An Imperial Affliction

Chapter 14- Pain has the power

Only Pain has the power to make us bleed silently.

-

Thomas Hardy had said, Happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain. Surely, he never watched the life of Riya Mukherjee before tragedy stroked, with him dying over 100 years ago and all that.

The daughter of a Hotel tycoon, she never wanted anything in life, just thought about it and got it. Maybe part of her arrogance comes from that, but everyone was fairly sure she was exchanged in hospital, as none in her family was a rebel like her. She established herself as the wild child of family who broke every norm and expectations, and some said she took after her great grandfather. When her other female cousins got Economics or Business degrees, or made connections with other rich heirs to marry themselves off, she joined IPS, moved out of her joint family, came to a new city and restarted her new life. None was happy with it, obviously, but almost everyone expected her to do something different than rest of them, though they looked upon her lifestyle and attitude scornfully. With the arrogance, comes her ability to detach herself from people who value her less and staying alone, so she made full use of it.

Then Aisha Kapoor came to the picture.

She was kind of person who wanted to be the son of the family, trying to impress her father who, while, was not particularly an asshole, looked down upon girls. She was the able, optimistic person who tried to change the system, and had only one goal, to impress her father and make a place for herself. While Riya's primary reason to join IPS was to channelize her eternal energy and restlessness to something good, Aisha was a saint all along, the voice of reason, a planner, a rule book and listener to authority, qualities which helped her to climb the ladders of success and prove to her father that one just need to work hard to achieve something, and gender has nothing to do with. Riya was more than happy to let someone else report to seniors and do all the red tape things while she did her work, sometime staying within rules, sometime bending it. They made an odd pair as companions in Academy, and later as colleagues, but it worked for a while.

Then came Neel Sahaay in her life.

The first time they met, her IPS preliminary was scheduled for next day, and music was blasting out of his apartment down the street and disturbing her. She shouted for a couple of time outside his ground floor apartment, which he never heard due to the loud music, so she picked up a stone and threw it to his window, shattering the glasses. This lead to a quarrel, and her not so subtle threat that if the music didn't stop, next time she will break something else.

He didn't play the music for next 7 days, but then again started, which was also the end of her Preliminaries.

One day they crossed paths in park and she commented on his choice of music, loud and without any soulful meaning. He offered to help him to pick up something better as he was about to go to Music store, and that trip turned to their first coffee date.

He was flirty, shining eyes and teasing smile, quite handsome too. He was rather amused at her personality, often cracking jokes she was assassin in some other life due to her short temper and ready to throw things. He wanted to know why she was like that, if there was any trauma which made her like this, but when he could not find any he shrugged, saying nothing else would suit her anyway.

He was passionate, driven about his work. He used to take classes of Ethical Hacking, wanted to join some company as Government was no fun for him. He will go on for hours about technical things and bury himself behind codes, forgetting meals and showers. He would fill her phone's internal memory with tons of app, patiently explaining what they each do. He would literally live on take outs and junk foods, hate veggies, would be the disgusting kind of person who went on without shower for days and cleaned in room once in six months.