ff: ''a many splendoured thing', update pg. 102 - Page 43

vice versa was kind enough to defy u and post some updates dear....but what happened ?!!!i see both of u abandoned if?neways...Happy 2010 for both of u ....do update soon .🥺

Preet gets a hint to what might b going on inside Prem(duffer's ) brain!! chalo ji ab Preet will bcum the lifesaver, and dig in some sense inside his PB's love crazed, relationship burdened skull!

Hope Prem clears all this directly with Heer...but am sure Heer will b offended if Prem asks her upfront abt her feelings for Preet!!

Am yet to see how E approaches this sticky situation!

prem demurred when preet tried to get him to join him to the dance floor. his excuse was not a lie. he felt a heavy pressure building up between his eyes, with all the promise of a grand headache. he watched preet saunter back to where hiten and heer danced, heer's head drooping on hiten's shoulder. prem could see the tiredness in the curve of the slim back that hiten was supporting, and ruthlessly stamped down the urge to go to her, and take her home.

prem hadn't realised that he had been frowning until he felt his brow lightening watching preet put an arm around heer, and the three walk off the floor. he sighed and hoped that they would be getting her something to eat.

he quickly went back to frowning when he saw them headed his way. it was too late to escape.

''hey pb.'' preet's voice was cheery and loud. somehow it matched the sparkling eyes in the face shining with sweat. hiten held heer's hand in the crook of his arm, and didn't seem able to take his eyes off her as they walked a little behind preet.

all that prem could see was how heer's eyes lit up when she saw him, chasing away the shadows of tiredness that had darkened her face earlier. his mind in a churn about what he had to do, and prem felt the drumbeat in his head go up a notch in intensity.

''pb, we need you.'' preet watched his brother's eyes rivet themselves on heer's face, and thought that he'd love to know what complicated reasons were keeping prem from reaching out to pull heer to his side as he clearly wanted to do. instead, he watched prem steel himself against heer's smile and thought fatalistically that actually it was his brother who needed help. serious help.

there was a question on prem's face. preet said. ''at dinner, pb. we need your company at the table. harman and nandita sent us out to fetch you. suni's already headed there. but sharad had to leave. said he has been away from jenine for two hours too long already. i'll find chloe. but i didn't want to leave heer alone and unprotected in casanova's company.''

hiten lazily drawled, ''how ungallant, preet. you didn't ask heer if she wanted to be left in my company alone or not.''

prem sighed mentally and stoically offered to find chloe while preet and hiten took heer into dinner before they went back to settling their fights the way they used to in the 5th grade.

the banter went over heer's head. what she really wanted was to go home. she refused to add, even to herself, that she'd really wanted prem to take her home. she just had no idea that what her mind refused to acknowledge her eyes were sending in volumes as she gazed at prem. if anyone had asked her, she would have answered that she looked at him because really, there was no one else there. well, at least no-one else drew the light, drew the eye. no one in all the gathering tonight had the same effect on her that prem had. and it was beginning to worry her, because it felt like the way she felt about him was changing the way she was doing her painting too.

there was no one at this gathering who knew of her earlier work. preet had asked her if she had wanted to invite anyone, but she had not been forthcoming with any names. it had been so long since she had been in touch with her old life. for some reason, she had shied away from this party being the right way to get back in touch. preet had invited mr. bernstein but they were out of the country.

so it had been strange that of all the people from her past, it had been her antagonistic cousin ashlesha who had seen what heer painted now, after the two-year hiatus that the death of her family had wrought. her cousin who had not cared before, and would certainly not care now about heer's fears about whether her paintings were still true -- or whether they rang false. whether they were an honest depiction of what she sought to paint -- or whether they were merely a manifestation of a current obsession she was suffering from.

her mind detached from the here and now, she thought critically about the two paintings that were standing proud in the limelight. what would they see, her old friends and acquaintances, when they saw the bold strokes of light and form? they had always seen her work in colour.

these paintings had so little of that.

of course, there was colour -- life had colour and her paintings were even now about living things. even if it was the life captured as light in stone and glass and marble. there was life there too, if only you could see it. and that was what she had seen in lalit juneja's idea. and so her paintings still had colour. but here colour was secondary to the ideas in the painting.

heer had only understood that once she had worked in the person in the second painting. prem, she forced herself to acknowledge. it was prem who had made her see the life in an idea compared to merely seeing it in a living thing. he had been the central link between the two paintings, the reason that she had finally understood how the cathedral had to be designed to let in the light.

at first, she had only seen it in her dreams. after that first time that she had run into him, seen the light in his eyes, even through the long dark hair that had lain tumbled and sticky with sweat on his brow. in her dreams, he had been part of the columns in that half-finished structure. he had stood there, dark and lost, until she had dreamt one day how he had reached up and opened up the roof to the skies, not naked to the elements, but sheltered beneath a curving dome that let the light down, in swirls.

heer had not taken the dream seriously. how could she see in her dreams what preet and his entire team at the brownstone had not found in all the years that they had been with his father? in the year that they had worked so hard without him?

it was only that night when she had painted prem in her apartment, that heer had realised what her dreams had been trying to say. she had been watching him as his eyelids slowly drooped shut, watching his life force slip into slumber, that she had realised how to complete the second painting. and once she had the interior of the cathedral clear in her mind, she could imagine what it would look like on the outside as well.

it had not taken that much longer after that night for her to finish the paintings. she had painted all through the morning and by the afternoon, the first coat of paint had started to dry on the second painting. by the time that preet had appeared at her doorstep, both paintings had been standing on their easels, waiting their second and final coats. earlier, it had been at this point that meher would get to see her painting. heer would let her see them and meher would spent several minutes staring at it, her face crunched in concentration. meher had a great sense of colour, and heer had always listened to her comments and criticisms, making adjustments in the final layer.

she had thought it fitting that the first person to see the paintings of the cathedral was preet. preet who had taken on the mantle of lalit juneja, and was carrying on his legacy in completing the cathedral. preet, in whose eyes, her sister could see the love that kept meher alive. for heer, when preet looked at the paintings, it was as if meher was looking at the paintings. and when he had spent several minutes staring at the paintings, making quick exclamations of excited approval, and then the slower questions and criticisms, heer had hugged him fiercely. she knew that preet had understood that it was meher she was holding and crying over. and he had let her cry, wiping her tears, telling her that she would never be alone again, because she would always have meher in him.

unconsciously, heer's fingers crept up to the ring on the chain that preet had given her. she knew what it meant to him. he had told her about it that night. that he had meant to seal his love for meher for the world to see with this token. she had not expected that he would want to gift it to her. his mark of ownership of her sister, which was now dangling from her neck.

if meher had been here today, heer would have been preet's sister-in-law, part of his family. she knew enough about the junejas to know that if anything had happened to her parents, preet and meher would have been the place where she could find a home, a family to nestle with, to feel protected by.

so she had been overwhelmed when preet had gifted her meher's necklace. she had understood what he had meant. she knew that it had been his way of telling the world that heer was part of his family now. and that meher was their link. without meher, she would have been just another trespassing artist in the garden of his brownstone. with meher, she had become a sister again. and heer had smiled thinking that meher always got her way, even when she was not around.

it was only after ashlesha's vitriolic outpouring that heer had realised that there could be another way anyone could look at that sweet gesture of preet's. that it was possible that everyone who had been standing around them could actually think that preet had made a declaration about loving her. and that too right in front of prem who...

heer's rambling thoughts stopped in their tracks.

prem who.. what? prem who could hold her at a polite distance asking her politely what the matter was in one moment, and then be crushing her as if he was trying to push her right into his heart with his kisses. prem who could spend two hours with her at the end of a long hard day so that she could understand finance proposals one day, and then vanish for two weeks when she had wanted to tell him what she had done with his help. prem who had come out of nowhere to rescue her when she was panicking in the middle of the crowd, one minute, and then stand across her with cool polite eyes, and ignore her pleading with him to take her home.

prem who.. how does that sentence end, heer? she asked herself a little frantically. why did it matter that preet gave her meher's necklace in front of prem? why did anything that prem did or did not do, matter to her? why should it ever matter?

still holding on to meher's gift, she came back to the present, where preet and hiten were still arguing with each other, her eyes focussing to look straight into prem's eyes. prem's distant eyes. and she felt an old fear building up inside her again. a fear that she had learnt to put away so deep inside her consciousness that it was no longer something she noticed.

fear that had been her constant companion ever since she had finally accepted that her parents had died, that meher had died, that she knew she was alone in the world. fear that she had felt once before, sharp, and fresh, as she had stood looking down at prem's face that night that he had collapsed. fear that she had opened herself so fully to someone else again. fear that her heart was vulnerable to pain all over again.

Tell PCP that she was aweesome and to take care! she even put up an extra update cuz I bribed her to. 🤣 you weren't supposed to know that. 🤔

hiba