Rudra.
He paced the room all the way from his side of the bed to the creaky main door back towards to the antique almirah, and then to the far end where the window opened up towards the main market. Even though it was a good few hundred meters away shielded amply by the worn out boundary walls of the haveli and the heavy foliage of the Banyan trees that stood in between, the noise and the hustle bustle inevitably filtered through. Sometimes, if you tried real hard you could even make our hagglers bargaining for a fair price during the evening markets, mostly though it was all a blob of cacophonies - discordant noises that were more of a nuisance than anything else.
Not tonight though, even as the loud music from the annual mela blared through the cranky loud-speakers, Rudra's thoughts were somewhere else. As he paced about his spacious room sporting a prominent crease of obvious worry between his brows, he was fast losing the patience he had fought so hard to maintain throughout the day. His thoughts drifted back to that brief conversation of an hour ago.
"I don't want your help" he held his hand up asking her to stop, why was it so hard for her to know he hated being smothered with all this care. It made him feel uneasy and trapped.
"Fine suit yourself" Paro thrust the medicine sachet in his hands, turned around and simply walked away towards the door even as a stunned Major looked on.
His mind was a bubble of contradictions and he had already told her not to believe everything he said, so her behavior irked him. He just wasn't sure why.
"And where do you think you are going?" if he had hoped this would make her stop, he was in for more surprises. If anything, his words had the opposite effect. Sensing that urgency in her steps, and not liking it one bit, he said the first thing that came to his mind, "Paaniii..." in a voice laden with thirst, as if he was a dying man in a dessert.
This time though, she did stop and turn around with her eyes searching for the jug of water. It came back up to meet his once she had it located on top of the table by her side of the bed. Their eyes held each other's for a moment longer than necessary, no words were spoken - and yet when Paro walked out of the room, he knew exactly what had been left unsaid. Major Rudra Pratap Ranawat was not a happy man after that.
Half an hour later even as the effects of the medicine kicked in, he found himself pacing the room restlessly, Paro was still not back. He had convinced himself that he did not care, it did not bother him where she was and that his restlessness was due to the sheer exhaustion and the side effects of the poisoning and not because of anything else and it certainly had nothing to do with Paro or the fact that she was not back in their...his room yet.
For a fleeting moment he was tempted to walk out of his room, and drag her back but thankfully it had just been that, a fleeting thought. Just then, his eyes fell upon the pink chudis, the ones he had bought for Paro just a day before, neatly stacked up on the table by the mirror and by its side lay the lone silver earring, the one she had worn the night of the ball. Drawn to it like magnets to an iron ore, he walked over and ran his index finger over the earring feeling its textures and inadvertently a smile played on his face as he recalled how he had woken up to find her nestled in his arms and her harried reactions to everything that had followed. He could get used to that, he mused.
But when he looked up at the mirror the very next instance, he could hardly recognize the man staring back at him! The smile was replaced instantly by a frown as Rudra let go of that jewelry like he had been scorched by it. He didn't want this, never had. So what had changed?
INDEX -
Scroll down for Update 2. Paro.
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