Part 17: The Chase
It was as if I hadn't slept at all since my visit to Prithvi's apartment the previous weekend. The grey dust that hung in the placid dawn breeze was ready to glow with the first touch of sunlight as I awoke that Saturday morning.
An implacable burgeoning kept me awake most nights. After learning that Shiv had keenly lied to me about Prithvi and Mitra's past, I refused to speak to him or pick up his calls. I had become less and less interested in my assignments and course work and was assailed by a steady pre-occupation about him and Mitra. I was mad that I had let them seep into the sunken depths of consciousness that I could taste their separation.
And strangely, I was ready to give up playing cupid. Without reason, the image of the veiled woman remained with me and another realization struck me that it was perhaps his tragedy that echoed through his paintings. It made him whole and his paintings filled with a familiar angst and by some sense of misguided selfishness, I wanted to do nothing to lose the haunting familiarity that I had finally discovered with him.
Movement hurt, but it ached more to lay in stillness and as if a void remained between my thoughts and actions, I dragged myself across the floor without purpose.
The hallway and then there was the door by the left that led me to the living room. The white embroidered plush of their love seat, a jean leg that hung off its arm rest. Missing shirt and a short crop of hair. The breakfast nook and a few steps after, I came to a stop by the stove. Water; tea and pan.
What the bloody hell? And a creeping chill turned me to a block of ice as the image of the man on the couch cleared out of the haze in my head.
On the ready, I swung around to run back into the living room, when his mocking jeer made me jump back and brace the counter for support.
He was there in the flesh. A blink and a gasp. My gaze turned away sweeping across his rounded shoulders and I trained myself to recover from his sudden presence.
"Are you still planning a career in public policy? If nothing," he said shuffling through the papers, "I sure do see that you have a future writing soft po*n." He raised a brow at me as if he very much intended for me to rise up to his bait.
My eyes flickered up to him, when at the same time my hands groveled to pull the papers out of his hold - the same papers on which I was scribbling out different denouements for the Paheli story I had begun telling Prithvi.
Soft po*n, my foot!
"May be you should take time to visit the bookstore." I slipped out of the kitchen and began turning the corner to head into the hallway that connected to my room. "You have your genres mixed up."
"Perhaps!" I heard him say as he kept at my foot, "I was hoping you would give me a kind lesson yourself. But first you would have to pick up my calls for that."
Stopping to turn and cast him a look of censure, I said, "I'm sure Saanchi would love to go with you. You would only have to hint and she will be driving you around herself."
"Trust me, I would have, but then again she doesn't know or write about talking parrots that could recite poetry. Or about the man who could not be loved..."
As he spoke, the smile on his face disappeared and instead, I saw a distinct approval for what I had written about. The sarcasm in his words didn't measure up to the look on his face and largely, it annoyed me that he wouldn't speak his mind.
"Shiv!" I prompted with contempt. "Why are you here? Your folks are out for your cousin's wedding. Of course, you know that. You know everything." I said with a dramatic tilt of my head.
He smiled shoving his hands into his jean. "I wanted to surprise my folks," he shrugged before leaning in inches away from my face, "I thought they would like to wish me in person on my birthday."
"Oh!..." I took a step back and gazed into his eyes not comprehending who he was referring at. My fingers dug into my skin as my hand tightened its embrace over the papers on my chest. There was an open eagerness in his ask; everything was the same about him and yet, starkly different; his face reveling with a secret amusement let loose a crawling fear under my skin jerking me another step away from him.
"You won't wish me...?" he asked raising his voice as I started to run towards my room. "Anandi..."
Open and shut. I leaned behind the door trying to catch my breath though I hadn't run far. I felt queasy as though something was making its way out of my stomach and rise to my throat.
I didn't want him to see I had gleaned at an alternate inference. I was afraid he could hear the drumming of my heart beat, the pulse that clamored against my jaw. I wanted to hide and fade like the wind.
At once, I wished I hadn't run from him then, for now he knew the chase had begun.
Edited by Lahari. - 12 years ago
CID
Bigg Boss 19
