Siddhartha jerked back to reality when his mobile rang. It was his mother who was waiting for him to take her to the temple. He assured her that he would be back in time and then drove to his home.

—

Karishma stared at a blue plastic bracelet through her tears. She must have been fifteen or sixteen years old at that time. Kanishk had been given the responsibility of taking the girls to the market for their knick-knack shopping and he had pulled Siddhartha along. “I need some company. I will be bored out of my mind while this giggling bunch shops for the most useless things in the world,” he had said.

The money was with the older girls. Karishma had spotted this bracelet when Aaradhya was getting the billing done.

“Jiji!” she had run up to her just as she was paying for the purchases, “Could I have this–”

But she was interrupted by Aruna, Aaradhya’s younger sister, barging in dragging Aaradhya out to see something exciting she had spotted in another shop. Karishma could have tried calling them back, but she had never stopped feeling like an outsider. So she did not. She had kept the bracelet back on the shelves.

The next day she had seen Siddhartha sneaking out of her room. She had gone in to find that bracelet on her study table. She hadn’t confronted him about it. He, obviously, hadn’t wanted her to know. Else he wouldn’t have entered her room.  Clutching the bracelet to her heart, she had cried for hours.

The bracelet was too small for her wrists now. Even back then she had never worn it. It had felt too precious to be worn and risk damaging. She had kept it like a souvenir.

She had only watched him from afar in those years before university. After refusing to take tuitions from him, she had never gathered the courage to strike a conversation with him. Despite him supporting her, she was worried that he might have taken offence. Besides, she was a shy creature and striking conversations or making friends was not her strong point.

The one good thing about not having spoken to him back then was that she had been spared the necessity of addressing him in any way. Else she might have had to call him ‘Bhaiya’ as her cousins did. Even at that young age she knew that her feelings towards him were not sisterly in any way. Not that she expected any fruition of her real feelings.

Talking to him at the university had made it easier. She could just address him as Prof. Sen or Sir and he didn’t ask her otherwise. She had been elated to discover in him an approachable man of gentle manners and great empathy. He didn’t show her pity, but great care. He didn’t talk down to her, but was happy to mentor her.

Her cousins had opted for Arts. As the only one among them who was studying Science with a major in Maths, her college schedule differed from theirs. So Siddhartha would often drop her home and they would talk about everything under the sun on these drives. Everything, but he never asked about her tattered doll, or the blue bracelet, or her refusal to take tuitions, or her parents. She was partly grateful, and partly disappointed. It kept things comfortable, but it also meant that he was avoiding any intimacy beyond a point.

He was the only person she could call a friend despite not having spoken to him throughout her adolescent years. Because she had felt connected to him on account of those little, subtle moments of kindness he had shown to her.

But she was also convinced that he didn’t see anything more in her than a friendless, orphaned girl who should be treated with kindness. So she didn’t harbor any hopes about him. At least not until she started hearing murmurs about her family planning her wedding and him visiting her uncle to talk about it.

How was it possible to for such huge dreams to be built and shattered in a matter of weeks?

—

Siddhartha paced in his room. He had earlier dropped his mother to the temple for a day-long program and was now alone in his house. His mind was in a whirlwind. Karishma hadn’t yet been told who they were planning to get her married to? Nobody in her family thought it necessary? Even after the talks had almost been finalized? And she, perhaps, doesn’t want to marry Vikram and blames him for the debacle? How was he to know her family will act so callously?

But perhaps, he paused, he should have known. She hadn’t lacked for the material comforts while staying with her mother’s family. But she had been friendless, ignored and bullied. He knew it. When Mr. Jain put the task to him, of mediating this relationship, he should have asked her first.

And now it was too late. Not only because the wedding was almost finalized. But also because there was more than a wedding involved here. Guptas were going through some financial difficulties and needed a partner to tide over until things turned around. Jains had agreed to step in and this wedding would seal that deal. If she backed out of it now, it will put the family in trouble in more ways than one.

Even as he prepared himself to talk to her and make her understand all this, a corner of his heart burned with guilt. He was doing wrong by her. The guilt was made worse by how she had phrased her question. “With someone else?” she had asked. Could she have seen through his despairing longing and desire for her? And if she had, didn’t she realize the impossibility of it?

—

To be continued