Plainly With A Twist!

6. Out of character

It is the night of the haldi ceremony.

Everybody is asleep and Eshaan alone is roaming around on the terrace. He can't believe he has been duped yet again by Mishka. Mishka had indeed lied about Meera wanting to meet him. she had done this only to extract details of his and Meera's relationship, and like the simpleton he was, he had fallen right into the trap.

But in his defence, she came onto him with nani, he could have escaped Mishka but he could not have escaped nani.

Even now he stood there like a moron as he wanted to rectify his image in the eyes of nani, Mishka and also if possible Meera, who by the way was fast asleep right now.

The besa haveli is a grand old style building complete with a courtyard, gardens and a huge terrace with barsati. The arrangement was such that during the wedding functions and rituals the groom's family occupied the terrace while the bride's family conducted function in the courtyard and the gardens were a common space. Thus, Eshaan had the key to barsati where all the extra decoration stuff was kept including the flowers. This was where he sourced this stupid rose flower.

Yes, he had caved into the pressure to be more romantic and decided to present Meera with a rose when he was supposed to meet her secretly tonight, apparently.

He had even gone ahead and got a chocolate flavoured barfi from the kitchens wrapped in a gold foil to be presented with the rose.

But as expected, romance was not his cup of tea and was also not included in his fate. It was 1 am at night, he should probably sleep.

Alas, he was too dejected to sleep now.

True, he wasn't much excited about this secret night meeting initially but then as the day progressed he too wanted to see Meera one last time as a friend. He wanted to see how she looked after the haldi ceremony. For Eshaan felt the afterglow of the haldi-chandan rose water paste was quite beautiful. And if he managed to look this good, Meera would be probably looking even more stunning.

Thinking over and over, he finally decided to do the most insane thing he had ever done in his life.

He decided to break into Meera's room through the attached balcony. The process though a bit risky to his skeleton, was quite straight forward. He first had to take the staircase to the huge porch on the second floor, climb down the precariously low cement boundary of the said porch, dangle from it and then jump directly onto the balcony of Meera's room on the 1st floor. Which was directly beneath the porch.

Yep pretty straight forward, except that if someone catches him doing this, he will die of shame or better he misses his foot and falls to his death; in either case, this would be the 1st and last romantic act of his life.

Eshaan thought some more, and again the same batshit crazy part of his brain that had prompted him to choose Meera for marriage against all odds egged him on to do this stunt.

20 minutes later, Eshaan thanked his lucky stars profusely, as he landed safely onto the balcony with intact bones. The door was open too and Meera seemed to be sleeping alone in the room from where he was standing.

The room was pitch black, except for the little light coming from the windows and the balcony. The girl was sleeping on the bed, with the covers drawn up to her face with only her forehead and eyes visible. Eshaan took out the rose and the barfi from the zip pocket of his sweat pants. Keeping it on the bedside table he gently pulled the blanket off Meera's face.

Wow even in sleep she looks dangerous.

He thought to himself, watching her hair strewn around her head, with some strands fallen on her cheeks. sitting beside her on the bed he gently shook her by the shoulder to wake her up. Meera woke up with a start, but luckily didn't shout and just looked at him wide-eyed.