This OneShot is a humble gift to one of the sweetest, funniest, awesomest people I've met on this forum- a person who's grown to be one of my closest friends :) A VERY HAPPY (advanced :p) BIRTHDAY Avantika (avantika_2012)!!! I'm a tad bit early, but I still hope you have a blast and that this year, and all the years to come, will be magical for you :)
Special, huge thank-you to Rae (Angelteen) for once more giving me the confidence to post this - without her, this story would never have seen the light of day :)
OneShot |Study in Senses|
***
"Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth."
Margaret Atwood, Der blinde Mrder
***
Her throat convulses as she hunches over in dejection, the cool edge of the metallic seat penetrating its icy touch through the thin fabric of her clothes.
It's like sitting at the edge of a precipice, teetering there, rocking back and forth with her eyes fixed on the nothingness below.
One push is all it would need to thrust her into that eternity of emptiness.
The tears seep so freely out of the corner of her eyes that she fails now even to notice them.
And then she feels it.
That weight resting on her head.
It is not firm - but neither is it light, or uncertain, or fickle.
It is steady, and it is warm, and it startles her into looking up.
Through the somewhat-blurry film of her tears, she stares in astonishment into the hazel-flecked orbs gazing back down at her.
They are not stony or searing or cold, not mocking or cruel or condescending.
They are warm.
They are sincere.
A tiny little gasp hitches in her throat, and she almost hiccups as she continues staring at him through wide eyes, words fizzling out before they can form.
She is speechless.
But that's all right. That's all right, because he is not saying anything either.
He does not have to. She can see it clearly, and sense it even more clearly. There are no empty words of sympathy and encouragement - there is just companionship, empathy.
He remains sitting there, letting his palm rest on the top her head, keeping his gaze locked to hers, and Khushi is awestruck.
Awestruck at how this simple touch, for once not aggressive and not forceful, not fuelled by anger or by instinct, not out of anger or out of necessity - how this one simple touch of his has suddenly made her feel so safe.
No longer alone.
Steadied at the edge of the precipice, secured so firmly she no longer fears falling.
It upsets her understanding of this man, who he is and what he stands for, what he means to her, and what she means to him...yet she cannot help but embrace it.
For the first time since her father is admitted to the hospital, Khushi senses her heart quiet its mourning beat, and pulse with a warmth that pumps hope back to every nerve in her body.
Something changes.
***
"I noticed that once you realize
someone's watching you it's pretty hard not to find yourself
watching them back."
Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now
***
She does not miss that strange look in his eyes.
It follows her wherever she goes; she can feel it weighing on her as she weaves her way through the people gathered at Shantivan, her mouth uncomfortably dry, heat curling like a snuggly-wrapped muffler around her neck.
Every once in a while, her eyes betray her flustered mind, drawn to him like a pair of magnets.
Every single time, they end up meeting his, and Khushi cannot understand why he will not look away.
Why the distance between them, though considerable, does not seem to diminish no matter how far away she moves.
Why she can feel that stare burn her, singeing through the scarlet of the saree Anjaliji has gifted her for Diwali, scorching at her flesh.
It frightens her a little.
Or at least, she supposes it frightens her.
What else could it be? Why else would her heart lurch dizzyingly every time she spies him at the edge of her sight? What else could be causing that restless fluttering behind her navel? Make her feel so cold and so warm all at once?
She does not understand what is happening- does not understand the meaning of his strange look, or the meaning of the strange ways it affects her.
She continues threading through the crowds, walled in by the pounding beats of her own heart, swathed in a coil of heat, with a peculiar conviction that something is going to happen, something pivotal and significant, niggling away beneath her skin.
Something is going to change.
She watches him watch her out of the corner of her eye, frazzled.
Enchanted.
***
"We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle
***
It is overwhelming.
She blinks disconcertedly, pupils fumbling to adjust to the sudden darkness that has engulfed the previously bright stage.
The charged rhythm of the music sounds louder, the notes sharper now as her senses readjust to the changed dynamics of her surroundings.
And then the spotlights blare to life, and Khushi is momentarily blinded.
What happens next happens so fast she barely registers how it all began.
All she knows is she is sailing through air - she is sailing, flying, her feet no longer on the ground, and there are tiny little pinpoints of light everywhere, and it's like she is dancing through the night sky.
But what she is most aware of is him.
She can barely see him, in this patchwork of light and shadows, in the blur of movement as she is turned, twirled, pulled and released.
But she can sense him.
Sense the sparks that nip at her skin every time his skin brushes across hers. Sense his warmth suffusing through the air and knitting itself around her like a cloak.
She is lost to this - to this confusing mosaic of sensation upsetting all logic and all understanding, leaving her flailing to regain her bearings. She knows she is meant to be wary, knows she needs to keep her distance- experience has taught her that every time she steps too close, she renders her heart defenceless. Every single time, it is an easy target.
One he never misses.
And then he tugs her, and she almost crashes into him, and she inhales sharply in surprise.
His scent clouds her mind.
It mists over her misgivings, over the tiny clamours of her subconscious questioning what is happening, decoding its significance.
She is familiar with it- familiar to the piquant scent of peppermint and smoky-honey and something that is elusive and enticing. She knows how dangerous it is- how it makes her brain stutter and her heartbeats falter, how it makes it difficult to think clearly, speak coherently.
But here in the darkness, caught within the enclosure of his arm around her, it is much more potent and much more disarming than it has ever been.
She gives in.
Her eyes slip shut, her body leaning back into the solid, hard frame of his torso as her knees buckle, and she breathes in deeply.
And his scent pervades her senses, soaks through her every pore, drugging her mind and body and soul with its charm, and she relinquishes all her doubts and her inhibitions, happy to lose herself in the magic of the moment.
Happy to let her dream come true.
Happy to let him help her touch the starry skies.
***
"A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead."
Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
***
She gathers her blankets around her, tugging them closer in the hopes of salvaging some warmth.
It is chilly by the poolside tonight.
Her throat feels raw, the skin of her cheeks almost taut from the tracks of dried tears. She thinks she ought to have run out of them by now, but as her betraying thoughts wander back to the man beyond the sliding-glass doors, comfortable beneath his duvet and probably sound asleep, hot globules of moisture bubble against the corner of her eyes.
Why? She asks herself, demands it, screams it again and again in her head, trapped within her own mind, robbed of her voice and her choices and her freedom. She is out here in the open, beneath the night sky, a breeze tickling at any skin left exposed, listening to the shivers of leaves and ripples of water- yet she cannot imagine feeling more suffocated. Confined. Trapped.
Why?
She knows she doesn't have the answer, knows there is no one to answer her, but the question echoes in the loneliness of the night, mocking her.
She does not understand. She does not understand why this is happening. The chain of black beads round her neck is like a strange-hold, the red streak at the parting of her hair a shameful brand.
Why is he doing this? Why is he playing with my dreams?
It is ironic, bitterly, poisonously ironic when she realises that somewhere, in some hidden corner of her subconscious secret even to herself, she had harboured such dreams.
Of being married.
Of being married to him.
Except he had caught hold of them, these new-born, just-hatched dreams of her, so young they had not even opened their eyes or taken their first steps - and he had clipped their wings.
A farce. That's all this marriage is. All, as he had promised, it would ever be.
A drama.
A play, where the doting husband gently seats his newly-wedded wife, and spoon-feeds her kheer with his own hands. Where he is tender and attentive, and dabs away a tiny grain of rice at the corner of her mouth.
But then the act ends, the audience leaves, the curtains fall- the actor tosses away his mask and returns to his life.
The prop remains behind, used and useless.
The kheer, and all its sweetness, had soured in her mouth today.
Just as this marriage and everything it stands for has soured her life. Her dreams.
Dreams which had started to shape themselves without her permission. Dreams which had been too bold, too audacious, drunk off the moments and the sights and the sensations, the beats of her heart and the quickening of her breath, those second-long moments when their eyes would meet and she would feel that mute thrill of sharing a secret...
She does not know why things have changed like this.
Does not how they will change in the future.
So she cries, and mourns the death of her young dreams.
***
"You're going to listen to me, and for once you're going to hear what I say and not read between lines that aren't there."
Genna Rulon, Only For You
***
There are weights tied to her arms, to her legs- they are pulling her, steadily, inexorably, forcibly, deeper into this impenetrable cloud of black fog.
This must be what drowning feels like.
She flails, mentally, emotionally, willing her body into movement, willing her hands to claw through the wispy darkness encompassing her, struggling to push herself forward, upward...it's impossible to know which way she is going, which way she is trying to go. She feels blindfolded, her lids heavy, melded shut...she feels mute, the desperate cries bubbling in her mouth gurgling helplessly behind sealed lips...her body is locked in a straitjacket, irresponsive to every heartrending plea she spills, over and over, again and again, panic clutching her heart with its frozen fingers...
But she does not relent. She can't.
She has to find him. She has to get back to him.
She can't let go him of now.
The last time this had happened, the last time she had drowned this way, she had been too late to free herself.
By the time she had finally pushed herself out of the dark waters inundating her, he had been gone.
And it had hurt so much. It had hurt so much she had felt her breath cut off just as it is right now...had felt her heart break, piece by piece, shatter and splinter and fracture...
Not only because he had left her...but because he had left for her.
He had pushed her into those waters himself, had hurt her on purpose, only to save her.
He had thrown himself into the fray to keep her safe.
And that hurt more than anything else could. Like being burnt alive and not dying. Like dying but still breathing.
And it is happening again.
Images flicker in her mind, like the static of an old television set, but she can distinguish figures in them again- can see him being held down by dark, hulking, menacing figures, can see blow after blow landing on him, and each pummel knocks into her as though she were in his place, bruising her, stabbing her.
And then she hears something. Fleeting. Faint.
But still there.
Tum kuch bolti kyu nahi...say something, dammit...
He sounds so far away. She does not remember falling so far, though she does remember falling...and falling...and falling...
Her heart lurches with panic and she strains against the invisible binds pulling her away from him with everything she has.
Khushi...Khushi...talk to me dammit, this is not funny!
Say something! Please say something!
She tries to respond. She tries to ask him if he is alright, tries to ask him if he is hurt .She tries to apologise, tries to explain to him how sorry she is for not being able to save him, protect him. She tries to scold him, tries to break down in the tears she has been holding in since the day she woke up and discovered he had knocked her unconscious and hidden her beneath the hay, forfeiting himself to keep her safe. She tries to yell at him for leaving her alone, for putting her above himself.
She tries to tell him how much she loves him, but she can't and it drives daggers of pain through her heart.
Apni aakhen kholo Khushi...just breathe, just breathe...I'm telling you to breathe dammit!
Raw pain, echoing her own. She hears it so clearly, just as she hears the panic and the desperation, and she bleeds with the effort of reaching him, soothing him, holding him...she channels all of it, all that pent-up desire towards her heart, trying to jog it back into beating, trying to shake off the leash tying it down...
No, Khushi...you can't do this to me!
Sobs clog and jam in her throat, and she suffocates on the air she cannot breathe out, but she still does not give up.
And then...
And then...
She does not understand what has happened, but a single sound penetrates what had before been faint ringing to her ears.
It is rapid and staccato, thumping hard and fast, each beat almost knocking out the next, like a race to sound louder, faster, and it is such a familiar rhythm that her mind almost trips over its thoughts as it rushes to identify it...
And then she realises that each thud, each sharp tattoo, is resonating about her, through her...she can feel it vibrate through her previously insensate body, juddering up nerves and trickling through her veins...
And just as it reaches her heart and she feels it flutter, she recognises what it is.
Dhak dhak.
Dhak dhak.
Dhak dhak.
His.
Hers.
Theirs.
Humaare dhadkane ekh ho jaate hai...
Her head pushes through the still surface of cold water, and a stinging gust of air surges into her lungs, forcing coughs out of her dry and quivering throat.
But that's ok.
That's ok, because she can lift her eyelids know, even though they're still heavy...she can hear his quick, stuttered breaths, heavy and erratic, and feel his warmth wrapped all around her, and even smell his piquant scent beneath the confusing miasma of dirt and sweat and grass and earth all around them...and she can see him, even through the translucent veil hanging before her eyes, partially because her pupils are still adjusting to the overload of light after so long in the darkness, but partially because she suspects she might be crying as she lifts a heavy, clumsy arm toward his face.
To touch him. To prove to herself he is here. He is real. He is safe.
And then her suspicions turn into reality and warm tears begin to flow, because he presses a kiss into her palm, and on her forehead, and he holds her, and she can feel the quivering relief and pulsating joy run rampant through his body, and she lets her arms wrap about him as she had been wanting to ever since she had awoken in that ramshackle hut to find him gone, ever since he had left her at that airport gate and she had spent lonely nights by the poolside that had once been her prison and now was her sanctuary- holds him with as much strength as she possesses, fingers scrambling for purchase, because she feels the same way.
And as they hold each other, their breaths matching tempo, hearts thudding against one another, Khushi understands that she does not need to say anything anymore.
He can probably hear her anyway, just as she can hear him.
***
Bas pata chal jaata hai...'
Khushi
***
She breaks off midsentence and a split second later, is scurrying toward the kitchen door, barely hearing the calls of Nanheji and Jiji behind her.
A car-horn blares just as she flits into the dining-room.
She runs into Mamiji, who does not immediately move, and makes a comment, probably cutting and snide, about daughters-in-law' and decorum' and maternity homes'. She is not really sure, because she does not stop long enough to listen.
But the door bell has sounded by the time she has mumbled a quick garbled apology, made her excuses, and resumed her course.
The front doors are opening just as she steps into the hall...and before she can call out to him he turns to her.
And within seconds her hand is in his outstretched one, and he has spared one perfunctory glance over her shoulder down the empty corridor before pressing a tender little kiss at the corner of her lips.
Welcome home, she says.
I missed you, he says.
And then there are footsteps, and he draws back, but Khushi does not mind. She has learnt that he is averse, most of the time, to public shows of affection, but she thinks it's fine.
Because it's like their heartbeats every time he shows affection, when they are alone, and together. Personal. Private. His, hers and theirs.
They walk back to the living-room together, and then she is ambushed by Nanheji, who is holding up a charred-brown specimen of what she suspects were the jalebis she has been trying to teach him to make.
Arnav brushes past her, the tips of his fingers barely skimming over hers as he does.
It is a while before she hears Nanheji's question.
How do you guys do that? How can you tell he's here every single time, before he-
Nanheji rants on in bewilderment, brandishing his burnt jalebi, and Khushi shrugs with a guilty smile, because she had abandoned him, and because she cannot answer his question.
It's too complex and too simple to explain.
So she just says, as her fingers unthinkingly hook around the mangulsutra he had secured round her neck when they had been married a month ago, Bas...pata chal jaata hai.
***
"I love you without knowing how or why or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride : I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."
Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
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