Hustle For Love |COMPLETE| MaNan Fiction

32. The One Where We Hit Reset

A/N : Hello readers, time for a REALLY long chapter (long by my standard, you can imagine!!) but hopefully by the end of it, you will not be as confused about what's going on with Nandini & Manik! Yes, this chapter will answer quite a lot of your questions, since it houses a long confrontation between Manik & Nandini! 

Also, this chapter marks the end of my unsponsored attempt at marketing St. Regis ;) Yes, this is the last chapter based in Maldives, we will move on touring another part of the world in the next chapter! :) Hope you enjoyed your virtual Maldives tour ;)

No more chit chat, happy reading & see you on the other side :)

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Vommuli Island, Maldives circa 2018

(Iridium Ocean SPA Center, The St. Regis, Maldives Vommuli Resort)

Nandini Murthy

"Nandu, come now don't run around! I am going to ensure that I put this mustard paste on you before anyone else! Once I get you married to Arya beta, I will breathe in peace" chirped my aunt very dramatically as she ran after me trying to plaster my face with the paste she had in her hand.

"No chahchiiii" I yelled as I laughed and ran around the place with her in toes. However, if the beginning of the ceremony was any precursor, than today was so not my day, and I realised it when Navya teamed up with my aunt & caught me from the other side and my aunt victoriously approached me and transferred all the paste she had on her palm, on my face!

"Ewww" I heard Abir's voice & quickly turned to see my li'l guy scrunching his nose showing disgust at the horrific state it left my face in. I showed him the tongue and quickly slided the paste off my cheek and plastered it back on Navya for good luck.

"Guys calm down, don't you rowdy Southies turn my arrangement into a fish market!" Priyank's annoyed & grumpy voice soon reached our ears & Navya, my aunt & I quickly giggled and made a dash. The ceremony started with applying the paste on Abhi & then the same bowl of paste was to be applied on Mukti by her family; once the actual ceremony was over with food & sweet delicacies & blessing for the couple, the rest of the guests finally laid their hair down to play the 'Mustard Holi' for fun! There was a saying that whoever gets plastered with the mustard paste right after the bride, is the next in line for her wedding, hence Navya & my aunt were after me, they were trying to leave nothing to chance now! Ayappa, bless them with better ideas!

Right after the ceremony, Soha & her entourage of assistants took Mukti away from the venue to start getting her wedding trousseau in place, while the rest of us hung out to have fun. Aliya was having fun running after Dhruv with the paste, Navya was of course after my life while Harshad was busy managing Abir, since all the running around with mustard kinda freaked the li'l guy out; I looked around for Arya and soon saw him discussing something animatedly with Dufus. I smirked evilly, as I approached him, muttering, "Mr. Aryaman Khurana you are so dead today".

I quickly grabbed a bowl of mustard paste & added some rose water to it, to make it a bit runny and tiptoed behind my prey; from Dufus's expression, I was sure, he had caught me, but he was keeping the charade on & keeping Arya focused in his conversation, but his lips twitched to a small smile now. My brother knew what I was up to!

"Yes, one more amazing feature of cryptocurrency is..." Arya was about to enlighten the world with one more boring detail of his new obsession, virtual money, but before that could happen, I promptly emptied the whole bowl of runny mustard paste on his head! There was pin drop silence in the next few seconds that followed as Arya froze & unfroze to realise what just hit him. Then without even turning around & royally ignoring my brother's ridiculous laughter, he yelled aloud, "Nandini Murthy, now who will save you from me?"