Page 18 of That Same Old Love

It probably wasn’t fair making that assumption, simply based on seeing a Mercedes dropping her home with several shopping bags. But it fit in right with the character she was before, and also the rumors that were spread about her marriage and affairs.

A bitter sensation was creeping through him like a poison, and he tried to identify the feeling. It seemed to be a combination of both anger and confusion. The thought of Mahi with that young boy in the Mercedes made him want to punish her, even though he himself had been similarly fascinated and attracted to her, when he saw her for the first time almost eighteen years ago.

He remembered that day pretty clearly, even though he felt like gauging out a part of his brain for having that memory.

He had only half listened to his parents’ conversation when they spoke about a new family that had moved into their opposite house. He vaguely remembered something about the children from that family being close to his and his sister’s age. He hadn’t really been interested in socializing, since he spent most of his time with his inventions and his programming. Therest of the time was spent in going to several shops to buy second hand electronics and technology books.

On that particular day, he had gone outside his room and was standing impatiently on the balcony, trying to get as much sun as possible for a bag to charge. He had been testing a prototype of a solar powered bag that he had built, to not just keep his father’s lunch warm, but to also heat it.

While he was waiting, he noticed someone on the opposite balcony.

At nearly eighteen years of age, Mahi was the most attractive thing he had ever seen. She was standing on her balcony right opposite to his room and was wearing a tight top and a skirt. Even though a twenty feet wide road separated their houses, he could still see her clearly.

Mahi didn’t notice him at first and was standing quietly, looking forlorn, as though all the world’s troubles were on her shoulders.

At eighteen, his body had been a cocktail of hormones. And with her loose curly hair and curvy body, she looked like a wet dream come true, and at the same time stimulated his protective instincts. Since he was a sucker for damsels in distress, he kept staring at her for a few minutes, until she caught him.

Mahi wasn’t angry, shy or even remotely awkward. She simply looked at him and shrugged, as though asking him, ‘what’? And then when he just continued staring at her in a daze, she just rolled her eyes and went back to her room.

He stood there like a fool, still staring at her empty balcony until the bag got overheated and burnt his hand a little. Then looking sheepishly at the DLB(Dad’s lunch box) prototype number one, he realized that it definitely needed some changes.

That night he had his first dirty dream about her. He was irritated by his body’s reactions that seemed like a waste of time.But his evil mind kept conjuring up her sexy images at the most inappropriate times.

The next time he saw her up close was at their college. They both had been in their first year. He had insisted on going to a reputed local college to feed his inventions hobby. He felt that staying in a hostel in other more reputed distant colleges and worrying about mundane things like laundry, food or other necessities would just waste his time.

The other more driving reason was that he knew it was matter of time before he got into MIT or Stanford’s PhD program. He wanted to spend time with his parents and sister as much as possible, before he left them for the four to six year program to complete his studies. He knew that he would eventually come back to settle in India, because that had been his plan right from the beginning.

When he saw Mahi up close, she looked even better. She wasn’t beautiful or obviously pretty, but there was some sort of untamed wild energy about her, especially in the way she moved or carried herself. A lot of people wanted to associate with her. Most girls wanted to be like her and the guys wanted to date her, but only Sidhu was able to get her attention, and soon they became a couple just after three months of college.

Although probably to her, Sidhu was more like a trophy boyfriend. He frowned at the thought of Mahi and Sidhu together and felt that it was all wrong. Even though they were of the same age, Sidhu was still like an innocent boy who was not able to handle someone mean and headstrong as Mahi. Sidhu was always obeying her wishes and protecting her, rather than arguing or confronting her when she was wrong or hurt someone.

The first time she bullied someone was when some girl dared to sit in her spot at the cafeteria.

He looked at her with a sinking heart. It was difficult to digest that the undeniably gorgeous female had turned out to be an obnoxious bully.

So what if she was all of his adolescent fantasies come true? Maybe it was simply time for him to grow the hell up

Since then, he had ignored her completely during the rest of the college years and focused on doing everything he could to get those scholarships.

Later when his sister, joined the same college as a junior in the following year, Mahi had made her life miserable for the next three years. He had to intervene a lot of times to defend and protect his sister from her. When everyone else ragged their juniors in harmless fun, Mahi went way too far with his sister.

Samrat scoffed. Mahi was hardly a damsel in distress. In fact she was the one causing distress to people around her. As to the havoc she caused with her mean spirit, she has met her match. He wasn’t a helpless poor adolescent boy anymore.

Hehadto get rid of her from that house and maybe send her back to the United States once the land sale was finalized. It was the only way he could get back his complete sanity.

CHAPTER 5

It was the first week of March and a couple of weeks after Mahi arrived to India. Surprisingly, she had fallen into a routine. Each morning, the newly hired domestic help and she cooked the meals for the day. Then she set out to complete some outside chores or shopped or did groceries. Later in the afternoon, she visited her aunt for an hour and came home.

Mahi went through her mental checklist and realized that there was nothing much left to do. Her aunt’s final operation was scheduled next week and then after ten days, she would be discharged from the hospital. Her aunt told her that she was going to stay with two of her acquaintances, who were also widowed like her. Mahi had met the other ladies a few times and they appeared kind and friendly.

Rajeev was busy with his finals and visited his mother on alternate days. Mahi didn’t want to disturb him either. She just called him briefly to let him know that his mother was doing well.

It was sometime in the afternoon and Mahi was bored out of her mind with nothing much to do for the rest of the day.I have to find a job soon or I will go crazy.

Feeling like having an ice cream, she put out a chocolate ice cream container from the freezer on the dining table. It would take about ten more minutes before the rock hard ice cream melted to the right consistency. Meantime, she remembered something important that she had to do.

She had found the land papers that Samrat wanted to buy from her. Strangely he hadn’t contacted her about them, and neither had she seen him since the last two weeks.

---