Posted:
Hi guys. This is some complete and utter fluff inspired by one of MsTiara's gorgeous creations. It's very...American. Please forgive me, suspend all expectations of accuracy and, umm...enjoy? 😳
Inspiration picture - credit to MsTiara aka KATE!!
Hugs
an AbhiGya OS by -mina-
I didn't want to be just another cliche, the school nerd who is hopelessly in love with the popular boy, so I never let anyone know that I felt anything for him at all. Mostly I just pretended to be indifferent, though sometimes we would get into taunting wars because he just can't keep his mouth shut. Honestly he is and has always been purely made of sass.
We didn't see much of each other in that last year of school, as our official status was only friends-of-friends and we didn't have any classes together. So graduation day came upon us suddenly and I shouldn't have been surprised when he pulled me into a hug. He hugged everyone that day, one after the other.
Still, I had never been that close to him before and even though it only lasted thirty seconds, I lost my head while in his arms. To feel his firm grip, his hard chest, the rasp of his stubbled cheek against my skin - to drown in that Old Spice scent that was subtler with him than the clouds of Axe favoured by the other boys - to know that my chin fit just exactly right on his shoulder -
- I just kept thinking, if only, and what could have been, and for thirty seconds I forgot everything I knew about what I could and couldn't have in life and just got to have him.
But of course he let me go with complete ease, no sign of being affected at all - and why would he be?
He took Tanu to prom, as everyone expected. They had this on-again off-again thing for the last two years of school. He never called it a relationship though she definitely liked to say "my boyfriend Abhi" as much as possible. They looked stupidly gorgeous with her designer gown coordinated to his bespoke suit. I did my best not to look at them but they were kind of hard to miss, always the centre of attention...
He managed to get away from Tanu for about ten minutes after dinner, and he came by our table to chat with Purab. When he turned to leave he finally saw me, and he got that annoying grin on his face, and I knew he was about to say something infuriating. Sure enough, he fulfilled my expectations with an obnoxious wolf-whistle as he smirked and commented, "Well well well, who are you and what have you done to Chashmish? The lehenga's nice but don't you think it's dangerous to be walking around blind?"
"I'm wearing lenses," I snapped back, and because it was prom and we were all a little giddy with excitement, I let my inner six year old come out to play and stuck my tongue out at him.
He laughed. "Don't ever change, Chashmish," he said, and he patted my shoulder and went back to Tanu and that was that, the last interaction I'd ever have with the wannabe rockstar I'd been crushing on since seventh grade.
Fast forward three years and I walked into the most ridiculous surprise of my life on the third day of term, because the most unlikely person was sitting in on my "feminist approaches to law" class. I actually didn't recognize him at first, because his hair was neat and his face was clean-shaven and he wasn't wearing his standard leather jacket and loose v-neck over distressed jeans. He actually looked like the picture perfect definition of a college boy, wearing a preppy sweater over a collared dress shirt. And get this, he even had glasses - thin black-rimmed wire frames with sleek rectangular lenses. I'm not going to lie, I totally sat down next to him thinking, "He's cute and I bet he's really smart, I have to get to know him."
He recognized me before I recognized him and if it hadn't been for the professor starting class the next minute, a very strange and loud reunion would surely have ensued. As it was we started exchanging notes on a piece of paper he pulled from his notebook, and we missed most of the introductory lecture.
I found out over the rest of the term that he was still a wannabe-rockstar, but his Daadi and Taya had convinced him to finish college first, "to have something to fall back on." He'd just transferred into my university after two years out of town because he wanted to live at home again. He swore he only wore the glasses to see the board, and it was true, he would always take them off as soon as we walked out of the classroom.
I spent a lot of time with him that semester, discussing and arguing about the readings, and working together on the papers and exam prep. I really liked being around him, because he was still funny and relaxed but he had this serious side too, and a surprising intelligence. I mean growing up you'd never think he'd be the type to take a feminist law class, let alone to write the papers a week ahead of time and then score top grades. But I guess he'd really been hiding a lot behind that rockin' persona. He was always a bundle of contradictions - cool as ice to the world but the warmest heart to his friends, completely modern outside the home but at the same time utterly devoted to his Daadi and upholding his family.
I didn't feel those annoying attraction feelings from high school any more. He became my friend and I liked spending time with him and that was it, I didn't daydream about what it would be like if he would only just see me, I didn't get stupidly excited every time our hands touched, I didn't blush when he said that he liked my earrings or my kurti or whatever random thing he would find to compliment. I know what you're thinking - "the lady doth protest too much" - but I really do mean it, for those four months I only saw him as a friend. I think it was in part because he was really serious most of that semester, I guess he had stuff going on that he didn't want to talk about. Whatever the reason, despite his generally cheerful and laidback mood, he was definitely closed off emotionally, and that kept me from falling too much. I think.
And of course for my part there was the engagement to Suresh. Maa had finalized the rishta with his family at the end of the previous summer. I never saw him because he was away finishing his army service, and I wouldn't be seeing him much for awhile because after that he was going to live in Delhi to finish up his master's. But we wrote to each other a lot, and we talked on the phone once a week, and over the course of the semester I never told him about my new/old friend Abhi but then again I never told Abhi about my fiance-to-be either.
Abhi didn't date at all that semester, but I think it had to do with whatever personal problem was keeping him so seriously focused on school. He told me Tanu was sort of still part of his life, though he could never predict when she would suddenly want to talk to him or come for a visit, so he didn't count it as a relationship or even a friendship. He never asked me about my personal life and I assumed he thought I didn't have one - it was the kind of arrogant assumption he'd have easily made when we were in school, and of course back then he would've been right. But then when we were having celebratory coffee after our final exam, he started teasing me about whether I'd ever gotten around to having a boyfriend...and then of course I had to tell him about the engagement.
He went silent for awhile and then he asked me a few questions about whether I was happy and what our plans were. He vaguely knew Suresh as a family friend since we all belonged to the same community, but as Suresh was six years older it wasn't much of an acquaintance. At the end of our conversation he offered me congratulations and gave me a hug, and to my horror and delight, after a wholly platonic semester, that same old thing happened. For the thirty seconds I was in his arms I forgot that the rest of the world and the rest of my life even existed. But then it was over and I told myself I hadn't felt anything disturbing at all.
We lost touch after that. We texted each other happy new year but then we didn't have any classes the next semester, and by the time college graduation came around a year later I actually had no idea what he was up to. Apparently he'd switched programs again because he wasn't at my department's finishing ceremony. i hadn't seen him around campus much and he hadn't built up a fanclub at the college as he'd had in high school, so there was no one to gossip about his doings either.
Anyway after briefly wondering about him at graduation, I put him out of my mind. I had lots of other stuff to think about, what with my new job in Delhi and living near Suresh and finalizing our engagement and setting a date for our wedding.
Of course the wedding never happened. While we lived in Delhi, away from the hectoring influence of our mothers, Suresh and I realized we were just completely wrong for each other. And it was a mutual decision to end our engagement and face our families, though he confessed after it was all done that actually he'd lost his heart to someone a long time ago and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to get married really. I thought that was silly; Suresh was made to be a family man, just not with me. But I knew I couldn't convince him so I just said comforting things and let him be.
We were awkward around each other the first year or two after our engagement ended, but eventually we put it behind us and became sort-of friends. We didn't have much choice, really, as when we both moved back home we became neighbours again.
I had liked my job in Delhi well enough, but it wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life, so when I got back home I also went back to school to upgrade my credentials. After I was done my third MA - and let's just not talk about why the department wouldn't grant me my doctorate then - I started teaching at the college and life was calm and happy for a few years. The only trouble was that Maa was getting more and more anxious about my not being anywhere close to get married.
Between her worries about me and Bulbul and the ongoing stress of running the marriage hall, she developed a pressure condition and every month she had to go to the hospital for tests and medication. it wasn't really serious, it just became part of our routine.
One afternoon I took Maa to her appointment and since there was nothing for me to do for the hour that she'd be with the nurses, I decided to walk to the hospital caf for some tea. On the way I had to pass the intensive care ward, and to my surprise there was a very familiar someone leaning against the wall with his head in his hands.
He was back to his distressed jeans and leather jacket look, and his glasses were nowhere in sight, and now he was even wearing some really silly dangling dog tags around his neck. It looked like he'd finally made it as a rockstar, but I knew that the serious scholar Abhi was probably still buried deep inside somewhere.
I went up to him and touched his shoulder and then as soon as he saw who I was, he just pulled me into a hug. It was incredibly bizarre to have him crying on my shoulder - we hadn't seen each other in four years and he was six inches taller than me and ridiculously muscled so really he shouldn't have felt so fragile in my arms, but he did. After a while he recovered enough to explain that his Daadi was hospitalized and it was looking grim and he didn't know what to do.
I didn't have much to tell him but suddenly I decided the best thing to do would be to take him to the hospital mandir. I told him to follow me and he did, because he was as trusting as a puppy - somewhere along the years he had really accepted me as a friend, and his heart was still open to me despite the many years we'd been apart. I knew he didn't believe in all the religious stuff but he was at his lowest and most desperate and sometimes in those moments, the most unexpected things can be a comfort. He followed my lead and we both offered a short prayer.
Afterwards he told me he hoped God would listen to me since he didn't expect Him to even hear his voice. He thanked me for caring about his Daadi. Then we hugged again and I had to leave because it was time to pick up Maa.
I found out from the papers that his Daadi made a full recovery. After that followed two years' worth of headlines about his rising fame, and then suddenly I was living in a world where everyone knew his name and had his poster and could sing his songs by heart, and it was utterly surreal to think that once upon a time he was just a boy I'd had a crush on, stuck my tongue out to, written notes in college classes with, and hugged while he cried in a hospital.
I didn't expect to see him again, especially not now that he was a big star. But life seemed to have other plans for us.
Maa had worked her way through most of the city's matchmakers over the years, and by the time I was 27 she was hanging all her hopes on one of the last aunties we were referred to. This aunty's services were a bit beyond our budget, and to be honest the families she was allied with were really not in our range at all for matching, but Maa was desperate and starting to get a bit delusional.
Abhi's information and picture were presented to me under his official name, not his rockstar-wala name, and I couldn't believe it. I had to know why he was going through this whole process so I agreed to meet up with him. Apparently he wasn't even deciding who to meet with, his Daadi was, and so when he got the restaurant he didn't know it was going to be me.
We talked and I found out all about his wacky life. He said he was doing this because he would do anything for his Daadi. He knew his Daadi wanted him to marry someone who would help him settle down, and though that wasn't his priority, he definitely wanted to find someone he could trust to take care of his Daadi and his family since his career kept him away so much. He remembered then that I was supposed to have been married half a decade ago and I had to tell him the whole sad story of Suresh, which now had the punchline of him having recently gotten involved with my younger sister. He was appalled at that but I reassured him that I didn't care.
We talked a lot about marriage and expectations and the matching process that day, but we never seriously talked about marrying each other. We kept in touch after that meeting and I kept him up to date on all the losers I had to meet and he told me how the matchmaking lady was having a tough time finding girls who wanted him for more than his fame so he was actually meeting with fewer and fewer women as the months went on.
To cut a long story short, we got closer than we ever had been before, talking and meeting over almost a year to share our miseries about the whole business of marriage-making. For my part I kept telling myself that I would start pulling away from him soon, because those attraction feelings were back but they'd evolved into something more powerful and terrifying and unnameable, and since I cared about my sanity I absolutely should and would save myself from heartache and get him out of my life right away. I told myself this after every lunch date and every evening phone call and every time I believed myself, but then he'd call or text again and I forgot all about that resolution.
As always, I did everything I could not to show that I felt anything but friendship for him. and as far as I could tell he too only saw me as a friend. But there's such a thing as willful blindness, and to be honest there was a lot that a sensible girl should and would have seen that I chose not to see, because I was afraid to deal with the implications. Thankfully he's never suffered from this kind of fear, and one day he just told me that the only sensible thing for us to do was get married, no self-consciousness or awkwardness or anything.
I told him that there was one test for that decision. And sure enough when we hugged, it was just like it had always been. It felt like the rightest and only place to be. And I thought I still didn't want to be a cliche, but if it still felt this way after so many years, and if now he felt it too...then he was right, there was only one sensible thing to do.
~The End~
Yeah guys...I like to write the same thing over and over again...the arranged marriage meeting thing, it grabs me, what can I say...and all of you who are mocking the idea of Feminist Scholar Abhi, do kindly quash your cynicism - this is an alternate universe, anything could happen!!
Well thank you for reading, I really do appreciate it.
Apologies again for the Americanisms. And for the first person narration. And for everything really.
Big hugs to you all ;)
Cricket
Financial markets and global economy
Ishaani
621