Prithvi... [Vol 5]

Chapter 124

In the depths of night, while almost everyone in Aadyabhoomi slept, a lamp continued to be lit in one room. Lounged against two large pillows, a young man was sketching deftly in a large journal.

The pencil glided across the page for one last time, and then the image was complete.

Prithvi sat up with a frown as he stared at the image

He had given up trying to capture Nandini's dreamlike enchantment on paper long ago. He had not yet drawn a portrait that did any justice to her, and had grown accustomed to the discontent he felt on reviewing each image.

But the images he had drawn recently weren't just unsatisfactory. They were vaguely troubling.

The large black eyes that emerged under his hand on paper were beginning to look increasingly aloof. The smiles seemed tinted with a faint disinterest. The silken black hair that he loved often hid her face from him.

He had begun using a pencil so he could erase the disconcerting portions and draw them afresh. It didn't help. Something in his own mind seemed adamant on distancing her from him...

Frustrated, he tossed the pencil and journal away and leaned back against the pillows with a sudden feeling of exhaustion.

If seen from a neutral perspective, Nandini had forsaken him at the most painful and difficult juncture of his life...apparently for a reason that didn't have anything to do with him.

But she must have massive reasons for doing so, he told himself mulishly. On that disastrous morning, she must have faced a situation that had shattered her completely. His dear mother hadn't just committed the unforgivable sin of hitting Nandini. She must also have used her words to cause as much trauma as possible...

His instincts had dismissed outright the likelihood that Nandini was actually basing her decision on something her father had said. Though, of course, it was natural and logical for Siddharth Bharadwaj to want to protect his daughter from having any connection with a person like his mother.

It was very likely, however, that his mother had issued a violent threat against the Bharadwajs or spoken insultingly about them. If so, he could understand Nandini's behaviour completely... and he would set things right, Prithvi mused grimly.

Or his mother could have revealed some misdeeds she had committed against the Bharadwajs. He was trying to discover if any such thing had happened and had spoken to a few people who knew his family long ago. But no relevant information had come to light yet. If he did find out about such an incident, he would do everything in his power to make amends to the Bharadwaj family.

But if it was only about the past, Nandini wouldn't have wanted to shunt him out of her life. No, she wouldn't be so harsh towards him because of another person's actions, and especially not during this harrowing phase in his life.

As usual, his analysis eventually came back to the same point.

The main person to blame had to be him. His mother had caused massive damage...but Nandini's resolve to split up was definitely triggered by his actions. He had mistreated her repeatedly since their first meeting, and given her more misery than happiness in the time they had spent together. But then... he hadn't fought with her that morning, and he couldn't remember having said or done anything particularly wrong during those hours. He'd been thinking about it continuously and had tried to recollect every miniscule detail of his interactions with Nandini. But he had come up with nothing.

He was missing a major point.

Or was he refusing to face reality, Prithvi mulled uneasily.

His love for her and his faith in their bond couldn't be damaged by an outsider or their actions. Even if everyone else who was dear to him was against his relationship with her, it would mean less than nothing to him. And the idea of a third person having any importance in their relationship or influencing its course was incomprehensible. Their happiness, their peace, their fights, their love...everything was contained in their private universe. Other people and external events didn't exist in the space between them.