Down With Love

Chapter 11

After dinner or buffet as I have decided to call it now, Elena lead me to her room.

Her room was very bright to say the least. Her walls had murals painted all over them, her headboard was cushioned and had loose stray threads from back when she and Rach tried to do embroidery on it.

She threw open closet, and a quick confession, I had never seen a walk in closet before so I quickly followed her in. Clothes were scattered everywhere. One thing about Elena was that she travelled a lot. And so she had hoards and hoards to clothes , most of which she donated every few months.

She started rummaging through her garment bags and pulled out a few which she handed to me.
Lin and Rachael entered the room but did not come inside the closet, instead, chose to go through Elena's collection of magnets. We did that every time because there was always a new one.

"Elena, Rach is sneaking your gold juttis." A heard a smack and Lin groaned.
Elena moved out of the closet so fast. I follow her.

"Give it back, you thief. I've borrowed you enough juttis, go buy some for yourself!"
"But you're borrowing stuff to Ad too."

"She doesn't sneak me clothes when I'm at work." Rach makes a face. "Yes, I know you took my Kashmiri shawl! And now that I've said it, Rach you better give it back, you chipmunk. Laksh gifted that to me."

"He did? Dang I really liked it."

Lin takes the bags from me and Elena opens one of them up.
Elena looks at me and says "If you like it, just take it okay? No uh, na. I don't want to hear that. Rach don't even open your mouth."
I laugh and watch as Lin pulls out a pale lavender lehenga, pale pink flowers and leaves scatted all over it. Nope.
I nod my head like I'm considering.
Elena and Rachael start opening up the other three garment bags.

The next one was a dark grey and I immediately shook my head. Grey was not meant for lehengas.

Then she pulled out a sky blue lehenga and that was it. It was so utterly gorgeous, I refused to check out the last sage green one.
The lehenga has golden work done all over it. Small and spare patter on the top of the skirt and then as the flare increased, the work got denser, without being cluttered. The top was a plane sky blue with a thin lining of work around the edges of neck and sleeveless arms. I picked up the blouse to feel the material. It was slightly big in size but that could be easily fixed. I loved the boat neckline and the drop in the back which swooned like a half moon.

This was easily the most prettiest lehenga I had ever seen.
Elena smiled at me, "This one? Sweet give me your measurements and I'll drop it off to get altered."
"It's so so pretty. You sure you don't mind it. I don't want to ruin it." I said clutching the blouse.

She just waved her hand and helped me put it back in the garment bag while Rachael and Lin helped with the others.

Later Rach and I caught a ride back home with Elena.

I slammed the door to my bedroom shut, changed my clothes, texted everyone and went to sleep.

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We woke up, rushed about doing the chores and checking out metro stations to take us to our respective universities and had dinner at the Daltons. That how the two days were gone and then it was Saturday. The day of the reception.

I skipped to my room to get ready. Whoever Elena gave the lehenga to alter, did an incredible job at it.

I moved around wearing my favourite golden jhumkas, trying to shimmy my hands into the plain golden bangles and matching mojaris with tiny ghungroo attached to them which made small tinkling noise everytime I moved. They were my all time favourite.