Rewrite the Stars | A Ruturaj Gaikwad Fanfiction

The wedding invitations (Mahati's pov)

Mumbai University, November 2028 (Present)

Mahati Chaturvedi sighed and sat down on the steps of her old hostel. It had been 6 years since she graduated out of college (bagging five individual medals at the Convocation, she had to add), but missing the campus never seemed to pass.

The train journey the previous night had tired her out, and the reason she'd returned to her campus after all these years...

The screen of her phone glowed with an incoming call.

Unsurprisingly, it was Rutu again, around the tenth time since she set off from Pune.

"How's it going?" he asked without preamble.

"The nostalgia, you mean?" said Mahati, leaning back against the wall and shoving an annoying tuft of hair from her face.

"Everything," said Rutu, "in general."

"Not bad," said Mahati. "I've given the invitation to more than half the profs on our list...they were happy to see me," she added with a hint of smugness.

"Aditi and I figured the same." Rutu's voice had laughter in it. Mahati always wondered how he managed that-how his voice could laugh without him actually laughing. How his eyes could smile without him actually smiling, too...

She pinched her left arm to bring herself back into the conversation.

"...a model student alumnus like you, of course they'd be happy to see you. Did they show your example to any of the present students?"

"Not yet," said Mahati, forcing herself to stand up and walk around her hostel again, the term 'present students' irking her. It was still hard to believe she wasn't a student of her campus any longer.

"Are you all right?" asked Rutu. "You sound a bit down."

"Not really, just tired," lied Mahati.

Ruturaj didn't buy it. He was surprisingly shrewd at catching untruths.

"And?" he asked.

"Nostalgic," said Mahati. "Coming back to this old place after half a decade..."

"You shouldn't have gone alone," said Rutu, now beginning to sound anxious. "When does Aditi's flight land in Mumbai?"

"Evening."

"I know that," he said. "I meant the time."

"I don't know, Rutu," said Mahati impatiently. "Why didn't you ask her when she left Delhi?"

"My mother's whole family is here," said Rutu, sounding amused. "It's hard to get a minute off."

Mahati glanced down at her phone.

"And yet you've been talking to me for 7 minutes," she said darkly.

"I just called to see if you're okay," he said. "You're doing half the work for us, you know how Aditi got at the idea of inviting your college people for the wedding all by herself."

A sharp retort rose to Mahati's lips, but she found that she couldn't say it. None of this was Rutu's fault. Nor Aditi's. If she kept on taking out her anger on them, soon she'd be two best friends down, and she had only three in the first place.

No, she wouldn't really be. Rutu and Aditi would never leave her. That was why she wouldn't do anything to hurt them, ever, no matter how much it hurt her.

"I know," she said instead. "I couldn't let her do it alone. Bye now, I'll talk to the rest of our professors after lunch."

"Are the restaurants open? It's pretty late, you'll get lunch, won't you?"

At times Mahati wished he was little less caring as a person, in general. It just made her heart sink more every time she glanced down at the cards in her hands.

'We cordially invite you 

to the wedding of

ADITI

and

RUTURAJ 

on 16th December, 2028 

at FC Kundra Gardens, 6 pm onwards.'

"Yeah," Mahati said into her phone. "It's a college campus, everyone has lunch late. Don't worry."

"I'm not worrying," said Rutu.

"Yes, you are," said Mahati, because he always worried.

"Is there a reason to worry?" asked Rutu quickly.

Mahati looked down at the wedding cards yet again. Aditi and Ruturaj.

Aditi and Ruturaj.

She choked back the lump in her throat. "No, there isn't."

..................................

It was supposed to be a happy occasion, returning to her favourite place in the world and talking to her old professors, inviting them to the wedding of her two best friends. Everyone in the country knew of their oncoming wedding, of course-they loved that their beloved Ruturaj Gaikwad, vice captain of the Indian cricket team was marrying a scientist of ISRO, Aditi Ahuja, that he had fallen for a girl with brains (not to say that she wasn't beautiful, too). 

Aditi got nervous in front of most people except her closest ones, plus she had to travel all the way from Delhi to Mumbai to reach their campus. Mahati, who lived in Pune, had come ahead of her because of the much shorter journey.

She hadn't visited the room she and Aditi used to share, yet. It held too many memories, memories of a time long gone.

It was strange to think that this was the very place she'd met all three of the most important people of her life.

Aditi had been the first.