Parineeta

A Fresh Start

'Manik,

It's been a year, kaafi kuch badal gaya hai,mai badal gayi hu, tum badal gaye ho.. and I know tum mere jawab ka wait kar rahe ho.. tum jaanna chahte ho ki hum kaha ek dusre ki life mei kaha stand karte hai... Par mai nahi jaanna chahti ki mai uss Manik ki life mei aaj kaha stand karti hu jisse mai ek saal pehle chorh ke gayi thi... I might've loved that Manik but he was very wrong and very toxic for me... Lekin tum... Manik.. you are a different person. A person I don't know at all.. a person who is different from the one he was a year ago.. aaj tumne mujhse kaha ki tumhari priority humesha Medha hi rahegi.. for whatever reasons Manik.. and this is changed Manik.. you're living for someone else.. ek saal purana Manik agar aaj mere saamne khada hota toh vo sab kuch mere liye chodh deta.. agar usse realise ho gaya tha ki usse meri zarurat hai toh vo kuch bhi karta to keep me with himself... But tumne mujhe choice diya... So I've made my choice Manik.. I don't want you..'
I took a breath, it didn't make sense. I was dreading what she wanted to say and I couldn't in my heart gather enough courage to read ahead but I had to.

'I don't want any of this.. I want to live a normal life.. forget everything that happened before, although we both know we can't forget whatever happened but we can move on.. I want to move on.. I'm hoping you would understand what I'm trying to say..'

She wanted to move on! My eyes were getting clouded with tears. My throat felt heavy and dry as if somebody had sucked away any existing water percentage from my body.

'I want to start afresh, with a new person, a person who's absolutely differ from the Manik I left behind a year ago... Manik you're a different person from who I left behind... I want us to start fresh.. I want to get to know the new you.. I want to understand you the way you are right now, a single father of a little girl.. I don't want anything of the past.. an absolutely blank page... Where he u don't try to win me "Back"... I just want a new beginning with this new person that you've become, a businessman, I don't want you to set things up for me to see them the way you want me to see them... No more games.. a fresh start.. like strangers.. i want to start a new life.. and let thungs fall into place... If we're meant to fall in love, we will but right now.. I'm not in love with the new you, and I don't intend to.. I just want to move on to a better life with and as a better person who has a life beyond himself, his love, his life, his besy friends.. if you agree to this then Tonight I hope Nandini Murthy from New York gets to meet The Manik Malhotra, a passionate businessman for the first time at her friends wedding function!

Nandini'

I didn't know how I felt. She gave us a another chance but in the most unique way. She wanted us to be strangers from today. That didn't make this a second chance. It felt like a new life that she'd given me, us, almost like a rebirth where we meet again, and if we're Lucky we'll fall in love again, well, she, since I'm already in love with her. But I guess a year is a long time and if I've changed so much then maybe she has too, just as much. Maybe she's a newer person than I am and I have just as much exploring amd understanding of her to do as she has of me.
I felt relief course through me. This wasn't even close to either of the options I was weighing. She didn't give me another chance, but she also didn't not give me another chance. I knew this time I was gonna try to win her. I was just gonna be me. I was not gonna try to please her or impress her. I would just do whatever I'd been doing for the past one year. Whatever a Nandini-less Manik used to do. However he used to be. Whatever kind of person he'd become. I knew she wanted to know this Manik and now she was gonna get just that. She was gonna get a Manik Malhotra who lived for his daughter, his family and his friends only as much as he could and in memory of his wife. A mature Manik, who's be invested in making a life for his family, his daughter.
I'll be the Manik I'd been for a year now and not the Manik I'd wished I'd been for Nandini a year ago.
I set my hair like I always did, wore my watch, grabbed my wallet and phone and walked out of the door the way I used to walk out of conferences and meetings. I realised that's who this Manik was and that was who Nandini wanted to meet. The Manik who never gave a second glance to people, ladies, at parties. The Manik who was just about his daughter and today he was starting a fresh too, he was moving on as well.

.....

I walked into the hall stuffed with people wearing extravagant dresses. Some extremely glittery, some wildly dull. As much as I didn't want to, my eyes kept tearing through the crowd hoping to get a glance of her for once, to see what she wore and how she looked but she wasn't anywhere in sight. I reminded myself that I was moving on too. She had to be a new person too and I couldn't wait for her or look for her, I just had to move on and start afresh.
I was walking like a lost kid through the crowd of the young adults acting crazy, trying to feel young while their faces cried out for the fact that they had indeed grown up and were getting old for parties and drinks and that even a slight bit of excitement was making them tired. I was clueless since I couldn't spot none of Fab5. All I could see were cousins and friends, my cousins, Alya's cousins, Cabir's cousins, Dhruv's friends, our mutual friends, mukti's gang. The ome thing that had remained constant ocer so many years is that family of one of us, Fab5, was family to all of us, and all of our friends knew every one of us but it still seemed awkward. With some ladies oggling at me like they could tear my clothes off only with their eyes. A certain discomfort settled in me as I felt what the women in India have always felt when they're put amongst a crowd of men. There were loads of ladies I could put my figure on who'd already imagined me in bed with them and the younger Manik, the Manik from a year ago wouldn't have minded or even cared but I somehow did. I felt embarassed, disrespected, afterall I was The Manik Malhotra, I had a reputation that preceded me, and it was not of a womanizer, not ever and I had better things to do than look around and find women fantasizing me in front of me. I tore through the crowd and reached a safe spot where no one could set eyes on me unless I wanted them to, near the stage where the couple was supposed to enter from and decided to wait for Cabir as I texted him and asked him for his whereabouts. He didn't reply. I swear I could kill these guys today, if ot wasn't for two of their bachelor's.