MaNan: Breaking Free

44|Take two

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Ten months later

Bengaluru

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Nandini's POV-

"Nandini wait! You forgot this." Shanno aunty comes running after me with a tiffin in her hand.

"Ayyo Shanno ji, what are you giving Nandini today!" Murthy uncle comes out too, sporting a harried look, his heavy south Indian accent as pronounced as ever.

"Murthy ji, aap chup rahiye." She scowls at him and turns to me with the brightest smile ever. "Nandini, today I have made puri and manchurian for you." She tells me proudly and shoves the tiffin into my hands. Murthy uncle gives me an apologetic smile from behind and I grin at him. Shanno aunty loves experimenting with food. At the moment, she is trying to perfect a variety of dishes she calls 'fusion food'. Each morning, as I leave for work, she gives me a tiffin full of her latest experiment and I take it everyday only to spare her feelings.

"Thanks, aunty." I give her my biggest smile and wave at the two of them before getting on my scooty and riding away.

Shanno aunty and her husband are my next door neighbors. We share the same surname and they had taken an instant liking to me when I moved here, to Bangalore, ten months ago. Both of them have helped me a lot since my first day here. When I turned twenty-one, I was able to access my dad's trust fund and claim the large sum of money he had left me. I had used it to build a new life for myself, here, in his hometown.

The most difficult thing about moving here had been finding a new house. For some reason, people were apprehensive to strike a deal with a 21- year old, single girl who apparently had no family.

Now that I look back, I realize they may have been more uneasy about the fact that I looked like someone who had just gotten out of a load of trouble, and would invite more, than my age or lack of family members. Their reservations were justified, really.

When I moved to Bangalore, I had been in a terrible state, both mentally and physically. All semblance of normalcy had disappeared from my life and I wasn't functioning properly. I still remember how my days and nights had morphed into endless nothingness; the thought still chills me to the bone.

After going through numerous dealers and houses, I had just been about to give up when I finally found my home.

It's a two-storey house with a small garden out front, located in an upscale neighborhood near the booming IT sector of Bangalore. The wide roads are lined by rows of houses on either side, all having a garden in the front. There is a huge playground around the corner which is almost always buzzing with the laughter and warmth of children and their mothers discussing the latest hot gossip. My house is not very huge, but it's beautiful, spacious and has some kind of an old world charm. I love it and feel proud to call it mine.

It hadn't been easy to buy the place. Just like the other places I had seen, I thought I was going to be turned away from this one too. Just as I had been about to leave, utterly dejected, Murthy uncle and aunty from next door had walked in. They had taken one look at me and felt sorry for me; I could see it in their eyes. They had chatted with me for a bit and then convinced the previous owners, who were their friends, to sell the house to me.