The Impulsive Soul-Mates

Chapter 5 - AURA's aura

Although Manik's confidence in me gave me a thrust but I was still not sure about the whole thing happening. Fabric designing was something that I had fair amount of knowledge on. Nanu' s textile and fabric business gave a good exposure to me in terms of idea-ting and experimenting but he was never very keen about me taking it up as a profession. In fact he was not very comfortable with the idea of me going out and working altogether. I would help him in his business sometimes which would give me some extra scope to see, learn and inculcate but nothing much that allowed me to take it up seriously. But here Manik wanted me to work that too for their most important project so far. I wondered what he saw in those designs that compelled him to take such a sudden decision or was it that he wanted to spend more time with me and this was just an excuse. I shunned all the confusing thoughts and braced myself for another twist in this roller coaster ride with Manik.

It felt like some task for choosing what to wear, I was going to walk into a fashion house that too claiming myself to be a designer and after a lot of yes, no's and may be's, I finally settled for a yellow floral printed full length skirt, a white sleeveless stretchable top and a scarf to go with it.

We finally reached AURA, Manik walked before me and I followed him at snail's pace and just as we had reached the lobby I stopped.

"What happened?? Why did you stop??", Manik asked as he trailed back to reach me.

"Manik..Are you sure we should do this?..Its not a great idea..What if they all ask me how come I am with you?? I mean how can I explain both of us??" I said out of genuine concern.

"Why do we need to explain both of us?", he was confused.

"Manik do you randomly walk in with girl's everyday to your office? They will definitely doubt there is something fishy and no one will dare to ask you, so I will be the bait", I got irritated not being able to make him understand my point.

"Huh!!! Come on ..Nandini it's our life and we live it the way we want besides we are not 5th graders that we need to keep explaining things everyone...You think I care what everyone else will think.."

"But I care Manik.." I insisted.

"Okay fine..", he took a moment and said "I have just the perfect way to deal with this." and almost immediately he slid his hand by my waist and gripped it tight, tight enough to give me a jerk and looked straight into my eyes.

"Walk with me"

I looked at him perplexed. He gestured me to come out of the drool.

"You have enough time to admire me and now shall we.."

We forayed into the office together as if we were walking the red carpet of an international awards ceremony and the reaction that we got immediately after that was no different. It was a huge open office separated by cubicles and I saw some 20-30 people bustling over like bees. The moment every one saw us they all froze at their respective places. Every one seemed to have different expressions on their faces. The girls mostly had a disgusted look, some had disbelief written over there faces, the guys tried to be indifferent. I couldn't figure out if it was because of the way I looked or the way I looked with Manik or because of his palm squeezing my waist. I glanced at Manik and he gestured me to be calm. We walked further to reach the center of the place where we could have an all round view, the only part of the frozen figures that functioned was their head which swayed in the direction we walked. Manik called for their attention. Some gathered around us and the rest stood at their cubicles listening attentively to every word that their boss Mr. Manik Malhotra uttered. I saw two other somewhat familiar faces appear in front of us.