The chaos of outside, the rain and the upcoming monsoon, the winds and the decree of time it brought forth, the upcoming separation of rain and clouds. Shehnaaz moved the strands of hair away from her face, as she picked up the clothes from the wire at the terrace. She raised her eyes up into the sky directly over her head, it looked calm, no trace of the events she could see at the distant end of sky line. Reena had left in an hour or so that day, but her words had not left Shehnaaz. They had lasted, just like the impressions of plants long dead in the stones that enveloped them. She looked away, quiet, her face as serene as it could be, it was Thursday evening, she wondered if Siddharth would still visit her for the weekend, or maybe their story had died an uneventful death.
Moving into her room, she sat in front of the AC, her fingers moving through the hair, "Dammit !"she murmured to herself, the humidity making her hair feel damp, she hated this about Mumbai, the wet heat, perhaps that was the reason she had never seen Mumbai as her home, she had never belonged to the place. As she sat in the place, the cold air moved into her face, calming her, she picked up her phone scrolling through the Instagram, hoping to distract herself from the turbulence her heart was facing, the restlessness, the anxiety the anxiousness over not knowing the future. Sidharth and Shehnaaz had not made any attempts to contact each other since that day, well that wasn't exactly the nature of their relationship, but it mattered, atleat now, maybe he could have just texted her to ask about her well being, afterall hadn't he left all of a sudden, Shehnaaz thought. But then she remembered Reena and her words and thats where she decided against texting him. In an attempt to control her urges, she threw her phone to the bed, walking to the hall.
"Do you know that kaner is a poison?" Neetu spoke as she walked over to Sidharth, as he stood in his balcony looking over his garden, their house situated in the middle of their property, hidden in the dense cover of greenery, a rarity that only their kind of riches could afford in Mumbai.
Sidharth turned around, not expecting his sister to visit him at this odd hour. It was 1 in the night. "Tu? " he asked looking at her.
Neetu smiled at him, as she walked closer standing next to him as both of them faced the garden. "This is an intoxicating view. This is where I first kissed Romi in mom's room. " she shared a fine detail of her life with him.
He turned around to look at her, "Wow. Its been ...."
"27 years since that. Tu school jata tha tabhi!" She added and joked. "Her room has the best veiw of Mumbai!" She added a little later, placing her head at Sidharth's shoulder. Neetu was the elder sibling, but Siddharth was a man and he was bigger, stronger and he had always been that towrads the two women of his life, protective.
He smiled at her words, as he patted her forehead with his hand, the love of a brother. The old memories, the good times, they could still remember them. For a few moments none of them spoke, and kept looking at the blissful scene of Mumbai's skyline from the hills.
"Kaner is beautiful. " he spoke a little later, "Its flowers they are beautiful. But it does kill!" He added, without looking at Neetu. The last few days had seen a different quiet in the family. He did not know about his mother's visit to Shehnaaz, but he knew of his and his visit to her had ended in a story of separate books. Neetu did not know of that, but he knew that everyone knew about something.
"Abhi next week ka court date pe toh you guys won't be there?", Neetu spoke, sitting on the table placed in the balcony.
With Bhavya's mother gone and her grieving Sidharth did not believe there was another choice. "Nah, I don't think so. Anyways divorce final toh hoga nahi abhi...!" He replied about the upcoming hearing at the family court, Siddharth and Bhavya had last decided that they would settle out of court, but before they could pursue that her mother had died.
