A love lost, A life gained

A Curtain of Memories

Okay so we are reaching the end of the story, this is probably one of the last parts. I am sorry the updates are slow. Not doing so well these days. Enjoy and please do comment.

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The time, he decided was the worst thing about travelling to and from Zimbabwe. After very long exhausting sixteen hours, he finally landed in Delhi. So dead tired was he that consciously he did not even process he had reached his dreaded destination. Instead his body seemingly moving on its own had found his hotel, his room, his bed and his pillow in record time. He expected to be asleep for a solid ten-twelve hours seeing that his brain had turned into slush sometime during the worrying and the travelling. Instead as soon as his brain calmed down in the peace of his room, his eyes lost all sight of sleep. He had been awake for more than thirty two hours between the long hours n road and before that he was just caught up in his head about his seriously risky decision. He had not told his family about his travel plans. They were bound to insist that he come back to Ranchi as soon as possible, and telling them he had a vague Delhi plan would just invite questions he didn't want to answer. He was not much of a liar, his mother and sister had ways of catching him and his father's eyes were enough for to prompt the truth from him. He hated lying anyway.

So yes, Mahi was in Delhi, a place synonymous with her, a place he had forgotten how it used to be before her, a place that was bound to give him nightmares. And yes, he was terribly low on sleep, enough that he was functioning almost entirely on autopilot (somehow there was a cup of tea in his hand now, that his absent mind did not remember ordering or making). And yes, he was not able to sleep and yes, he was entirely, terrifyingly alone. One would think seeing his circumstances, Mahi would have made the obvious sensible choice and somehow coaxed himself into resting. Instead what he found himself doing was calling a cab, (he was not delusional enough to think himself of capable of driving in this state) to drive him to THE spot. Whatever sanity was still awake in him questioned him ruthlessly the entire way but a sleep-deprived Mahi tended to lose all his screws. Which was why he valued sleep a lot but anyway, it was too late to go back and tell his past self to take a damn nap.

Which was how Mahi found himself, eleven something at night (not that he was processing time zones either), looking the slightest bit shady staring blankly into the void. He was in one of those small populated colonies known for their multiple PG's, a hotspot basically for college students running away from hostels. And the building he was standing infront of, housed a girls only PG. Which did make him look a little creepy but in his defense, Priyanka used to drag him here, he wasn't exactly a new face. One of her friends used to live in the building and the rooftop, yes it was again a rooftop, was an abandoned space she had been using as a hangout spot since university days. The only way to it was hopping across from the adjacent building and hoisting yourself up using the pipes, since the door was barricaded with trash. If your hand happened to land on a lizard, oh well, you better not be scared of them then. The path was complicated enough that they used to have no fear of getting discovered by an angry landlord, and getting kicked out. But him standing there like an idiot was going to get him in trouble so he shook himself out of stupor and quickly began his ascent to the place.

It was as they had left it, he took in the familiar surroundings, his breath caught in his chest. There were the cans of pepsi , they had had the last time they had hung out, the last time he had gotten to see her. The McD wrappers were still in the corner they used to toss them to, they had obviously gotten drenched and squashed at some point but the logo was unmistakable. There was a sheet in the corner, the one they had deemed safer from nature's elements. They used to spread the dirty ass sheet to sit on it, willing to pretend that sitting on that was somehow cleaner than sitting on the dusty floor. Everything about the place was exactly the same, not like he had expected it to change when they were the only ones to use it at all, but it was still shocking for some reason. Nothing had changed and everything had. He sat down heavily on the dusty floor, maybe the haze from the sleep deprivation making everything seem surreal to him.