“Come, dear. Freshen up fast. Choudhry Uncle and everyone from their house have come to ask for your hand in marriage. You will have to look beautiful for them. Come.”
Chanda gave her mother a wide-eyed glance, her large black eyes shining with excitement. They looked like freshly plucked grapes on her little round face. “I’m going to get married?” asked Chanda, her voice also portraying her anticipation. A grin almost split the tiny face as she went along with her mother to the first floor of their mansion to get ready to meet her groom’s family.
Not that Veera had come with his parents and grandparents to meet his soon-to-be bride. He was all of thirteen years and was just not interested in tying himself to a little girl. But then, who was bothered about his opinion?
Choudhry Daadaji looked at Chanda’s baby face as she peeped from behind her mother’s long skirt. Mohan called out to her, “Come here little one, meet Daadaji.”
A bout of shyness attacked Chanda and her steps faltered as she moved towards her father, her eyes on the old patriarch sitting on the huge sofa. She stared at his large moustache, a hint of fear coming into her black eyes. She had always associated a large moustache with harshness. She blinked at the old man hoping that he wouldn’t hurt her, as she moved sideways to her father.
But Daadaji was anything but harsh. While his exterior was rough, he was an affectionate person. He looked at little Chanda and thought that she would make a wonderful wife for his handsome grandson. The old man had but one son in Surendra while the latter in turn had three sons and two daughters. Surendra’s eldest son, Jeetendra, all of fifteen, was married to ten-year-old Meena. That had been two years ago. Now, it was Veerendra’s turn.
Daadaji was a mite worried about the boy. While the rest of the children were easy to handle, Veerendra had always been wild. It was very difficult to make him toe the line. Daadaji sincerely hoped that the young brat would settle down after the wedding.
He smiled at Chanda, his big, yellowish teeth gleaming beneath his large pepper and salt moustache, worrying the little girl further. He turned to look at his wife Lakshmi of more than fifty years. She gave a small nod indicating her agreement to Chanda being suitable for their second grandson.
Daadaji turned to look at Surendra and his wife Sona. Sona had tears in her eyes as she looked at the doll-like Chanda. It was obvious that they were tears of joy as she was totally enamoured by Veerendra’s would-be bride.
They were an uncomplicated family who were quite straightforward. They had not searched far and wide for a bride for the son of the house. They had heard about the Maheshwaris from the relative of a friend. After a couple of weeks of talk, the Choudhrys had decided to give them a surprise visit. They didn’t regret their decision.
Daadaji spoke, “So, when can we have the wedding?”
Nobody spoke of anyone meeting Veerendra. Then again, no one was surprised by the situation either. Mohan smiled at his guests and soon to be sambandhis and promised to go over to their house the very next day to fix everything. What he didn’t utter was that he was curious to meet his soon-to-be son-in-law.
The next day, Meera and Mohan - there were no other elders in their home - went to the Choudhry home in the pretext of discussing the wedding arrangements. They were eager to meet Veerendra.
Veera glared at his grandfather when the patriarch told him to stay back and not go out to play. “My friends are waiting for me,” came the mutinous reply.
Daadaji smiled wisely before saying, “I know, Veera. But Chanda’s parents are coming on a visit. You will have to meet them.”
Dark velvet brown eyes glowered their dislike at the old man. It wasn’t that Veera didn’t like his grandfather, only the idea of being shackled.
Veera didn’t care for what his brother Jeetendra became after his wedding. The brother who used to play with him all the time had become a responsible man, answerable to another girl. Veera couldn’t stomach the thought that he would have to give up his friends and become a slave to another being, that too, a strange girl.
But he didn’t have a choice as his grandfather told him in no uncertain terms that Veera would have to stay back to meet Chanda’s parents. Surendra had left this unpalatable job to his father as he knew full well that Veera wouldn’t refuse his grandfather anything.
Meera and Mohan came and visited with them for over three hours, discussing the wedding arrangements. The Choudhrys were going to take a baaraat to the home of the Maheshwaris the very next month and the wedding would take place in just three weeks. Mohan was very happy to meet Veera. The boy was handsome and quite tall for his age. He had the makings of a strong man and Mohan hoped that Veerendra and Chanda would have many sons.
THE MARRIAGE TOOK PLACE with great pomp and ceremony. There were about two hundred guests - family, friends and neighbours - who attended the wedding.
The same night, the Choudhry family was shaken when they couldn’t find the second grandson. All of them had returned home without the bride. Chanda was to be brought home later, after a few weeks. Reaching home, they all realised that the boy they had believed to be Veera, was actually his best friend. Beating up Jaggi had been of no use. He had had no clue that Veera was making use of him in such a fashion. The boy had believed it was a game when Veera had insisted that the friend wear his pagadi on the way back home.
A search was sent out in all four directions. But no one could find Veera. Daadaji swore to whip the boy and later cried for his grandson’s safety. But nothing brought him forth from wherever he had disappeared to.
The Maheshwaris were speechless with anxiety. Their only daughter’s life was spoilt forever. Chanda had been married for barely a few hours and now she had no life. Meera cried her heart out while Chanda looked on, unable to relate to her mother’s woes. The wide-eyed child couldn’t understand what was wrong.
“Veerendra is not there. You don’t have a married life,” said Meera, sobbing.
“What happened, Mama? Is Veera dead?” asked Chanda innocently. In the child’s world, people cried this much only when someone died.
Meera howled all the more, hugging her daughter, who was still in her bridal finery. She shook her head, quite unable to explain the situation to Chanda.
A couple of weeks later, Mohan reached a decision. He couldn’t face the disgrace brought on by the incident of his son-in-law’s disappearance only a few hours after the wedding. He decided to uproot his family and move to Jaipur, where he hoped to get lost in the anonymity of a big city.
A tearful Meera hoped that the move would bring about the peace they had lost.
Two
Fourteen years later….
Chanda stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded, feeling lost. She was doing her final year Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) in a Delhi college and lived in the hostel.
The shift to Jaipur had done the Maheshwari family a lot of good. It had taken them a few years to adjust to the radically different way of life in the city, but in the end the adaptation had been quite smooth as Mohan was quite forward in thinking. Meera listened to whatever her husband said.
It wasn’t as if the family had forgotten Chanda’s ill-fated wedding. But they had pushed it away and got on with their lives. All four of Chanda’s brothers got educated and still remained bachelors. Chanda had also got the opportunity to go to Delhi to continue her studies.
Just now, her friends were all out with their boyfriends. Chanda had none. While her parents never said anything, Chanda didn’t feel free to pursue any relationship.
Chanda had grown to a height of 5’5” and was slim with a curvaceous figure and a complexion of golden wheat. Her black grape eyes with long, curling lashes were her best feature. Her eyebrows were naturally dark and a little bit of tweaking had given them a perfect shape. Chanda’s nose was small and sharp while her face had turned out to be a perfect oval. She wore her tresses cut in a modern style and they fell down to the middle of her back.
Chanda held her arms tightly around
herself and wondered what she was missing in life. She heard her friends discussing romance and stolen kisses in whispered conversations. But Chanda felt that that life was not hers to live. It seemed that she had placed herself in a fortress and wouldn’t let any emotions reach out to her.
It wasn’t as if guys didn’t show interest in Chanda. While she wasn’t a raving beauty, Chanda was an above average looker who did attract the attention of many. Chanda didn’t ignore anyone, but somehow managed to keep her distance and always gave a clear signal of ‘back off’ to those who got too close.
Chanda felt lonely, especially tonight. What she was unaware was that her biological clock was calling out for a mate. She would have been shocked if anyone had told her that.
Meera kept worrying about her daughter. She kept wondering about Chanda ever leading a normal life, getting married and settling down. Chanda was married and divorce was quite unheard of in their families - even if they found the runaway bridegroom. It never struck them that it was just a small formality to get the marriage annulled citing the reason that Chanda had been abandoned by her husband of a few hours. Meera kept her worries to herself as she staunchly believed in Mohan and knew that her husband made the best decisions. Had he not brought them to Jaipur when they couldn’t face their neighbours in the village?
It was early morning before Chanda went to sleep. Her two roommates had returned in the middle of the night, giggling about their outing. Chanda pretended to be asleep as she didn’t want to hear about experiences that she could never be a part of.
Chanda was unaware that she was punishing herself for a mistake that was not of her making.
EVERYONE RUSHED INTO THE AUDITORIUM as the guest speaker was expected in a few minutes. He was a stickler for punctuality and all the professors spoke in awe of Ranveer Singh. Ranveer was the Managing Director of RS Software Pvt. Ltd that he had set up a couple of years ago. The software firm had grown in leaps and bounds and was one of the top companies in the country.
He was at Chanda’s college today to give a lecture to the BMS students about setting up and managing a business.
Ranveer entered the college premises exactly at 6.45 pm as the programme was scheduled for seven. One could be misled into believing that he was either a member of the Indian cricket team or a hero from Bollywood as the professors hung around him. In fact, they just short of managed to stop themselves from kissing his feet.
All the students ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed when Ranveer went up on stage. Chanda had been preoccupied with her own thoughts when she heard the noise. She raised her head to look at their guest speaker. Her black eyes rounded in surprise. She had been sure the speaker must be in his fifties when she heard the college professors waxing lyrical about him. But the man on stage appeared to be in his twenties - probably late-twenties, at that. She wondered what knowledge he would be able to bring to them.
When he raised his head to look at the crowd, Chanda felt her heart picking up speed. Ranveer was not just handsome, he looked so intelligent too. She couldn’t remove her gaze from his face while her ears muted to the roar of welcome around her when Ranveer got up to take the mike. Only a few words of introduction had been given and the floor was all his.
Chanda was lost! Ranveer’s voice seemed to strum on her heart-strings and play it like a guitar. She heard his voice but didn’t grasp one word of his speech. It was not even a speech at that. There was a lot of interaction and the girls and the boys around her were keen to be a part of it. But Chanda was lost!
Ranveer looked at the adulating audience in front of him. Talking to students always gave him a lot of energy. He could so relate to his student days. And the crowd in front of him was super-enthusiastic. He answered all their questions patiently. As his keen eyes scanned the crowd, he noticed the girl in the third row. She was somewhere in the middle and was staring at him. Black eyes locked with brown and Chanda’s gaze lowered as she felt hot colour flood her face. Could he see it from that far? She kept her gaze down after that.
Ranveer’s curious gaze kept going to the bent black head. No amount of willing brought her face up. He wondered what she was doing there in the auditorium. She didn’t seem to be interested in what he had to say. Had she just gate-crashed into a lecture where she didn’t belong? Ranveer had to pull back his attention to the rest of them. He realised that he was getting distracted and that was unheard of. Ranveer was too focused to let a young lady distract him thus.
He took a deep breath and forced his attention back to the rest of the crowd, just refusing to look at the girl in the third row. It was no small effort. Why would she strike him with her silence? It was not as though he could see her features clearly.
Ranveer couldn’t forget her late into the night. He tossed and turned on his king-sized bed, wondering about the girl with the black gaze.
It looked like he was not the only one who lost sleep that night.
Three
Ranveer sat in his office cabin busy on his laptop. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he was totally tuned out of his surroundings.
His week-old secretary Shikha was eyeing her boss from the adjacent cabin. The office was all steel and glass and Ranveer’s cabin was the largest. It occupied one corner with glass walls on two sides and floor-length windows facing the compound on the third. The fourth was made of bricks and separated the office premises from the apartment next door.
One glass wall lay between Shikha’s cubicle and Ranveer’s office. She could walk in directly from a door between the two offices. The rest of the staff could get into the cabin from another glass door on the side.
Shikha was a few months over thirty-one and had worked hard throughout her life, always keeping her eye on the main chance. Her prime goal in life was to strike it rich by making the right marriage. She had moved around a few companies, working as a secretary trying to get the attention of her bosses. But it seemed that she always seemed to garner the wrong kind. All the men she had met so far had been ready to share her bed, but not her life. It never struck Shikha that those were the vibes she was emanating and that every man was only responding to it.
Shikha had made an extra effort to get dressed today. The last week she had been here, she could have been invisible for all the attention Ranveer had paid her.
What was with the man? Couldn’t he appreciate a beautiful woman? Shikha gave him a calculative look before she got up purposefully. She went to the washroom and stood in front of the mirror. She ran her hands through the permed tresses of her hair, fluffing them up. She pouted her lips to verify that the bright lipstick was in place, pulled the third button out on her vivid pink top and brushed a hand over imaginary wrinkles in her tight skirt that reached three inches above her knees.
She wore a matching jacket to give an appearance of formality. Her blouse was anything but that. With a determined glint in her eye, Shikha decided to tackle her recalcitrant boss.
Shikha knocked on the outer door and walked in when she caught Ranveer’s preoccupied gaze on her. He looked up at her with a frown that seemed to indicate that she was distracting him. How Shikha wished that she really was.
She was prepared for his reaction as she lifted the tray a couple of inches to let him see the sandwich and coffee that were on it.
Ranveer smiled instantly, turning around to indicate that she placed the tray on his left.
“Thank you Shikha,” he said as he sipped the hot mug of coffee. “This is just what I needed.”
That was it! He didn’t utter one other word as he devoured the sandwich while sipping at the coffee. The man was a moron or what? Something must be seriously wrong with him. Couldn’t he even make polite conversation?
Shikha had a difficult time controlling her temper. She wanted to throw something at her young boss’s head. Yeah, actually Ranveer was young - twenty-seven to Shikha’s thirty-one. Not that it bothered the determined woman.
She took a deep breath and said, “Ranveer, I—”
&n
bsp; Ranveer’s eyes moved from the laptop screen to give his secretary a startled look. It was obvious that he was surprised to see her still standing there. His right eyebrow went up in query as he polished off the last bite of his sandwich.
“You wanted to dictate some letters. I thought I’d remind you.”
Ranveer fixed her with a scowling gaze, trying to recall what the letters were about. His concentration on his work was to the exclusion of everything else and he couldn’t remember what she was talking about.
He gave Shikha another look that would have shrivelled a less determined woman. “Later, Shikha, I don’t want to be disturbed now.”
“But, Ranveer, you were clear that they needed to be sent today.”
Ranveer was back at his keyboard and didn’t even turn this time as he said impatiently, “later.”
She had no choice but to return to her cabin. All her efforts at dressing up had been in vain it seemed. At that moment Shikha decided that she hated men.
Ranveer got back to his work, totally unaware of the tumult he had created in his secretary’s mind. He worked continuously for the next few hours, not even aware when the rest of the staff left.
It was 9 pm when Ranveer paused as his stomach growled in protest. He flexed his fingers as he lifted them from the keyboard and got up to stretch. He looked at the wall clock and was surprised to notice the time. He saw a movement in his peripheral and was taken aback to see Shikha walking through the connecting door.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, the surprise evident in his voice.
“Waiting for you to finish,” replied Shikha as she walked further into the cabin.
“You should’ve left, Shikha. I’m sorry not to have left clear instructions.” Ranveer turned to lift his navy blue bomber jacket from behind his chair before thrusting his arms into the sleeves.
Shikha gaped avidly at the rippling muscles through Ranveer’s thin cotton shirt, her heart pumping in anticipation. She had to make him hers.
Ranveer continued, “I keep strange hours, Shikha. You can leave with the rest of the staff once your work is done. You don’t bother to wait for me,” he said as he shut down his laptop.
Flaming Sun Collection 1: Happily Ever Afters from India Box Set (The Malhotra Bride; Meghna; The Runaway Bridegroom) Page 30
