15 YEARS AGO…..
Some men, dragging a knotted bag carefully, enter the office room without making any noise. One of them puts a chair in the center on what the others lays their burden. They back off waiting for some moments.
He comes in, a Cuban cigar between his fingers from what he takes a sip while he’s reading some file he was carrying in his hands. Suddenly, he freezes seeing the bag, frowning he looks to the four men surrounding him and at their surprise, he just slaps one of them throwing him to the ground.
“- is he an animal you caught in the jungle! Morons!… free him… let me see him…”
As they hesitate a bit, he growls angrily slapping a second one of them… they open the bag hastily with shaking hands, one them mumbles fearfully:
“- ba-ji… he’s ferocious… he gave us a hard time catching him…”
“- bilkul his baba”
His victorious smile turn to a shocked expression seeing the cute face of a boy of about ten years old, unconscious, he face was a bit turned to one side showing just a fair skin, a long lashes fanning over his adorable cheeks, his thin lips a bit opened…
Ba-ji growls like a dragon gripping the boy’s face angrily detailing his its features:
“- this is not my son! He’s just a kid! Adarsh is an adolescent of fifteen years old now!”
All of sudden, he shoots one of the guys killing him without blinking, throwing the boy on the ground, he simply falls over the puddle of blood forming there… the shock wakes him and he immediately struggles to stand up. But he’s already grabbed forcefully by the men as he was about jumping over ba-ji…
“- let go of me! Don’t you know who I am!? What do you want of me?… my family will never give you any kind of ransom…”
A hard slap across his cheeks silences him, as he fall unconscious again, blood start oozing from his mouth…
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Swara could still remember the mark of her baba’s ring on the small boy’s cheek, she swallows hardly repressing those memories. Then faking braveness, she folds her arms on her chest saying:
“- ha baba… your enemy’s grandson… Durga Prasad Maheshwari… kya hua?… you’re surprised that I’ve already put the pieces of puzzle together?… always wondered why has Adarsh baihya turned evil just like that… for what? The money he already has?… why all this hatred toward me?…”
Ba-ji smiles replying:
“- your little smart brain never stops, hai na?… what have you understood too?”
“- That you were the man with whom Bade Papa’s sister run away many years ago… the lover who turned to be her murderer… Adarsh’s father and the reason behind all the drama our family lived for the past months…”
He smirks saying loudly waving his gun :
“- kya karo… maybe it was destiny! I first lost a son then got a daughter… but I lost her too… but how could I imagine that when I’ll find my son… I’ll find my daughter too…”
“- don’t ever call me a daughter again… my father is Shekar and you’re just the monster I lived with in my childhood…”
“- Shekar Gadodia? The man who robbed your mother’s innocence and throw her out of his life?… sorry Parvathi ji… your bahu has always been just too honest… I knew everything from the first day we met…”
***
Sanskar still on the road recalls the story Dida told him that night…
*** FLASHBACK ***
Trying to reassure her, he pours a glass of water making her sit and drink by little sips, he asks again:
“- calm down Dida… nothing will happen to Swara, she’s bilkul safe, at home, with everyone around her…”
Actually, he was shivering from head to toe, the idea of any harm menacing Swara makes knots in his stomach, Dida finally speaks with a low voice, her eyes looking nowhere:
“- nahi beta… you don’t know… you don’t know that she’s menaced since fifteen years ago… diamond’s traffic here? Lakshya here?… at Banaras… not Kolkata… he found her… he found her…”
“- Dida… please… kya hua? What are you talking about? Fif… fifteen years ago, Swara was still a small girl… what kind of menace could she live then…”
“- then and forever beta… as long as that Devil will be alive, Sorroo will remain in danger…”
She then narrated him the forgotten story of her daughter’s first marriage.
“- I was angry against Gadodias, against Shekar who betrayed my sweet Shomi letting her shattered, breaking her dreams and heart and turning his back to her… Parvathi promised to marry him soon and I promised back that my Shomi will be married before him and to a much better husband than he would ever been!”
“- a month later, Shomi was married to a great respectful businessman at Banaras, a widowed man who lost wife and son years ago… I made sure he never knew about Shomi’s past and as he had no work in Kolkata, it was easy to hide the bitter memories…”
“- I let her there and returned to Kolkata resigned to never see her again… her husband had to never know about Badi, Gadodias and all the past…”
“- but one night… years after, Shomi knocked at my door her little angel sleeping in her arms… and Devil’s ghost purchasing her…”
***
At Badi…
Swara points her finger at her baba’s face stopping him, she says angrily:
“- don’t say a word against my father!…”
“- your father!?… really?… Adarsh told me about your so called beloved father… about his love and support… he even couldn’t protect his own son from his own mother… Shona… mere sweet Shona… how can you call him a father? May be it’s his blood which is flowing in your veins, but it’s my strength which give you that force you’re facing the world with it…”
“- you gave me nothing but a fake fairyland restricted between the walls of the castle you were jailing my mother in… how couldn’t I see the criminal you were? The monster that was making my mother’s life hell on earth?… you really think me that Shona? That girl who was adulating the image of father you gave her until she saw your real face”
“- at least I taught you how to point a gun properly and touch your aim…”
Caressing the scar on his face, he smiles pointing his gun on her… both remembering their last meet before tonight:
***FLASHBACK***
Little Swara who has avoided anyone’s contact the whole day, finished by fall asleep clutching her mother’s scarf against her like a protective amulet. She’s wakened startled by a woman’s scream, thunder was growling out too… she whispers at the same voice again:
“- ma!?”
It was her mother’s voice pleading painfully to be freed… without thinking, she runs toward the source of the voice, but she freezes at her father’s office door, images of blood, beats and screams haunting her, she could hear her father’s angry voice:
“- tell me!!!! How did you do to open the safe? My whole life! My whole blo*dy life… no one could never go against me, because before even the idea forms in his brain, it’s extinguished by a bullet… and you! You shameless woman… you dared defy me!?”
“- PLEASE! Believe me! … I really don’t know what are you talking about… how can I know what happened fifteen years ago? Whose murder are you talking about?… AAHH”
He pulls her hair hard crashing her head against the armory’s glass doors and shouts:
“- LIAR!!! I don’t believe you! A woman who gets married with a baby in her womb can do anything… tell me! Tell me what you know too? What did you say to police too?”
“- NOTHING! I swear on my Shona’s life that I never knew about the gun hidden in the safe and I didn’t get out from this house since you brought me here as a bride…”
Pulling her to him by her hair, he grips her face with his other hand digging his fingers in her skin making her look up to him:
“- Don’t drag Shona in this!!!… and don’t test my patience…”
Taking her head between his hands, he crashes it against the glass breaking the armory’s door and injuring her forehead’s side badly, she moans in pain about fainting, but he still grabs her mercilessly… dragging her further, he pushes her hardly against the floor making her cry in pain and asks with a menacing lower voice:
“- or maybe… maybe let us drag Shona in this!… maybe if you see her at your place, you’ll start speaking…”
Sharmistha is shocked by his words, she joins her hands begging, her face drowned with tears and blood:
“- nahi! PLEASE… what’s her fault in all that?… she’s too innocent to even notice the dark world you’re making us live in… please!…”
As she sees him take a paper cutter from his desk standing up, she grips his feet pleading more:
“- NAHI! Do whatever you want to me… ha… ha… I… did… it… it was me… me who… went to police… and… and… gave the gun… that gun they were… searching… I’m … I’m also the one… who told them… about this case… kill me… ha… kill me… but let my Shona…”
He kneels back behind her grabbing her hair again in his fist to force her looking up to him, he says with a devil satisfied smile:
“- MUCH BETTER… but…”
Putting the knife under her chin pressing it on her throat until blood starts forming, he asks:
“- this isn’t enough… you have never been smart enough till now… it’s impossible you did it by your own… who helped you? Who gave you the code of the safe?”
She closes her eyes moaning in pain again, but he didn’t stop, taking the knife away he pushes her head against the desk hardly making her scream more, then puts it again on another place digging it in her skin…
“- LET GO OF HER!!! I AM THE ONE YOU’RE SEARCHING FOR…”
A small determined voice coming from nowhere startles both of them… little Swara was standing there, a gun between her tiny shaking hands and her huge filled with tears eyes throwing lightening from anger, she adds:
“- let’s go of ma, baba! I’ll never let you do with her what you did with you first wife…”
Taking off the security of the gun she was now firmly handling, she explains at his astonished face:
“- fifteen years ago… your wife quitted you running away with your just born baby and when you tried to stop her, you killed her instead of her brother who was the unique person not afraid of you… and for the first time, someone complained against ba-ji… but then without the crime’s arm, there is no crime? Hai na?”
He frowns remembering those words he was saying hours ago, in this same office:
“- ha baba… I was here… I heard your horror story narrated to a poor small boy you ordered to kill… here, just where I used to bend down taking blessings at your feet…”
Seeing that he was looking behind her to the safe, she smiles saying:
“- your safe was safe with everyone but me… my fingers’ print… my birthday date… you really thought that I don’t notice what you’re typing after asking me to put my hand over it?”
A loud laugh escapes from ba-ji’s throat as he manhandles his wife’s head changing the knife’s angle to hurt her more, he says in awe:
“- dekho Sharmistha… this is the perfect daughter of her baba, hai na?… so sad she took the wrong way… put down this gun, Shona! Put it down or I’ll kill your ma… and you know me well now!”
“- nahi baba… you let go of her or I’ll shoot, and you also know me well… you should start packing your things… police will be here at the early morning… ha, with arm and my deposition… court ordnance will soon be delivered in order to inculpate you as murderer… ”
Sharmistha asks her trying to escape from her husband’s grip:
“- flee Shona! Flee from here, he’ll kill you”
But Swara just stands there fixing his eyes with hers, he shouts menacingly:
“- put down this gun, Swara! Or I’ll cut her throat just under your gaze…”
“- let go of her or I’ll shoot you right now… and I’ll have peaceful night knowing that the world lost a criminal like you…”
Fearless, Swara defied him more which makes him angrier, he’s about killing her mother when she presses the trigger…
B-A-N-G!
Injured, he has loosened his grip on Sharmista before falling unconscious on the floor… she hurries to her small shocked girl whose eyes couldn’t get away from the vision of her baba covered with blood face… she took her in her arms and runs… runs… runs… from city to the other, on their feet or in some passing merchandise transporters… on the road returning to Kolkata, Swara closed the door on those memories until today… considering them as a nightmare, her ma’s lullabies finished by chase…
***END OF FLASHBACK***
Recalling that last night brought tears at their both eyes, ba-ji looks to the little Ayush a sad smile on his face, he whispers:
“- he really looks like you…”
Parvathi exclaims:
“- just as devil as his sister…”
Without looking toward her, he simply shoots her shocking Swara who cries out:
“- Dadi ma!”
The old woman falls on the floor a huge mark of blood forming beneath her, he sighs turning back to Swara and says:
“- Stupid woman… how could you bear her?”
Looking again to the little boy, Swara steps in his way toward him, he smiles again and says:
“- always saving others, never thinking about yourself… just like the small boy you saved on that day too… tell me who will save you today?”
Pointing the gun toward her, he wipes a tear from his eye adding:
“- I would never be able to love Adarsh more than you, mere Shona… really… I’m sorry…”
Hugging her entwined SS pendant tightly by a hand, the other over her belly, Swara closes her eyes listening to the pressure on the trigger… the sound of the bang reaches her ears at the moment she feels herself wrapped by a warm embrace…
Sanskar, hugging her tightly, rolls on the ground dragging her with him, he opens his eyes finding her unconscious… a blood stain forming under them! His shout fills the place:
“- SWARAAAA!!!!”
TO BE CONTINUED…………