JIVAN

When I close my eyes, I feel my father's hand reaching out to me from the grave, slowly caressing my head.
I can imagine him looking at me, a smile creeping onto his old, saggy face, his glittery blue eyes – a trait of my inheritance. And spoken words would be:
"Jivan means life. My son, you were my chance to have a second life. And the only reason I ever got to have it. Because Narsimha Adhvaryu saved me from the debt and torture of Rathore, he brought me to Gujarat, where I met your mother – the love of my life. She gave me my second life. You. Since the day I picked you up in my arms, Jivan, I have sworn only one thing: that I would pay with blood and sin if required to Narsimha for allowing me to have something so beautiful. I will always and forever be indebted to the name Adhvaryu." 

My father used to work for Narsimha Adhvaryu, the loyal friend who followed him, who watched him marry Manorama Rajadi and was ready to be like an accomplice forever to him.

He stayed true to his friendship; his boss and he died serving him loyally.  So when his son started to work hard to make a name for himself, it only felt right that I follow in his footsteps and swear my loyalty to another Adhvaryu in line, keeping his death promise. Prithviraj Adhvaryu.

After all, this was the only legacy my father left for me.
But this legacy came with a price. A price to hold. A price to have zero morality and follow him blindly into absurdity.

Absurdity such as kidnapping a woman of his enemy. And another woman, to cover suspicion, and torturing them for it.
My principles went in vain as I followed the footsteps.
And I became an accomplice in hurting people who never deserved it.

I couldn't live with the regret. Never with the way her eyes had found mine, begging to be saved.

Her loud cries and begging to stop.
I had followed those MP people whom Prithviraj had hired to kidnap these women. One he had taken himself and the other – thrown into a trunk before my eyes, and I saw one of the goons climb inside the trunk before they slammed the doors shut.

I remember running towards them, and a grinning goon looked at me. "You also want a taste? You will have to get in line!" His disgusting words.

It attacked me, it attacked my morals, my principles.
I know if Prithviraj gets to find out what these men were doing? He would hardly care because his demons had won over him.

He was a friend I supported no matter what, because I understood the negligence he underwent. How talented he was, and yet he was lost in the mix and the title of a bastard in society. But the new man I had seen in him? For the last few months?

I no longer trusted him.

"Please! Save me! Please!"

And worse – I no longer trusted myself.

"We have kept the ground rule clear. No actions taken until we command! Get him out!" I ordered, his grin stretched.

"Tu do baar lelena uski! " He offered that girl in filthy words.
I heard the loud begging once again.

Right thing.
I had stood on that ground many times in the last few months.

Right thing was it to support Prithviraj for planning a kidnapping?
Right thing was it to betray our heiress, Ahilya Bahen?
The right thing is to throw not one but two women in hell, because it saved us from jeopardising our name?

And the right thing will be if I take control of the matter and trample on the neck of these two bastards who are hurting an innocent?
Will it be the right thing if I serve justice by killing them for wounding an innocent, and not killing ourselves because we are no different?

Perhaps.
I couldn't right every wrong, but I knew when I heard another plea, I had to save her. I punched the man in the face. He returned, his hands stretched out, and before he could retaliate with my punch, I grabbed his arm in a tight fist, twisted it around his back, and another punched him in his gut.

He lost balance, and I caught his neck and smacked it with my knee before I kicked him back on the tyres of the truck.
His body was extremely sore to make a move. I opened the door of the truck.

Man perched on the fearful and helpless girl.  "Kyu disturb kar raha hai? Ja na re!" He screeched.
I climbed the truck in one stride, caught his neck and smashed it on the wall of the truck.
"No actions until commanded!" I gritted and, dragging him outside the truck, I threw him off on the floor.
My eyes returned to the fretting girl in the corner, who curled herself, making herself smaller and invisible. Her tears shone in the light, petite and fragile. She was transparent in colour, pale with the fear of what her tomorrow holds.

And when her dark eyes raised towards me...

The question held in them was simple:

 Was I going to replace the man I had just saved her from?
I dropped my gaze. Climbed down the truck, her suddenly standing and running towards the entrance, but faltering in her own half-undone clothes and fell face down before me.

Those black eyes looked at me with hope.
And I shut the door in guilt and a reply.
There is no hope for her.

~~~~

She had to face many things, maybe even more than what the targeted girl had to face.
When she was being brought to Gujarat.
I had to save her from being molested for the second time.

This time, the breaker of the rule was my own bhai bandhu, who was thrown on the ground of the back road of the house. While we were all dealing with work, the main target.

I walked in through the back door, finding the innocent girl crying face down on the floor, held by one guy while another guy was unzipping himself over her back.

They both stopped when they saw me.
"Su karo cho?" I asked them, and they instantly started to stand.
My loyalty had served its purpose, maybe that's why over my life lessons and morals,
I was still helping, not this girl who was perched into rape twice.

At that moment, when I saw her pulling her chunari closer to her chest when the two men left run away, her dress closer to her chest, and her eyes found mine in yet another plea.
I hated my father, I hated. That he died, saying to me, that my loyalty lies towards the nefarious man downstairs and not humankind.

~~~~

I was forced to drag her down to the dungeon.
She cried, begged.
"I know you are not a monster like them! You saved me twice! Please? Please! Don't help me? You don't want to? Don't help me. But please, just release me this once? I will run as far as possible and won't get caught, never take your name. Please? Please let me go," Her wise plans, could hardly work on me.

I had her clutched tightly by her arms, and her feet were dragging on the ground, while I had to pull her.

I knocked on the dungeon door and opened it after hearing the approval.
I descended the dungeon staircase.
The real problem, the targeted woman inside already.

Both passed each other an acknowledgement, and the women practically crawled by Prithviraj's arm to hug her friend.
A moment of safety in the land of malevolence.

Something in my chest thrived in relief when they hugged each other. The woman who should keep quiet challenged Prithviraj for dragging Jheel.

Jheel is her name. And in everything, he liked her reaction. This brutal man enjoyed the reaction of the targeted woman. Manyata Daiwar. 
Before he threw Jheel from the hold of her friend to me.

That fragile body, nothing but jelly with all the pain, in my arms, and then he spoke the word. I hope he had not.
"Escort her to my bedroom."

Till now, my fights with everyone who hurt her were about not having command from the leader.
Now the leader, the owner of my blood royalty, commands it, which is the higher I am supposed to defend?

The girl's eyes called for her friend. And for once, I tried to find mine instead of the monster who stood before me.
And he retraced me as nothingness.
Exactly what he had been for the last few months.

My father's words played in my ears. 

I held the girl by her waist and climbed the stairs. Threw her outside the dungeon before shutting it and holding her hair. I started to haul her.

"You don't have a mother? Sister at home? How can you? How can you do this to me? How? Please! Please save me! Please don't do this to me!"
Mother. Sister?

I had neither.

When we reached his door.
I had to stand and stare blankly at it instead of opening it.
It's not because of other women in my life that I want to spare her, for?

I want to spare her because she didn't deserve it.
I couldn't! I couldn't let it happen.
I can't— my hands left the woman, her entire body pressure falling on my feet while she clutched them tightly.

"Please, please—"
I pushed her. She fell face down, and a head rose from the corner. She realised what I had done.

I saw Shanidha Bhabhi standing in the corner of the room, witnessing what had happened.
"Don't tell him, Bhabhi. Don't tell him I let her go—"

I loomed at her, who stood immediately. "If you can save yourself, do it. But if anyone catches you again. It's not my responsibility."

I watched her desperation-filled face, she looked left towards Shanidha Bhabhi and then me, and towards the main door.

She runs.

She did. Only later, when I picked the drink from the stairs in the back lawn, other boys were standing across and sitting on the khat. 

"I bet he will fuck her sore!" I heard the man putting numbers on the girl.

She indeed got caught.

"Jivan! Run under the dungeon! We got a call from the factory! They just saw the Royals' car passing by the main road!"

I stood, muttering and running under the staircase. As expected, after tearing half her clothes apart, hurting her in a way she wouldn't meet eyes with even her own friend.
She sat in the corner. She was curled, her eyes catching me by the last step of the dungeon.

I was here to guard them. Guard them from escaping and looking at her condition. I wanted to, I wanted to do nothing more than let her run away from this dungeon again.

It killed me, it killed more than one part of me. Her face was making me defy everything I have lived for. 

~~~~

My eyes opened.
And despite my desperate need to watch her leave safely.
When I actually saw her walk out the door with Somvarth Rathore.

Her lover.

The man who had sabotaged and thrown her into this place.
I think that killed me completely from the inside. Desperate need to watch her leave safely…

~~~~

I follow, and I follow Adhvaryu everywhere.
It only feels right because he amended all his mistakes, paid for his sins, and he strives to do better. And strangely, he is now married to the same girl he once kept in his dungeon to torture.

We are at the party of Agnivanshi's, where, after he left Gujarat, he had joined and is now part of.

And I? I am the loyal dog, as always. Who sniffed and followed him till here. 
I had to act civilised, and I can hardly manage it because I have always been too rugged and rogue to care for how a fucking two-teeth spoon thingy is supposed to help me eat my chakna with my drink.

I am leaning on the bar, one good thing about these parties being free drinks.
My ears sting with a familiar name. A name I want to hear again and again, "That's Jheel Chauhan? The same one who was kidnapped? Can't I believe she is attending parties again? I mean—" I looked at the two women talking by the bar side, my gaze tracing theirs, and I saw the girl walking around the Haveli of Agnivanshi.

Her back doesn't satisfy the need I feel in my chest knowing she is at the same party as me.
That I can see her closely, once again.

I stand in the driveway now, and she’s nowhere.

A teary whimper, and my head snaps left. I walk around the car in slower steps. My eyes found her in between the cars, tears streaming down her face, and her eyes shut.

"Are you okay?" I ask, and she jerks in her place.

Maybe it’s fate, or something above the sky who always pushing me towards her when she needs someone.
Mostly needs someone to save herself from me.

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Here ends whorl I. Tell me how this equation feels?

Next update, day after tomorrow.