LOVE REMAINED A BEAUTIFUL DREAM for some, for others it became a curse.
It has been twenty-four hours since Ashna had met Ivanya, and she still could not get past all the information she was made aware of. While it solved so many questions she had always had, it all made her feel so empty and uncanny inside.
The entire day in her college, she spent thinking about Ivanya. When she was just a flower, her life was dropping grenades only. When to destroy her, it needed no bombs.
Everything in her life made Ashna feel unsettled. She still had questions, and she was afraid of the answers.
She was also upset because Ivanya did not tell her, not even their mother told her. But it was also true, maybe she would not have understood or reacted as well as she had now.
In reality, though, she had not even reacted. She was still getting it inside her. She could not believe Ivanya had a child and that child could have died. More than unbelievable, it was painful to Ashna.
Yesterday when Ashna had returned home, she had remained silent and this silence was much different than any other. At the dining table during dinner, her eyes would often dart to her mother.
She pondered on how she knew and had kept the secret. So finely that no one ever guessed.
She had mixed feelings for her on this, she was happy that Ramya took the stand for her, but angry and disheartened that Ivanya was still left alone, discarded from the family.
Ashna looked at her father, who sat there with his powerful composure maintained. She wondered how he would have reacted and the image that got created in her mind made her shudder.
Ashna sat on her bed, trying to submerge herself in writing answers to questions of Comparative Government when all her mind did was overthink every little thing that had created a major impact in their life.
~
"Hey," Ivan called, signalling to look at him.
He loved taking pictures and here she was standing on the top mount of the hill.
She was not so comfortable at first, for she barely looked good in pictures, but then she knew Ivan was going to keep those to himself only and she just let him click. Also, he clicked pretty nice pictures of her, which she loved.
The hill was a large piece of rocks and mitti, trees and stones merged which resembled a broken part of the mountain and the only such thing here in the city which was in the plains.
It was a place on the outskirts, at a deviated path which not everyone knew of and it was beautiful with no crowd, silence and greenery. The hill had something like a mandir, and that was what it was for. Worship.
Ashna had called Ivan, after her college, when the late afternoon sun was shining and going down, inviting the moon to come shine for her.
She missed him.
She would not accept as much to herself but Ashna thought of Ivan a lot. While she was anywhere, doing anything, he filled a major portion of her thoughts. She liked talking to him and even if it was occasional, she loved to meet him.
The first time Ivan had guided her here, and she had driven the scooty on this secluded path, it intimidated her. She had even joked, "Are you going to kill and bury me here or what?" And he had, in a serious but funny manner agreed.
When Ashna had seen the hill, she was stunned. It was beautiful. More so because she had no idea a place like that existed in her city. But then, she had barely known her city.
Ivan, however, knew each corner of the same city. A city he had only recently considered his own. For it was the one to which Ashna belonged.
Ivan walked closer to Ashna, as she signalled to look at the pictures he had clicked. He moved closer, they were leaning on the parapet at the top of the hill. This was led by a few stairs to the uppermost part, the terrace. From here, one could see far into the city. It had, at its centre, the mandir's shikhar/viman.
Ivan's eyes captured Ashna's.
If Ashna's dark orbs had lightened to brown in the sunlight, she could see inside Ivan's eyes. She could see herself in his eyes and she looked devastated, worried and sad. But when she observed Ivan, he was looking at her with protection, calm and love?
This was something so odd yet beautiful about him. His life could be going downhill at the pace of Vande Bharata Express, and still, he would be calm, and patient.
She leaned to look into the pictures, each of hers. "You don't smile, so it comes out you looking murderous, not my fault," Ivan explained her looks in the images.
She looked at him through a slit of her eyes. He nodded, unafraid.
"You know I am older than you," she warned.
He nodded, "Ten months only." A smile graced his pink lips, his eyes lit in amusement.
"What?"
"Nothing," his smile deepened.
He moved back, taking his phone from Ashna's hands and keeping it in her pockets. She still leaned, her hands on either side of hers on the parapet. Ashna looked at him, her expression grim. But then, "Ivan," she whispered.
She was trying to make it a warning but sounded like a request to Ivan.
As weird and bizarre as it seemed but every time she whispered his name, Ivan's heart would skip a beat.
He swallowed, his eyes darkening as they took her in, fixed on her face for the most time, but lingering on the curves of her body for a few seconds.
"I like older women," he whispered through the coarseness of his voice, his eyes not leaving hers. Lingering on her form, her face, and her body.
Ashna had to look away. His bewitching gaze made her feel warmth take over her, and her cheeks tinted the slightest of pink as blood rushed inside her.
The first time they met, he would not even look at her properly. Now, she felt herself burning under his gaze. Amorous, and ardent for him.
"Don't look at me like that!" She warned, her voice weak as she stood straight.
She walked to the stairs that led down to the gallery which further guided her to the stoned stairs that spiralled down to the ground.
She had just bypassed him, who was leaning against the wall on the side of the stairs when his hand circled her wrist. Her skin burnt under his grip as her heart picked pace.
She stumbled and he wrapped an arm around her waist; they stood in front of each other, his eyes on hers while she just looked somewhere else, or at least tried to; her waist locked in his venous arm.
His fingers caressed her cheekbones as he brushed her hair and moved them behind her ear.
"What?" She questioned, her voice a mere whisper, still trying to look as unaffected as possible even when her heart beat fast inside her.
She would have been afraid of him listening to her heartbeat but was not for his own heart thudded inside his chest and she could feel it pounding beneath her as her hand lay on his chest, the other around his neck.
He shook his head. He was so nervous that he could not say a word. She looked into his eyes. "I thought you were afraid of women."
He was nervous. It was not like he had no female interaction. But family and women outside were different. When he was a child, he had girl friends. Since class ninth when he moved to this city, and was admitted to the school Ashna was in, he only befriended boys.
It was not purposeful. It just happened like that. He had barely talked to the girls of his class. To Ashna even, he had only talked two or three times and only some words. In his colony, he only had male friends.
This was also why it took him time to open up to Ashna. But then, it always took him time to open up and he barely chose a few people he wanted to keep close in his life.
Ashna was the first woman other than any of his family that Ivan had befriended. "Not you," he spoke.
Ashna knew he was nervous. She tightened her grip around his neck coming closer and her other hand entangled in his hand that was resting on her waist. "It's okay," she whispered.
A rustle made them separate and stand away in a rush, but no one was there. They sighed.
"Women don't bite—" Ashna commented.
They walked down the stairs and she heard him reply, his voice more calm and fun now, "I won't mind if they do, especially when the woman is you."
"Dirty minded," Ashna looked back at him, hardly able to bite back her smile, her eyes narrowed.
Ivan shrugged, smiling at her with love.
The thought crossed her mind. Even if it meant for the nicest, most honest and precious person Ivan was, Ashna bit back the urge to say.
I love you.
a/n: shikhar\viman--- the top mount of a temple.