MG (FF) Back to You# III (#ThrowBack: Pg. 105) 26/03/15 COMPLETED - Page 16

A hanging tale

He would always love her

But that remained his heaven, and his hell

The tale remained hanging by

Is there another side of story to tell?

"You don't need to explain Maan. I understand"

He could feel her nod as the shirt slightly wetted on his shoulder where her head lay.

"You have a world to go back to"

She tried to smile but her lips puckered at the last moment and kissed his shirt ever so lightly.

"I have a world to go back to Geet. I have my ambitions to go back to. And I wish..."

"Don't. Don't wish please. It takes away everything"

"Mish..."

She cut him midway

"Hear me out for once please. Let me just tell you that I..."

"No"

He didn't let her finish

His curt monosyllable thawed the frozen reverie that they had swooned in each other's arms. She pulled out and stood back on her feet from the tiptoe and looked up into his eyes. Neither did her eyes water anymore nor did that single bled tear remain on his cheek. And yet their faces and his wet shirt betrayed their states.

"Maan please..."

"No Geet. You don't deserve to mourn over a hanging tale. You don't deserve this"

"You can't stop me from deserving my fate. I choose this reality, I choose you"

"But I will not remain here in some hours"

"Then I shall wait for you. Will you let me do that?"

Her doe eyes, innocent and earnest looked up with so much hope that it lighted a little candle somewhere deep in his darkened heart too.

"Will I be waited upon?"

His question found the silence of her assent.

"Then I shall come back Geet. I shall come back to you."

When?'

Her eyes seemed to betray the unsaid question. But he had no answer, didn't know when, if ever he will be able to make his way back to her. Except,

One moonlit night, when stars will wink the brightest and sea will muster a calm storm, I will come back to you...'

Unknowingly his eyes recited a poetry piece he never remembered reading. Maybe in one of her books somewhere, there was a poem called Back to You...

'Irish beer'

Samar gave a hard-rock fist punch to Vicky and the two grinned.

Before anyone could process what was going around at 1 am early morning, the group had packed into the SUV. Except Maan. And Geet.

"Sorry Geet. We'd take you for a drink but baby you don't drink and you need a beauty sleep for tomorrow"

Meera winked from Dev's lap where she was squeezed tightly in the back seat.

"But Meer I need to..."

"Reach home right? Don't worry. Maan, mere sher! Drop Geet home please"

Samar drawled from the bucket passenger seat. And off they went into the night like teenage party mongers out to paint the town red; Samar sticking out like a sore thumb with his hand broken in a sling! Only they were grownups, and wicked shrewd ones at that; Maan grimaced thinking all of this was a set up.

His friends, their friends had thought there was scope for reconciliation. That maybe what they thought was a college-old relationship would find the two together. Hell they didn't know there was no Geet in this relationship.

"Umm it's alright. You don't need to give me a lift. I'll hail a cab"

She peeked at him from below her long mascara clad lashes

"Like hell I'll let you leave alone this late. In this"

He looked her from toe to head.

Maan clipped in an almost cold voice going around the car they had come down from the airport in. Before going Dev had tossed him the keys and Maan's scowl then was noteworthy. Opening the passenger door he waited until she relented under his immaculately personalized glare and settled inside. He bent down, adjusting her flared lehenga; carefully tucking the material inside. The sharp intake of breath was inaudible and yet she instinctively gripped his shoulder for support.

His eyes averted upwards and the connection broke again.

Maan got up and closed the car gate, settled on his side and put the key in ignition.

Indian roads after ages...He thought looking ahead as his foot hit the gas.

Reversing the car out of the parking he put the gear up and raced into open empty roads towards what was her destination.

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They drove into silence. Ironic how they went from silence into more silence. Soon the familiar silent slopes of Carters approached in sight and he could hear the low rumble of a silent sea beyond. The eeriness of night enabled him to hear every distinct moan of those waves that abandoned their guards and sloshed into their fates. He had tried that with Geet this time and she had rejected him.

Pure loathed rejection had been thrown in his face.

Anger boiled and he slammed harder on the accelerator, throwing them back in their seats as the car raced up and down the gentle slopes. He missed the turn to her house, unintentionally.

"Stop there Maan! My home's right there. Just because you get to drop me doesn't mean there is a chance"

She screeched into the maddening pace he had acquired.

"Did I talk of getting a chance?"

He smirked, changing gears casually.

"Why the hell did you come here Maan? What more do you want?"

"You should ask that would-be-husband of yours. He seemed genuinely happy I was here"

"You didn't"

Geet warned and dreaded at the same time.

"What did you tell him?"

She leant forward into her seat and suddenly Maan broke coming on the bandstand roads. She lurched forward with a start and would have hit her head hard on the dashboard had it not been for Maan's hand that cushioned the slam.

For a moment she thought his heart beat had stalled too. But then the way he looked at her made her flinch.

"For god's sake woman! Put a seat belt on"

He plastered her into the seat and fastened the belt

"Just leave me alone Maan. Go away"

"I didn't want to know this. But now I need to."

He hissed leaning dangerously over her, his hand snaking behind her head rest and the other gripping the steering wheel in a white knuckled hold.

"Selfish? That's what you said I was, didn't you? Did you always think I was selfish?"

She closed her eyes in a sigh.

His phone rang and he ignored. Both the phone and her.

Finally having come to his tether's end he gave up. Getting rid of his vice like seatbelt Maan opened his gate and got down into the crisp open airs of the sea. He hadn't meant to stop here, but he just couldn't move forward after coming so close to the very sea that had shaped him. The distant roar was now so near, so real. He breathed in the wet cold air that was Mumbai. His city. Even though he'd only ever stayed here for the span of a few months, the city had given him much more than Delhi had taken. It didn't matter where he was born or where he had evolved into the successful man he was today; Delhi and New York didn't matter. This city did. The metamorphosis it had brought about in him mattered. The friends, the memories, the education mattered. She mattered...

Geet followed stepping out when she saw him ram a fist into the bonnet, the one that had erstwhile broken her fall and now throbbed red.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?"

Geet spat.

"You need not concern with that"

Maan fisted that injured hand. The way he looked up at her with red raging eyes, it was a miracle his blood pressure hadn't busted his veins.

"Answer once and I swear I'll walk out. You will see the last of me this time I promise"

His phone rang again and he pulled it out of his pocket with merciless contemp.

"Dev"

He put it on speaker phone since his right hand was red with pain.

"Bro just tell Geet her mobile is with Meera and Rano aunty had called to say that Rohan is sleeping well."

Geet saw a nerve ticking on Maan's temple that softened at mention of Rohan. But that was only for a suspended second.

"She heard you"

Maan clipped in a steely voice and threw the phone inside through the open car window.

"Your answer Geet. You at least owe me that"

He persisted impatiently.

"Enough Maan. Enough...

What else should I call you? The man who left me midway with a hanging tale? You, who couldn't confront your own feelings? If not selfish then what should I call you? Maan it was you, your ambitions, your dreams of rebuilding an empire, your fear of long distance relationship. I was nowhere"

She hiccupped.

"And all this after you said you would wait"

Maan taunted.

"I was a kid then. I could wait for you; Rohan could not wait for a father. For god sake Maan! We make decisions and they change the next moment here...We are talking of eight years worth. Eight years and no contact? Did you know how stifling it is to not forget you and neither remember you? And have to make life changing decisions. I had to wait for a man who left no promises to return, who said he would one day but didn't tell when. I was supposed to provide my child with a father at an age where he started the formative years of his life; but the one whom I wished to see in that role never contacted me!...You ruined me for any other man all these years!"

And there, that was the confession.

"But strangely you came when I had committed to a man whom I have always admired. He who did not leave, who stood by Me., who came to become my best friend"

She added to harden the softness of that statement.

"But you still burn for me. Don't you"

He stated more than asked.

"Will you stop loving me if I am not yours?"

Geet answered his question with another question.

"What do you want me to do Geet? Stand there and watch you become someone else's huh? That's what you want? Then let's make the game interesting!"

He snarled.

"Then here, Maan Singh Khurana will not leave this country until you are married. I promise to never come back to you once I leave Geet. But before I go, I will come down to pay last homage to the grave of our love; my love actually, because you don't love anyone. While you marry another man, I will bury my love. And that's a promise."

He stated his declaration of contempt with as much passion as he had once showered his love with. If the man could love with all his heart then he could also hate with all his demons!

As an afterthought he looked back at her and added.

"Never. I will never stop loving you; if that is the answer you want."

His reply came terse and crisp. But in the same breath he said something else. Something that threw her completely off balance.

"I will always love you Geet. But that is my heaven. And my hell"

He stormed back into the car with these words and sat there waiting.

She moved inside like a zombie, like the conversation had never happened even though his last words had minced her into pulp. Why did the man have to come again and again and again and throw her life off gears?

She'd never know why and how he could ever affect her so. She'd never understand how one look, one word from this man had the capacity to make her do unimaginable things. Only that he had.

Maan sped into the familiar roads to her home and deposited her there safely before leaving without another word. She went up quietly through the lightened hallways and decorated stair banisters retrospecting.

She had spent three weeks rebuilding her defenses, three weeks convincing herself and yet here they were. With one look of those chocolate brown eyes her entire world had again turned upside down. This time though, there would be a tomorrow where she would take control for once.

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"Dev"

Meera entered Dev's room early in the morning to find him haggard and worn out, still crumbled in the previous night's sherwani. He had slouched by the bed and gaped outside at the dawning sun. He didn't respond even to Meera's tell-tale anklets that she'd started wearing here, neither did he turn at her voice calling out to him.

"Dev what's wrong?"

Meera stood in front of him freshly bathed.

"Meer"

He looked up and she gasped at the red teary eyes of his.

"Bro's chance is destroyed. I destroyed it Meera, we destroyed it...he would never find her again, they would never get happily...ever after bro is leaving and and"

"Dev Dev, calm down first"

She bent down to his level and took his face in her hands.

"Look at me, first stop mumbling."

He looked into her eyes and coherency returned. Dev blinked and then rubbed at his eyes furiously. He scrubbed his face with the heels of his palms and looked at Meera.

"Last night when I'd called bro, he forgot to switch the phone off. And I heard them."

"What are you talking about?"

"Meer Geet thinks bro is selfish, he left her for his own ambitions. Where as that is the fact farthest from reality. He, he had to leave because we were not coping in US. Things were miserable, I and Annie were miserable. And I think there was another reason which..."

"Then how will it help you if you cry Dev? If you want to help them then go find out. Go and get those reasons together before they part forever."

"But the wedding?"

She cupped his neck and steadied his shaking head, her thumb circling soothing patterns below his ear.

"Eight years and every force of universe couldn't keep them apart. You think her stubbornness or his martyr act will?"

Dev gaped at the love of his life with so much admiration, basking in the fact that he was a part of such a brother as Meera described, a martyr. And he was blessed with her who was shining over him in this time of breakdown, his Meera.

She continued

"Geet is broken. I know she is. One shove and it will be enough. She only needs someone to show her the facts, and it might as well be you. Do it before it is too late Dev"

Meera instilled confidence in his dimming spirits and Dev gathered himself up.

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The morning of haldi came and they applied turmeric paste all over her arms and face, smearing her in the colour of brightness, in the colour of prosperity that a marriage should essentially bring to the couple. It was the morning of diwali, and while other households decked their verandahs with rangoli, her life was filled with the saffron colour of haldi. It was meant to enhance her already fair complexion, to put a glow all over her.

While all her friends including Meera smeared her cheeks in turmeric and saffron, the wetness she felt over there wasn't only of the paste Geet knew.

I will always love you Geet. But that is my heaven. And my hell

Somewhere there was a tear or two that shivered and rocked her body from time to time. And yet sitting there in the circle of family Geet managed to pass as a shy and demure bride-to-be.

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Her lehenga was a heavy crimson, shades of deep red woven intricately with quintessential gold and green. Her mother's choice, the lehenga was beautiful but bright and deep, something unlike Geet whose tastes ran into pastel shades would have least chosen. But she didn't look at the lehenga in the mirror. Rather she looked back at the woman whose lips were painted deep pink but didn't smile, whose cheeks were coloured in blush but that was what it was. Make up. She saw into the woman's eyes whose surface brimmed with unshed tears.

What had she done to herself? This wasn't her. What was she doing? This was for everyone's good, for Yash and Rohan's good; this was the right thing, the commitment fulfillment that this shade of Geet had learnt through all these years of responsibility.

That Mishty who was an aspiring director, who thought only good would happen and there would only be right and wrong, bad and good to choose from was but now only a nave shadow of hers in the dark rooms of past. Those rooms she would inevitably close today and lock that shade of her forever. Was she in any way wronging herself while being righteous to all? Was Maan the key to that locked Mishty in the rooms of past?

"Geet"

She lifted her shadowed eyelids up into the mirror and saw the faintness of Dev's figure walking inside. The tears that burned had formed a film over her eyes, deluging her view. Quickly looking away she used the best remedy to drink back tears and rolled her eyes.

"De..."

She turned.

"Bro didn't leave you for himself"

He didn't even let her complete.

"Trust me he wasn't selfish Geet. That's not my brother."

"What are you talking about? Dev all talks of Maan have been dealt with..."

"No. No. Listen please Geet. He would have never told you his side of the story"

Her blood was chilling to the bone and somewhere she didn't want to hear what he would say; for the sheer reason that it would complicate matters further. She knew it would. Dev took a step forward.

"Did he tell you eight years ago why he was leaving so suddenly?"

"No"

Geet answered out of wits.

"I mean, I assumed because he had some business offer or..."

"That's what! We assume things."

Dev shook his head.

"You thought only bro was the one who couldn't adjust in new places? Let me tell you problems were no smaller at our end as well Geet. I was a depressed loser on alcohol, Annie was little and alone without both her parents and brothers. Dadi couldn't cope with office and us. Still bro would talk to us over Yahoo chat, try to pull me out of stupors and motivate me. But that would only last a day or two."

He concluded looking down.

"In December that year before NY went for Christmas break, I remember there being this huge deal which required more creativity and expertise. Daadi asked me to join but I didn't. Finally she and Adi had called bro who initially declined to come down immediately but help from India."

Geet was hanging onto his words knowing he was coming to the much more heart-racing climax of what was their story.

"But then some days later he called to say he was coming"

There was something missing from the puzzle, something that didn't make sense.

"Your brother was running away from here because he was getting emotionally involved. With me."

Geet clipped with a mocking smile.

Though how convincing that looked even she didn't know!

"That's where you are wrong"

Dev continued pulling out a stapled bunch of papers from his back pocket.

"This is why he left"

He shoved them into her hands and she was left gaping into the black formal letterings on white sheets that danced in front of her eyes like a troop of adivasis mocking her of the wrong choice of road. Before Geet could process or materialize the text, Dev had started speaking.

SO big revelation in stow

Grip your seats and wait...till the next update!

Hahahaaa...Sadist Frosty leaving on cliff hanger😆

But come on, do LIKE and COMMENT guyS, cause I have a tralier for the Climax!!!

Sweet sweet frosty, ain't I?

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MjdELbWB3U[/YOUTUBE]

And, and...

Frosty's FF Discussion thread

http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3922362

Courtesy: maaneetmahi

Until next update

<3

Frosted Starlit