Chapter 265

Chapter 344: After the Eight Years

On the day after Raoul's twenty third birthday, he was found leaving for the town, as was his usual morning custom, dressed smartly and looking more handsomer, which was also a familiar morning sight for the lad kept improving in his looks and gait with each passing day, provoking the attention of many a village and town woman.

On his way along the dirt path that led out of the Malik Mansion, he came across PrakashPrakash who had become a lean, tall lad than he had been eight years ago.

"What are you doing out here?" asked an imposing Raoul, who was distrusting of the servant, believing he was blemishing the family name by his relentless friendship with the youngest Malik heir.

"Waiting for Devananda, sir," answered the lad, bowing slightly.

Raoul frowned, "You're supposed to call him Master Devananda."

"I know, sir," said PrakashPrakash, "But he won't allow me, because we are friends."

Raoul shook his head, "Sometimes I don't know which one of your minds was the first to be corrupted with this ineptness."

"If it won't offend you if I spoke of your brother so boldly, sir, people say we are both brainless," said PrakashPrakash naively.

"It DOES offend me!" Raoul growled, "People speak thus because of your company!" And then he added as a firm afterthought, "He may be witless but a Malik is never brainless."

"I was only pointing out what people said, sir, it was not a theory of my making."

"Stop chattering, idiot," fumed Raoul, "You have messed by brother's senses with your senseless chattering but you won't get my ears for that."

"I don't intend to, sir," bowed PrakashPrakash.

"Idiot dog," mumbled Raoul, "I'm polluting my intellectual space conversing with a nut like you. Out of the way!"

"But I am not obstructing your path, sir,"

"OUT OF MY WAY!!!" yelled Raoul.

"What happened, brother? What is it?" called out a worried Devananda as he rushed to the spot.

Devananda, unlike the unruly appearance of his childhood, had grown over the years into a tall, magnificent youth. Though not as well groomed (he despised daily baths and found no motivation to run a comb through his hair) and handsome as his brother Raoul, Devananda's features were naturally alluring, his appearance moderately dashing. His lips still retained their naughty smirk though there was a slight stubble of adolescence growing around them. His eyes were his best quality, deep brown impressed with excited golden flecks, which made you want to drown in them if you looked really close into them.

But no one bothered to look closely at him because, from a distance, you would grade him to be a careless spendthrift and merciless satirist, deserving to be disregarded.

Infamous for his villainous wanderings about the Village and Market and his ill companions, he was titled off as an unfit product of the Malik ancestry, the prodigal son of a very distinguished father, and was never liked by anyone but his friends, his brother and his indulging grandmother.

(You might remember, in our original story, that Lord Arnav was admired for his eyes that he'd inbred from his father. Lord Arnav hated, though, the mention of his body or behaviour having anything to do with his father. But let us not digress and return to the scene we are witnessing.)

Raoul scowled at his brother, "Tell your filthy friend to not stick his presence into my face every time I leave for an important purpose."

"I'll remind him, brother," assured Devananda as he watched Raoul march off in a heat.

"What in the world did you need to annoy brother for?!" Devananda hissed at PrakashPrakash.

PrakashPrakash only shrugged disinterestedly, "This conversation happens every morning, so much so it's part of our routine that I am certain if he didn't find me to bark my head off every morning, he'd come to find me first and only then take his very important trip to the academia."

"Now, now, PrakashPrakash," Devananda cautioned his friend, as they commenced walking down the path for the Village Market, "Just because you are my comrade in arms does not give you the right to mock my brother. He means the world to me."

"I know," said PrakashPrakash, "Which is why I have kept unsaid, some especial adjectives in honour of your brother, which I will reveal only on the day your brother stops being your world."

Devananda laughed, "I don't think there will ever be a day like that."

Two hours later, Devananda and his companion, along with some village chaps, were perched atop the high wall of the Market square, looking down and gloating down at the people passing by.

They had each a fruit or two in their hands that one of the boys had sneaked off from the fruit vendor's stall when the vendor had been counting out a customer's change of coins.

Holding his guava astride, one of the boys leaned forward to Dev, "Did you hear?"

"What of?" Dev asked absentmindedly, biting into a stolen apple.

"She's come back," replied the boy.

"Who?" asked PrakashPrakash.

If the boy had answered PrakashPrakash's question, Dev did not hear it. For, at that very moment, his gaze that had been lazing over the people in the Market caught a glimpse of something that struck him motionless.

The apple slipped out of his hand and he stared, spell bound.

There, among half a dozen young village girls, stood a most bewitching damsel he'd ever beheld. Her dancing eyes, her quick smile, and her long hair braided beautifully were accentuated by her bright yellow sari.

Dev's boat of emotions had capsized and, having no sensible reaction to hold into, found himself floating in a sea of tranquillity created by the spell of hr beauteous eyes. By the time he'd righted his boat and snapped out of the spell, she'd vanished, to be found nowhere in the vicinity of the throng.

"Where-?" he turned about in his perch on the wall and would have fallen off if his companions had not held him by his shoulders and arms.

"Steady yourself, Dev!" said one of them.

"What're you fidgeting for, Dev?" asked another sensing an air of urgency in the young scion's posture, "What's the hurry?"

"I-" Dev looked about the crowd frantically, trying to catch a sign of her.

"Dev, what is it?" asked PrakashPrakash who was beginning to get worried because his friend was acting strangely, struck speechless unlike ever before.

Suddenly, Dev's darting gaze spotted her standing before the farthest stall of the Market.

Without thinking, he shrugged off the grip of his companions and leapt to the ground, landing on a stack of hay and rolling down to the dusty ground.

"Dev!" cried out his friends from above as they too attempted to leap down and join after him but Dev was already on his feet, running into the crowd.

"Shove off!" he yelled as he pushed through the crowd and cursed when a passer-by stepped on his feet, "I'll get you for that later!" he yelled at no one in particular as he made way through the horde and finally reached the circle of young girls among whom was his sought vision.

"What fruit is this?" a singsong voice asked her friends.

"It's a kind of peach," said one of the friends.

"Try and taste it," said the seller behind the stall as he held out to her the tiny fruit, "Here!"

Dev arrived just in time to see beautiful fingers reach out and receive the fruit by the fingertips.

He watched the progress of the fruit to her rosy lips part and felt his heart leap at the same time she bit into the fruit.

He stood and stared, watching her dark long hair blow in the breeze.

He saw her close her bewitching eyes to relish deeply the luxury of the fruit's saccharinity. Staring at the way her long, dark hair blew in the breeze, Dev was awoken from her trance on hearing one of the female friends enquire the goddess, "How is it?"

He saw her mouth move in answer but he didn't hear a word. He was lost in her eyes, the grey light that danced in them with abounding mirth, obtained from the taste of a mere fruit.

His friends had caught up with him at that moment and PrakashPraksah tugged hard at his shoulder, "Have you lost your remaining nuts, Dev? Do you know who the girl is you're gawking at?!"

"I don't care who she is," he mumbled, still under the spell of her eyes.

PrakashPrakash tried to alert him, " She's the-"

But he'd slipped off from them and vanished into the crowd again, wanting to not lose sight of the delighted damsel as she moved on with her personal circle of friends.

"Won't you look at these flowers!" exclaimed one of the girls, hoping to direct the giggling group towards the stall that sold fresh flowers.

The damsel who had caught our Dev's heart shook her head, "No, I'm not interested in those flowers-"

"Not interested in flowers?!" remarked Dev, suddenly appearing beside her and startling her group of friends.

She stared at him and then frowned, "No, I am not."

She tried to walk around him and move on but he cut in and obstructed her progress, "What girl born to this world does not like flowers?!"

She looked proudly at him, "One who does not like the life plucked out off them so they can be shoved into vases and bonnets!"

Dev was impressed, "Sensible and beautiful!"

This remark made her gasp in shock and, then, she swung her umbrella at him.

But he ducked with a chuckle and then stood straight as though to show she could not that easily ward him off.

"You filthy teaser!" she exclaimed and was about to strike him again, when she noticed the boy who had appeared beside him.

She froze and then frowned at him over Dev's shoulder, "Aren't you...that servant of the Maliks?"

Before PrakashPrakash, who looked slightly petrified, (for her knew the identity of the woman while Dev was clueless about it), could answer her, Dev intervened happily, "Oh, you know the Maliks! That is a delightful news to my ears! Though I've never seen you around and assume you to be new to our village. May I introduce myself as one of the Maliks that you've just so significantly spoken of."

The girl narrowed her gaze, a cunning light in her eyes, "Ah! A Malik, are you? I should have guessed from that characterless chatter of your unbridled tongue."

"Don't mistake my words for profanity, beautiful lady," said Dev, smiling coyly, "You needn't embark on what these friends of yours tell you about me." As he said this, he moved closer to her, his words coming out in whispers with the proximity, "The real me is a soft, loving-"

"Dev!!!" hissed PrakashPrakash urgently at his ear, "You don't know who you are talking to. This is-"

"Stop interrupting my chivalric speeches, PrakashPrakash," shushed Dev back at him before returning his ardent attention to the girl, who spoke before he could, "Devananda Singh Malik! I knew it couldn't be your elder. You were the one who had the most poisoned intentions in your heart since childhood!"

Dev blinked in surprise and then smiled, leaning importantly against the frame of the flower stall, "This is news to me again: you know me from childhood even though my eyes never had the chance to feast on you? Did you, perhaps, harbour a crush on me that led you to study me so closely?"

The girl let out a disgusted laugh, "A crush on you? Not in this life! Ever... Dungface!" The girls behind her giggled at the reference.

Still oblivious, Devananda asked in an interested tone, "Now where did you hear I was called that by-?" when suddenly he froze and would have toppled onto the flower stall he was leaning against if he hadn't pulled himself together as his mind riveted in realization of the truth.

Every clue rammed into him all at once: her snide way of saying "Malik," PrakashPrakash's desperate attempts to persuade him against wooing her, and then, like a smacking slap on the face, her address of him as Dungface.

He straightened himself and stared at her in disbelief, "You're that Var-..." He couldn't say the hated name so resorted to the nickname, "Mudface?"

She had a shrewd look on her face as she addressed her friends, "And as expected, his Malik brains don't seemed to have brightened up with age!"

"But you can't be!" he stepped back in disbelief, "SHE was an ugly witch!"

"You haven't changed much," commented a cold Chandraki Varma, her hands on her proud hips, "Though you've somehow grown slightly taller than me."

"I'm a man now! Of course I'd taller than you, girl!" he retorted.

One of her eyebrows lifted as her gaze directed at PrakashPrakash over Dev's shoulder, "And I suppose your friend is nowhere near a man, with no a hint of a beard and quite shorter than he was before!"

"Don't you pick on him-" Dev heatedly defended but Chandraki was already moving onward, followed by her whispering friends, not interested to continue the conversation with her old enemy.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going? I didn't finish talking to you!" he yelled after her but she ignored him.

The crowd filled up the territory and he could get to her no longer.

PrakashPrakash slid closer to him, "I tried to warn you but you wouldn't listen-"

"You SHUT UP!" he frowned down at him, and then looked at him from head to foot, "She's right. Why haven't you grown?"

PrakashPrakash was not offended by the remark. Rather he took it quite well, and answered it thus, "It is my intelligence that has enlarged with age and not my size. It helps to process our escapades."

"Whatever," Dev mumbled as he frowned in the direction she had vanished into.