Colourless

Summary: There are always those who eat their children...

◇◇◇

If it hurts her when Veer pushes her away from his grief Amrit doesn't let it show. Instead she turns on the man who had caused him the deepest hurt of his life.

"Well Chauhaan sahab," she says drily. "I see why my husband does prefer to ignore your requests of audience. Why ever on earth would you call Rani Sahiba an enemy of the late king?"

The old man watched her with a keen eye, his scrutiny made Amrit huff. After a pause he smiled.

"I see what he has seen in you," he says. "Your highness. You have the spirit of his mother."

"The same woman you just declared an enemy of her own husband!" Amrit points out. "I don't know whether to take this as a compliment or an insult."

"I did not call her his enemy. I called her the enemy. In general. More than anyone else that woman is her own enemy, or else would anyone throw away a good life, good life partner and an innocent child born of her own flesh and blood to chase after a rotten core deceiver?"

Amrit has to agree that the man had a point, but a terrible way of making it. It was a mistake to bring Veer here. She should have met Chauhaan alone, spared Veer the heartache. She shifts in her chair wanting to chase after her husband but keeping her position before this man. She would go to Veer, but she has to go to him with enough information to balm his wounds. Such information only Chauhaan could provide.

"You say the problem began because Rani Sahiba's father was send to war under Rana Sahab's command."

"Call her Nalini, she doesn't deserve the honour of her title."

"I will not take my mother in law's name, thank you very much," Amrit snaps at him. "You said she believed it was part of a scheme to marry her. So it was not?"

Chauhaan shrugs and taps a finger on the bound volume in his hands - the late king's personal journal that he wanted Veer to have, before Veer had abruptly left the room.

"It's all in here. I'm sure. Though I have never opened and read it." Seeing Amrit opening her mouth to argue he continues.

"I know your highness wants a more direct sort of an answer. I can provide one, as I was deeply involved and informed of this particular state affair. Again it will explain to you why I have called her the enemy.

"First thing, if you mean to ask me if late Rana sahab schemed to marry Nalini Devi - I can assure you he did not. In fact most of his youth he was in love with another woman - one he had met at Oxford and as I understand there were promises made between them.

"But then Rana Sahab's father passed away and he was called back to shoulder the responsibilities of his throne and family and that life he had once wanted was abandoned altogether.

"Second thing, I gather you mean to ask - if Rana sahab had send Nalini's father to his death, knowingly?"

The man rubbed his forehead.

"He did. Because someone he cared for rather deeply, had demanded that of him. You see, this man, Veerendra - Nalini's father had a volatile temper. You could call it an ailment of the head. He was the sweetest and kindest at his best and a hell hound at his worst.

"With time the frequency and intensity of his violent outbursts increased. His wife feared for her life, for the life of her children.

"You may call it heartless of her, or the most wise - she wanted him separated from her family. And she had a hand in bringing up Rana Sahab, and his siblings - being the most favoured of the late queen mother's maids. Hers was a request he would never disregard."

"You think Rani Sahiba has inherited her father's - condition?" Amrit asks slowly.

"Yes, and no. Her mother definitely feared that, she feared her - for she was odd as a child. She was close to her father, very close - his sudden absence made a big impact on her. She has this habit of being fixated upon things, making up an entire reality around it.

"Reasons - if you will - why something is as it is. And she used to react violently when someone tried to point out why she was wrong. Fearing her response nobody corrected her fantasies.

"It was almost harmless at first, but as she grew up the fantasy also grew. Nalini strongly believed what her father had put into her head before he was sent away, that he was being sent unfairly - that he was being conspired against.

"When Nalini married in 1922 - she was just a few months shy of eighteen, a fact that her mother used to her advantage by consenting as Nalini's guardian. I always felt she was too young for Rana sahab, there was a decade between them - then Nalini was almost always younger than her years.

"Then there was that matter of her father and Nalini's own condition - just waiting to blow up at anytime. Then there was that means of destruction she had found for herself, a man who knew just how to make use of her fanciful mind to achieve his means; Chandra Singh Rathod."

"While Nalini's mother used the influence she had with the king to make sure her daughter did not follow the path of her husband - I had to make sure, that girl's madness did not ruin the royal house."

The man clenches his fists agitatedly.

"It was one thing to remember those who've been of service, but when a woman starts to extract a price for her affections - one has to be wary of her. I tried to warn his majesty of the old maid's motives. But both him and the queen mother would hear none of it. She had practically brought him up when the queen mother had been gravely ill for an year following Rana Sahab's birth. And they would not deny her anything.

"I had to go to great lengths and involve his friend the Nawab too, to finally get his majesty agreed to have that contract of marriage drawn up. If ever Nalini proved to be a danger like her father - the contract and its clauses would curb her reach from causing any real harm."

"But she still caused enough damage."

"That's because he fell in love with her!" Chauhan exclaimed.

"His majesty! He fell in love with her and rescinded almost all of those clauses. He thought it is a disrespect to the woman who would bear his children to take away her right to decide their lives. He should have known better. There are always those who eat their children..."

*

The rain pours over him, from a sickly gray sky bruised with purple clouds. Veer is barely aware of it. He is shaking, he is breaking - so did the world around him, suddenly a blur of dull colours and a hum of reeling sounds.

He is no stranger to hurt, physical or otherwise, but this particular wound kills him with sheer agony.

He will never be able to meet his eyes in the mirror, knowing that the face staring back at him tormented the living hours of the woman who gave birth to him.

Suddenly, every moment spent with his father - every moment that he cherished tucked into his memory felt like heavy balls of iron taking him down under.

Monster his mother called him. Jaanvar of cause that's what she saw, that's what she was reminded of.

He tries not to think of Chauhaan's cutting remarks.

"The contract was a necessary precaution, one that any sane man would take before bringing the enemy to his bed."

That's what his father had been doing. Keeping a woman who loved another in a glided cage - no wonder she - no wonder she did what she did.

No wonder he thinks bitterly. No wonder he did what he did with Amrit. Hadn't he too come very close to taking the same road as his Baba sahab?

Would Amrit too have cursed him then, hated any children of their union - just the way his mother hates him?

Her words, sharp barbs that he had always ignored sink vengefully into his conscious now.

"I always ask God," his mother's voice takes an acidic tone. "If one child had to live...why take Prem?"

"Why didn't Veer die!"

"Why you?"

No wonder she flinches from his touch. He clenches his hands in disgust, no wonder she wants him dead. No wonder Chandra Singh Rathod tried to get it done for her, many times over.

It cleared so many things. The man's absolute hatred for Veer, that run way deeper than a mere grudge on behalf of Nayantara's lost right to a throne. He could still change the law and give her that - which Chandra never did but Veer intended to do once he came to power. He had never understood the reason for this feud between them.

Now he did.

Or he was beginning to.

And it hurts. Realizing the lengths Pratap Singh men went to satisfy their egos seeped in like a taint on all the great things that they were.

Veer was beginning to hate himself for still being unable to tear himself away from his father's memories. Or his affections for the man despite his truth.

There had to be an explanation, his heart stubbornly whispers. There has to be more. But for the life of him, Veer couldn't spend a moment more in that stifling room.

His airway closed up and he just had to break out. He only vaguely remembers Amrit's cool, soothing hands reaching for him, the tears that brim her eyes and the mute shake of her head. He had blindly brushed her off - something he had never done before.

But just then, with all that love she was full of, Amrit only reminded him how close he had come to being just like his father.

How close he had come to utterly and truly destroying this wonderful woman, who reminded him so much of the woman his mother was before she had been reduced to a shell of her former self, that self of her which young Veer had only caught a handful of distance glimpses of - as she has never been that to him.

And he had to get away from her too.

He has no idea where he had ended up, walking blindly as he had done. It seems like an endless fleet of narrow stairs. Veer sat upon one, too tired to either climb up or down, and pressing his head with the heels of his hands he allows the rain to beat his hunched shoulders.

It is finally too much.

Too deep.

Too sharp.

Too cold.

Finally, desperately, he wonderes if it would be too bad to let Chandra reach the ending he wants.

The call of void is rather tempting.

"If you don't bring him to me now - I'll have you all answer to me!"

The voice sharp and unforgiving cuts through the pelting rain. Veer stops short, caught in a momentary awe at the authority with which his wife speaks.

The steps of those she commands scatter but it is she herself who finds him.

The rain stops it assault on him and Amrit bends down to touch one of his tightly wound shoulders.

The hand of hers that holds the umbrella shakes and a new stream of water falls upon him.

"Veer?"

He doesn't move. He cannot bring himself to look at her. Amrit continues to watch him for a moment, then, without a warning she folds off the umbrella and joins him on the stairs, getting drenched to the bone in minutes.

She sits next to him, their shoulders touching, and draws her knees back and wraps her arms around them. Amrit doesn't look at him, gives him no indication that she has witnessed or recognized his pitiful condition. Instead she stares right ahead into the incessantly pouring rain.

Silence between them grows, then thums and finally begins to thaw.

Their wet clothing does little to separate them where their shoulders touch. Veer could feel the scant heat that lingers on her skin and seep through the layers of wet clothing to meet his skin.
Tendrils of hair escaping the bun at her nape are plastered to her throat, releasing the faintest scent of jasmin as they bled into the rain air.

"Aap ko woh din yaad hai?" She says suddenly. "When you asked me to marry you?"

There is a wistful silence on her tone, slowly bleeding into her words just like that scent of jasmin. Veer watches her in his peripheral vision, daring to turn towards her. His heart feels stuck somewhere at the base of his throat rather painfully.  He wishes she stops, doesn't continue and tell him how much of his father's son he had been.

But she does.

"It was raining then too. It felt like the world was pouring upon me."
The water that drained down him douses him in ice. Veer's heart clenches painfully.

"It felt as if I was stranded and the storm blew around me. There was no road to turn back to - no road to walk on either. You had asked me to choose between my past and present. Ya toh humare rishte ko ek naam doon, ya tod doon, humesha ke liye. That ultimum shook me more than anything. You gave me a choice."

She turns to him with that, takes hold of his clenched hands.

"All my life - until then- the men I knew be it Bauji, veerji, even Randheer - they told me what to do. They decided what was best for me.

How.

When.

Where.

"They kept me unburdened. Unmolded. I never made a choice. I never forged my path. I never learned who I was. You taught me that. You gave me that."

"Aur phir, aap hi toh kehete hai - yahaan, iss rishtein mein, ek dusrein ke itne qareeb na main aap se badi hoon na aap mujhse. I fell in love then, of cause it took me a while to name that feeling. But when I agreed to marry you - I did it because you gave me that choice, you opened some door inside me that led to myself."

He looks at her earnestly now and she moves to cup his face.

"You never forced me. Never. Never. Itna kuch toh diya hai aap ne Mujhe, phir aaj Yun kudh par, mujh par - humare rishte par aisi shaq kyun?" She asks softly. "You are my equal. Dark of my moon. Jab dil ek hai toh dard mein tera mera kya hai? How could you even think that you have hurt me? How could you hurt me without hurting yourself? How dare you suffer and make me suffer like this? How dare you think we are similar to them?"

He looks a little ashamed now and Amrit presses her lips to his forehead. Drawing back, her eyes worriedly search his face.

"You are running a mild fever."

"Doesn't matter."

"Veer Pratap Singh - if you say that one more time I'm going to hurt you really bad and I mean it! What matters more than your own health?"

He doesn't answer that, her fury is endearing - but he is overwhelmed. He is coming apart at the seams. Veer reaches over and coils against her, his head on her lap, his arms and knees folded close to his body. The child within him searching for something he never received.

"Can you make it all a lie?" He asks her wistfully. "I can't go on living like this Amrit. I can't live knowing how and why she wants me gone. Sambhaliye humein Biwi sahab- humse sambhala nahi jaata."

**
Continued in 72 part two on Friday.