Hey guys!!! How are you all? Well as I said you people here I come with the next part. So presenting you the next part. Happy reading.
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ADHOORE HUM ADHOORE TUM
Chapter-4 (Working Together)
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Five months had passed from the time Sanchi and Kabir had met each other for the first time. They met later several times, but purely on a professional basis because they were going to work together for Sanchi’s new script ‘ADHOORE HUM, ADHOORE TUM’. The entire unit was gearing up for the shoot of their promo. Kabir’s dates were already tight and this promo was scheduled to go on air in two days. So they were all working very furiously and also anxiously. Working with a superstar like KG who was rumoured to be very moody and prone to temper tantrums was no joke.
Everything was ready for the shoot when the spot boy, Mukund accidentally spilt some tea on KG’s dress. This was a disaster of the worst kind. Veer immediately went and apologized for it and told KG that he would get the dress replaced immediately. But KG said, “If the shoot is to happen, it will happen with this dress, or it will not happen. I will not wear a new dress.”
Veer barked to his team and asked them to get the dress cleaned immediately. But the tea stain was not at all going. Veer sat down extremely dejected. He did not see the promo shoot happening in the present circumstances. They could not shoot with a stained dress while KG was refusing to wear any other. He remarked to Sanchi, “You’ve always set my life right and bailed me out of the most difficult problems. Sanchi use your magic wand this time also and set things right for me.”
Sanchi nodded her head. She asked whether she could speak with KG alone for a minute. When she entered his vanity van, he was reading a magazine. He knew that she was there but looked as though he had not observed her. She coughed a bit to make him notice her but in vain. He did not look up from his magazine. She addressed him, “Sir, I want to talk to you about that dress.” KG gruffly replied, “If you’ve come to ask me to use another dress then I’ve already told my answer to Veer. Either we shoot with the old dress, or we don’t shoot.” She tried to reason out with him, “But Sir, the stain will be visible and it will not look nice in the promo.” He angrily said, “You ought to have thought about all that when you guys go around dropping tea on my dress. Do you realize whose dress it is? It is KG’s dress. It deserves the same respect that you give to KG. “
Sanchi tried explaining, “It was just an accident. There is no need to make such a big fuss about it when the dress can be easily replaced.” This made KG even angrier. He said, “Who the hell do you think you are? A mere story writer and creative director! And you have the temerity to question KG’s wisdom or decisions. Just because I praised you in your house that day don’t think too much about yourself. Stars make a show and not a story. Your show would be nothing without me.”
Kabir did not know why he was being so rude to her. Perhaps he wanted to get over the unspoken attraction he had started feeling for her after the night they had spent together at her house. Though their next few meetings were all purely professional, he was secretly getting more and more attracted towards her and her genius in storytelling. He very well knew that Varsh’s character which he was playing on the new show was the most complex among all the roles he had done till date. It had so many layers to it that he had to go through the script a number of times to actually get into the skin of the character. The interesting thing was that Varsh’s character reminded him of himself. He could identify with the character. He could already sense how this show was going to be the next big sensation on Indian television. But he did not want to reveal all this to her.
Kabir’s past experience with love had made him wary of feeling admiration or expressing admiration for a woman. So he did the only thing he knew. He cloaked his admiration for her within his anger. He decided to intentionally hurt her ego and make her hate him. Now they were going to work together also. So it would be better this way. She too would not get too many ideas that superstar KG was giving her undue importance. He wore the same stained dress and said, “I’ll give you five minutes. We either start shoot in this same dress before the time I gave you or we cancel shoot.”
Sanchi was astonished. She could not believe her eyes that it was the same man whom she had met on the highway. But being an introvert herself, and a person who always hid behind her stories and sought her fulfilment in life through her characters, she could easily see through Kabir’s play-acting. It was just a mask he was wearing to show off to the world. She could guess that much. He wanted to hide something but what and from whom she hardly had any idea. After all for how long must she have known him? Even people who knew him for years said that they had just worked with him and that they did not know who KG really was.
This show was her dream project. She was confident that it would succeed. She really could not allow KG to destroy it because of his psychological complexities. She and Veer would have gone in for some other lead actor if they could. They had worked for all their shows till date only with newcomers and freshers to the industry. So they never had to face any temper tantrums which the established stars were prone to throw. But they knew that carrying off this particular role could only be done by an actor of KG’s caliber. So they had to tolerate all these temper tantrums of KG for the sake of their new show’s success.
Sanchi looked at the dress Kabir was wearing and then at the silk dupatta she was wearing. There was a big embroidered rose pattern on it. She quickly tore it away and took a pair of thread and needle and started stitching it in the place where the tea stain was. It took Kabir more than a minute to comprehend what she was doing. She pulled him towards her in her haste to finish stitching before five minutes.
Sanchi’s whole face was a study in concentration. She was only bent upon getting her job done. She hardly observed how close they were standing to each other or how Kabir was staring uninterruptedly into her beautiful eyes or how her loose hair was brushing against his face. He could feel both their heart beats coming together in unison. He got so carried away by all this that he was going to embrace her in his arms when he realized what he was about to do. She broke the trance by saying, “It’s over. Now we can have the shoot of the promo.”
Kabir pushed her back and she got hurt by the needle she was holding in her hand. It was not his intention to actually hurt her physically. He immediately took her hand in his to examine the wound and give it some first aid, but she rudely pulled back her hand. She proudly held up her head and said, “I don’t need the attention of superstar KG. I can manage my hurt by myself. Thanks for the concern. I come here for my work and so do all of us. Do you even realize that your childish and unprofessional behaviour has caused the entire unit so much inconvenience?”
Nobody had the nerve to talk to him like this till today. Here was a woman who believed in giving her hundred percent towards her work. His respect for her grew even more when he saw how she fought for her own self-respect without bothering about his stardom or his footing in the industry. Kabir had seen only fawning heroines and sycophantic fans ever since he rose to fame in the television industry. All of them wanted to attract his attention by hook or crook. Only she had the courage to ignore him and tell him the truth on his face.
The promo shoot was wrapped up in another hour, and just when Kabir was about to leave, he overheard Veer and Sanchi talking to each other. Veer was saying, “You needn’t have spoiled your dupatta for this. We could have found out some other solution. I know KG’s dress is looking even better than it originally was. This dupatta was your lucky charm. You always used to wear it for all the important occasions in your life. Now you’ll never be able to wear it again.”
Sanchi said, “Don’t think about all that. That dupatta was actually not my lucky charm, you are my lucky charm. My BFF (Best Friend Forever)! How could I let you be so sad? It was just a dupatta. A new one will come, but can I ever repay you enough for your friendship? You came into my life at that time when I didn’t know who I was or what my priorities in life were. You helped me in carving an identity of my own. Both of us have seen several struggles together, we will see through this one as well.”
Kabir was really impressed by their conversation. Veer was lucky to have a friend like her. He, Kabir, had fought all his battles alone. He never had anybody to support him except his mother, Kusum. He had made more enemies than friends in all these long years in the industry. But when he saw how she had fought for the sake of Veer today, his heart was touched. She had even given up her most prized possession, her lucky charm for the sake of her friend, and did not make much of it. This was what standing for each other meant, and this was what his so-called past love didn’t do for him. She deserted him and insulted his love for her at the first sign of difficulties. It was no wonder that Veer was so successful today. Anybody would be with such a friend like her.
Kabir was a book worm. You’d often find him after a long day of shoot curled up over the sofa engrossed in a book for hours and hours together. It was his favourite hobby and pastime. That was also one of the reasons why he had started admiring Sanchi initially. Her stories, her characters, her thoughts, and her style of taking a story forward made him ponder deeply. There was something so profound in whatever she wrote. Was it herself she was expressing through her works? If she had been like any of his heroines or fans, superficial and shallow, he would not have wasted even a second on her. But she was different. He felt intrigued by her. She was like a question mark to him. He wanted to figure her out.
Kabir was reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
He felt exactly like that at this moment. He did not want to give her that space to get into him. But she was already there. He wanted to shake her off but without hurting her in the process. He wanted to have nothing to do with her but couldn’t remain away from her. She had turned him into a bundle of contradictions. He was feeling and feeling very deeply at the most intricate level after years and years of cynicism.
Kabir wanted to make up for all his rudeness today. He wanted to apologize to her; but would she really agree? It was always his tendency to act and hurt people in haste and repent at leisure. Knowingly or unknowingly he had become the cause for destroying her lucky charm while she had repaired his stained dress and had even beautified it with her resourceful mind. He had been so bothered only about the stain while she saw beyond it. She had saved the day both for her friend and for himself in not allowing his temper tantrum to come in the way of their show’s promo shoot. He did not know what to think about all this.
Sanchi sat at her table writing the continuation of her script
Appearances are often deceptive. We find a person to be something initially, but on knowing further, we uncovers layers and layers within them, just like an onion. If you begin pealing it, layer after layer comes off, making you cry and cry over it. Varsh also made Spandana cry like that. Did he really intend it or was it his real nature? No onion wants to make you cry but you end up crying. And that’s an undisputable fact. Similarly eye specialists say it is good to cry occasionally. It purges your eyes of all the accumulated dust that is hindering your vision. You’re able to see even clearly. So was the onion actually doing something good to your eyes by purging it of all its waste and negativity? So was Varsh actually good for Spandana? Was Varsh’s rudeness intended to jolt Spandana out of her fairy tale and give her a reality check? Or was Varsh hiding something else behind his rudeness? You’d generally understand what the other person was trying to tell you if they spoke to you. But if they didn’t, how would you read the language behind their silence? People say that ‘Silences speak’. Here in Varsh’s and Spandana’s case ‘Silences screamed calling out for each other’
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With love~
Rishika❤