The Thing

There were books to read, music to hear, paintings to look at, places to visit and people meet, all that Shabnam could do rather than be here. Her father slunk into a chair and she instinctively reached for his elbow, but he swept her aside. Her mother had already started weeping. Her brother snatched the phone from her father's hands and demanded to know more.

"What do you mean the wedding is off. If the groom had someone else in mind, he should have run off before all this. What are we to tell people?" He screeched into the phone. 

Her eyes met that of Kabir, the wedding planner whose eyes had strayed to hers in-between nervously biting off his fingers. 

Shabnam turned away, she had had enough. She dropped the shawl of her lehenga on the couch and climbed the stairs. There was no point staying all dressed up for a groom who was not going to come. She walked past her room and to the ladder that led to the attic. There she opened the rusty hatch that looked out at the sky and plopped herself down. She knew no one would come looking for her, they all probably thought she had something to do with how things went awry. 

But she was surprised to hear someone's carful footsteps come up the creaky ladder. She turned in time to see Kabir's confused head come up and then his eyes light up when he spotted her. He had pulled himself up and walked over when she turned her head away. His shadow cast shade over her and she looked up at him from where she sat.

"Are you alright?" He asked. 

She patted the floor beside her and he looked around uncertainly before taking it. 

"The wedding I have been trying to call off the day it came up got foiled, why wouldn't I be alright?" She asked, not meeting his eyes. 

"Because this is no way to treat you," he said, and that got her eyes to his. 

It had been this way all along. She wanted anything but this marriage that he was planning, but he was a little hard to hate. When her father threatened to cut her off after she lost her job unless she got married, Kabir had been hired to plan the wedding. He had planned everything perfectly, except the minor detail where the groom ran off, without the bride. 

Even as her mind wandered, she was still painfully aware of his eyes and the way they remained fixed on hers. He had not known she was the bride till around two weeks ago and only found out that she did not want this wedding till two days ago, but she would rather not think of that right now. Especially not since he had seemed ready to help her out that day, especially not since his eyes were fixed to hers this way. 

His phone rang just then and they both turned away. He got up answering it, shot her a look meaning to ask if she really was alright. She nodded. And that was it, he made his way down the ladder, and she could hear his voice come from the floor below, while he negotiated returns with some vendor or the other. 

She had thought she had no other option but to give in so far. The without a job, the only place she could return to was home, and that if her father said so then she would have to get married. But this was not home. There was yet another place she could go to. She could manage to tide the storm till she got a job there. She rolled up the lehenga to walk in, she would leave. And now.