Prithvi...(Vol. 6)

Chapter 148

With her mind far away, Nandini watched the short pooja being performed sincerely by the priest.

She'd been stupid to hope that Prithvi would either not notice Rajesh Garewal by the roadside or that he would make the choice to drive past without halting. Knowing him, and how her luck had been since morning, there was no way either of those things could have happened.

And so, she was going to have to face Prithvi again, and the others would naturally be with him. Her prayer to avoid one more encounter today had clearly been dismissed, but she was going to be blessed with the chance to see him together with...the new people in his life.

Aruna prodded Nandini to accept the prasad, consisting of crushed pieces of rock sugar in a leaf and some flowers, from the priest, and then gratefully offered dakshina to him. She fed a bit of the rock sugar to Nandini, and happily ate the sugar that Nandini gave to her with great affection.

Then, as they circumbulated the sanctum sanctorum, Nandini looked at the flowers that had been returned to her as prasad. Apart from marigold and durva grass, there was a red hibiscus too.

She was standing in another shrine...much older...carved out of stone. And then she was being tugged around the shrine by an impatient hand...

Nandini halted at the back of the sanctum as the memory surfaced with a shocking intensity, pushing aside the present moment to envelop her in a tight, bittersweet hug and bringing a faint smile on her pallid face.

But then she turned downcast again. Love for the divine mother, the embodiment of purity, power and fearlessness, had become a beautiful and integral part of her life post that visit to the Aadhyabhoomi temple. The divine mother had strengthened her, and helped her face many terrible situations. That was what she had believed. But since morning, she had behaved like a lily-livered coward, falling to the lows of struggling to eavesdrop on the conversations of strangers, and trying to run away from Prithvi to escape the weakness and flaws within her, she reflected with a rising anger and shame. And all this just over a tiny possibility that another woman had made a place in his heart.

But it was even more pathetic that her heart and instincts were dismissing laughing off the possibility as a tasteless joke.

Deep within her, the idea that he was in a relationship with someone else seemed as outlandish as a discovery that the laws of nature had been rewritten. It would be easier for her to accept they had never met at all...that everything that had happened in the last five years had been conjured by her imagination.

But what kind of love did she bear in her heart if she couldn't even tolerate the likelihood that he had found happiness with another woman. It couldn't even be called love...it was unadulterated selfishness.

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Rajesh ended the call after giving his brother-in-law a quick update about the situation and then started to walk back to Prithvi. The driver was starting the car on Prithvi's directions but to no avail.

Rajesh paused and quickly unlocked his phone again. Typing as fast as he could, he sent two messages to his wife. His choice of words would upset her, but he preferred to face her temper later than to endure a display of her overenthusiasm about this coincidence in front of Prithvi, his friends and Nandini.

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Why shouldn't it happen, Nandini asked herself forcefully. Why should he not find happiness again. He had every right to do so, since she was the one who had walked away.

Aruna was calling out to her now.

Nandini tried to come out of the painful reflections. Touching her forehead to the wall of the sanctum, she wordlessly sought strength. Then she took a calming breath, and walked slowly to the front of the sanctum.