Arhi FF: Nilagiri Diaries - Part 11 Updated 30th May - Page 16

Events turned out in his favor, when Anjali asked that he take Kushi to the temple, to complete a pooja, at their aunt's behest. Word had been that there were still some gods to be appeased with offerings and the accident, being the consequence of having failed at that.

He rolled his eyes at that theory and yet, a drawing eagerness surged in him over the prospect it presented.

Once in the car, as she pulled on the seat belt, out of habit, he turned to her and paused with a tentative look on his face. "Do we have to go to the temple?" he hesitated, before going on to explain. "There is a place I want to take you, but if we are to go there, then we won't make it to the temple - I have to get to a meeting in an hour too."

"I don't mind," she shrugged.

"Are you sure?" he asked teasing, as the engine came to life. "The gods may put me in danger again, if not bowed to their supreme will."

"I can't speak to the gods," she said smiling, catching his eyes with a hint of mischief showing in them. "But even if they care not to put you in the way of danger, I think you would. I believe its your will against theirs."

With the jeep in momentum, his gaze shifted to the road. "That's an I answer I didn't expect," he declared with a sliver of surprise dragging on his words. It escaped him, if she always saw him for the man he was, even in the years they grew up together.

"Its just that di still believes that my will could be bent," he clarified, wondering if she had an image of him that he'll have to measure up to.

"But you don't seem to mind keeping that illusion either. You oblige in your own way," she nodded, speaking to him with an ease he hadn't heard before. "She thinks, we are going to the temple, so she is happy. But we are not going to the temple and she doesn't have to know and that's to keep you happy," she spoke surely, as if understanding him was beyond simple for her.

"Are you going to keep surprising me like that? You talk like you know me all your life." He laughed uncomfortable that she could see through him like he was only glass.

"That's one part of the answer," she said, taking a moment to contemplate. "The truth is I only know the Arnav, from the years we grew up together... and that understanding is from so long ago too. We have grown to be different people too."

Her response was followed by a welcome silence, for what she left unsaid, were more severe for words. Throwing a quick glance at her, he shifted his attention back to the road. His silence was a quiet assent to her assessment that they were more strangers than friends.

The winding ooty roads through lush and verdant fields of tea, made for a good distraction. Slowly, conversation arrived with the need to discuss her comfort with the local weather that ranged from rain and occasional shine to the ever-present fog. She dismissed his concerns, describing the horrors of winter, she'd faced in the US and abroad; that she would take ooty any day, over those other places that required her to wear thermals and jackets in numbers that made her feel like a clothes wagon on a roll. He laughed heartily at the image she painted for him. And with that the same initial ease with which they had begun their journey, came back into existence.

After a half hour more of local banter, he turned into a small lane off the hilltop road. "And here we are," he said, punching the codes to an unguarded gate, to enter another byway road that took them up the estate.

Once they reached the flatland, at the summit of the estate, she saw the white house that overlooked the vast slopes of plantation and vegetation, that made for a picturesque view. "You bought this place, didn't you?" she asked with certainty even before he could answer. Sliding off the jeep, she walked drawn towards the quaint, but intricate foyer, not waiting for him to guide her to her new surroundings. Elaborately carved wooden pillars adorned both sides of the entrance. She stopped by the pillar to the left and let her fingers glide down the smoothness of the wood where it curved to meet the ground.

Turning around, she saw him walk towards the other pillar and lean on it. He threw his brows up and down, in cursory acknowledgement of her earlier question.

"The story goes," he began, sitting down on the raised platform next to the door. "Murugappa Chettiyar - the previous owner of this place - built this house for his dying wife, Nachiammai, when the doctors declared his wife was in the terminal stages of lung cancer. They lived in Delhi, and he felt that cleaner air, might give her a few more months than what the doctor's gave her. Of course, she didn't want to come away from the house she'd spent almost all her life. But I'm told that she fell in love with this house, when she saw that her husband had built it keeping to the chettinad style of the old house, they had begun their lives as a young couple, before moving to Delhi. They spent their days here, until she passed away. And the chettiar died too, a few months after, his wife left him," he ended with a glimmer of sadness in his voice.

She didn't prompt him, to enquire if he'd known them personally, but the conditions of the house being far behind in age, compared to the modern measures that guarded it, she assumed the couple must have lived here well before their time. He took out a set of keys from his pocket and offered them for her to take, from his hold.

She obliged him wordless and unlocking the ornate door, she pushed it aside to lead them into a similarly fashioned courtyard. "Because their only son lived abroad," she heard him continue from behind, while her eyes traced the details of architecture, style and finesse that had gone into every measure of the house. "And he was financially, well to do, Chettiyar had made his will such that the proceeds from the sale would go to an orphanage in Chennai. But not many came forward to buy a place, where the old couple had come to die - they saw the house as a portent of death."

"No one else know that you own this place, do they?" she asked, only caring to ask the questions that mattered.

He got to his feet and made his way inside the house, to stand by one of the courtyard pillars, close to her. "I don't want to go through the poojas they will line up to get rid of the ill luck of this place," he answered tucking his hands into his pockets. "And if they were to hear the local stories, they might even conclude, that the house is haunted."

"Is it?" she sounded calm, posing it as a mere question.

"I can't wait to find out." A challenge echoed in his tone, as he smiled.

"I suppose its my way of owing a slice of time that's come to a standstill - to hide in it," he added as an afterthought, sensing the explanation for his purchase come together on its own, in her presence. "To belong here. The pristine sheen of marble, the urbane polish of stainless steel and all that screams money, but doesn't carry the stories of time in its nooks and crevices - I doubt such places will ever hold any appeal to me." He clicked his tongue in contempt.

"And it disturbs me that people can dismiss the beauty of this house. And not give reason to rumors that such beauty could claim lives," he ended, drifting his gaze upto the sky window that showed for the incoming fog.

Her eyes averted to the trickle of water on the ground that dripped from the corner, by which he stood. She looked up at him, and internalized for the first time, this side of the man she didn't know from her teen years. "You see it as the place where the husband bought his wife to breathe a few more months of life into her," she said slowly, aware that he wouldn't refute her read of the previous owner's sentiment.

She saw that he saw love in the wood, brick and mortar that went into building the house. It dawned on her that she was standing on holy grounds. Though it was only her her intuition, it felt right when she assumed that that's how he wanted to be understood.

"Do you realize that you indeed brought me to a temple, as your di asked you to?" she asked, managing a smile that fought its way up to her lips, her humor far from the sentiment she felt inside.