Prithvi... [Vol 3]

Chapter 77

Shocked and petrified, Nandini stared at her father’s friend.

It was over. He had seen them together. Everyone would find out about the relationship she had struggled to keep under wraps for months. It had been a futile battle after all. Dismayed, she looked at Prithvi.

He didn’t look concerned or perturbed in the least. The knit brows as he regarded the other man merely showed a slight puzzlement.

Then Kedar spoke up again, and Nandini’s anxiety swiftly turned to bewilderment.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to begin with that,” Kedar said apologetically, privately wondering why Bhoothnath hadn’t communicated the news of Prithvi’s arrival.

 “It’s just…seeing you and her together….it brings back memories of two tiny tots fighting violently with each other,” he chuckled, his disbelieving eyes continuing to flit between the girl and the boy.

Nandini stared blankly at Kedar. He was purportedly remembering the antics of Prithvi and herself as children. And that was bizarre. She hadn’t known Prithvi as a child.  

Caught up in his reminiscing, Kedar gazed at Prithvi. “I can still see you trying to drag her around by the hair like she was a doll…and you, Nandini, angrily throwing small stones at him!” he laughed. “To see you both behave maturely in each other’s presence…it feels unreal. I didn’t think I’d live to see this day,” he chortled and abstractedly marvelled at how the high-spirited, grimy toddlers from his memory had transformed into such elegant and fine-looking people.

Silence greeted his explanation.

Nandini looked totally mystified, and Prithvi was frowning. People had stared at him like that in the past when he used to drink more than he could handle. Like he had rattled out a whole bunch of gibberish.

Verifying his suspicion, Prithvi glanced irritably at the baffled girl and testily asked, “You called me to show he’s insane?”

“Prithvi! How can you – he’s perfectly normal!” she said, livid. “He is just confusing us with someone else.”

“I’m not,” Kedar said perplexedly. He looked at Prithvi and enquired, “You are Aditya’s son, aren’t you?”

As Nandini froze, an icy screen fall instantly over Prithvi’s already annoyed visage.

“You knew my father?” Prithvi asked him sharply.

“I knew both your parents,” Kedar corrected. “Mainly because they were very close to one of my best friends – Siddharth.”

Nandini recoiled mentally. Trying to make sense out of chaos, she stammered, “My - my father…Papa…Papa knew his parents?”

Puzzled by her disbelief, Kedar said, “He was their good friend. Didn’t your grandfather or mother tell you?”  

Grandpa and Ma knew?

Nandini breathed in deeply. She had to bring a bit of logic into the conversation or she would go mad. “No…No, they haven’t - and I’m sure they would have said something if  - There is some mistake here, uncle,” she pleaded.

At a complete loss, Kedar critically surveyed Prithvi. “Why didn’t you tell them in all these months?”

“Tell them what? That you can’t speak two successive lines that make sense?” Prithvi said irately, having rapidly surmounted the astonishment of meeting a person who’d known both his parents. So far, he’d only come across people who were acquainted with any one of them.