Nandini

One At A Time

It was the same woman, who visited nandini in the corridor of the palace few days back. Nandini was terrified, her face turned pale yellow, she grabbed a pillar nearest for the support as it was difficult for her to maintain the balance.
She sighed and took a deep sigh, she moved a bit closer to her, she wanted to know who this woman was, was she the same woman from the corridor and the painting or it was just a coincidence.
One her maids, made a way for her and then requested her “Maharani(queen) your throne has been prepared for you, please you may sit next to the maharaja (king)”.
Maharani was looking ravishing, there was happiness on her face, she didn’t look pale like she did before when Nandini saw her. She was covered with gold from top to bottom and it was more than Nayantara for obvious reasons.
Maharani took her seat next to the king and which was followed by an end of the chaos among the courtmen. Everyone settled to their respective seats after that and one of the king’s personal cleared his throat in order to speak about something, it appeared to be something important. Nandini was observing everything and everyone in a very peculiar manner. When suddenly there was a loud hush sound among the hall and everyone turned towards princess nayantara as she walked her way towards her throne.
Every time  Nandini used to look at princess nayantara, there was always a feeling of envy inside her, something sort of strong but not in a good way.
The king official finally uttered words from his mouth, his name was yogeshwar and according to the guess made by nandini he was the vice president of the king’s court.
Yogeshwar started speaking in his heavy but trembling voice, “ maharaja(king) of balvaan ghati has sent a message for the king and he wants to marry princess nayantara before the end of the month fagun () and he has asked kings permission to lend him hand of princess nayantara and he would also be visiting us in a time span of a week”.
There was mumbling sound all across the court, everyone wanted to say something, everyone wanted to give their opinions. King hushed them all and after pausing for a while, he finally said “ let the king of balvaan ghati know that he can always come to the palace every time he wants to see a kingdom bigger than his own and also princess nayantara belongs to a royal and huge kingdom and we can’t let her marry to any king who would be having a kingdom less than ours”. Everyone started applauding in the court for no obvious reasons and nandini found it to be such disturbing thing.

The king further added, “ king of Tatvagarh has sent us his letter and he would be joining us in a day or soon and as soon as he would arrive we will talk to him about his marriage with princess”
There was sudden chirping sound among the court, everyone was overwhelmed. But there was something else, something which was only noticed by Nandini, it was the face of the princess as it turned blue due to grief. Something was off about her which convinced nandini that there must be a lot going on with her.

Nayantara was sitting there, with every sound fading loosing its meaning and she just looked up to everyone and suddenly all the glittery golden colour just faded to blue which was as dull as her soul at the moment. She didn’t say a word, she didn’t say anything, she was just sitting there without a word like a doll, beautiful but silent.
Nandini felt her pain, for the first time she had a feeling as if she was watching her own reflection for real this time.