Kaal Chakra

0. पूर्वरंग

पूर्वरंग - Meaning prologue or the preliminaries of a play deals with the ceremonies performed at the beginning of the presentation of play on the stage.

                           **********
Pune, Maharashtra

Chaturthi, Phalguna Krishna Paksha, 2000 AD

It was a pleasant night in the month of Phalguna. The sky was filled with an endless inky black darkness with swathes of grey clouds scattered throughout. Even though it was a clear night, only a few nakshatras were visible, as if giving a sign of an impeding crisis.
Everything was quiet in the Bavdhan valley. There were no vehicles on the main road, even the food trucks and stalls that usually lined up on the sides beyond midnight were shut. There were no people on the street, as if some energy had bound them to their homes.

Beyond the main road and in through few small internal lanes, was a huge bungalow society. In between the rows of identical two storey houses, one stood out due to the blooming nature within its compound. As if the person after whom the house was named had herself blessed it with the beauty of the divine gardens of Vaikuntha.

If anyone looked inside the huge window adjacent to the front door, they would see a huge living room, elegantly decorated with rosewood furniture, an LED flatscreen on the side wall and simple cream coated walls. On the other side of the living room was the kitchen and just beside it, a staircase made out of marble stone. There were a total of four bedrooms in the house, one master bedroom with an attached bathroom and three large rooms, one converted into a library/study room.

In one of the rooms, one could see a sleeping figure on one of the twin beds. A sliver of light was illuminating the face of the figure making her honey gold complexion to glow wanly due to the perspiration covering her forehead. Her brow was furrowed, drawing her arched eyebrows closer together while her hands were gripping the sheets beneath her so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Suddenly, the girl woke up with a muffled cry, eyes wide with fear and grief. She shot up into a sitting position, lips trembling with the effort of holding her emotions together. She swung her legs off the bed and rested them on the cool tiled floor, resting her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her palms, taking deep shaky breaths.

The creaking of the floor at the doorway of her, no their bedroom alerted her senses. She lifted her head from her hands and turned towards the door with a sigh.

"I am fine, Abba. You can go back to sleep." She said in a quiet voice but she knew it was of no use. She heard the footsteps coming towards her and the mattress of her bed dipping down as someone sat beside her.

"I was awake anyways. Your Ajji is having one of her rare snoring episodes." Her maternal grandfather said and she let out something akin to a snort.
She slid down to the floor and rested her head in his lap, the feel of the soft cotton of his lungi against her cheek providing her with a comforting warmth. Her grandfather rested a hand on the back of her head, patting it at steady intervals.

Her heart felt heavy as she thought of all the trouble her maternal grandparents were facing. They shouldn't have to face this at their age. They shouldn't have to feel the pain of losing their daughter, her mother, their son in law and their first grandchild. They shouldn't have to leave their hometown, their own house and come all the way here, just to take care of her and the house, so that she could concentrate on her studies. They shouldn't.