Maryada FF: Vidya-Gaurav (p. 30) - Page 6

Originally posted by: 6thElement

The story is taking shape and now I feel I have enough bank of my thoughts to pour down here.

The game changed for me right after you changed it to Gayatri. There is a certain panache she adds to the character of Vidya now. Well I didn't perceive that visuals mattered so much for FF's too, but you made a believer out of me now.

Gaurav to me is coming across like Dev for obvious reasons. How thoughtless? Though the full extent of the impact is beginning to take shape in him now, I doubt he grasps its too late to make amends. Besides this, he also seems to be unbigoted, so freethinking to seek out a lover in a woman who choses a profession outside the conformities of society. Is this really his unprejudiced nature of being or a side that feels no self-worth to deserve a virtuous women due to previous misdeeds? Too early in the story to ask the question I guess...I will wait for more of the backdrop to reveal through your choicest words.

I can't wait to see the character growth you have planned for him...and also interesting to see how he rises up in the eyes of the readers from the current image that has been instilled for him (if he is still to be the male protagonist...I doubt that somehow even though your title calls out Vidya - Gaurav)

Great updates Devi.

Hasini

Chapter 11 – The third First Night – Part 2

Something woke her yet again and she sat up startled it bed, twisting around to look at the bedside clock. It read 1 am. One of the choker necklaces around her neck dug into her skin and she unclasped it in irritation. Her husband had yet to make an appearance, and given the time, she doubted that he would. She might as well sleep in comfort, she decided, and started to unclasp the bigger necklace that hung around her neck when she heard again what had woken her. The necklace fell and she slid off the bed just as she heard a louder noise, like something crashing.

She opened the door and ran out into the hallway to look over the railing, which gave her a straight view down into the enormous main hall downstairs. There was a small crowd of people there and she heard someone yelling, although she could not make out what he said. She looked more carefully and could see Gaurav and Aditya, Brahamanand, Devyani, Imli, Sweety, and Bauji there and… it was Uttara trying to hold back a man who was shouting incoherently. As she watched, the man pushed Uttara away from him and kicked a chair, sending it crashing to the other side. Gaurav caught Uttara to straighten her, but no one approached the irate man. More of the guests were starting to cluster around and she saw Uttara look around at the crowd before running back to the man, who Vidya now surmised could only be her husband.

Before she could think more about what she was doing, she found herself running down the hallway and down the stairs. The voices were louder now and she could hear the man more clearly – he was hurling insults at Gaurav's father. She stopped herself at the foot of the stairs to watch the scene in front of her. Uttara's husband was not a slight man; in fact, he had quite a stocky built and for all that he was drunk, each of his attempts to get Uttara off of him had enough force to send her reeling back. The only thing preventing her from being seriously hurt was the fact that Gaurav was right behind her to catch her each time that she was shoved back. The man's yelling proceeded to become louder until suddenly he pushed at several bottles on the table. She felt a chill go through her entire body as she watched the bottles crash onto the floor, breaking and spilling glass and liquor all around. She looked up in shock as no one made any attempt to intervene, although Devyani looked uncomfortable, Sweety upset, and Aditya agitated. Jaggi looked helpless as Imli stood next to him watching in distress.

She had never seen anything like it before.

The man went on yet another tirade against Brahmanand and she looked over at her father-in-law and felt her fear deepen. The rage that she saw in his eyes was a controlled one… it made her think that he was a man who was capable of having someone killed. She clutched her throat in fear as Uttara went up to her husband again trying to pull him away. This time, rather than swatting her off absently as he had done before, the man turned around and slapped her hard across the face.

Vidya gasped as she felt a sudden urge to run away from there.

Uttara staggered back from the force of the slap and stumbled. It was an instantaneous reaction rather than a thoughtful one as Vidya ran up and caught Uttara before she fell. She straightened the other woman and turned around just in time to see that the man was actually coming at his wife in earnest now. Once again without thinking, she pushed Uttara behind her and away from him. It was a foolhardy thing to do and she cursed herself for doing it as she watched the man's face contort in anger at her defense as he charged at them.

Just before he reached them though, she saw Gaurav and Aditya rush at him from behind to tackle him to the ground. He did not go down without a fight and at the last minute kicked the chair that had already toppled over in her direction. She couldn't move out of the way quickly enough with her long skirt and the chair hit hard against her shin, making her knees buckle.

Uttara tried to grab at her, but only got ahold of her dupatta and it unraveled off of her in the blink of an eye, in surreal repetition of what Imli had done earlier that night. Even with the pain that shot up her legs, she could feel a deep mortification envelop her simultaneously. When her knees hit the ground, the dupatta had already been pulled off and in another instinctive reaction, she wrapped her arms over her blouse and crouched over to cover her body. Her hair fell over her shoulders giving her some protection, but her knees and shin throbbed so painfully that she couldn't make herself move.

There was dead silence for just a moment before chaos erupted. Uttara rushed over to her side and so did Devyani, Sweety, and Imli. She felt lightheaded and most sounds around receded out of range, leaving only a strange monotone in her head like the beep of an ECG machine that no longer read a heart-rate. She wanted to tell them that she needed air, but there were so many people around her that she felt too weak to make a sound.

Just when she thought she would faint in real, the crowd around her parted and she felt someone lift her and carry her out of the room and up the stairs.

"Hold on… hold on..." she heard his whispers as if from far away. She didn't know what he wanted her to hold onto, but she didn't have the energy to ask.

By the time they ascended the first set of stairs, she felt less dizzy and inhaled in deep breaths.

"My dupatta…" she managed to say when she finally felt able to speak, lifting her head up to look into the eyes of her husband.

"We'll get it tomorrow. Don't worry about it for now. No one is here to see you."

Once they climbed the second set of stairs, he stopped to adjust her in his arms and she was forced to hold on around his neck to make it easier, but nevertheless said, "I can walk. I am okay now."

"We are almost there." He told her without slowing in his progress to their room.

"Who is he?" She asked before she could stop herself, thinking back to the earlier scene, wanting to confirm that the man was indeed who she thought he was.

"A dead man." Gaurav whispered through gritted teeth and she felt the earlier chill return to her suddenly as she recalled the face of SSP Brahmanand Jhaakar. She tightened her arms around her husband without thinking. He seemed to realize what he had said then and looked down at her.

"Don't ever put yourself in danger like you just did, Vidya, especially when I am not around. There are things about this house that it's better for you not to know or get involved in."

She wanted to ask him how that was possible now when it was already three days too late.

Originally posted by: 6thElement

Just found out today, you are keeping two threads. Which one should I follow?

The pic change for Gaurav was much needed. 😊 Thanks.

It totally works for me. Its quite strange that my mind flung out the image effortlessly and all I could see was Duggu help steady Vidya as she sinks to the floor.

I need more story movement, to see why they the clan is tolerating him. Sure there will be solid ones. A drunken brawl right after the wedding, and she buts in? I have some high expectations for her now.

Totally imagining Duggu caring for a hurt Gayatri (Sorry...Gaurav and Vidya 😃) in the next part. Great Update Devi.

Hasini

Chapter 12 – The third First Night – Part 3

His sense of smell had always been quite strong since he was a child. He had found that it was not always a good thing because the memory of smells decayed much much slower than that of any other senses.

He walked into their room and was struck with the overpowering fragrance of a hundred flowers that were in multiple bouquets around the room, hanging off in streams from the canopy, wrapped around the bedposts, and sprinkled all over their sheets. It was disorienting after the pungent smell of liquor downstairs from the bottles that had Rishab had broken. He would like to think that is reason why he missed the smell of blood.

When he returned with a warm towel from their bathroom for the bruises that were sure to have formed on her shins, he saw her quickly turn around from sliding a book under her pillow, looking at him guiltily. He was amused and thought of telling her that he had no interest in her secrets; that he was so filled to bursting with the skeletons in the Jhaakar closet that he cared not to know anymore. But then, he became distracted by the sight of the red dotting the white of the sheet just around her feet. He rushed over to her side and lifted the edge of her skirt up to her bent knees. She was too surprised by his action to protest, but then she too noticed that her shins were not merely bruised, but leaking blood from several jagged cuts.

"Glass" they both said in unison as they looked up at each other.

He placed the warm towel over her shins and it quickly stained red as it absorbed her blood.

"Does it hurt?" she shook her head when he asked.

He lifted his eyebrows at her blatant lie but she clarified, "The chair did more damage than the glass. My entire leg hurts so much that I can't really feel the cuts."

He was taken aback that she was so candid, but pleasantly so, and told her after a pause, "Good. Don't think that suffering in silence is a virtue. It really is not…"

She appeared to think of that statement in earnest as he took the towel to the bathroom to rinse it out.

"You really think it's not a virtue? I thought that it is the best virtue in a woman…" She told him when he came back, cringing a little now as he pressed the towel back against her shin.

"No one suffers in true silence. You either expect someone to notice that you are without you having to say it, or you believe that the almighty is in fact seeing your suffering. If the former is not happening and the latter is not within your belief system, then what is the point?"

He thought that she would immediately question him about his admission that he did not believe that there was a higher power looking out for everyone, but she did not, at least not right away.

Instead, she said, "I never thought about it that way. I don't even know if I have ever suffered anything in silence that I wanted anyone else to find out without me telling them. If there has been something like that, it's usually been because I really wanted no one else to know."

He paused in his care of her wounds to look at her and wanted to remind her that she had married him without seeming to have any liking for it, but he didn't, and instead said, "I'm glad. That's the only reason to do it."

There was then a few moments of silence. When it lengthened into minutes, it made the awkwardness between them return and she finally noticed that she was missing her dupatta. Even though it startled her for a moment that she had been sitting there like that all this time, she did not want to call his attention to it and tried to be inconspicuous as she lightly shrugged her shoulders so that her hair would fall over to the front. It did not cooperate right away and she pretended to be working the kinks out of her shoulder as she gently pulled her recalcitrant mane forward.

She was sufficiently distracted with her efforts that he felt permitted to grin as he snuck a look at this struggle with the return of her modesty.

"So, are you always as gutsy as you were downstairs?" He asked as he walked back to the bathroom a second time to rinse out the towel and also give her some privacy.

She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her hair forward and covered herself before he came back.

"I don't know." She answered him when he placed the towel on her legs again. The bleeding had turned into just spotting now and he thought that this last compress would suffice to curb it completely, even though she was bound to be in much pain tomorrow from the bruising to her shin bone from the impact of the chair.

"I have never had to be fearless before." She continued as he took better stock of her wounds. "In fact, I would have thought the opposite. I hate confrontations and I never seek out any thrills. Not even scary movies or novels."

He was starting to notice that she answered each question only after giving it some consideration. He thought that it was a quality most people did not possess.

"Don't you know the true definition of brave? It's not being fearless. It's being scared, but doing it anyways." He held her gaze as he told her.

He walked away after making that statement and she looked after him, wondering. She had not thought that she was doing anything brave. In fact, if she had been given enough time to think it through, she likely would have realized what folly it was to jump in front of a raging, drunk, bull of a man and retreated to search for better options. She told him as much when he returned with a dry towel, antiseptic ointment, and bandages.

"No one with a sound mind would ever jump in front of a raging, drunk bull. You only do it if you are brave or foolish and impulsive."

"What if I am just foolish and impulsive?" She asked him seriously, not entirely ready to own a badge of bravery that she remained unconvinced of as being in her possession.

"You may be. You would know better than I. Are you?" He asked, trying to keep from smiling.

She looked away from him in thought. By then, he had finished bandaging her legs and had opened the closet and found that she had several of her clothes hanging up there already. He did not find any salwaars there though and finally pulled the shawl of one of his few sherwaani's and walked back to the bed.

"I may be…" she told him just as he handed her the shawl and gestured to her top. Her face colored at this reminder, but he did not wait around to increase her embarrassment and walked off into the bathroom to change out of his clothes.

Chapter 13: Something like a Phenomenon

When he returned to the room, she was already asleep, or at least pretending to be, as he had thought she would. She was squeezed over to one side of the king-size bed looking like she could fall over at any moment, which if their first night was any indication, was not out of the realm of possibilities. He would have to get a couch in here that had a pull-out bed without his mother finding out.

He settled into the lounging chair by the window and decided that it would have to do for the night. Just as he took off his glasses, however, there was a knock on the door. He sat up quickly, wondering what had taken her so long. His asleep wife sat up within a heartbeat too and looked over at him. He put his glasses back on and walked over to the bed to pull back the bedspread from his end and asked Vidya to scoot towards the middle of the mattress before going to the door to open it for his mother.

She looked at him and did not say anything; she often did not need to for him to understand what she thought and felt.

He opened the door wider and she walked in, going directly to the bed, to Vidya's side.

He heard them talking quietly for a few minutes before his mother stroked Vidya's hair and gently raised up her skirt to find the bandages. She looked back at Vidya and asked her something and in response he saw them both turn to look at him. He sighed internally…. what would they have him do? Leave his hurt wife to be?

She turned back to Vidya and said something more and then came back to his side.

"Uttara maasi?" he asked and his mother looked away for a moment before turning back to him.

"Aditya drove Rishab and Uttara home."

He sighed openly now. "You can't hide from it anymore, ma. Now he is doing it in the open."

"He was drunk tonight. You know how Rishab is when he has been drinking. He will be alright by tomorrow." She answered, although she had difficulty looking him in the eye now.

He wondered how long she would insist on such illusions, but did not challenge her any further.

"Take care of Vidya." She asked him and then turned to leave.

"How is dad?" he asked quietly just as she was out of the door. She turned around to face him and in that moment, he saw the weakness that she tried to hide at every other time, all the time. But it was gone in another moment and she smiled just as she always smiled, like it would just have to do to make everything better.

He walked up to her and took her hands in his; they were cold to the touch, although still soft as they had always been, just like when he was little and he used to take her hand and hold it against his cheek when she was upset.

"I am married, just like you wanted me to. To a girl that you liked. What more should I do to make you really smile?"

Her eyes filled suddenly and she leaned up to take his face between her hands. "I know you think that you won't be able to forget her."

His mood soured at the mention of Salome.

"But you will, you'll see…" His mother continued when she saw his expression. "This is your girl, Gaurav. This one… She will be the one to make you happy."

He thought to himself that happiness was overrated.

"I don't need a woman to make me happy, mom." He said instead. She patted his hands then before walking away.

He stood in the doorway watching her go into the room that she shared with his father. Just as he was about to turn back to go inside, he saw his father leave their room, dressed as if he was going out. He wondered what exalted police-work SSP Brahmanand Jhaakar had given as an excuse for going out at 3 in the morning. He was sure that there was no dearth of them; not that it mattered because his mother had no say in the matter anyways.

He took off his eyeglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His uncle had acted like a sadistic drunken buffoon at his wedding reception; his aunt had been slapped and humiliated; his bride had been publicly disrobed and injured; and his father was now off to spend the night with one of his many mistresses that littered the city.

The Jhaakars truly knew how to make an event into something like a phenomenon to behold in repulsive wonder.