Chapter 23
This Could Very Well Turn into a Live Manifestation of Manjummel Boys
Prabalmachi, Sunday
I avoid Priti and Rudra for the rest of the ascent. I don’t give either of them a chance to talk to me because I have my AirPods
in and am blasting music at a volume that’s probably going to induce irreversible damage to my ears.
It helps that the ascent is so petrifying. While there are stairs, which I wrongly presumed would be better than unstable
rocks, they’re way worse because they are so narrow. I have to stick to the rocky wall, back vertical and pressed entirely
to it, inching up every step.
There are a few sharp turns, and my heart leaps to my mouth when my shoes slide on the ground, making gravel tumble off the
edge. One fall and I’ll crash-land straight onto rocks that will not just spike me like barbecue but break every single bone
in my body into tiny, tiny pieces.
I don’t want to die here. I’d become an example for parents to quote to warn their children not to lie to them, ever; not to run after boys, ever;
and not to go on night treks, ever. I can almost imagine the headline:
Indian American Teen from Maine Goes on Prabalmachi Trek Without Telling Her Parents and Falls to Her Death
While the others pause intermittently to take photos and selfies, making quirky faces and poses, I don’t dare include myself
in any of them until I’m assured I have a tight hold on something so I won’t fall. I stay at least a foot away from everyone
else because I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen those posts where a bunch of people went to some waterfall or
something and one of them accidentally tripped, taking everyone down with them.
Surprisingly, I’m the one who is at the very front of the group this time, so I’m able to avoid looking at both Priti and
Rudra.
The morning sun is beating down on us when we reach the top, and I pause at the ledge, looking out over the whole view. It’s
so, so beautiful. And quite literally breathtaking, because it took a draining hike to get here.
This isn’t the end of it, though, as Jalaj warned us. There’s still a vertical wall—and when I say vertical, I mean it is
perpendicular to the ground. The last of the college boys is completing his climb, helped up by three locals who lounge at
various places along the wall in their chappals. A few boys who don’t look a year over ten scurry around us, giggling at the
weary looks on our faces.
I hide my face, hoping it’ll take some of the burn away from the embarrassment.
Jalaj gathers us around, pointing to the wall.
“That wall is very tricky. There’s no harness, but there’s one rope, and you’ll need a lot of muscle strength to pull yourself up using just your arms and legs.
Those three men will help you at all points, so you won’t fall, but I’d strongly recommend backing out if you don’t feel a hundred percent confident. ”
“Is this trek ever going to end?” Digha wails, flopping to the ground. She’s got the kind of pretty face that make her sunburned
cheeks look like they’ve been patted with rouge. “I’m not going.”
“Me neither,” Charu says, sitting next to her. “I did it last time, so I’ve been to the mandir before.” She takes her huge
thermos out and guzzles water from it.
“You’ve been carrying that this whole time?” Varun says. “No wonder you’re tired, Chubbs. You could knock someone out with
that bottle.”
Priti uses her hanky to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck. The sun has made her even more brown. I glance down at my
own arm, which looks browner than ever, but I don’t mind it. When I was a kid, for the longest time, I avoided staying out
in the sun for too long even after applying sunscreen because I got so conscious of tanning, but now I don’t care. The sun
feels surprisingly good, warming the chill from the wind drying the sweat on my skin.
Jalaj looks around at us again. “Anyone else?”
I wait for the Krishnas in my brain to tell me to raise my hand and back out now—but I’m surprised to be met with radio silence
instead. And I find that I want to do this. I came this far, and I want to see it through to the very end.
I shake my head, soaking up the sunlight, nerves riding a cresting wave. It’s true, what all those fitness freaks keep going
on about. The toughest part of exercise is starting. But once you do, once you push above and beyond your limit—that’s when it starts feeling good.
“Who’s going first, then?” Jalaj asks.
Varun sits next to Digha, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her cheek. They’re so disgustingly cute. I want what they have. “I’m going to stay with Digha for a bit,” he announces.
Rudra raises his hand. “I’ll go.”
“I’ll go after him,” I say. Priti snaps her head toward me in surprise, but I ignore her, amping up the volume of the music
again.
Rudra walks to the wall and rolls the sleeves of his T-shirt up even farther until they’re bunched around his biceps. He stretches
his arms out in front of him, his bones popping. Then he grasps the rope with both hands and begins climbing.
He’s like a monkey, quick and sure-footed. The three guides direct him in Hindi on where to keep his hands and feet, boosting
him whenever he needs it. The wall is about thirty feet tall, and he’s at the top in minutes, pulled up at the end by Padam.
I walk to the wall, surveying its height, finding my frame tiny in comparison to its intimidating span. I take off my AirPods,
shoving them into the case and jamming it into my pocket.
I can do this, I convince myself, feeling everyone watching me, and take the rope. Priti, who filmed Rudra climbing, starts recording for
me as well, and I am determined to not fuck up on camera. The first few feet are easy because I keep my grip on the rope tight,
not letting go unless I have to reach for grooves above me. The men guide me patiently.
But then there’s a point where the rock I need to grip feels too far out of reach, and I’m afraid I’m going to fall. A mind-numbing
panic takes me over, and one of the men notices it.
He says, “???? ?? ?????”* and being the idiot I am, I do exactly that. I look down. My head spins. We’re dizzyingly high.
“??? ???? ?? ???? !”* I gasp, gripping the rope so tight my skin stretches over my knuckles and the blood drains from them, turning them white.
“???????, tension ?? ???”*
I shake my head firmly, all resolve to complete this thing gone. I’m determined to stay here, to go neither up nor down unless
a chopper comes to fetch me and deposits me on solid ground. I can’t do this, I can’t—
“Krishna!”
I inch my eyes open, looking up at the source of the voice. It’s Rudra. His head pokes over the edge of the cliff and he stretches
his hand out toward me.
“You can do this!”
“I can’t!”
“You can! Just look at me. Don’t look away.”
I scan his face, knowing I’ll be damned if I do, but he looks so earnest, genuinely concerned for me and my safety . . . and those eyes. God. They anchor me.
I suck in a deep breath, wait for the panic to subside just a little, and let go of the rope with one hand. It’s a mighty
stretch, grabbing the rock way above me, trusting that my hands will take my weight when I lift my leg and rest it on the
groove the men point to, calling out encouraging words to me.
“??, ???? ??!”*
I grunt, straining to hold on, barely swinging on the rope for a few moments.
And then my feet find stability.
“?? . . . ?? . . . ????! ??????!”*
The rest of the climb is quicker, and while I don’t hold Rudra’s gaze the whole time—because, well, I need to focus on where
I’m keeping my hands and feet—every time I glance up, his hand is outstretched, and he’s always looking at me. It pumps confidence
into me, and when I’m near the top, I grab his hand, relieved to find it firm. And strong.
The man below pushes me up, and I scrabble away at the ground, my face scrunched in concentration. There is a sudden, painful
pull on my right arm, pressure rushing to my bicep, and I gasp as I’m hauled up and over the ledge. My torso finds the ground,
then my legs, and Rudra yanks me harder than needed. My body practically sails over the edge, and lands—
Right on top of him.
He falls back with the momentum, our bodies tumbling together. I instinctively grab his T-shirt as we roll on the ground.
My hand accidentally slides it up, and my fingers touch his spine, nails digging into his flesh.
As we finally stop a foot away from the edge, clutching each other as if we’re holding on for dear life (which, frankly, we
are), I find myself lying astride him, our faces so close my braid brushes his cheek.
I’m suddenly aware of his hands squeezing my hips, tight, as if he’s afraid of letting go. Or as if he doesn’t want to let go.
He pushes my braid off his face and tucks it under the hem of my T-shirt at the nape of my neck, the tips of his fingers hardened
from skimming the frets of his guitar and playing bar chords. They rest on the curve of my neck now, the spot he didn’t touch
last night, and a visible shiver racks my skin.
I know he sees it, the effect he has on me with the barest of touches.
I need to pull away, but I don’t want to. He looks so hot lying under me like this, my legs on either side of him, his hand gripping my hip with the sort of ferocity that floods my mind with the wildest of thoughts.
Thoughts I should definitely not be having right now, at the edge of a cliff with all the college boys and locals staring at us. I can feel their eyes boring
into me, but I can’t seem to get a single part of my body to move, can’t seem to get myself to look away from Rudra.
His thumb skims the pulse fluttering in my neck, coming to a stop so it’s resting on the dip in my throat. It takes me a second
to realize the rest of his fingers are behind my neck, while his thumb applies the slightest amount of pressure to the front.
His lips hike upward, and his eyes fall from mine to the spot where he’s clutching my neck, making a million sensations come
alive inside me. “You look like you’re about to kiss me right now.”
Ohmyfuckinggod.
I immediately push away from him, scrambling to my feet and smoothing my fingers over my clothes and hair. I can’t help it,
even when Rudra sits up and looks right at me, challenge swimming in his eyes—I touch my neck, the spot where he gripped me.
This is getting out of hand.
Rudra stays seated there, one leg bent and on the ground, the other folded up, and the hand that was on my neck just moments
ago rests on his knee. His smirk has stretched into a full, shit-eating grin, because he basically just said the same thing
to me that I told him last night: You look like you’re about to kiss me right now.
The worst part is, I did. I do. The urge and the want are stronger than ever, and every time I start to feel like I catch a grip on my self-control, I lose
it just as quickly.
I turn away from him, my face bursting into flames. I’m glad the sun’s up, because my face feels redder than ever, and I’m hoping the others will think it’s just a sunburn.
I pass them, trying but failing to ignore their stares, and climb a boulder to the highest stretch of ground, where the Chhatrapati
Shivaji Maharaj shrine is. I make sure to take off my shoes and socks and tuck them behind another boulder where the others
have left theirs. Shivaji Maharaj was a man, but he’s worshiped like a god in Maharashtra because he was the founder of the
Maratha empire. To keep our shoes on would be blasphemy.
I walk up to the shrine. Embedded in a huge stone is a small brick-red idol of Shivaji Maharaj on his horse. I sit on a boulder
next to it, soaking up the calm and trying to soothe my fritzing nerves. It’s windy here, and air rushes into my clothes,
cooling all my sweaty crevices.
It takes me a moment to catch my breath, push all thoughts of Rudra out of my head, and focus on the up-and-down movement
of my chest as I stare at the rolling hills and sharp trees, the blues and greens and yellows.
I can’t believe it. I did it.
I managed to complete this trek that at one point felt like it was never going to end. I’m here, legs swinging from a ledge
that looks out over a swathe of green stretching out toward the horizon, the sky literally the color of cornflowers.
Priti’s voice sounds behind me a little while later, startling me out of my thoughts. “Can I join you?”
I don’t look back at her as I say, “When have you ever been the type to ask?”
Priti snorts, climbing onto the ledge beside me. For a moment, we just sit there in silence, listening to the others talk and click photos on their phone. I’m calmer than I was just minutes ago, with the wind drying the sweat on my skin and the stunning view laid out before me.
Priti’s voice is quiet when she finally speaks up. “I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
I don’t say anything. I keep my gaze straight ahead, waiting for her to keep going.
“I just—” she says, a tinge of frustration in her voice. “Things have been so horrid between us for so long, it’s almost become
a habit to be this way with you, if you get what I mean? But I appreciate you hearing me out about Rudra last night. And I’ll
make it up to you. I’ll be better—we’ll be better. I just need time. Okay?”
Normally, I would just roll my eyes at that, but she’s being honest, and genuine, and that is all that matters to me. I haven’t
been entirely loyal to my promise to her either, what with everything that’s been happening with Rudra. But I’m intent on
doing better by her from now on.
Because I’m Krishna Kumar, the girl who sees things through. Even when the going gets tough, I don’t back out. And if I was able to make it here, to the top of this peak, I can keep my
feelings in check. If not for me, then for Priti.
I finally turn and look at her. Then I nod, exhaling heavily.
“Okay.”