Living in a Mirage

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Two

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"The truth is he spends thirty minutes of every hour suspecting he has missed some essential clue about himself. And not only himself- he has a recurring fantasy that one night, while he was asleep, the entire world was transformed into an alien planet, but no one bothered to tell him, and he didn't have the instinct to figure it out, and here he is now on a wild new Earth, walking around like an imbecile, as if everything he knows hasn't fallen away behind him like a river plummeting over a precipice."

- Kevin Brockmeier, A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade

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* One year later *

2017

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"Just stop, Nandini, for God's sake, just stop," Venkatesh Murthy yelled out loud.

A yell that had shaken everyone present in the living room of Murthy's house. It was late in the evening and the members of the Murthy family along with Cabir were just sitting in the living room together as per Nandini's request. At first, the elder two Murthys had not known the reason why Cabir had stayed back after dinner, they hadn't thought much of it because from the past two years, ever since Manik's disappearance, the young man had been always found around Nandini, planning on to go to a new place for their never-ending search for Manik.

Venkatesh and his wife, Shanno, both had time to time asked Cabir to stop encouraging Nandini's obsession of finding Manik and had told him that it was time for both him and Nandini to get over the loss and get on with their lives, they had even warned him to stay away from their niece, but alas, Cabir had refused to do so and had accompanied Nandini everywhere she went to search, and for that, they had been so grateful that after a certain point, they had stopped minding his presence around Nandini and them. They had tried to tame their irritation with the thought of her not being on her own, at least she hadn't been roaming around the country alone, at least she had Cabir with her, they had tried to console each other, soothing each other's worry.

But no more...

Now only a week after her graduation, with Cabir and Rishab sitting at her each side, Nandini was telling them that she had been waiting for her degree from S.P.A.C.E, and now that she had it, she was, from then on, going on her search to find Manik full-time and had no intention of continuing her studies. In fact, she had told them that she had decided to start her working career with a music company that was hunting talent all over India which gave her the perfect opportunity to search for Manik without extra expenses. 

It was a perfect plan in Nandini's eyes, but apparently not approved by her elders...

Venkatesh couldn't help but get angry at his niece. He, along with his wife had thought that finally out of her college, Nandini would become a responsible adult and let go of her search for Manik that she had been on since the day he went missing. Two whole years, they had been understanding and had let the girl grieve in her own way, and had been so sure that the day she would get out of that damn college where she had met him, she herself will snap out of her madness, but it didn't seem the case...

"You are driven by the insanity of the loss to such extent that you aren't realizing that you are ruining your life, Nandini. Can't you even, for once, think of the possibility of him being dead? Because he is. Manik is dead, Nandini," Venkatesh yelled at her.