In His Custody ✎ | (MaNan)

✰ 2 - a fallen star

Rewritten: 9 January 2025

⭒

Two weeks prior...

Manik

'This is just a job, don't listen to what the others say. You are worth much more. Music is your calling, your passion, your everything,' my subconscious mind lectured yet again, soothing my rapidly firing neurons in the best way possible. I braced myself and tugged the heavily embroidered sherwani over my broad trunk and smoothed it out before pinning the garment in place.

Delicately handwoven with intricate little peacocks that glimmered like stars in the Victorian-style full-length mirror, it outwardly eradicated all darkness I sourced and emanated an ethereal glow, reflecting in my slightly appreciative smile. I could somewhat understand why my father thought I was the perfect successor to the only baby he put his heart and soul into – his fashion house, of course. Why, did I wrongly give the impression that I was referring to myself?

I would have to be reborn again for any of the Malhotras to give a crap about me, perhaps that too wouldn't change my destiny.

Bubbling with unchartered resentment that needed the first blow to erupt violently, I vouched that gig would be the last one I would ever do for Manish Malhotra's Fashion House; no more of my time would be enslaved into meagre tasks meant for peons to take over just so I could pay my bills.

Fuck it, if push came to shove, the streets past dusk would warmly embrace me and my guitar, while deserted footpaths would give me a podium to perform and earn my living wages from it. Manchester was filled with budding blips of such unbounded talent and unconditional support from ones near and dear to them, but I had a better thing up my sleeve: the privilege of a classist parent with a luxurious reputation attached to his name – one who found such lifestyles pitiful and disparaging for his standards.

A couple of short, well-groomed men clad in sherwanis themselves, dressed beyond the means of their class, blocked some time in their busy schedules to assist me. See, in music one did not need to be so vain; none of Fab 5's performances considered reputation or class to be one of the criteria of soulful music, talent automatically rang in hearts.

One of them brushed my forehead, and those distasteful memories resided within it, with a dense revolving poof, tiptoeing slightly to step in range while the other effortlessly hung a pearl-beaded chain over my left shoulder blade.

Diyah, my 'girlfriend', chuckled while covering her mouth with her two forefingers as she always did whenever she giggled. Except for her distinct native accent, it was hard to point out what part of her was half-British.

Anyway, she didn't want to miss the prospect of me posing in wedding attire for the Vogue September edition release, so she slid her mobile out and clicked a few candid shots of me.

Wedding.

My toes curled inside my already-curled loafers, constricting them further in place. At the back of my head, I knew that the expectation for settling down was coming along somewhere; regardless of class or wealth, it was a concept so deeply ingrained in Indian blood universally. What was the most ironic was some of the worst examples of marriage were the ones dropping little grains of hints for those hopeful commitment-seeking birds to flock to.

Who in their right mind would willingly offer complete power over themselves and their feelings to another person, who could quite easily crush it with merely the snap of their fingers? A recipe for disaster was what it was.