Glassy Dreams

Chapter 11

“Ja raha hai agar, ye bata kab aayega,
Khadi hu mai, aaj bhi, chodda tha tune jahan"

It was more than late when Manik finally made it to bed. Nandini was passed out, her face softer in sleep than he remembered. She was sleeping on her side facing him, but had curled onto herself, despite the comforter draped over her. Manik sat on the bed, and spent a few moments just staring at her - the chubby cheeks he adored weren't so chubby anymore really, the pink lips that always had him hypnotized were chapped and dry, her hair that she had meticulously worked to grow back after she was done enjoying her short hair phase were dull and lusturous spread out on the pillow.

It suddenly hit Manik Malhotra that he had been staring at her all this while but had not looked at her in so long. It was an epiphany instead - to acknowledge that you could love someone more than the whole world and still not see them sometimes.

Like she didn't see you back then.

His thoughts went back the the evening, to Nandini losing it all in his arms. For those few seconds, he really had thought he was going to loose her forever - she wasn't breathing, or breathing too hard, he couldn't tell, but she was so far gone in her head it felt like she had gone away somewhere he would never reach her again.

Fucking hell.

Nandini had panic attacks and with such intensity at that and he didn't know. He hadn't seen it coming.

He had zero fucking clue.

It brought back the conversation with Aryaman to forefront of his thoughts again. She had began to hallucinate him. She talked with his ghost. She had lived complete moments with what were essentially just his memory. Some people might say she had in a way loved him to the point of madness but that madness was just hers to know and suffer. Nobody else had even minutely seen it and even Aryaaman knowing about it was apparently a coincidence.

Manik leaned back on the headrest, his hand finding its way into Nandini's hairs as he began to softly run his fingers through the strands.  Nandini hummed and curled even further in.

For a long time Manik had believed that even though his anger at the world was volatile and loud and out there in eveyone's face, his love for Nandini was subtle. It had taken Kabir's consistent tease and meddling for him to realise he wasn't that good at hiding his feelings. Kabir could see right through his feelings and eventually everyone else had as well. His love for Nandini was just as loud and on his face as his anger used to be.

But Nandini's love was quiet. It was as shy as she was, and patient in ways he had never known love could be. Her love was like the air you breathed, always around you, but not something you were consciously aware of. Something like the act of breathing. So natural, its a part of you.

Loud and quiet. Manik and Nandini. Yin and Yang.

He remembered walking up the stage to defend Navya's rights and in turn, having Nandini's back in front of the whole college, including his mother. Loud.

He remembered Nandini holding him in her arms after Dhruv had left him that evening, of him lying in her lap on a random bench. That moment was just the two of them existing together. Quiet.

He remembered plummeling Pandit to the ground, screaming at his mother, at the police man, at the world every time they tried to make Nandini feel like it was her fault. Loud.

He remembered Nandini in the store room - making a fire because he was scared of dark and egoistic to admit it. He remembered that feeling of being seen and understood without being judged for something he saw as a weakness. Quiet.