Manan FF - Kaisi yeh Yaariyan season 3 - Chapter 123 & note - Page 31

Nandini woke up with a jerk, frightened to her bones. What was that loud crashing sound?

She sat up on the bed, trying to make sense of the world around her. Why was her head feeling like a 1000 kg stone? Why was it so dark and fuzzy? where was Manik? how did she end up in the bed? Why was her stomach churning like a washing machine? What was bloody wrong with the world? A thousand questions hit her at once.

She crawled forward to climb down, but the moment she put her first step on the floor, her head spun and she fell back on the bed.

She called out for him in fear but the silence following her plea scared the daylights out of her. Beads of sweat started sprouting all over her face. She was dancing and then they had come here and then she had mentioned something about Neel? But What? How much had she revealed? They came to her in hazy flashes but she couldnot place them in a proper sequence, the way the incidents had unravelled.

Nauseated and disoriented, she pushed herself to stand back again. The room was pitch dark, and without a trace of Manik anywhere. She turned the bed lamp on and blinked her eyes a quick few times to clear out her blurred vision. There, she saw a faint streak of light in the balcony and quickly ran towards it.

It was so f**king cold, and she had been exposed to it so suddenly that she shuddered with an almost epileptic intensity . For a moment her brain had stopped registering what lay in front of her eyes. This couldn't be. Perhaps she was still in her dreams and this was a nasty nightmare. But her heart knew this was it, this is what it had tocome to one day, this is what she was dreading of, this was her worst ever nightmare.

Manik was on the floor, his back pushed to iron railing, his legs huddled close to his chest, & in the damp chilly night, he was trembling in just a pair of khakis and a thin T shirt. On his left, the glass table stood cracked and right below it lay two broken bottles of liquor.

'What had she confessed in her drunken state', She was just about ransacking her brain when her eyes fell on the twisted cover of what used to be her diary once upon a time. A half torn page flipped up and down furiously, while the wind had tossed away the rest of the torn bits.

"Diary...Confession...shit!!!!!!!" Manik had read it! Manik had read it in her absence and now God knows what he was thinking because her confession had been incomplete.
His condition was pitiable. It was out rightly painful. This is why she had kept it from him for so long. Nobody freaking understood how it felt to see him broken like this. If she could cut her heart open, she would do it and give it to him.

She bent down and tried to inch closer to him. "Manik, Manik listen to me. I wanted to tell you everything but.." she took his hand in hers but he shrugged it off and pushed her away, leaving her feeling abandoned and hurt. He refused to as much as look into her eyes. They were bloodshot. He was drunk, he had consumed two whole bottles of liquor but he wasn't intoxicated. Her breath, her racing pulse, damn she couldn't calm it. How would she get him back to sense?

It was raining in sheets outside. Much before the first ray of sun could usher in the dawn, it was one tempestuous night. The gnawing skeletons of the hills, were staring at her questioningly, time had stood still.

.

"Manik meri baat to suno, please.. Don't do like this." Every time she approached him, he cringed a little more. Everytime she tried to push her way through the walls he had built around himself, she just fell back , a little more hurt each time. Teary eyed, delusional, nauseated, she kept on trying. No more afraid for herself, her only aim now was to bring him around. She would not let go of him, no matter how angry or upset he was. If this was the pier life had set up for her to walk on, she would walk right through the fire. How far could he push her, how many times would he shrug her, how long would he stay silent. She would outlive it, and wait for him on the other side.

She closed her eyes and remembered the seed of hope, the little red shoes, the artificial rain, and the stars turning into fireflies. She remembered his rocking her over the night, she remembered how he had struggled to bring her hidden anguish out. And if he gave her his best, she rightfully owned his worst too.

Her insides were on a rebel and a sudden wave of Nausea washed over her. Holding her mouth with her hand, she rushed to the washroom and threw up...once, twice ..thrice...

She thought he would come running, he didn't. For a brief while, she looked at herself in the mirror and wiped away her tears. When she came out, she saw he was walking towards the door. She ran after him and stood between them.

"I won't let you go Manik, you have to talk to me... Tumhe meri kasam."

He stopped. The memories from few hours back were still haunting him...

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Flasback: ( 3 hours ago)

How excited he had been, while opening her diary. Much to his disappointment, the diary didn't have many entrees, infact just about two, but he was sure, even in those few pages, he would find himself. He was hoping to read a few sweet confessions and perhaps a few small complaints. It would be so much fun to know what she thought about him and then later tease her about the same.

Perhaps he would also get a few glimpses of the time he had spent with her and that would help him give a meaning to the scattered bits of memories he had of those times & the limited details Nandini had narrated to him. He remembered the sunrise, a few jumbled words, but he didn't know why she had taken him there. He remembered going to her school, he remembered the annual day function, a group hug, but not the interactions he must have had with people there. And there was a random face, about which Nandini hadn't mentioned at all.. Who was this guy in what appeared like a night club?

"Who aaya tha, all the way from Pune to Panchgani, to ask just one question aur chala bhi gaya. STUPID! Yes, MnM you are such a stupid, yeh question poochne ke liye tum itni door se aye the, is wajah se tumhara phone kal se off tha? 'DO YOU LOVE NEEL'? Like seriously????"

He had barely read through the first two lines of the first page when he got the first shock. Who was this Neel? Why would he ask her about loving Neel? Wasn't Nandini supposed to be his, always and forever? And how come Nandini hadn't mentioned any of this to him. He quickly resumed reading, with a sinking feeling nagging him.

"Do you not know that I was born to love you and only you? And I don't think even God can change this fact. Chahe tumhe kuch yaad rahe ya na rahe, destiny will always bring us together. Kash I could tell you everything... I don't know what that son of a ***** has told you, but the truth is I have tried hating you, I have tried forgetting you, I have tried removing every trace of yours from my life and every single time i have failed miserably. I don't exist without you..

So my stupid romeo, fir aise stupid sawaal kabhi mat poochna, aur galti se apna phone mat band karna.. Aur thori der karte to shayad mera dil dharakna hi band kar deta."

God knows why her words couldn't bring a smile to his face, even though she was assuring that she loved him and him alone. Why did it feel like a part of her had betrayed him?

Manik walked inside to fetch a drink from the cellar, he needed help to digest her words & whatever was to come next. He hadn't signed up for this and he wasn't prepared, after a day of running all around her. He flipped the page.

"It's time for me to make a few confessions, Manik..." He swallowed the lump in his throat "Where are you Manik, tum kab tak aaoge? I guess finally the time has come for me to answer many of your questions and I know this is going to hurt you very badly but agar na batau to shayad it will hurt you more." What are you doing Nandini, what is it that you wanted to share?

"You always wondered why we feel such a strong pull for each other, how can it possibly happen in 3 weeks and why it had never worked with your doctor in Switzerland... We don't know each other for 3 weeks Manik, we have known each other for 4 years. 3 years ago you fell sick, you started to forget everything and you decided to go to Denmark alone for treatment. Eventually, we lost touch because you were undergoing a treatment that didn't let you maintain contact with me or your friends. Besides you didn't remember us anymore." Ok, this, she had told him. He quickly moved on to the next line

"As you know, 3 years later, you bumped into Neel at Zurich airport and look at the irony of destiny, we met at my engagement reception, where I collapsed and you took me to hospital." Engagement? ENGAGEMENT!!!! Neel??!! Manik spit out the whisky, he was having on the rocks(raw). Nandini was engaged???!!! NANDINI WAS ENGAGED. Was she joking? This couldn't be true. How on earth could Nandini be engaged? Does that mean she was still engaged to someone? He didn't have the strength to read any further but he could not afford to leave it at that.

His world was crumbling. His girlfriend of four years was engaged and she hadn't even bothered to tell him, while he had come so far despite being so sick, just for her, just to make her feel a little better.

"And before you jump to any conclusion, before you think I played with you, that bas***d forced me into it. An year after you were gone, this guy came from Mangalore and Amms ke bolne pe chacha ne use ghar pe rehne diya. Uska dimag day one se hi screwed up hai. He used to stalk me from day one. I used to stay as far from him as I could but uski ankhein mera peecha karti rehti thi.

Ek din use mauka mil gaya. Nyonika ne chacha ko fasane ke liye, she sent someone to leak some confidential information from chacha's office computer and unlickily Neel was present in office at that time and he saw everything. He started blackmailing me since that day. He gave me two options, either to have a physical relationship with him or marry him. He threatened that if I didn't do either of that, he would not give his statement in favour of chacha. Agar main mana kar deti to chacha ki job chali jati aur unhe jail ho jata. Even rishab ka treatment bhi band ho jata. I know ki tum bohot naraaz hoge shayad mujh par, par main kya karti, u were not there, cabir was dead, Fab 5 bikhar gaya tha. Main jati to kiske paas?

And fir tum aa gaye. Pehli baar I got the courage to stand up to him.

He got mad, because he wasn't used to such replies from me and finally today morning after you left he came home to threaten me. Uske iraade bohot kharab the and I don't know ki wo kya kar sakta tha..I was damn scared Manik and I didn't want to tell you all this over the phone.

I know ki you might be feeling ki why didn't I tell you all this earlier, that's because..." and there her words trailed off as if she had more to say but something had abruptly come up.

Each word hit him like a cuss word, like someone was throwing profanities at him. This was his past, her past. Nothing made sense to him any more. He tried waking her up but she was fast asleep.

He drank one whole bottle and then another and when even that could not bring him any respite, he banged the bottles on the glass top. He wanted to kill someone, only he didn't know whom. He just wanted to get f**king lost somewhere. He wanted to sleep for good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueOUlNIU7DI

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Author note:

I am sorry for the previous note. No matter how adverse the circumstances be, we should try to put our best foot forward without begrudging our life. As most of you said, there are two sides of each coin, and one should always look at the brighter side. So sorry :)

@_SIMRAT_ : Thank you for reminding that my previous post happened to be 100th and a 100th post is not supposed to be like that, so I unpublished it and instead this one becomes the new 100th. I don't know if you would like it, like old times but I have tried my best as i always do.

This also happens to be a special day because it my sweet sister @Shoana 's birthday. God bless you girl. this one is for you.