In His Custody ✎ | (MaNan)

✰ 54 - safety net

6322 words, but I feel like there's still more to tell in this one :")

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Manik

I forced my way down the narrow aisle in the General compartment, dodging outstretched legs and overstuffed bags shoved carelessly beneath the seats. A kid in one of the lower berths was getting scolded for missing a slipper somewhere in the midst of running around the bogie.

From the looks of the other passengers travelling alongside me, I seemed to be the only one out of place... with just a guitar bag on my back, instead of slugging around some heftily packed suitcases and luggages for my trip.

As my feet found gaps between the legs and luggages to fit into, the blue-speckled vinyl flooring beneath it caught my eye, adorned with a patchwork of tobacco stains, dried gum, and streaks of dirt. My gut churned at the sight, threatening to spill the lunch contents I so enthusiastically gobbled down from loving hands.

It was not the time to regret my impulsive choice to take the train to Bangalore, leaving behind a far easier, more luxurious and comfortable option – or rather, life – that was associated with my surname. Merely stating my father's fashion brand, or my affiliation with SPACE, could offer me a first class ticket, a five star hotel and a chaffeur to pick me up at the destination. I had left all those privileges behind, willingly, to travel in a more mediocre mode of transport. Strangely, that power of choice had brought more solace with it than I had imagined.

A burden had been pressing on me since I had left the recording room with only my keys, my wallet, my phone and my guitar bag that morning. Forced straight towards the Malhotra house, to where all my inner demons emerged from, I had numbly visited the dark, deserted cave that lacked a feeling of home in every sense.

I wasn't particularly searching for anything, and could not even put a finger on what had brought me there apart from a mild wish to see some light in the doom, until my eyes landed on a thick journal placed carefully on the centre table in the living room. It must have been tended to by the housekeeping staff, who found it beneath the couch I had shoved it under several days ago.

My agitated fingers had trailed the edges of the misplaced book, whose nostalgic powers induced softer emotions, none of which deserved to extend its stay in the cold confines of the Malhotra house. Decisively, I had taken it to its rightful home, the Murthy villa, a place that used to soothe me on days when my own house destroyed me, yet walking into that home brought back a rush of unexplainable memories that were almost too fresh to rehash under the volatile state I was in.

Was it because she wasn't there?

Was it because nothing had physically changed in those premises over the seven years, as much as I wish it had? 

The rest of the afternoon was a blur, and all I could register was the radiating beam of warmth manufactured into a certain middle-aged woman in the Murthy villa, who had unintentionally extended a warm air of affection when I most needed it, mending pieces of me she had not even broken. With that chunk of time in her presence, an overpowering urge to disintegrate into my darkness was replaced by a calm level-headedness quite uncharacteristic to my natural self.

I indeed had nobody else of my own whom I could rely on, it was a begruding realisation indeed. The fact was I was all alone in this world to navigate my problems and emotions without anyone else to understand me, or to care enough about it all. As sickening as that solitude was, I had felt... in control of it, knowing nobody in fact had that power over my vulnerability. Finally. And the weight associated with it had magically lifted off my shoulders.