Chapter -32 (Akanksha and Anushka 3)
Anushka kept pacing up and down her room, her brows knit close together. She had earlier heard her mother asking Akanksha to reach Jishnu up to the front door. Akanksha reacted, that was what Anushka felt, rather too quickly. As if she was just waiting for mother to make that request to her!
The next twenty minutes inside their room, Anushka kept walking up and down, thinking some very weird thoughts! Was there anything going on between Bro Jishnu and Akku? Not likely, she comforted herself. Akku was simply not that type. But why had she kept her rendezvous with him such a closed secret for so long?
How to find out? How could she jab something out of that Akku bitch, who had been very secretive so far about the whole thing? How could she get Akku to talking? There was a way, probably the only sensible way, Anushka thought. She had to confront Akku directly, confront when she least expected it, Anushka reasoned out. Why not confront her tonight itself? She wouldn't expect Anu to be awake after 10 in the night. Not that she retired to bed early. There were many nights when the sisters lay awake in bed watching TVD or the BBT (Broad Band Theory) and discussing either the sweetxy (sweet and --xy) Shelden or the deadly Damon.
'My dear Akanksha Banerjee, tonight you have to deal with me.' Anushka smiled as she thought her thought aloud.
She wondered and pondered over what she had to do as long as Akanksha was out of the house but the moment she heard Akku's voice, Anushka got into her sleep suit and leapt into her bed. She kept staring up at the fan on the ceiling still planning out her each move. Autumn was slowly setting in. Feeling lighthearted, she pulled the sheet away from her and turned to her left. She smiled thinking that she still had a lot of guile left in her to deal with the likes of her sister.
Akanksha got back home and entered the kitchen to find Mrs. Sania having the final look around as was her habit before retiring to bed.
"Is there anything you want me to do, Ma?" She asked her mother.
"I think we're done for the day. Just making sure that nothing is left out. The cat from the house opposite is really being a menace. It spoilt more than half of the finni I made the other day! I'd to throw it away." She said pouring the content of the curry pot from the oven into a container and shoving it in the refrigerator. Akanksha thought that Ma closed the door of the freezer a ittle too hard.
"Ok, Ma. I'm going up then. I need a shower badly." She told her mother and started runing up the stairs to her room.
"Wai, Akku. How's your day?" Anushka asked her sister teasingly, yawning and turning over to face her sister as she came up to the bed.
"Awesome, Anu. I really enjoyed the mutton curry Ma made. The Cornado is also one of my favorite items, you know." She answered.
Bitch! She talked as if dinner was what made her day! "Is that all or was it mainly due to The Prince Charming coming to dinner tonight?" Anushka was surprised herself at the cuttig edge in her voice.
"Yea, for that too. Jishnuda gave us a glimpse of why doctors are held in such high esteem in the society. I can feel it in my bones that he will be a very successful doctor in the days ahead. The best thing about him is his maturity. He is so down to earth! There is not a trace of insecurity in him!" Akanksha told her sister recollecting once again what Jishnu had told him just before getting behind the wheel of his brand new Volvo earlier.
"Akku! What's cooking? I can smell love in the air! Have you fallen flat for him, heart and soul?" Anushka sat up on bed, rubbing her eyes with both hands, looking devilishly devine.
"Anu, behave. Don't forget I'm elder than you by nearly three years." Akanksha retorted in feigned annoyance.
"Not by three years but, may be, by a little more than two. Anyway, that's beside the point. What isn't is, your secrecy over your relationship with bro Jishnu. Have you started fancying him, Akku?" Anushka asked her sister, who, she felt, hadn't been opening up to her lately.
"Jishnuda is a handsome bloke no doubt, and girls find him, his charm irresistible. But it'll be wrong on your part to assume that there's something going on between us, dear Anu. Besides, I'm too worried about my fourth semester exams to really think of anything else." Akanksha said to her sister.
"Don't give me that, you pretentious truth-seeker. I saw how you glowed everytime bro Jishnu did or said something tonight. Looking at you at that time, anyone would have taken you for his bride-ti-be! How can you be so boy-crazy, Akku? Didn't you go dating with him?" Anushka tried to get to the secret on the basis of a wild guess, with a lot of venom.
Akanksha was surprised at Anu's sudden outbursts. Why was she getting so hypertensed? Akanksha wondered for a while before laying out her final card," You know, Anu, the only guy I ever went out on a date with was Mayank," her voice betrayed what was going on in her mind then.
"MAYANK? You mean, Mayank Agarwal in your class? The guy who made you cry and sore for the entire day of your very first day at school? He took you out on a date or was it the other way round? When did that happen? How could you keep this a secret from me, your 'only friend' or whatever for so long?" The hurt in Anushka's voice was palpable. "You are turning out to be one heck of a secretive bitch, Akku! " Anushka shot out.
"Anu!!! How can you be so forgetful? You were the only person I ever opened my heart to about Mayank. How could you have known about this, that so-called womanizer otherwise?" Akanksha asked her sister, equally hurt, if not more.
"You're trying out your jadu (magic) on me now, Akku. But I am no admirer of yours, for your information, Ms. Rainbow-faced! So, you'd better try it on your Jishnuda or Mayank or whoever." Anushka was acting crazy now.
Akanksha looked at her near hysterical sister. Even in fury, Anu looked like a diva. With her cascade of long hair, reaching down to her waist, her betle-nut-leaf shaped face and a pair of the most expressive eyes she had seen on anyone on two, Anushka was turning out to be quite a looker. She looked even better when she was in an angry mood, Akanksha thought. But time was running out and she had to pacify her sister before she went totally berserk and started picking up and throwing things like pots and pans!
Anushka, in the meanwhile, withdrew her eyes from Akanksha's and started stepping back towards the table. There was a pencil box lying on the it. Akanksha followed her sister's eyes before shouting out :
"Oh, Anu! Do you want to tell me that I didn't tell you anything about the boy who was a drip on my first date ever! The boy who, I thought, would want to kiss me, and all he did was to act very decent and sober in that dim light of the Lover's Point?" Akanksha was almost shouting as she had seen Anu picking up the pencil box. But Anu stopped in the act of hurling it at Akku, and giggled out instead.
"Oh, Mayank The Sissy? Now, I remember. How excited you were going on your first date. How the boy had asked you to lead him to your fave restaurant and order? How, when the other lovers had hit the dance floor, he stayed put to his seat and kept rubbing his hands with his head down? How after YOU had led him to the floor and made him put his hands around your west, he kept rubbing the tip of his left shoe with the tip of his right!"
Both the sisters were giggling now. Anushka finally concluded by saying, "How could I forget one of the most bizarre dates I've ever read or heard about, Akku? How could I forget what you had talked to me about a couple of days later? Didn't you tell me that you'd even risen to your toes expecting a kiss which never materialized?" Anushka threw what sounded like a casual question at her sister next.
"You got most of it right except the last bit. I remember having told you that I didn't want the most boring date to end on a rousing note. But Mayank spared me the trouble by never asking me for a kiss or anything as abhorable. Remember, my hypocrite sister?"
Anushka broke into a characteristic smile and walked across to the wardrobe beneath the window. She opened the door with a bang, bent down to take out something and came back to her sister, with the door of the wardrobe still left open! She put her arms around her sister and said in a childlike tone:"Time to make amends. my mother. Let's share this Fruit and Nut."
She withdrew her hands, broke the Cadbury bar into two neat halves and put Akanksha's share into her mouth while Akanksha continued giggling and shaking her head. Having taken her share out of her mouth, Akanksha broke a small, sqare piece into hers.