have much problem in invading Maan’s private space at KM for it was normal for any boy to share his place with a girl after marriage…

Though it was not a regular wedding according to Geet, Maan was neither the regular boy according to her…

But slowly she has been exposed to Maan’s feelings and she realizes that Maan is no different from any other boy, yes Maan is as romantic as the MSK, he is his own competition when it comes to romance, there is no comparison whatsoever in this matter, MSK is the ultimate winner…

Geet may have shown a blind eye to her own feelings but she couldn’t ignore Maan’s intense feelings that erupted on a couple of occasions in the middle of nowhere in his otherwise dormant self…

Now both of them don’t know where they stand in the other’s life and how to move forward with this strange relationship….

Maan who is scared of making inroads for the fear of a painful retreat is just fooling himself that he has successfully started withdrawing from this mess while he is still sinking..

Geet on the other hand has started questioning her priorities… yet she keeps convincing herself that her notion that “romantic feelings are a girl’s foremost weakness” is 200% correct…

Next day Maan takes Geet with him to the site…

Nanaji’s driver usually drives her to work… she also drives herself when he is on leave.. but nanaji is happy to send her with the driver only.. it’s still not safe for her to drive back alone in the evening when at times she stays at the site longer…

Still there is no conversation between them…

Maan finally breaks the silence…

Maan: I’m here only for nanaji, you need not worry

Wow Maan, what golden words?

It would have been better if he too maintained the precious silence like Geet…

Geet is happy that it will only save her from any unnecessary complications later… she is already confused with all the guilty feeling seeing him like this… no strings attached, no feelings, all good…

Geet: same here, you are nanaji’s mehmaan and that’s it

Geet has said that easily, but is that the truth? Doesn’t she have any connections at all with him?

No, she is hiding something, she keeps looking at Maan with a lot of expectations….

Geet can’t forget everything just like that, it may be easy for Maan, but it seems impossible for Geet….

What actually happened to the man she had known earlier? That MSK, her boss, is missing… she really misses those initial days at KC, or even at KM for that matter… she misses that bonding and this guilt is the result of whatever attachment she made with him in those days…

She is not happy with the way things have changed… specially her equation with Maan…

Its now at a very uncomfortable point for both of them where neither of them are happy…

Maan drops her at the site and leaves for Delhi…

Maan makes it a habit to visit Beas every weekend, there by easily avoiding any questions about his marital status by both his family and nanaji…

Nanaji has got all the experience to see that nothing is working in their marriage… .

They are only fooling themselves thinking that they are fooling him…

He knows about his pothi, but he expects a lot more maturity from his damadji…

He thinks he has to set the ball rolling in order to break this impasse in their relationship…

He knows exactly what he has to do…

First thing he does is to put out a couple of portraits of their wedding on the wall alongside other pics . ..

Nanaji is happy to look at his wife’s picture on the wall and enjoy recollecting fond memories from their past…

Geet thinks that nanaji is not going to get anything by just adding Maan’s pic on the wall.. .

But she keeps watching it often and gets a little better whenever she looks at him… no his picture…

Maan is surprised by the additions on the wall but doesn’t understand what value does it have when the reality is completely different..

Nanaji starts asking Geet about the wedding, and how she was received at the Khurana house..

Geet rewinds the past and how she was given a royal welcome by everyone, specially dadi and Annie…

Geet still speaks with Annie daily and also Dadi keeps calling her every other day..

The problem is they keep asking her to come back to Delhi… they don’t care about anything about what she is doing, they want her to be their bahu first.. typical Indian mindset…

And to Geet’s disbelief, Dadi at times talks to Geet about grand children…

Women are their own enemies… why the women are not ready to see themselves beyond mere manufacturers of offsprings?

But Geet misses being with Annie, she has made a beautiful relationship with Annie..

Annie though elder to her, always respects Geet’s intellect and discusses everything about her pregnancy only with Geet…

Geet uses the internet to clear all her doubts and keeps suggesting her what to do and what not to from her experiences with Pari…

Geet is not ignorant of the intimate relationship between a couple, but she doesn’t think that she is ready for something like that, or to be precise, this is not the right time for all that according to her…

Her problem is that, her definition of a lifetime consists of exclusive segments with very rigid partitions, like education, career, financial independence is a must for woman, marriage and finally children.. she is not against marriage or having kids…

She doesn’t have any respect for the bollywood type romance, she thinks the love between a boy and a girl is hyped too much and it’s nothing different from any other form of love..

She has only seen her mother, sister and every other woman being enslaved by their spouses and she hates how they accept it proudly…

At times she has seen them helplessly trapped inside the system and there is zero respect for their opinions and feelings…

Men enslave woman in the name of love and marriage is the licence to it…

She can’t imagine something like, her falling in love with someone, the filmy style, even in her worst nightmares..

That’s why she fails or fears to recognize her feelings for Maan….

Her equation with Dev is also only a route to reach her goal, Dev is also ambitious and has clear cut future plans, Geet too has one and is meticulously following that, this wedding was a hurdle, which, according to her has been successfully used as an opportunity to hone her professional skills, and a years work experience has a heavy weightage while joining PG…

Geet didn’t just blindly accepted Dev’s stupid idea, she gave it a lot of thought before deciding to go on with this….

She thought that Maan had no interest in women, she has aversion to romantic feelings, perfect match… according to her romance is a very bad weakness not just for men but also women, specially married women, they become addicted emotionally to their husbands that they could never leave them no matter what happens to their own life, then there is literally no life for them, they start living for their husbands…. And the men proudly say, ‘Behind every successful man there is a woman”…

Why should we hide behind their shadows? We should come forward and achieve great things like them, that too independently, without their help, haina?

When everything seemed to go as per her plans, unknowingly she got emotionally attached to this MSK, that was totally unexpected, and then Maan got romantically attracted to her, wonder what he saw in her, she is not the one boasting her looks, actually she hates to be admired for her looks, it has nothing to do with her, it’s just the genes that she inherited, she likes to be admired for her talent, her work, her intelligence and not her physique…

And it’s just not Maan, Geet herself has started liking Maan, it’s not physical attraction, he has won her over by his unique personality and his actions…

She must be lying if she says that Maan is just one among the rest of the men…

She can’t recollect even a single incident where Maan treated her less than himself or less than anyone else, irrespective of the gender..

In fact he was happy to stand behind her and support her rather than lead her from the front…

He let her on her own to err and correct herself, rather than trying to tell her what is right or what she has to do ..

First of all marrying him was her decision, joining KC was her decision, doing this project was her decision…

She is here due to her own deeds and she can’t blame Maan for what is going on with her right now…

But there is something more, that is going on between them, that’s what she wants to think…

She has started to realize that there are certain things that are beyond her control… beyond anyone’s control like the her attachment with Maan… She is sure that it’s from both the sides and both of them are aware of it…

She has drastically reduced her conversations with Dev, citing her workload as an excuse.. but she has all the time to think and constantly worry about her unique friendship with Maan though..

She knows that she is changing… she knows that her preferences are changing… she knows that somewhere in the process of finding her freedom she has lost it to someone…

She can’t believe that she has let someone else to control her emotions which is the last thing she wanted…

She should be happy for she is still her own master, she has successfully kick started her career, she is confident that she can stand on her own, she knows that there is no one to stop her from doing what she wants…. Maan is always ready to let her go… to Dev, her love? But she has a problem with that too… but why?

Maan has completely destroyed her notion of a husband, he didn’t stop her from leaving the marriage and going to her love.. . He doesn’t put any restrictions at all for her, he wants her to come to him on her own, that’s the problem…

She doesn’t want anyone to control her, but she expects Maan to do everything, as far as this relationship is concerned, she wants him to back her all the time, she wants him to be there for her always, she needs him in her life desperately… but she has a problem with his romantic interest????

Koi iss pagal ladhki ko samjaaye ki Maan jaisa boss toh phir bhi mil jayenge, par Maan jaisa pati kahin nahi milega… Geet ko pehle ye sochna hai ki Geet ko MSK, the boss, wapas chahiye ya MSK, the ever so loving husband, wapas chahiye…