Together

04

After long hours of being the centre of everyone's attention, Mallika finally sat in solitude, and all the moments from the evening flashed in front of her eyes. It felt like she had just woken up and was trying to recollect the hazy fragments that a dream had left behind. It had to be a dream, something which had got to do nothing with reality, for in those flashes she had seen herself laugh and cry, both at the same time. It had to be a dream.

Her eyes wandered around the room and the moment they captured their own reflection, she couldn't look anywhere else but at the mirror in the far corner. Darkness had overpowered every corner of the room, but the impatient beam of moonlight had somehow managed to peek in through the slits between the light drapes stretched over the windows. If the moon had not soaked her in its silver beauty, throwing light on the mirror, she wouldn't have realised that no bit of what she had seen was a dream. It felt as if someone was slowly breathing life into all the dreams she had seen ever since she had known love. When she had spent days and nights seeing those dreams with eyes so widely open, all of them had felt strangely real; that day, when she was living every bit of those dreams, all of them felt strangely unreal.

Mallika continued to look at the woman who stared back from behind the mirror; the woman who looked so beautiful that her beauty seemed to daze Mallika.

In that moment, every bit of her existence seemed surged up with the moon's sheen, and she herself felt like a moon -- one which had finally found its sky and was all ready to shine in its vast embrace. Or perhaps the full moon gleaming in the distant sky, was a bridesmaid who had just touched her through those rays and then playfully ran away as Mallika got up, clutched her lehenga, and tried to chase the moon with each careful step that her mehendi covered feet took. In those blissful moments of being with her own self, she felt as if everything was trying to convey a message. As if the breeze, in its soft whisper, was singing songs of love in her ears. As if the moon wanted Mallika to tease and run like a maiden for one last time. As if those painted walls, which wouldn't get to see her anymore, had suddenly turned dull with emotions. As if that mirror was trying to make her look a little more beautiful than she was, because it wanted to soak her with love for one last time. As if all the marigold flowers, adorning the whole house, wanted to remind her of all the flowers she had seen blooming in her life ever since she had fallen in love with herself.

She was still wearing the same yellow lehenga which had turned a bit dirty, she noticed, with the mehendi stains highlighted at places on the light coloured fabric. She was still wearing the same jewellery which, according to every person who saw her that evening, made her glow more than any piece of gold or silver could have ever done. Mallika recalled how he had adorned her with those strings of roses -- the ones he had woven on his own, with love, for her. All the costly jewelleries secured inside red and blue boxes, which could be seen almost everywhere in the room, couldn't match the fragile ones she wore at that moment. For her, his love was priceless.

"You're like these flowers -- delicate, worthy of love and only love. You're beautiful, Mallika."

Those were his exact words, Mallika recalled, when he had tied one such string of roses around her neck, and then bent down to kiss the forehead of his bride-to-be.

Mallika turned towards the window and slightly raised her hands, allowing the silver rays to shed light on them. A smile embraced her lips as she gazed at the name of her husband-to-be which, in a very sly fashion, was hidden in between the intricate mehendi designs covering every inch of her hands, and almost the whole of her arms.

She was still humming the tunes of Navrai Manjhi, the song on which she had danced along with her two mothers -- the one who had been her maa for those twenty-three years, and the one who would be her aai for the rest of her life. While dancing, she had managed to pause for a second or two and glance at him. Mallika recalled how she had seen him smiling broadly, staring at his beloved with eyes glistening with tears; nothing could have better explained how surreal he had been feeling. Minutes later, she had felt a tear slide down her own cheeks; she had cried and smiled with inexplicable happiness at the sight of her beloved losing himself to the bhangra beats, dancing like crazy in his own mehendi function. It was only then that Mallika realised why he had been in tears a few minutes before.