What's Past is Prologue
"Beautiful view..."
She snapped her eyes shut, willing away the image of his eyes fixed on her as she had walked him through his bedroom. He'd had little to say and she had grown more and more conscious by the minute. That knowledge - the glaring fact that she was so aware of this man - was enough to rile her.
What right did this Dev Khurana have to make her feel this way?
Pulling her chair closer to her desk, she started to work on the budget for the month. She had noticed from the bank statements that Kaka had taken out very little money in the past month. Her heart squeezed with guilt for having left him for so long. He was a stubborn man and careless when it came to his own needs.
Her aunt had been ill for a long time and when she'd left her this haveli in her will, she had given Nayantara something more precious than a business - she gave her the gift of a father's love.
With no memory of her own parents, her aunt alone had filled their roles in her life. She had never felt the loss of a father, never wondered what it would feel like to fearlessly watch the world from the vantage point of a father's shoulders.
But her aunt... she had understood Nayantara better than Nayantara herself. She had known her niece would never insult her by letting her think she had not been enough for her. But she had been keenly aware that when she was gone, her niece would be too proud to cry of her anguish to strangers; she needed someone as stubborn as herself, someone who could share her pain.
Growing up, they had never spoken of him. He was Mr. Gopal, the manager of her aunt's inn and that was the extent of her knowledge about the man. Snippets of gossip had reached her here and there in her youth - men and women with more time on their hands than work - but she had found no reason to believe them.
She outgrew it all through adulthood, anyway. Forgot mysterious Mr. Gopal, forgot Darjeeling and at the height of her career in the US, forgot her aunt, too.
When Mr. Gopal had called her for the first time in her life, she had been in New York, celebrating with her bosses a quantum leap of a deal. He was quiet on the phone and unfailingly polite. In a very careful, practiced manner, he informed her that her aunt had passed away in the night, peacefully and in her sleep.
She was a practical woman more than an emotional one and she knew how to work fast.
After that night, New York became Darjeeling, Mr. Gopal became her Gopal Kaka and Ms Tara Rathod - the soft-spoken, ruthless businesswoman of the hour - became just Nayantara - the owner of a magnificent ancestral inn in a quiet, gossipy town.
Low voices distracted her thoughts, which was just as well. Trips down memory lane were unwelcome ones.
"Don't tell the others but you have the most beautiful room." Kaka's voice carried past her study and into the adjacent corridor. "It has a magnificent view and - you can swim, can't you? I hope you can swim."
"Why, are you going to throw me into the ocean as an initiation test?" A woman - Heer Perera, she presumed - chuckled.
"Oh no, we save that for after guests check out so we don't have to pay the electricity bill for the dryer."
Nayantara glanced out of her window. Dusk had fallen and the sky was a dark, velvety blue. A smattering of stars - bright and silver - lay scattered around a crescent moon.
Such beautiful nights made her incredulous. Had she ever really believed she would be happy elsewhere? Had New York ever felt like home, the way every fibre of her being knew Darjeeling was?
Those years spent abroad had brought her full circle back to this very town. She'd spent those years running, chasing... well, when she remembered that time now, she realised she had been chasing herself. Chasing the thrill that came from winning, from succeeding when people told her she couldn't. In that chase, she had made some terrible mistakes and lost some valuable things.
That's what she liked about home. She simply couldn't be someone she wasn't. The mountains would laugh at her.
Edited by kaamchorni - 6 years ago
Pati Patni Aur Panga
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