Reality Ever After

Part 29. Lean on me

Hey everyone, I wanted to respond to all of you on the previous chapter but then I thought I'd rather write another part rather than respond to all of you. Is that a good compensation?

Well, this chapter is rather unexpected but I hope you all like it. 

This ones for friendship!

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The whole day passed with both Manik and Nandini not talking to each other yet again. At this point, both knew that the other wouldn't call and that made both of them even more upset. However, as the day progressed, they had also begun to start missing each other terribly. There were a very few days that the two of them spent apart, even when they were fighting. Nandini had managed to avoid Manik in college. Now that she was in a different stream, she had no reason to visit the music building. Though she was very tempted to just drop in and get a quick glimpse of him, she resisted the temptation and quickly got out of college before she became weak. Whereas Manik was having a bad day as he had expected. He had turned up at the college earlier than usual, thanks to Nyonika. He had gone and sat by the music wing for some peace but had landed up missing Nandini even more. He then went into the jam room when all his friends were due to arrive. All of them shot for the next video but the atmosphere was rather grim. They mostly stuck to talking about work and didn't indulge into any banter or fun. All of them avoided talking about the previous day and ensured they were professional about their work. They even viewed the edited version from the prior day and based on the few changes all of them pitched, Cabir edited the final version and uploaded it on YouTube. All of them also kept tagging and reposting it on their social media accounts to maximise the spread. Sometime during the day; Nandini was going through her phone gallery and came across the picture of the Harvard newspaper clipping that she was supposed to send to Manik. The workshop was on the same day at 3 in the afternoon. However, she didn't want to send this to him and be the first one to initiate the conversation. But if she didn't, he'd miss the event. And she really didn't want their fight to come in between his career decisions. So she decided to just send him that image. She wouldn't bother sending any messages with it. He was smart enough to see what the image contains and decide for himself if he wanted to go for the event or not. However, once she sent the image, she kept waiting and waiting for him to respond. She was hoping that this would at least start some conversation between them and they would at least start talking to each other. She knew it would be much easier if they at least spoke to each other even though they were fighting. Because not knowing anything about him for a second day in a row was starting to get painful. Manik saw his phone flash with Nandini's name in between his shoot. He had been desperately waiting for Nandini to call or text him. However, he couldn't check his phone till the time they finished the shot and then jumped on his phone to check Nandini's message. He was hoping she'd at least write a hi or a how are you or at least ask or tell him something stupid but all she had sent him was the newspaper cutting of the Harvard workshop. There was no message, no hi, no hello, nothing with it. He got so pissed off that he didn't bother to respond either. If she could act like so aloof, so could he. He put his phone aside and decided to complete the shoot. He wasn't going to go to that stupid Harvard workshop either. He had initially planned that he'd take Nandini with him when she told him about it. It would've been a good opportunity for them to have stepped out of their routine lives and they could've even grabbed some coffee or dinner after the session. But he clearly wasn't interested to sit through a boring event all by himself. Nandini saw that Manik had seen her message and not bothered to reply to it. He had blue-ticked her. She got even more pissed now and decided to not bother getting in touch with him again at all.

After a long tiring day, Manik returned home and sighed in relief when one of the butlers told him that Nyonika had gone off to Singapore for a few days. He went into his room and lay down on his bed thinking about his day and realised that the day was so bland. Was it because his friends had been grim and dull or was it because of Nandini not talking to him. Or maybe it was both. Now that his anger had calmed down, only the hurt remained. He didn't want to stay away from her any longer but at the same time, he felt very belittled in front of Nandini. He couldn't get over the fact that she thought he was one of those rich spoiled hypocrites and was still quite hurt with whatever had happened. But he decided to stop resisting staying away from her things at least. At least that would give him some solace. He decided to have a quick shower and change into comfortable clothes quickly. He came out of the closet wearing his comfy pajamas without a T-shirt and saw the brown Amazon box placed on the study. He picked it up to place it on the bed. God, this was heavy. He sat on the bed and opened it. He opened the first small box and saw a small Ganpati Bappa figurine. He had to admit it was a beautiful one. He could imagine Nandini's big smile when she would see it. He went and placed it in the middle of her desk. He then came back on the bed and pulled out the huge Harry Potter collection. Looking at the size of these books; he wondered if the whole world was crazy to go mad behind these books. They were huge. Who in their right minds would want to read so many books for pleasure! Well he knew it would be a pleasure for Nandini. But he didn't think the rest of the world would be as nerdy as her? He knew everyone was crazy about the Harry Potter books and movies when he was growing up but never bothered to get into what was so special about them. He didn't even know which was the first one out of these seven. He then decided to google about it. He opened his laptop to find out more and realised that the whole Harry Potter franchise was worth $25 billion. Woah... that was a lot of money. Now he was really curious to know what these books were about. He realised that the thinnest book of the lot was the first book and decided to read a few pages to know what was the whole craze about. As he read the first chapter, which described how Harry was an orphan and lived with his aunt and uncle and he had lost his parents in a car crash and how lonely he felt despite having family around, he wondered if Nandini also felt the same. Did she like the Harry Potter books because she could relate to it? Although, here they had mentioned how Harry's aunt and uncle were very mean to him which of course, wasn't the case with Nandini. But did she feel like she didn't fit in? Just like Harry did in this book? He wanted to continue to read more but then one of the butlers knocked on his door.