A/N: So I will recap for each chapter in accordance with what part from the previous chapters it ties to/from. Just to sort of retain memory and flow.
Also, I forgot to mention in the previous update – in case anyone was wondering, I'm now throwing in some character names from the old Sanjeevani series – aka Dr. Juhi Malik, and Dr. Aman Kher so far (with altered last names to fit into their AoL characters). And yes they are namesake, but no they will not bear semblance to the originals, except in rare basics (like being doctors as from the show.)
And just for the record, I had mentioned in some earlier chapter that this Greater Kailash (GK) house which befell Ridhima's legacy, has in general received regular maintenance through the years - just in case you were going to wonder! Also, I faintly recall making a mention of the year in which this story begun narrative as 2008, or 09, and although it doesn't matter for this particular chapter, I just wana make sure you disregard that and assume 2011, so I don't end up saying general things which belie 2008-09.
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Recap:
Ridhima has made a purpose out of keeping the kitchen showdown a secret, so she doesn't have to share the tale of her injured hand. Armaan misunderstands her efforts to apologize, as further misbehavior on her part, and decides to remain quiet for his own reason of giving her no more chance to make a public spectacle out of rebuking him next. Muskaan eventually gets called over leaving AR to themselves, but Ridhima fails in several attempts to apologize right, and have it accepted. Until it's all cut short by a call for Armaan about a 'she' who's had an accident.
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~ Part 15 ~
"Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm…" - Description of a Struggle (Franz Kafka)
For all her restlessness to get these quiet hours alone, disquietude was growing upon her in a disturbing manner. She had tried nearly every possible position lying in this bed, but nothing would make it 'feel like home'. No more, than the bedroom itself would feel like it was hers at one time. She couldn't be sure if this 'foreign feeling' was responsible for her tiresome bout of insomnia, despite being bone-tired, or the other way round – either way she felt desperate to escape the ordeal.
A fickle desperation, given that it had been her own conviction to stay back alone.
Accordingly, over a couple hours ago, she had bid her final goodbyes. Then she had walked back in through the main doors, and alone this time, securing the safety bolts, she had arbitrarily been reminded of the teen game show from the 90's, The Crystal Maze, which Rahul and she had grown up following keenly for several years. It had momentarily humoured her to have remembered, and drawn the comparison. Then as she finished locking behind her and turned around to face the task she had set for herself, a grim smile returned as she wondered if the contestants on the show had felt half as ambiguously about what awaited them.
The size of the mansion had had a fresh overbearing effect, heightened in being all by herself. The silence had been broken only by the sound of her heels when she had taken the first tentative steps, making her unassumingly step out of them. The floor swept shortly before had immediately felt cold. But even as she absently crinkled her toes, her attention consciously had been hooked to absorbing her surrounding, as she walked around, like she hadn't been in and out of this hall all evening, or all the days of prep. Distantly she had remembered Nikki having made some remark about how grand this place was, and walking around, Ridhima had tried to see it in that perspective. Putting aside her preconceived notions, trying to start with a fresh slate. But 'the grand' had still only seemed too empty for its spaciousness, the emptiness in turn – contradictory to its nature - rather claustrophobic for a leisurely, lonely, exploration. Perhaps she had been looking for something in particular, without knowing what. Perhaps she had imagined scenes evoking deja vu to have risen to form from the mere thin air – but no such spectacular visions had obliged her.
Still, she had kept her heart strong, and proceeded. Climbed the ornate spiral stairway and taken a right at the top of it, to have walked along the corridor that she had inconspicuously but carefully avoided these last few days, while party prep was in full swing.
The corridor which led to the master bedroom.
She had tried to ignore the slight shaking of her fingers as they worked the key into the lock that secured the latch, and pushing the door open, she had been met by an odd mix of smells – musty and dusty and partly of fresh paint. Her hand had of its own reflex begun seeking for the master controls to turn on the lights, all the while staying cautiously just outside of the doorstep herself. Then, all at once with a single switch soft neon lights had come to life at asymmetric corners of the room, covering it in patterns of glow and shadows.
Ridhima had not remembered to be meticulous and explicitly lay out for herself, what exact expectations she had from this room. Or even from herself, in entering it for the first time, in all of these years since she been undertaken by foster care. Her reaction however, to the sight of blank walls and plain sheets spread over the furniture and other belongings had been nothing like anything one would imagine; for this was after all the room that had once been lived in by her parents. Yet what had risen within her in response, were no piercing pangs of loss, instead a vacant sense of detachment. For one long moment she had stood staring. Then abruptly it had hit her - the cognizance of how aloof she felt facing this relic of a room from her life's forgotten past – and hit her hard! She might just as well have been a stranger on a maiden visit! Before she had realized, Ridhima had begun to breathe heavily, rapidly working herself up into an ironic fit that had been not on account of an emotional upheaval, but from the sheer lack of it. And she had known no better than to flee from the sight of it, although even as she had come to a breathless halt at the bottom step, letting herself collapse upon it, nothing had helped her escape the feeling itself.
The feeling of futility as in being faced by a dead end. She had sat like that, looking pointlessly ahead into the dark hall which had been home to the grand bash only hours ago. Frustration and guilt had mingled to torment her, until slowly they had subsided into a sense of defeat – defeat, in being let down by this powerful reminder of the past that had failed to stir absolutely nothing inside of her.
Then an hour ago, she had finally raised herself to stand, and made way to what had been 'her room' back in the day. So that here she lay now, in this bed that was all snug and pampering softness which had seemingly been waiting years to be able to cuddle her like a little girl again. But all she could think about was what a horrible mistake it had been to test her limits after such a long day, and a borderline unbearable evening, by isolating herself in this place! Yes, some ridiculously stubborn part of her had still believed in blaming her precedent circumstances for not finding reaction in this place, rather than her own lost connection – but for the meagre solace that it provided her in the otherwise engulfing disappointment, she had allowed it to prevail like a tiny flame of improbable hope.
Now as she turned to change her side for the nth time, the bandaging on the hand brushing slightly against her cheek reminded her. This impulsive leap of faith was the doing of that wretched cactus, the prodigal sibling as she had thought of it, not so long ago. It had brought her back a surprise flash of some vivid memories, and somewhere foolishly she had been led to believe that staying back here would bring back more…
If ever she had been any more in the wrong! All the cactus had given her was a heavily bruised hand, an epic fail of a party, and worst of all, false hope!
Ridhima sighed exasperatedly slamming herself upon her straight back, and telling herself that unless she was in fact trying to encourage the sleeplessness, she had better quit this line of thoughts. Or any thoughts for that matter. Staring at the ceiling of her room, she tried consciously to draw a mental blank. Instead she found herself thinking of how structurally similar the bedrooms in this house were, inevitably thinking in comparison of that other room... Aggravated, she shut her eyes. But 'blinding' herself to 'sight' only heightened her passive awareness of the sound of silence around, into an acute one, until she thought the ringing of this silence would deafen her!
And with a jump she sat up in the bed. The abrupt loss of her duvet's warmth as it slipped off made her shiver slightly, even as she had a bodily feeling of a clammy sweat breaking despite it being an October night. The contrasting hot and cold made her queasier than ever, and looking to her bedside she realized she had kept no water. A groan in reaction startled her for a fleeting second, before she realized it was her own, and subsequently realized also that it was the first real sound she had uttered in the span of hours now. Reflexively she cleared her throat, slithered off the bed and made way to the attached washroom. It wasn't so much the dark as the quiet and desertion that made her switch on every light in the space, and further turn on the faucet at its highest pressure so that the water made loud gushing noise. Without waiting for her eyes to accustom to the bright, she splashed her face with the cold water several times before stopping to catch breath, and a few seconds after, cupped her hands to drink in some too.
Then, she walked back into the dark bedroom. The sight of her bed in the silvery blue light of the night was so tousled and pulled apart, that if she wasn't looking at her own bed, which she had occupied all by herself, it may have well given her embarrassing ideas. For now, the shabby state was enough for her to know better than to go through the futility of trying to sleep in it again. She turned and walked towards the large window instead, pushed open the glass to welcome in the night outside, willing it to remedy the stuffiness as she dropped herself into the old mahogany rocking chair beside it. Ever since Shakuntala had mentioned its having once belonged to her father, while cleaning the hall a few days ago, Ridhima had remained uncertain whether she had subconsciously known as much from the sight of it, or if having it spelled out had made it feel like a blur of a memory. She had tried to conjure an image of her father sitting on it, and was just as unsure that the picture in her mind wasn't entirely a self fabricated one. Still, there was a benefit of doubt, and she had asked for the antique chair to be moved to her room. Leaning forward in it now, so that she could rest her face upon chin on the cool pane, she looked out of the window, at nothing in particular, but the night itself at large.
A clear night with the expected nip in the air given the month. Out of an old habit she remembered not having picked up where from, she looked at the stars to establish a familiar form, and there it was, the Orion, or the hunter as per its shape. Although for many years Ridhima had found absolutely no such sense of semblance. Then that animation movie had come out, the Prince of Egypt, and for some reason she had associated this constellation with the Pharaoh ever after. If not literally, in the figurative way it made sense to her to perceive that antagonist as a hunter. And so it had remained.
She sat looking at it now, the cool air feeling fresh after the feverish restlessness, and in a distance she heard the sound of a late night wedding band. Unknowingly, as if to shed off the silence that had grown on her, she closed her eyes lightly, and concentrated on other sounds. A car drove by somewhere in the neighbourhood, and at a brief interval there was the zooming past of a bike. Somewhere in the distant background were muffled fireworks – and she remembered Diwali wasn't so far off. Then amidst it all, she heard a faint little giggle. Faint at first, but as it caught her attention, she focussed on it, and it became more distinct, the other sounds fading around it. It was a little girl laughing, as someone talked to her, but try as she might, she could not catch the words that were making the little girl laugh. It grew louder though, the laugh itself, there were squeals, and shrieks now... and then abruptly, there was a scream. Not a scream in glee, but a scream in much fear. Another scream followed, and this one, she was sure, did not belong to the girl at all! Then there was a bang. She wondered when the fireworks had become so loud and close, but couldn't dwell on the thought because the bang was followed by another. Then another. And another. A total of six – she counted. Then like the giggle from before, arose another faint sound. She struggled to distinguish it, with an urgency she could not understand, and realized it was the sound of the little girl crying. She sought desperately to seek out the girl, or even the source of her misery, and then suddenly from the dark rose this darker shape, one she couldn't make out immediately, but then its corners begun to shine and she realized it was the hunter! The Pharaoh had come to life! And it was what was scaring the little girl, making her cry... She tried to tell it off, but it appalled her that she'd lost her voice, and then as she made to push it away physically, a pang of intense pain shot through her own self! She screamed in agony, but still no sound would come, and writhe and cringe as she might, the pain only grew worse... until there was the sound of wailing in a distance. It grew louder, and louder, like a ringing siren...
Ridhima sat up with a start - breathless from soundless hiccups, very cold, especially her wet cheeks which were freezing from the night air against them now, but most importantly in pain. In real physical pain, she realized, as she gingerly extracted her bandaged hand from where she had gotten it stuck in the crevice of the window pane which she was clutching tightly. So distracted was she by its throbbing, that it was another few seconds before she realized her phone was ringing. Had been ringing for some time perhaps. Hastily she got off the chair to seek it out, meanwhile squeezing her painful hand, hoping to alleviate it of the stinging feeling of chopped nerve ends.
When she did find the buzzing phone from within the mess of sheets and the duvet, Ridhima looked at the flashing ID, in double minds. Eventually the call got cut. Before it could ring again, she quickly reworked the settings to silent mode, and dropped the phone face down on the bed again.
Before sighing deeply, as she stood, hanging her head backwards, hands upon her hips. Slowly, she lowered her head, then shook it at herself. He was probably worrying about her – no he was definitely worrying about her. But if she talked to him just now, right out of that horrible nightmare that had amounted of her fitful nap, she would only worry him more. There was a part of her so vulnerable that wanted nothing more than to talk to him and have him calm her frenzy. But there was another part of her which had grown into a slow but sure resolve over these past few days, to shed off this long time shell of protection and pretence and own her life as it truly was.
So no. It was better that he wondered how she'd survived the evening, than knew for a fact that she'd fallen flat on her attempt. A first attempt she pointed out to herself. Tomorrow she would talk to him. Assure him she'd done just fine.
Tonight – or what was left of it – could be spent in analysing why and how truly unprepared she had been. How weak she still was for this tryst with the past. Randomly it reminded her how Armaan had accused her of seeking sympathy, and how unhinged her reaction to that had been. It was natural for someone like her to have taken great offense to that blame. Someone like her, who had kept up with hiding her demons from the world all her life, particularly in despise of any sympathy. But perhaps it was also from knowing that she had her moments of breaking down and needing to be solaced. Perhaps it had risen from this consciousness of the last few days, that she had in fact been seeking shields of comfort too much, too long, on the pretext of a long ago ghastly mishap. And was that not seeking sympathy?! Armaan had touched a sore nerve, sans intention; and her outburst in response, in a way, had only affirmed his stance.
But this was it. No more sympathy. No more support. It was time she outgrew the shell of the poor little destiny hit orphan girl. Time that she learned to fend for herself.
And she knew, even if it would upset him initially, he of all the people would understand, how badly she needed to establish this independence.
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Book Talk
Cricket
193