Climb Every Mountain, With You (Shubman Gill x Ishan Kishan)

Sara destroys the perpetrators

Of course, it had been too much to expect they wouldn't be photographed together at all when going out without disguise.

At least this time, the photograph was simply standing on the footpath, smiling at each other. It still brought on captions like 'Shubman Gill spotted with ex?-partner three days after his engagement.'

For Ishan's sake and his own ego's, Shubman would not grace them with a reaction but he couldn't help a grimace when he saw.

Ex partner indeed.

Ishan, whose fever hadn't gone completely, said, hidden under a heap of blankets, "At least now my parents.... my brother's parents know where I am. Maybe they would stop calling me."

Shubman went over to sit beside him. "They have been calling you?"

"Yes," said Ishan bitterly. "I wonder what they want, now that I'd given them freedom to disown me."

"Well, maybe they don't want to disown you," said Shubman. "Maybe they're scared that their threatening and bullying backfired."

Ishan turned away as his eyes filled.

Shubman patted his arm comfortingly and caressed his cheeks, wiping the tears away. Ishan didn't push him away, but more tears kept taking the place of the ones Shubman wiped.

Shubman's phone rang in the next room.

"Just a second," he told Ishan. "Maybe that's di or Nisha...."

But when he found it, it was Sara.

It was a furious Sara.

"How are you?" she said, so dangerously that Shubman was unsettled.

He walked back to Ishan's room, saying, "Um, not bad, why?"

"Is Ishan with you?"

Ishan frowned up through his tears.

"Yeah," said Shubman. "Why?"

Sara ignored his why yet again. "And what is this scam engagement?"

"I don't know," said Shubman. "Mom and Dad's, uh, choice."

"Right. Right."

"Sara, what-"

The line was dead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shubman and Ishan could not come up with any possible explanation behind Sara's bizarre call.

Shahneel called to say Nisha's cousin had been convinced against the wedding and would be calling her parents, who were staying at the Gill's to inform them of her decision sometime soon.

"You should go return home and tell them you're back with Ishan," she said.

"Di, I don't want to talk to them about anything that matters to me," mumbled Shubman.

"Shubi," his sister said. "Ishan left his home by standing up his parents for you. The least you can do is talk to Mom and Dad and give him a bit of stability."

Shubman looked down at Ishan, who was sleeping peacefully now, his head on Shubman's lap.

"Okay," he says. "I'll go.... I'll go today."

While Ishan slept his fever away, Shubman's anxiety spiked. To calm his nerves, he flipped through TV channels and stumbled upon a famous talk show series. The topic caught his eye.

'Is the celebrity-influence poisoning the nation?'

Sure enough, it was essentially a debate about Shubman and Ishan's relationship, or whatever the public had deduced about it. It showed their picture from Australia. It showed the one some interfering bastard from the media had taken yesterday. The panel started talking about whether celebrities, by virtue of being celebrities didn't have a duty to the society not to act in inappropriate manners.

Shubman gritted his teeth and switched it off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Within an hour or two, the talk show had gone viral. And not because of the speakers of the show.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The concluding line by the anchor, grinning like he was being funny:

"All said and done, it would have been better for the nation if Sara Tendulkar hadn't turned down Shubman Gill. There wouldn't have been a load of negative influence on young minds and... Imagine a kid born with Sachin Tendulkar and Shubman Gill's gift in cricket!"

Then Sara burst into the scene.

"I assume you are talking about me?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sara looked pretty much like an avatar of Goddess Durga when she started speaking, so great was her fury.

"You people who think a girl and a boy cannot be just friends, and just friends is the limit two boys or two girls can be, and sadly define 'normal' by your narrow minded ideas spoonfed to you by your ancestors and don't have an ounce of original thought inside you...

"When you were eighteen, trying and failing to get into the college you wanted and trash talking the ones who did get in, Shubman and Ishan were representing India in the Under 19 World Cup. When you were twenty one, doing drugs and alcohol to make yourself seem cool in college, Shubman and Ishan were winning IPL trophies for their team. When you were twenty five, going through midlife crisis, trying to look for your conventional, normal life partner, Shubman and Ishan were winning the World Cup for India. And now while you at forty or fifty, stuck in unhappy marriages and failed parenthood, are judging their love and passing derogatory comments, at your age, Shubman and Ishan will be taking their kids to their academy after school and oversee the growth of young, budding cricketers who idolize them.

"Because Shubman and Ishan will end up together, because they are far too intelligent to let your frustration and toxicity affect their love, do you two hear? If they are thinking of letting go, I will personally go and ensure they don't let a society that has no original thought process and filled with frustrated and unsuccessful people steal their success, because there can be no success without the one you love. If they won't fight for each other, I will. And I always win."

For the first time, Shubman laughed at anything related to the public break down of their relationship.

"Hm?" Ishan mumbled in his sleep.

"Get up and see this, Ishu, this is awesome...."

Snippets from Sara's speech were all over the internet and social media. Wherever people were trash talking Shubman and Ishan's "illicit relationship", others would come up with replies like 'there's someone stuck in an unhappy marriage' or 'hey, didn't the college entrance exams come out last week? Missed out, did you? Feel the frustration dude.'

And for the first time, the supporters started coming off better than the haters.

Ishan was dumbfounded when Shubman showed him the clip of Sara's speech, still laughing. When he'd recovered, Shubman called Sara, who still sounded in a hurry.

"Cut off the scam engagement, Shubman," she said. "Meantime I'm trying to do something."

"What?" asked Shubman. "What else are you trying to do?"

The line was dead again.