My previous Bollywood fic
I have three other pieces, and I am just putting them on lj for my own convenience (they can be found at Bollywhat). Two are Veer-Zaara stories, and on a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai one. They are pretty sappy, but then so is Bollywood.
Title: Two Moments
Fandom: Bollywood (Veer-Zaara)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil some of the movie for you (though not the ending)
Rating: PG
Summary:Maybe if she closes her eyes tight enough, she can pretend he is Veer.
Zaara
She sits in her bridal chamber, wedding finery strewn all around her. She is alone for the first time today, not a good thing.
Soon a door will open and a stranger, her husband, will come in. If she was not so wrapped up in her misery, she'd wonder and even be grateful at his courtesy and forbearance. But she has no thought to spare for him.
Her sense of security is gone and with it her balance. She is off-kilter in this new world. Veer has made her secure. It is silly to say this of someone she's only known a week. But she has known from the first, with a certainty she shrank from analyzing, that as long as Veer was there she'd come to no harm. Rescuing her from the wreckage, helping her on her trip. Even her fear of heights was bearable with him around. Laughter and security and rock steady eyes. She did not know she missed them before. She will not forget it after.
She imagines him back at the base. Flying as he so loved. In the village talking to Bauji and Maati. If she is tied, at least he is free.
She wonders if it is betrayal. If she is a bad wife to be thinking of another man on her wedding night. She does not care.
The door opens and Raza comes in. Quiet, polite, smiling. Maybe if she closes her eyes tight enough, she can pretend he is Veer.
Veer
The hearing has come and gone. He's had a fleeting, naive, stupid hope (one he did not even acknowledge to himself) that someone would think, suspect, decide he isn't Rajesh Rathore, and it would end. Surely his agreement with Raza extended only to his silence. He did not have to actively protest he was Rajesh, did he?
He is spared the dilemma when it is clear it will not arise. They are only too happy to dispose of the traitor. His foolish hope abandoned, the hearing wears on and the words blur and distort into a meaningless, rhythm-less buzz in his head. Why listen when you cannot speak?
He sits in his cell, newly made a number. He tries to gather memories of life outside, as sharp and as many as he can, to last him a lifetime. But there are so many he cannot think about, coward that he is, because of the pain. One day he will think of them and be glad of the feeling. But not yet. Bauji. Maati...He's heard of the bus crash and he tries to be glad that they won't wonder about his fate, at least, but all he can see is Maati's face crumpling, the certainty of his death in her eyes.
Maybe if he wishes hard enough he'll wake up. To Bauji's shouting in the village. In the barracks, to the loved, mechanical noises outside. He's always been an optimist.
He cannot think of Zaara as she is now. Married, wife, husband, Raza Shirazi. That way lies madness and scraping your hands on the stones of the cell. Instead he concentrates on the time he's known her, the time he's loved her. Slowly, patiently, like a miser hoarding the last of his gold, he gathers memories of their week together. He'll get better at it with years of practice, the smooth groove of repetition, but this is the first time and he is desperate, terrified to leave anything behind. When a week has to last you a lifetime, you cannot afford to discard even a glance, a gesture, a smile.
His hands clutch at Zaara's anklet as if it is a greater talisman than the one her mother gave him, greater than all the amulets in the world. It is. It is his link to his memory, to his identity, to his sanity.
He closes his eyes tightly and begins to recollect: "The wind was blowing hair into her eyes. She was very afraid."
THE END
Title: Homecoming
Fandom: Bollywood (Veer-Zaara)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil the end of the movie for you.
Rating: PG
Summary: This time when she stretches out her hands, he takes them.
Zaara is back in the quietness of her room, momentarily alone. Veer is talking to Shabbo outside and she has to fight a childish desire to hold on to his hand, to dog his step, to make sure he is still there, unvanished, whole, hers. She knows it is only for a minute, she knows he is only in the other room, but just as surely, she knows her desire to make sure he is still there won't be shaken off. Ever. She sees herself waking up in the night to check that he is still there. She sees days, months, years, decades of that. She can't wait.
They are home. Veer is home. She is still somewhat dazed. No, make that very dazed. It is hard to assimilate, to process. Her mind is still catching up with her heart.
Veer is back. He is back, he is alive, he is hers. It is almost enough. But not completely. He won't talk about certain things and, coward that she is, she is grateful. She cannot bear to think of him trapped, uncared-for, mute, alone. He is so thin and his eyes look haunted. She saw the tears in his eyes as he entered the village. She saw his uncertain step and the way he looked at the bed: soft, not a stone plank. She and Shabbo have been plying him with food as if to make up for twenty years of neglect and the gratitude in his eyes breaks her heart. She wants to cry for him and for herself but she can't do that for he might walk in any minute.
The years wasted. The anger rises, the grief, the pity. She clamps down on that, hard. Bites her lip, reasserts control. She will not think of that. She must not. She will not let Raza Shirazi win. She swallows her rage, forcing herself into calm. Years lost? Yet his smile is still the same. The way he says her name, the feel of his hands, the angle of his head is just what she remembered and replayed in an endless loop in her head. She can live with the lost time, because her present and her future stretch out and all she can see there is Veer.
Her husband. She rolls the words in her mouth. Says them quietly to herself. She likes the sound. What a difference enclosed in one word. All she loves encapsulated. The same word, which she loathed as a sign of her duty, her bondage to Raza is now washed clean, made good.
She looks up when she hears a noise and there he is. Veer is standing on the threshold, the door open behind him. Veer is in the house. Not his photograph, not his ghost. And this time he won't disappear as she stretches out her hands. This time she won't wake up weeping, wishing the dream was real. This time when she stretches out her hands, he takes them. Their fingers are entwined and she isn't sure where she ends and he begins. Her hands. His hands. Theirs. She will grow to love this possessive pronoun, she knows.
He untangles his hands and gets up and she feels an actual sense of loss as he walks to the door. For a moment it's her nightmare made flesh.
At the threshold he turns and she is caught by the intensity of his gaze. In the mirror of his eyes she is twenty again. He smiles and her heart turns over in her chest. He closes the door.
He is back, he is alive, he is hers. And that is more than enough.
THE END.
Title: Reflection in Three Parts
Fandom: Bollywood (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil the end of the movie for you.
Rating: PG
Summary: He has always loved her. Different kinds of love, different colors of feeling, but always there.
Rahul:
He isn't sure he can bear watching her get married but he does not want to deny himself any chance of looking at her. It is worth the pain. He had told her he loved her, years too late and it's no good to complain now.
He has always loved her. Different kinds of love, different colors of feeling, but always there. He did not realize the gap her loss had made all these years until he saw her again and the world came a bit more into focus and he felt fully alive again. And he lied to himself and he denied her. She is only an old friend after all. He must be a master of self-delusion.
He loved her. But he gave her away to a man with a whole heart. He thought he could give her up. He is worse than a fool. He denied his love and, worse sin, denied hers. He deserves the hurt.
He is fine, he is fine, he is fine, he is fine...His eyes sting and his cheeks are wet. He is crying in front of a crowd of curious strangers, and he can feel them staring, and he does not care.
She is coming down the stairs to marry another. He's lost her. And this hurts worse than when Tina died and he hates that.
Aman:
It should be the happiest day of his life. Anjali is coming down the stairs, more beautiful than he has ever seen her. She is bedecked until she looks like a glittering doll. From the top of her head to the bottom of her feet she is golds and reds and glitter. He represses the look on Rahul's face. He is no saint to sacrifice his life for a stranger. Anjali is coming down the stairs to be his wife. And he knows he can make her happy. Anjali who told him she loved him and rushed to the wedding as if something was chasing her. His eyes focus on her, in nervous anticipation. He tries to put the child's miserable face and her words to the back of his mind. He almost succeeds. Anjali is coming down the stairs to be his wife. To fill his life with her quick laugh and her pragmatism and her joy.
Anjali is standing on the stairs. There are tears in her eyes. She is golds and reds and glitter and sodden misery. And he can't have that. He should be kind and understanding and gentle. He must. So he knows he will do the right thing and it doesn't hurt and he is puzzled. He is rather numb. He likes numb. It's better than what he will feel later. The priest tells him to call the bride and he gets up on his feet, taking off the mocking turban.
Anjali is standing on the stairs, more beautiful than he has ever seen her. And he wants her. And he won't have her.
Anjali:
It should be the happiest day of her life, instead of the leaden feel of misery in the pit of her stomach. She is getting married. She is starting a joyful life with a man who adores her. Instead, she can barely walk, supported by the happy gaggle of relatives. She feels like a marionette whose strings have been cut. And not all her will-power, self-control, pride, dignity, and all the myriad of other dutiful things can make her move forward a step. She is rooted to the stairs.
She thought she could forget him. He fell in love with someone else and she survived, after all. In her youthful despair she believed she had broken her heart past repair. She knows better now. It was not broken beyond repair then. If it was so, it would not hurt so badly now.
He came back into her life and she lied to herself. I do not love him any more. And she repeated it until she almost forgot it was a lie. He is only a dear lost friend after all. What an easy lie to think. What a hard one to live. But she thought she could. She did not count on his eyes. She did not count on his voice. She did not count on the tenderness and the fun and the stolen short dance in the rain. That was when she knew nothing had changed after all. He would always have her heart. All of it, forever. She had given it to him unbidden, years ago, and it was too late to unmake that now.
When he let her go a second time, she thought she would stop breathing as she could not swallow because of the pain. She almost wished she had. But it's nothing to the pain she feels now. Because now Rahul has told her he loves her. And that broke her heart. Again. And he is crying. And that makes it worse.
And then Aman is walking up the stairs, taking her hand and she is trapped and she can't escape. And then...she is free. He has given her a bigger gift than anyone should ask for. Later she will relive the pain in his eyes. But all she can feel now is that she is free. She is free. And then somehow she is in Rahul's arms and she belongs there, she fits there. And she is ruining his jacket, sniffling so hard, but he doesn't care because he is weeping, holding on to her so tightly it hurts. They laugh and they cry together. And she knows what happiness is.
The End.
Title: Two Moments
Fandom: Bollywood (Veer-Zaara)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil some of the movie for you (though not the ending)
Rating: PG
Summary:Maybe if she closes her eyes tight enough, she can pretend he is Veer.
Zaara
She sits in her bridal chamber, wedding finery strewn all around her. She is alone for the first time today, not a good thing.
Soon a door will open and a stranger, her husband, will come in. If she was not so wrapped up in her misery, she'd wonder and even be grateful at his courtesy and forbearance. But she has no thought to spare for him.
Her sense of security is gone and with it her balance. She is off-kilter in this new world. Veer has made her secure. It is silly to say this of someone she's only known a week. But she has known from the first, with a certainty she shrank from analyzing, that as long as Veer was there she'd come to no harm. Rescuing her from the wreckage, helping her on her trip. Even her fear of heights was bearable with him around. Laughter and security and rock steady eyes. She did not know she missed them before. She will not forget it after.
She imagines him back at the base. Flying as he so loved. In the village talking to Bauji and Maati. If she is tied, at least he is free.
She wonders if it is betrayal. If she is a bad wife to be thinking of another man on her wedding night. She does not care.
The door opens and Raza comes in. Quiet, polite, smiling. Maybe if she closes her eyes tight enough, she can pretend he is Veer.
Veer
The hearing has come and gone. He's had a fleeting, naive, stupid hope (one he did not even acknowledge to himself) that someone would think, suspect, decide he isn't Rajesh Rathore, and it would end. Surely his agreement with Raza extended only to his silence. He did not have to actively protest he was Rajesh, did he?
He is spared the dilemma when it is clear it will not arise. They are only too happy to dispose of the traitor. His foolish hope abandoned, the hearing wears on and the words blur and distort into a meaningless, rhythm-less buzz in his head. Why listen when you cannot speak?
He sits in his cell, newly made a number. He tries to gather memories of life outside, as sharp and as many as he can, to last him a lifetime. But there are so many he cannot think about, coward that he is, because of the pain. One day he will think of them and be glad of the feeling. But not yet. Bauji. Maati...He's heard of the bus crash and he tries to be glad that they won't wonder about his fate, at least, but all he can see is Maati's face crumpling, the certainty of his death in her eyes.
Maybe if he wishes hard enough he'll wake up. To Bauji's shouting in the village. In the barracks, to the loved, mechanical noises outside. He's always been an optimist.
He cannot think of Zaara as she is now. Married, wife, husband, Raza Shirazi. That way lies madness and scraping your hands on the stones of the cell. Instead he concentrates on the time he's known her, the time he's loved her. Slowly, patiently, like a miser hoarding the last of his gold, he gathers memories of their week together. He'll get better at it with years of practice, the smooth groove of repetition, but this is the first time and he is desperate, terrified to leave anything behind. When a week has to last you a lifetime, you cannot afford to discard even a glance, a gesture, a smile.
His hands clutch at Zaara's anklet as if it is a greater talisman than the one her mother gave him, greater than all the amulets in the world. It is. It is his link to his memory, to his identity, to his sanity.
He closes his eyes tightly and begins to recollect: "The wind was blowing hair into her eyes. She was very afraid."
THE END
Title: Homecoming
Fandom: Bollywood (Veer-Zaara)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil the end of the movie for you.
Rating: PG
Summary: This time when she stretches out her hands, he takes them.
Zaara is back in the quietness of her room, momentarily alone. Veer is talking to Shabbo outside and she has to fight a childish desire to hold on to his hand, to dog his step, to make sure he is still there, unvanished, whole, hers. She knows it is only for a minute, she knows he is only in the other room, but just as surely, she knows her desire to make sure he is still there won't be shaken off. Ever. She sees herself waking up in the night to check that he is still there. She sees days, months, years, decades of that. She can't wait.
They are home. Veer is home. She is still somewhat dazed. No, make that very dazed. It is hard to assimilate, to process. Her mind is still catching up with her heart.
Veer is back. He is back, he is alive, he is hers. It is almost enough. But not completely. He won't talk about certain things and, coward that she is, she is grateful. She cannot bear to think of him trapped, uncared-for, mute, alone. He is so thin and his eyes look haunted. She saw the tears in his eyes as he entered the village. She saw his uncertain step and the way he looked at the bed: soft, not a stone plank. She and Shabbo have been plying him with food as if to make up for twenty years of neglect and the gratitude in his eyes breaks her heart. She wants to cry for him and for herself but she can't do that for he might walk in any minute.
The years wasted. The anger rises, the grief, the pity. She clamps down on that, hard. Bites her lip, reasserts control. She will not think of that. She must not. She will not let Raza Shirazi win. She swallows her rage, forcing herself into calm. Years lost? Yet his smile is still the same. The way he says her name, the feel of his hands, the angle of his head is just what she remembered and replayed in an endless loop in her head. She can live with the lost time, because her present and her future stretch out and all she can see there is Veer.
Her husband. She rolls the words in her mouth. Says them quietly to herself. She likes the sound. What a difference enclosed in one word. All she loves encapsulated. The same word, which she loathed as a sign of her duty, her bondage to Raza is now washed clean, made good.
She looks up when she hears a noise and there he is. Veer is standing on the threshold, the door open behind him. Veer is in the house. Not his photograph, not his ghost. And this time he won't disappear as she stretches out her hands. This time she won't wake up weeping, wishing the dream was real. This time when she stretches out her hands, he takes them. Their fingers are entwined and she isn't sure where she ends and he begins. Her hands. His hands. Theirs. She will grow to love this possessive pronoun, she knows.
He untangles his hands and gets up and she feels an actual sense of loss as he walks to the door. For a moment it's her nightmare made flesh.
At the threshold he turns and she is caught by the intensity of his gaze. In the mirror of his eyes she is twenty again. He smiles and her heart turns over in her chest. He closes the door.
He is back, he is alive, he is hers. And that is more than enough.
THE END.
Title: Reflection in Three Parts
Fandom: Bollywood (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai)
Disclaimer: Don't own. Also, this will spoil the end of the movie for you.
Rating: PG
Summary: He has always loved her. Different kinds of love, different colors of feeling, but always there.
Rahul:
He isn't sure he can bear watching her get married but he does not want to deny himself any chance of looking at her. It is worth the pain. He had told her he loved her, years too late and it's no good to complain now.
He has always loved her. Different kinds of love, different colors of feeling, but always there. He did not realize the gap her loss had made all these years until he saw her again and the world came a bit more into focus and he felt fully alive again. And he lied to himself and he denied her. She is only an old friend after all. He must be a master of self-delusion.
He loved her. But he gave her away to a man with a whole heart. He thought he could give her up. He is worse than a fool. He denied his love and, worse sin, denied hers. He deserves the hurt.
He is fine, he is fine, he is fine, he is fine...His eyes sting and his cheeks are wet. He is crying in front of a crowd of curious strangers, and he can feel them staring, and he does not care.
She is coming down the stairs to marry another. He's lost her. And this hurts worse than when Tina died and he hates that.
Aman:
It should be the happiest day of his life. Anjali is coming down the stairs, more beautiful than he has ever seen her. She is bedecked until she looks like a glittering doll. From the top of her head to the bottom of her feet she is golds and reds and glitter. He represses the look on Rahul's face. He is no saint to sacrifice his life for a stranger. Anjali is coming down the stairs to be his wife. And he knows he can make her happy. Anjali who told him she loved him and rushed to the wedding as if something was chasing her. His eyes focus on her, in nervous anticipation. He tries to put the child's miserable face and her words to the back of his mind. He almost succeeds. Anjali is coming down the stairs to be his wife. To fill his life with her quick laugh and her pragmatism and her joy.
Anjali is standing on the stairs. There are tears in her eyes. She is golds and reds and glitter and sodden misery. And he can't have that. He should be kind and understanding and gentle. He must. So he knows he will do the right thing and it doesn't hurt and he is puzzled. He is rather numb. He likes numb. It's better than what he will feel later. The priest tells him to call the bride and he gets up on his feet, taking off the mocking turban.
Anjali is standing on the stairs, more beautiful than he has ever seen her. And he wants her. And he won't have her.
Anjali:
It should be the happiest day of her life, instead of the leaden feel of misery in the pit of her stomach. She is getting married. She is starting a joyful life with a man who adores her. Instead, she can barely walk, supported by the happy gaggle of relatives. She feels like a marionette whose strings have been cut. And not all her will-power, self-control, pride, dignity, and all the myriad of other dutiful things can make her move forward a step. She is rooted to the stairs.
She thought she could forget him. He fell in love with someone else and she survived, after all. In her youthful despair she believed she had broken her heart past repair. She knows better now. It was not broken beyond repair then. If it was so, it would not hurt so badly now.
He came back into her life and she lied to herself. I do not love him any more. And she repeated it until she almost forgot it was a lie. He is only a dear lost friend after all. What an easy lie to think. What a hard one to live. But she thought she could. She did not count on his eyes. She did not count on his voice. She did not count on the tenderness and the fun and the stolen short dance in the rain. That was when she knew nothing had changed after all. He would always have her heart. All of it, forever. She had given it to him unbidden, years ago, and it was too late to unmake that now.
When he let her go a second time, she thought she would stop breathing as she could not swallow because of the pain. She almost wished she had. But it's nothing to the pain she feels now. Because now Rahul has told her he loves her. And that broke her heart. Again. And he is crying. And that makes it worse.
And then Aman is walking up the stairs, taking her hand and she is trapped and she can't escape. And then...she is free. He has given her a bigger gift than anyone should ask for. Later she will relive the pain in his eyes. But all she can feel now is that she is free. She is free. And then somehow she is in Rahul's arms and she belongs there, she fits there. And she is ruining his jacket, sniffling so hard, but he doesn't care because he is weeping, holding on to her so tightly it hurts. They laugh and they cry together. And she knows what happiness is.
The End.