Humesha | ✔️

Chapter 30 | Love, Nandini

[You have previously been warned. No negative comments will be tolerated. Please do not leave the chapter midway, orelse nothing will make sense in the Epilogue. Please read it to the end.]

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N A N D I N I

From the moment I had first seen him, I knew he was worth the broken heart. And I never blamed him for it, it was my heart that considered it as a privilege to have itself broken by him. And I knew it would happen. I knew since day one that he'd break my heart one day, but somewhere deep down I was really hoping he wouldn't. And even if he did break my heart, I just never expected it to be this way.

I stare at the life moving swiftly in front of my eyes. People run here and there, everywhere. But for me, life was at a standstill. As if someone had pressed a pause button to my life where as everyone else was as play. As if I was paralysed, unable to move or do anything except think. And I kept thinking about everything, replaying my life that I lived in the past one year in front of my eyes like a movie.

And I remembered everything. I remembered every moment, every up and every down, every laughter and every tear, all the pain and the unexpected love, the people I lost and the people I gained; it all kept flashing in front of my eyes as if everything was engraved deep inside me and it was weirdly amazing how I remembered every detail, as if I had locked it in the cage of my heart and just found the keys to it today.

And what hurt was not that I'd never be able to live all of it again. I would laugh again one day. I would cry again. I would go through ups and downs and still make more memories with those people. But do you know what would still be different?

Everything.

Why?

Because he won't be there with me anymore— Manik Malhotra, the star crossed metaphor of my life. I always kept calling him a star, my star. But what I had deeply forgotten was, stars burn too and all that remains is darkness.

And that happened. Every happy memory that I had created with him collapsed right in front of my eyes and I just stood there helpless, numb. No tears came out. I didn't wail, I didn't cry, I didn't mourn. I held everything deep inside me, even when I stood there watching his body get buried deep inside the soil, near his father's.

It hurt me. It hurt me more than the knife that was stabbed inside my back when I saw his eyes close and reality hit that those eyes would never open again. I had heard his voice for the last time, I could never hear him annoy me again. I would never feel his hand on my skin as he hugged me to sleep. I would never see his face once he goes down. He'd never be there to protect me anymore. He'd never be there again. We'd never get married. My child would never see her father and all of this hurt more than anyone could think.

But still, I held myself back. It killed me every moment I lived to think that the lips I once kissed were now lifeless and disintegrating and the man I loved countless times was nothing but another pile of ash buried deep inside the soil.

I despised a world without him. But I had to live; and life had to go on.

Manik Malhotra maybe dead for the world. But he would never be dead for me. As long as my heart lives, he would live inside it.