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Shrut lost her temper. “I am not behaving kiddish. It’s not only their right to keep us waiting. Girl’s family hai toh kuch nahi bolnewala zamaana gaya. I am not meeting and that’s final.”

To be continued….

Shruti’s parents knew that she was behaving like this coz she was heart broken, never having faced rejection in her life.

Her mom tried to reason, “Shruti, you can meet him once at least. Let him explain what exactly had happened, then take a call. We are of course not going to force you if you don’t wish to go ahead.”
Her dad also tried to reason with her, “Yes Shruti, don’t make assumptions before understanding what was the situation.”

Shruti conceded, but what she said next left others dumbfounded. “Okay fine, I shall meet. But I won’t dress up formally or anything. Shall go in my casual home clothes and I won’t budge on this so please don’t try to convince me. Let them see me like that. Kya pataa... they might not find me that appealing.”

Everyone just sat staring her, not knowing what to say. Shruti was extremely fussy and particular about her clothes. They thought that she won’t be able to stick to her words in the evening and didn’t argue at that time.

****The scenario at the bank*****

Atharva had to wait at the bank for an hour as the manager was busy with some other meeting. He finally managed to meet at 12.30 in the noon. It took him more than 2 hours to show the presentation that he had prepared for the new project. It was a very ambitious venture, and they wanted to get the bank loans sanctioned to be able to proceed further. During that time, he rejected the calls made by both his brothers as he didn’t want to be distracted from the meeting. He sent a text message saying, ‘Still in the meeting. Will call later.’

Minish sent a text updating him about the scenario since morning and asked him to be at Cream Center in the evening, but it went unnoticed by Atharva as he was engrossed in the meeting. Since Shankar and Minish were having other priorities, they had decided that Atharva should go ahead and at least initiate by showing the presentation and then, they can carry on later from there.

It was almost 3 p.m. by the time he was done. His stomach was grumbling and he realised that he had skipped the dinner last night as well morning’s breakfast. He went to a nearby restaurant and ordered a grilled sandwich and fresh lime juice for himself. He was still in a foul mood and didn’t enjoy his meal; had it just to fill his stomach.

He didn’t even bother to revert the calls and thought he will discuss about the bank meeting whenever they meet. He still hadn’t checked his text messages. By that time, his inbox was anyways flooded and Minish’s message got lost somewhere. It was 3.45 p.m. by the time he was done and went on his way towards the office.

Around 4 p.m., Minish called up again and said in a frustrated tone, “Where are you bro? Why did you not revert back?”
Atharva replied, “The meeting got over very late Minish and it skipped my mind. Am on my way to the office. Tell me, what is it?”

Minish said impatiently, “Arey you have to come at Cream Center na. Why are you going to office?”
He was baffled. “Why Cream center?”

It dawned on Minish that Atharva seemed to have missed seeing the message and blurted, “You have no inkling, do you?”
Atharva was getting impatient and said, “Can you please be more specific? I don't  understand anything. What’s going on?”

Minish thought of an ingenious plan. He bluffed, “Oh nothing. Please don’t go to office and come straight. We have a meeting with Mr Agarwal at 5 p.m.”
He found it very odd and questioned again, “Why Cream Center?" to which Minish replied, “Oh well. He had been calling on your phone but it was unreachable. So he called me up and said that we need to meet up in the evening regarding a new fabric development that he is interested in. Since he is in that area, he suggested to meet up at Cream Center. He is going out of town tomorrow for a couple of days, so he wanted to get it over with today itself.”

He knew that it sounded very unconvincing, but he didn’t have an option as he had cooked up the story at the spur of the moment. To avoid further argument, he asked Atharva to be there on time and disconnected the call.

******At Parmar’s Residence******

Here, Shruti actually refused to dress up and went for a simple cream coloured kurti with pants. It was sweet but definitely very simple considering her choice of attire. She applied only a lip gloss in the name of make up, put a butterfly clip in her hair and she was done. She wore her pride on her sleeve and nobody dared to influence her otherwise.

****Outside Cream Center****

Shruti and Rohan reached at the decided place at 4.50 p.m. sharp. Even Rohan didn’t provoke her on that day; she had created such a barrier. She did not leave any chance in venting out her anger though and continuously kept telling Rohan that there was no need to be waiting for them before time.

She noticed Shoppers stop nearby and pulled him inside. She was looking at the footwear display when her eyes fell on a very pretty pair of strappy sandals.

She blackmailed her brother, “Rohan I am anyways not willing to meet them. If you really want me to go through this, I will need some sort of motivation. To make things easier for you, how about if you buy those sandals for me? Then I can think of going ahead with this unwanted meeting.”

Meanwhile, Shankar, Preksha along with Isha and Minish had just reached. Minish was about to call Atharva to ask him as to where had he reached, when he saw the car coming. Atharva was completely confused as to what was happening. He saw all of them, and knew something was fishy. Minish briefed him about the series of events since morning; Atharva kept listening in utter disbelief.

Inside the store, Rohan made a face, but he very well knew that his sister was taking full advantage of the situation, and said, “Yeah sure. Ek footwear dilaake agar hum sab ki jaan chhutti hai toh why not?”

She gave him a scathing look, but knew she had the upper hand. He paid for them at the counter and just as they came out, they saw the Shah family waiting over there.

Atharva was barely able to take in what Minish had told him, as if he was in some kind of a dream, when he saw Shruti. He blinked his eyes to assure himself that this was really happening. Shruti, on the other hand, held her head high, and refused to even glimpse at Atharva.

To be continued… 

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