Healing Hearts

Chapter ~ 6

MUMBAI

“YOU.”

They said it at exactly the same moment, at exactly the same volume, and every other person in that flat turned to look.

“What is she doing here?”

Said Manik.

“What is he doing here?”

Said Nandini.

Priya Murthy looked from one to the other with an expression of complete blankness.

“You have met?”

Said Priya.

Nobody answered her, because by then it had already started.

“You are following me.”

Said Manik, coming forward.

“I beg your pardon—”

“An airport was not enough. You have come to my best friend’s house. Get out.”

Said Manik.

“Your best friend’s house.”

Said Nandini.

“This is my sister’s house. I have keys. So, if anybody is leaving, it is going to be you — though frankly, I am not surprised you have walked into the wrong flat, because you do not see where you are going. It is a documented problem. Perhaps check the number on the door next time.”

Said Nandini.

“Keep your suggestions. They are as useful as you are.”

Said Manik.

“And hold on. Sister? Whose sister?”

“Do not change the subject.”

Said Nandini.

“You were the one staring at a phone in a public corridor—”

“You walked into me.”

Said Manik.

“I caught you. You would have gone down on that floor and split your head open, and I caught you, and my phone is in three pieces, and instead of one word of thanks I have been shouted at twice in one day.”

“You saved me from falling over. You did not save my life. I am not required to be grateful to you for the rest of it.”

Said Nandini.

Manik took another step closer.

“You broke my phone, and now you are somehow the injured party.”

Said Manik.

“I will buy you a new phone.”

Said Nandini, through her teeth.

“No, thank you. You have done quite enough.”

Said Manik.

“ENOUGH.”

Priya had got between them with a hand flat on each of their chests, and both of them stopped instantly, which told everybody in that room a good deal about Priya Murthy.

She took a long breath.

“Are you two out of your minds? Grown adults, in my hall, on my first night home, shouting like children.”

Said Priya.

“Manik. This is my sister. Nandini.”

Said Priya.

“Nandini. This is my best friend. Manik.”

Said Priya.

“Nobody is going anywhere and nobody is throwing anybody out. Both of you. My room. Now.”

She walked off down the corridor without checking whether they were following. Manik rolled his eyes at the ceiling and went. Nandini pulled a face at his back and went after him.

The door shut.

Aman, Cabeer and Navya stood in the hall in complete silence for about four seconds.

Then Cabeer bent over with his hands on his knees and started laughing.

“What — what was that.”

Said Cabeer.

“I have no idea.”

Said Aman.

“I want to be clear that a genuinely serious thing has just happened, and I have never enjoyed anything more in my life.”

Said

“He called her a peanut.”

Said Navya.

“She called him the Eiffel Tower.”

Said Aman.

“She called him the Eiffel Tower—”

Said Cabeer, and had to sit down.

Inside the room, nobody said anything at all.

Manik stood with his hands in his pockets, studying . a curtain rail with tremendous concentration. Nandini stood by the wardrobe examining the floor. Priya looked at the pair of them with her arms folded and her face like thunder.

Then her mouth went.

She tried to hold it. She failed completely, and sat down heavily on the edge of her own bed with her hand pressed to her stomach, laughing so hard that no sound came out for the first few seconds.

“Dii. Are you all right?”

Said Nandini.

“You two.”

Said Priya.

“You two are insane. Do you have any idea what that looked like? Nine seconds. He turned around. and you had both gone off like—”

She wiped her eyes.

“Right. Somebody tell me what happened. And since neither of you is capable of waiting your turn — Nandini. You first.”

Manik threw both hands up, put them on his hips, and turned pointedly towards the window.

“At the airport.”

Said Nandini.

“When you went to get the cab. I went in to find the washroom. I was looking at the signs, and I was not looking straight ahead, and neither was he, because he was entirely occupied with his phone —”

She said the last part at the back of Manik’s head.

“— and we walked into each other, and I would have fallen, and he caught me, and his phone broke, and then—”

She stopped.

NANDINI’S POV

And then nothing.

Say and then he shouted at me. That is what happened next. That is the entire remaining content of the incident.

Why have I stopped.

Because of the four seconds. That is why. Because there were four seconds in the middle of it where somebody had a hand between my shoulder blades and I was not falling and I was not thinking about anything at all, and I have not had four seconds like that since March, and I do not know what to do with the fact that they belonged to him.

Do not look at him.

I have looked at him.

POV ENDS

He was already looking at her.

He broke it off immediately, the moment her eyes came up — turned back to the window, examined the curtain rail again, and Nandini felt her whole face go hot.

“And what?”

Said Priya, eyebrows up.

“Nothing else.”

Said Nandini.

“Ask him the rest.”

“Ask me what, Miss Peanut?”

Said Manik.

“My name is Nandini.”

Said Nandini.

“I am aware. I have chosen otherwise.”

Said Manik.

“You are impossible—”

“You are extremely small. It is not an insult, it is a measurement—”

“Manik.”

MANIK’S POV

Say it again.

That is a ridiculous thought, and I am going to have it anyway, standing in Priya Murthy’s bedroom at eleven o’clock at night. Say it again.

She has been in this city four hours, and she has shouted at me twice and broken my phone and called me a piece of European architecture, and she has just said my name with her whole chest, furious, and something in me has gone completely quiet.

I have not been quiet in three years.

Something is wrong with me. I got off a night flight, I have not slept. My mother told me I was a failure at six o’clock this morning and I broke a guitar over it.

That is all this is. That is all it can possibly be.

POV ENDS

Priya stood up.

“Right. I have heard enough.”

Said Priya.

She walked to the door.

“Dii?”

Said Nandini.

“Priya.”

Said Manik.

“One hour.”

Said Priya, and stepped out, and they heard the key turn.

“PRIYA—”

“Do not shout, you will frighten the neighbours.”

Said Priya, through the door.

“Listen to me, both of you. Today is the first day in six months that I have had every single person I love inside one set of walls, and I intend to enjoy the rest of the evening, and I cannot do that while my best friend and my sister are behaving like children in a corridor.”

Said Priya.

“So you have an hour. Sort it out. Knock when you are finished, and if you are not finished, stay in there and think about it.”

Said Priya.

“Dii, this is completely mad—”

“Your time has started.”

Footsteps went away down the corridor. Somewhere at the far end of the flat, three people cheered.

Manik Malhotra and Nandini Murthy turned and looked at each other across eight feet of bedroom.

Neither of them said anything.

They had known one another for approximately four hours. At that time, they had collided at speed, shouted twice, and been placed under house arrest by a woman they both loved.

Locked in a room with the last person on earth either of them wanted to be locked in a room with — and both of them, if you had put them under oath at that exact moment, would have told you that the worst thing about it was how completely awake they suddenly felt.

Fifty-nine minutes remaining.