#7
Steffi woke up to a call that she had been ignoring since that day. The number on the display was that of Rustom. Thinking of to end it once for all, pumped up Steffi pressed her thumb hard onto the phone symbol painted in green. Before she could start talking, an irked Rustom on the other side of the call, demanded her to continue talking without showing any hate. Steffi was never familiar with the tone that he just heard and that made her numb. She still gathered her courage to bluntly say
" Little did I expect, every time you said you will surprise me. This was cruel, this was barbaric, in the name of love"
Realizing the situation that is already out of his hands, Rustom played his last card to keep her with him. The deadliest two minutes of conversation with more pause and syllable than words, in a sentence.
" My love for you is spellbound and there is nothing barbaric in what I did.......
Had you not made me insecure....., nothing would have happened
Now that the damage is half done, lemme remind you......
The world shall see what I should alone have seen! "
As
he completed the last sentence, the world paused at that moment for Steffi.
That was a pure threat of blackmail. The orthodox girl inside her who was long
forgotten woke up to that context and the mutiny of life and death started
within her. With nothing left to say she dropped the phone and sobbed. Rustom
was the only guy in the entire universe that she hated, but she was the chosen
one to love him and it was him who had chosen her. Rustom was obsessed
with her love and care for him. A unpleasant family life was what Rustom had
gone through, with his mother's early demise and his father getting married to
a younger lady who ill-treated him. He had never experienced that kind of
care from anyone before and all he thought is about never losing it.
Steffi adjusted herself to the new normal. Every morning wishing herself looking into the mirror
"I just want to be normal again".
She picked the calls of Rustom even faster than she used to pick. But his attitude went for a toss and was swinging at a faster pace than that of a boomerang. He had found a fascination in keeping her edged in her toes. His methods of torture differed each time from the previous ones. It was his belief of right over her that made him do all that he did, while it was her family reputation alone that she kept listening to anything that he said. She was forced to love him over the hate she had for him. Her final year ended, but not the calls of fear and threat.
Insomnia had become another normal for her and the only relief to her was the time intervals of intoxicated blood circulation. The moment she left the campus, she rubbed off her image from the atmosphere that she existed. She had gone elude. Steffi was no more seen or heard.
A half day had already gone and I never wanted to move even once, from the place where we started the discussion. I had made a heap of stone that resembled a mountain in the Western Ghats. I understood that it was a long story short. She accompanied me to the nearest mess for the lunch and we spoke nothing about the story during that brief 1 hour.
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