Yato hastah tato drishṭih|
Yato drishṭih tato manah|
Yato manah tato bāvah|
Yato bāvah tato rasah|
"Where the hands go, the eyes follow;
Where the eyes go, the mind follows;
Where the mind is, there goes the expression;
Where the expression is, ther...
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•••
Days flew by too quickly for Chandni to savour them.
It was her sister's wedding and though the engagement had been a quiet affair between very close relatives, the wedding was calling the entire cavalry in.
So it meant she was among the ones in charge of accommodating and helping said cavalry.
A huge banquet hall with enough rooms in the same hotel were booked out for a couple of days and the few relatives who arrived early were to stay at the parents' house or Anjana and Chandni's bachelorette pad.
Especially, the cousins were all to stay at Chandni's.
With the mild OCD that Chandni had, she immediately frowned upon the idea.
But once she got used to the fun of being cramped up in a house with her extended family, she didn't mind it.
She cancelled all the dance sessions with Aakash and Rakshan for a week alone, though she recommended both of them to attend Rukmini's class on those days.
Her days were full of kicking away sleepy forms that landed on her or the legs and hands that landed kicks and punches on her.
Her nights were sleepless, filled with playing rummy—with bets of course—or watching horror movies where the elder ones tried scaring the little kids—with no avail.
Yeah, they were hardcore.
Chandni almost cried during the mehendi convention, at how the henna dripped on the floor and dried up, leaving a bright colour on her squeaky clean floor.
Her house became an absolute mess when the mehendi artists came to lay their designs on willing hands.
Her hand wasn't willing. But they made it willing and she ended up with a bargain of having only one of her hands hennaed.
She wasn't really the type to sit in one place for a long time. She was too jittery for that.
Chandni rolled her eyes when one of her elder cousins told about how Chandni's father used to say that she was going to be a menace with the way she'd been kicking in her mother's womb.
Anjana was the calculatedly thriving girl. It seems. She had used to kick right on time for food and also whenever their mother used to tell their father about how the baby was kicking.
So, when he'd try to feel it, et voilà, Anjana would kick right on cue.
Or so they said.
The sisters just rolled their eyes at each other.
Chandni was finally so proud when she sat until the end of the design. But then again, she was just a menace and ended up smudging the henna on her hand.
When everyone kept writing their crushes' or partners' initials on their hands, Chandni rolled her eyes so hard.
She felt that the entire bunch of mehendi lovers corrupted everyone because even Rakshan came in between to wear some design on his hand with 'C' as the centre of it.
