Chapter Thirteen: Before Delhi
The next morning was not romantic. It was molecular biology.
Geet woke, saw the time, and sat bolt upright with such violence that Maan woke beside her convinced something had happened.
"What?"
"Exam."
"Yes."
"What time is it?"
He told her. She made a small horrified noise and launched herself out of bed. Within minutes she was brushing her hair with one hand and trying to read notes with the other, tea cooling untouched beside her.
"Geet."
"Hmm?"
"Your shoe."
She looked down. One shoe. She stared at her own foot as though it had personally betrayed her. Maan found the other beneath the chair.
"Thank you."
"Should I be concerned that biotechnology is destroying basic object permanence?"
"Not today."
He drove her to campus. At the gate she reached for the door handle, then stopped and looked at him, and for one second neither seemed entirely certain what married people were supposed to do before an exam. Then she leaned across and kissed his cheek, quickly, softly. Maan went still.
"Bye." She was already opening the door.
"Geet." She looked back. His expression made her smile.
"Good luck," he said.
Her smile warmed. "Thank you."
She left, and Maan remained sitting in the car for several seconds after she'd disappeared through the gate. His manager, calling at exactly that moment, received a distracted hello and wisely chose not to ask why.
By afternoon, the suite had begun accommodating two completely different lives. Geet occupied the desk with textbooks, loose pages, and handwritten diagrams; Maan worked from one of the armchairs with his laptop, phone, and several documents his manager had delivered. Their worlds touched at the edges. She muttered scientific terminology under her breath; he spoke quietly about valuations and project timelines. Sometimes one interrupted the other. Sometimes both forgot the other was there.
That, strangely, was when Geet became most conscious of him - not when he was looking at her, but when he wasn't. Maan concentrating had a stillness she hadn't seen in the bookshop. His face changed. The charm disappeared. He read quickly, expression sharpening, fingers occasionally tapping once against the arm of the chair before he made a decision. She liked watching him think. Perhaps too much.
Once he looked up without warning and caught her.
"Again?"
"I wasn't staring."
"You have now used that defense twice."
"I am studying."
"Yes, ma'am."
She smiled despite herself.
An hour later she had been reading cell signalling long enough that the words had stopped behaving like language. She dropped her pen. "Break."
Maan glanced up. She stood, stretched, and then, without thinking about it enough to stop herself, put both hands on the carpet and cartwheeled across the open space beside the bed.
He stared. She straightened.
"What," he said slowly, "was that?"
"A cartwheel."
"I identified the cartwheel."
"Then why did you ask?"
"I was hoping there was a rational explanation for why my wife just inverted herself in the middle of a biotechnology textbook."
She laughed. "My legs went numb."
"That explains stretching."
"Cartwheeling is more efficient."
"Is it?"
"No."
She was still smiling when her gaze dropped. "I used to do things like that all the time. When I was little."
Maan waited.
"After I came to live with Aunt Sunita..." She shrugged. "She liked the house quiet. Things put away. Homework done. Mehek could get away with more because she was-" she stopped, searching for it "-Mehek." A tiny smile touched her mouth. "I think I just got very good at not making trouble."
Maan closed his laptop.
Geet looked toward the strip of carpet she'd crossed. "Sometimes after everyone left the bookshop, I'd put music on very quietly and-"
"And?"
She looked embarrassed. "Dance. Make faces at myself in the mirror. Do impressions."
"Cartwheels."
"Sometimes." She looked at him cautiously, as though some part of her still expected amusement to turn into judgment.
Maan stood, and moved the armchair farther back.
"What are you doing?"
"Providing clearance."
"For what?"
"Another one."
Her eyes widened. "Maan."
"The room permits cartwheels."
A laugh escaped her. "No."
"Yes."
"I am not doing another cartwheel on command."
"Fine." He took two steps backward. She grew suspicious.
"What are you doing?"
Maan attempted a cartwheel. It was terrible - not catastrophic, but close enough that one leg came down much too early and he had to catch himself against the desk.
For a second she only stared. Then the giggle came out before she could stop it, a proper one, bright and helpless, both hands flying to her mouth.
He straightened with the remnants of his dignity. "That was awful."
"Yes."
"You nearly broke your neck."
"Possibly."
"Maan!"
"But you laughed."
She did again. He watched her, and something about the way he looked at her changed the laugh into a smile - soft, almost shy.
"You don't mind?"
"What?"
"This."
He looked around theatrically. "I have concerns about the structural integrity of my spine."
She shook her head. "No. Me being-" she couldn't finish it. Silly sounded childish. Too much sounded worse.
"Geet." Maan waited until she looked at him. "You don't have to stop because I'm here."
He paused. "Actually, I'd prefer you didn't."
Her eyes warmed at his answer, and then he ruined it, slightly. "Within reasonable limits. I draw the line at juggling fire."
She giggled again. "Idiot."
Maan smiled as though he'd been given something. And perhaps he had.
They did not become effortlessly comfortable overnight. Some things became easier. Others became more noticeable precisely because they were married now.
Earlier that same evening, while they sat side by side on the bed going through her notes, her bare foot accidentally brushed his ankle. She pulled it back immediately.
"Sorry."
"For having a foot?"
"It was cold."
"I noticed."
Her face warmed. He didn't reach for it, didn't turn the contact into something more - he simply pulled the edge of the blanket over her feet and went back to the question on his phone. The tenderness of that tiny gesture stayed with her absurdly long afterward.
That second night, she woke and realized she'd pulled more than her share of the blanket toward herself. Mortified, she pushed half of it back.
Maan stirred.
"Sorry."
"Hmm?"
"The blanket."
"What about it?"
"I stole it."
A sleepy pause. "Did you?"
"Yes."
"Return it in the morning."
She smiled in the dark.
Their kisses were still deliberate too. Sometimes one of them would look at the other and the room would change; sometimes Maan would ask; sometimes Geet would simply lean in. But there was still nervousness in the first few seconds. Still awareness. Still discovery. Nothing between them had yet become ordinary. She liked that.
On their second evening in the hotel, she was halfway through revising when she looked up from her notes. "Maan?"
He glanced away from his laptop. "Hmm?"
"Have you told your family yet?"
The warmth in the room shifted almost imperceptibly.
"No."
Geet's fingers stopped against the page. "You said you would after the registry."
"I know."
"Maan, that was two days ago."
He leaned back. "I want to tell them in person."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to tell my parents I got married over the phone while we're here and you're trying to finish exams."
Geet looked down at her notes. "I thought they'd know by now."
That landed differently.
"They will."
She looked at him again. "When we go to Delhi?"
"Yes."
"Before I meet them?"
A pause.
"Yes."
Geet nodded, though the small unease didn't entirely leave her, and returned to the book. He watched her for another second before returning to his own work. To him, postponing the conversation and hiding his wife were two entirely different things. She wasn't sure they were. But two days into a marriage was an odd time to discover how much meaning could live inside the difference between two words, and she filed it away.
The following morning, while Geet sat her final exam, Maan's manager arrived at the hotel with news. The trustee acknowledgement had cleared faster than expected. The administrative handover of Geet's estate was essentially complete.
Maan stood beside the windows listening.
"And the parcel documentation?"
"Preliminary valuation is done. We have two possible structures drafted."
"Protections?"
"Outlined. Nothing final."
He nodded. His manager hesitated. "Once she has control, we can approach her."
"I'll approach her."
"You leave for Delhi tomorrow?"
"If she wants to."
His manager glanced at the folder. "Do I hold this?"
Maan looked down at it. Everything was nearly ready - a fair valuation, possible equity structures, dilution protections, exit provisions, all of it designed so that when he finally put the question to her, she could take the proposal to independent counsel of her own. He had solved every problem that could be solved on paper.
"No. Keep preparing it. Valuation, structures, protections. Nothing goes to her until I speak to her."
"When?"
Maan closed the folder. "After today."
His manager didn't ask what after today meant. That was fortunate. Maan wasn't entirely sure himself.
Geet came out of the examination hall just before noon. For several seconds she stood at the top of the steps in the bright mountain sunlight, stunned by the absence of anything else she was supposed to revise. Three years. Done.
Then she saw Maan, leaning against the car at the edge of the road, jacket off, sleeves rolled up again, watching the stream of students come through the gates. His face changed when he saw her. Her stomach did that increasingly familiar little turn, and she walked faster without meaning to.
He straightened. "Well?"
She stopped in front of him. "Done."
"All of it?"
"All of it."
She heard herself say it and suddenly understood what it meant. No next semester. No timetable waiting to be printed. No exam whose date she had forgotten because she'd somehow managed to get married in the middle of finals. Three years had ended on an ordinary Thursday morning.
Her smile widened. "I don't have to explain apoptosis to you ever again."
"I was beginning to enjoy apoptosis."
"You asked whether cells could simply refuse."
"It seemed reasonable."
"It was not reasonable."
He reached for her bag, and she let him take it this time. "Happy?"
She considered, then smiled. "Very."
He looked at her for a second longer than necessary. "Good."
They walked rather than getting straight into the car. She wanted to - the day was too clear to waste behind glass. They passed shops she'd known for years, people she recognized, the tea stall where too much of her life had somehow happened in less than three weeks. At one crossing Maan placed his hand lightly at the small of her back to guide her past a scooter. The touch lasted perhaps two seconds. She felt it for considerably longer.
That was what these days had done to her - made her aware of him everywhere. His hand near hers. His voice behind her. The weight of him lowering himself onto the other side of the mattress. The way he bent his head to listen when she spoke softly. The startling physical fact of him, yes - but also the stranger intimacy of knowing that when she woke tomorrow, he would still be there.
She glanced at him.
Maan was already looking at her.
For a second neither looked away.
"What?" she asked softly.
His mouth shifted. "Nothing."
Geet smiled. "That's my word."
"I'm borrowing it."
She slipped her hand into his. His fingers closed immediately around hers. Then she remembered.
"Now?"
He knew what she meant. His family. His promise. Delhi.
His expression settled. "Now."
"You'll tell them?"
"In person."
She stopped walking. He stopped with her. She looked up at him.
"Before I meet them."
"Yes."
"You promise?"
Something moved across his face so quickly she couldn't name it. Then he squeezed her hand.
"I promise."
She nodded. She believed him. Why wouldn't she?
For now, beneath the clean Shimla sunlight, with her exams finished and her husband's hand warm around hers, Delhi was only the next place they were going together.
_________________________________
Author's Note
Part 13 is up 💛
This chapter felt like a little pocket of happiness before everything changes again. I wanted Maan and Geet to have a few ordinary, almost domestic moments together - studying, teasing, laughing, wandering through Shimla - because sometimes the smallest moments are the ones that make a relationship feel the most real.
And of course, beneath all that softness, there are still things Maan hasn't said. 👀
Please comment and tell me:
- Did this chapter make you feel like Maan and Geet are beginning to settle into marriage more naturally?
- Which of their little moments together did you enjoy the most?
- Do you think Geet is becoming more confident and comfortable around him?
- How nervous are you about Delhi now that Maan still hasn't told his family about the marriage? 😭
- And most importantly: which moment in this chapter stayed with you after you finished reading?
I read every comment, and I genuinely love seeing how differently everyone reads Maan, Geet and their choices. Even a one-line reaction or your favourite scene means a lot, so don't lurk quietly 😄💛
Also, if you enjoy my writing and would like to support my published work, I have books available on Amazon as well:
Mahabharat Katha
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