New SS: Noli me Tangere CLOSED Indefinitely - Page 6

Originally posted by: 6thElement

😊 Don't bother...I will write I&K after finishing all the open items in IF...incl the Epilogue for NYT and the one OS that is promised ;)

And how about Chandani's rooftop. You see you have loads of pending items... 😉

I stayed away from IF yesterday folks. So I haven't written anything yet for either of the SS. Although something has been simmering for NMT. So I think I will start writing today and hence the post might be either today or tomorrow.


You see I don't have to add anything to my list, because the list of FFs to be completed has always been the same. When I leave IF, I will finish everything that I have started...Rewrite a few parts of NYT to my satisfaction. A promise is a promise. Only it takes time to fulfill them all.

Originally posted by: 6thElement

I stayed away from IF yesterday folks. So I haven't written anything yet for either of the SS. Although something has been simmering for NMT. So I think I will start writing today and hence the post might be either today or tomorrow.


You see I don't have to add anything to my list, because the list of FFs to be completed has always been the same. When I leave IF, I will finish everything that I have started...Rewrite a few parts of NYT to my satisfaction. A promise is a promise. Only it takes time to fulfill them all.

Originally posted by: 6thElement

I stayed away from IF yesterday folks. So I haven't written anything yet for either of the SS. Although something has been simmering for NMT. So I think I will start writing today and hence the post might be either today or tomorrow.


You see I don't have to add anything to my list, because the list of FFs to be completed has always been the same. When I leave IF, I will finish everything that I have started...Rewrite a few parts of NYT to my satisfaction. A promise is a promise. Only it takes time to fulfill them all.

If pictures could speak, what stories would they tell?

She'd dropped off the album earlier in the day just as Dev'd asked for it to be redone - in a new album cover with old pictures that she'd put together the previous day for him. He picked up the plastic glass with a straw and slowly sipped a mouthful of juice before moving onto the next set of pictures in the album.

This page had photos from their second year of college. The same year she'd shown up from nowhere with a transfer, into the fourth hour English class looking tired and sulky, in a long skirt, sleeveless top and a stole going around her neck with a dozen bead bracelets clinging her wrist. Her hair spilled in curls over her temples and something about the way they danced wild in the breeze made him feel it was suggestive of her untamed spirits too.

When the professor approved her admittance and asked her to sit anywhere in the class, she chose the first bench where he always sat. It was still unclear to him, if it had been a conscious decision to choose a seat beside him; if everything that existed - and didn't exist - between them had come into being the first minute she'd walked into the class. But there was no way to ascertain that, when either of them would never in their right minds be willing to discuss anything on that subject.

It was so long ago, that his memory would be blotched had he been trying to recollect something else from that same period. But how could it be, when she still looked the same, as though her allure and good looks were not a thing of the past or the present; like she was frozen in time, embalmed in a perpetual wait. Perhaps for him...

The details were still finely imprinted as a memory and he couldn't help but go over them with the same elaborateness he'd noted that first day.

She had fine, delicate skin like it was a thin sheer that covered the inner workings of her body, telling him she was not native to the area; her thick accent too confirmed all the same. Of course, all these were only minor details until he studied her comely, but defined features; her sublime, untouched beauty came of a timelessness that was almost surreal, given how young she was. And then there was an air of mystery around her that made it impossible for him not be drawn towards her. Watching her from the second bench Dev still had no knowledge of her greenish-brown eyes. But much later when he stepped down to sit next to her, he stared speechless watching her raise an eyebrow at his sudden move while his body felt a surge of awareness giving away his final undoing.

If she had the same impact on Maan, the indifference on his face concealed everything and he kept up his fixation on the professor, as the balding old man in safari suit was the sole object of his devotion. If anything within two minutes of her having joined him in the same bench, Maan got up to climb the stairs and settle down in one of the benches behind them. She was one step ahead of him in keeping up appearances and if she'd taken offence to his curt act, she didn't show any trace of it. This was the exact opportunity Dev was waiting for and jumped next to her, in Maan's place. He didn't know then that it was a precursor to all the other times he would be filling in for Maan. However, the fool that he was for her, was only lost and perhaps even enthralled in finding a greenish-brown eyed girl joining their batch, entirely dismissing the furtive glance she cast behind to check on a blue shirted someone who was walking towards the back of the class as a harmless gauging look to know her classmates. But he was more ascertained now, that she'd turned around for him and only then considered facing him with an arched brow, questioningly.

"I can't see the board with all your hair flying around..." Dev said, mustering a casual shrug with all the nervousness that was wringing his insides.

Wordless and uncaring, she turned around and started digging inside her bag for a book, while he kept his eyes glued to her every movement. Only he'd never really learned to peel his eyes away from her ever since, dedicating almost one third of his life in trying to get just one similar look from her.

That was one story the picture on the page couldn't tell. For the picture had him smiling in a bunch of people seated by the campus auditorium and it was far from showing that he was the known - and sometimes the unknown - third between the two.

There were other pictures too, that weren't part of the album and they didn't give away their secrets either. It was an illicit memory of a picture Maan had taken from their college days using the Rollei Rolliflex - a vintage camera - that he'd gifted to Maan shortly after he moved into Dev's apartment as his roommate. Knowing he'd a thing for aged items - as if he was searching his past; scouting for his lost childhood that he'd spent in the orphanage in those antiques that he collected - he thought it was only appropriate to pass on the collector's item Dev had inherited from his own grandfather, to him. He'd seen the picture in Maan's wallet in their final year - the year before he left Bombay for good - when he'd come in to get some change for the pizza they'd ordered.

It was obviously a picture of her. Only he would never be able to guess the circumstances the picture could have been taken; or know matter-of-factly what could have led to or followed after that instant. He was chagrined for the few seconds while he held the small rectangular photo that was worn-out around the edges. Nothing had existed between Dev and her then, except a deep camaraderie and it was all the more reason, he shouldn't have felt like his insides were on fire, as if he was caught in the eye of a storm in hell. But he crumbled under the imposing weight of the picture.

He couldn't fathom to date how she could have ended up in the photograph clutching a scrunched and stained t-shirt over her chest, her bra straps in plain view, while her midriff was bare. He clearly saw the faint line of the beginning of her skirt, just before the bottom edge of the picture. She was standing close to their bathroom entry, with one hand on the door and the other going across her top to keep the t-shit in place. It appeared she was perfectly conscious of being photographed by him for he could see the slight deliberateness in her posture which was only off by a little to pass for a natural pose to a trained eye.

A few strands of her hair swept across her face and the light from the bathroom window bathed the picture in an unearthly light that made her seem as if she was from another space. Her face was titled towards her hand that loosely held the door. At first he assumed she was shy, but later when he gazed at the photo for another two minutes, he conceded she was facing away from the lens indecisively, frozen a millisecond before she would have looked up with anguished eyes. Something told him it wasn't the kind of pain that came from shame over being half-naked in a picture, but from ambushing desires...of a winded longing that was being artlessly betrayed that unguarded second.

The realization was one proof Dev'd searched for in her eyes. But he'd been in the lookout for that yearning from her for himself, not for him. And knowing that she'd already given it to his best mate only made it that much more difficult to live with them thereafter. But he'd survived his denial (his tinge of jealousy over all that they shared - how much ever cold they were to each other) and their denials (their guiles that has lasted over years claiming they were mere acquaintances); hadn't he?

And so he found himself asking again, what story would this picture tell when revealed; reserved no longer as only his memory. What tell tales did it have to tell of the lady in waiting? And what of the obscured who chose not to stay in the picture?

***

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Keep writing...
Hasini

ur story brought in memories...oh not mine but the tales are in 3rd person...
the triangle reminded me of the happenings in my sister's litt class...there was not just triangles but rectangles too😆😆
and my sis herself was involved in one...but unlike geet she is married to her ceaser.
great going but at times confusing to keep up with the allusions in the thoughts... but never worry keep up i will... 😃
have send a buddy request for PMs

its brilliantly written