Chapter 12 #3
Raashi watched Dheer and the band play from a far corner.
Dheer, being typically himself was pestering her again.
He’d been bothering her ever since he’d agreed to perform here tonight.
But she wasn’t giving in to him. Mercifully, the band was playing in full swing since the past half an hour and he hadn’t had the time to trouble her since then.
The crowd cheered at the end of the song and she was thrilled for the band.
They deserved their success. They had worked long and hard to reach the kind of acclaim they had acquired and she was proud of them.
She blinked when she realized that the band had stopped playing again. She rushed towards the stage to find out why they had stopped and if there was a problem and halted in her tracks when she heard Dheer’s voice on the microphone.
Sameer had thoroughly enjoyed the last couple of songs.
It had been so long since he had watched a gig being played live.
And this band had only gotten better over the years.
Rishi was in high spirits, cheering with the crowd and thankfully even Natasha was enjoying herself.
He had noticed her tapping her foot a few times with the beats and more importantly she wasn’t asking to leave.
The crowd applauded at the end of the song and instead of playing the next track, the lead singer, Dheer, conferred with the rest of his band members before walking up to the microphone again.
“OK, people! The next set of songs that we’re going to perform for you are from our very first album, ‘Bohemia’.”
The crowd roared in delight.
“But, but,” Dheer said raising his hands to silence the crowd, “playing this album will be incomplete, without the one person who was the soul behind Bohemia. She’s here tonight and we all,” he said pointing to the entire band, “will continue only if you convince her to play and sing with us.”
Dheer turned to see where Raashi was standing and seeing her shocked expression, he gave her a wink and continued, “So, alright people, let’s hear it for, Raashi! There she is.”
To her complete horror, the crowd began chanting her name.
The jerk, Dheer! He was playing dirty. She hadn’t sung with them in years.
How could he expect her to just pick up the guitar and start where she had left off?
She was going to kill him. But as of now, he had left her with no option, unless she wanted the place to go crazy.
One song, that’s it, that’s all she would give him.
She wasn’t making a fool of herself, no way.
“Is my hearing alright or are they really chanting Raashi’s name?” Sameer asked Rishi, a bewildered look on his face.
“Yes. She was one of their original band members,” Rishi affirmed and then continued to chant Raashi’s name with the crowd.
Sameer’s mouth dropped open. “Raashi was once a part of this band?”
“You seriously don’t know anything about her, do you?” Rishi shook his head and continued, “That guy, Dheer, he and Raashi formed the band when they were nineteen, she played with them for two years before she had to give it up to take over T-Cafe?.”
Sameer heard the beep of a text message, once and then again. Natasha picked up her phone and smile at its screen. Seeing her engrossed, Sameer turned back to his brother.
“How is it that you know so much about her?” he asked.
“Duh! Because unlike you, I actually talked to her back then. She was my friend until you made her disappear from our lives!” Rishi accused.
Raashi reached the stage, where the bass guitarist handed her a guitar.
Tentatively, she wound the strap of the guitar over her neck.
She settled its familiar weight across her and took a shaky breath.
The drummer started the fast paced beats for one of Rhapsody’s first songs ever and on cue Raashi strummed her fingers over the guitar.
She walked towards the center of the stage, her fingers flying over the guitar.
Seeing her, the crowd burst into hysterical frenzy.
“Please welcome, my dearest friend, one of our original band members and my co-song writer on the album ‘Bohemia’, Raashi Deewan,” announced Dheer.
The minute she started playing, she lost all her reserve. It was like going back in time when all she wanted to do was only play and make music.
Dheer gave her a high five.
“For the rest of the night and for the first time in six years, we are playing not as Rhapsody but as Rhapsody REUNITED,” Dheer announced, before he began playing his own guitar and started singing.
Sameer watched awestruck. He looked at Raashi, her fingers flying over the guitar, creating magical notes.
The music was extremely fast paced and she was strumming along brilliantly, singing the chorus with the lead singer.
He watched them play and sing together. He was struck by the amazing chemistry they shared.
Wordlessly, they picked up cues from each other, came together to sing into the microphone and then parted to different ends of the stage, coming back together again to sing.
Rishi addressed him, “It’s the first time I am seeing her play like this. She’s superb.”
“That guy Dheer...and Raashi. There’s something between them, right?” Sameer was curious to understand her equation with Dheer.
Rishi frowned at him before replying. “She was dating him for the two years she was in the band.”
Sameer’s brow wrinkled.
Seeing his tense expression, Rishi sneaked a peek at Natasha before lowering his voice to say, “Actually, after the way you treated her, I can’t imagine why you’re so curious about her.
But, since I can see you obviously are, look there,” Rishi pointed.
“See that table, right in front of where Dheer is playing?”
“Yeah,” Sameer said, looking in the same direction.
“Can you see the lady in black and white sitting there, the one next to the guy in the baseball cap? That’s Dheer’s girlfriend. Raashi pointed her out to me earlier. And that guy in the baseball cap is his younger brother Vir Malhotra, the upcoming movie star. The boys are old friends of Raashi.”
So his guess was correct. Raashi did have a history with Dheer. Even now they looked really comfortable with each other, he thought irritably. Natasha laid her hand on his and without thinking Sameer moved his hand away.
Natasha felt her anger rise when Sameer moved his hand away from under hers.
He wasn’t paying her much attention. Oh, he performed the polite necessities well enough.
But he hardly ever spoke to her. In fact, she did most of the talking when they were together, just like this evening.
She felt that things were not the same between them now.
He was different. In the past when they were dating, his whole world had revolved around her.
He would go out of his way to be with her and to make her comfortable.
But this time around, he was different. It had been so long since he had met her.
Even tonight he hadn’t really been that keen to meet.
Only after she had forced him had he agreed to go out with her.
When her father had proposed marriage between Sameer and her as an option to solve their business problem, she had leapt at the idea. She knew Sameer had once been crazy about her, probably still was, considering that she hadn’t heard of a single steady relationship in his life after her.
When they were dating, they had been so young.
He had been twenty-four and had not yet made his own mark when he had proposed to marry her.
She had laughed at his proposal and they had broken up shortly thereafter.
She had not been ready then to be tied down to one man.
She wanted to experience life to the fullest. But now almost seven years later, Sameer Sehgal was one of the most eligible bachelors in the country, devilishly handsome, and his name itself was worth its weight in gold.
He had made it in life. This time, marrying him seemed the most attractive offer she had ever received.
However, things were not going as planned.
She had expected to lure him easily, as she once had, but now he was hard as ice.
None of her outward charms worked on him anymore.
Sameer didn’t look at her the way he had in the past – the besotted way he looked at that girl, Raashi.
Ever since she had come on stage, Sameer’s attention had been fixed on her.
Natasha prided herself on being extremely shrewd and reality was that her relationship with Sameer was not going anywhere.
If the situation continued the way it was, she doubted that Sameer would actually be proposing to her, as she and her father expected and wished.
Annoyed, both with him and herself for being in the position she was in, she touched his arm.
“Can we leave now?” she questioned.
Sameer dragged his eyes off the stage to look at Natasha.
“Why?”
“Because, I’ve had enough of this place for tonight,” she said.
“I thought you were having a good time.”
Sameer looked back at the stage. The band was gearing up for their next number.
He saw Raashi and Dheer deep in conversation and finally he saw Dheer shove Raashi into a chair in front of the microphone.
She turned a pleading look at Dheer, but he ignored her and jumped off the stage and went to sit next to his girlfriend.
They exchanged a warm glance and Dheer put his arm around her.
Sameer let out a deep sigh of relief as he concluded that whatever Dheer had once felt for Raashi was obviously long since buried.
Natasha held his arm and he turned to her. “What?”
She picked up her bag and started walking away from the table. He caught up to Natasha in two long strides and held her elbow.
“What’s wrong, Natasha?”
“What’s wrong? Ask yourself that,” she shot him a furious look.
“What the hell are you talking about?”