English versions of 1 & 224. Sirf Khushi ki...Part 1"Di...", the twin calls rang out loud in the empty great room.
"Two minutes...", came the answering call from the kitchen, with Anjali muttering under her breath, "Hey Bhagwan... looks like Chotte and Akash will be late just because of me. Who knew Khushiji's and Payalji's absence will disrupt their schedule like this!"
With the domestic help too bustling around, Anjali quickly plated up their breakfast and went off to the dining room where both her brothers were waiting impatiently for her. When Payal had expressed her desire to attend the early moring pooja at the temple and Khushi too had said wistfully that it she had never been able to attend it since her marriage, Anjali had gamely offered to take care of both her brothers for the morning and sent the girls off with her Naani. But she was now wondering if she would be so quick to offer the next time around. With Arnav's special diet and Akash's picky eating habits, it was not an easy chore.
Arranging everything on the table and having served both men, Anjali settled down with a sigh, happily watching her brothers eat, now that she saw on the dining room clock that she had only been seven minutes behind schedule. But looking at the two brothers, it seemed as if they were running very late, seeing how they were gulping down their food.
"Arre, slowly! Why are you both in such a hurry?", she exclaimed.
Not pausing even for a beat, Akash replied around a mouthful of poori, "Di you forgot?! Don't you remember, I told you yesterday that this year's batch of Management Trainees will be coming to our head-office today, for their orientation training. We have to be there for the induction talk. We can't be late today."
Not used to keeping track of their business engagements and appointments as Payal and Khushi had proved to be experts at, Anjali could only nod as she tried to remember if she had indeed been told of his before. Letting it go, she quickly sent them both off on their way, thankful that she hadn't messed up much.
****************
"We're going to be just on time, Akash", Arnav muttered as he almost leapt out of his car and dashed up the steps, his younger brother right at his heels. He turned to glance back if Akash had remembered to take the file only to crash headlong into another soft body with an 'oomph'.
Dia was running late, that too one the very first day! A quick peek at her watch as she ran up the steps of her new office was all it took to crash into a solid body. Another pair of steadying hands making sure that she didn't tumble back down the steps, she looked up into the most glorious hazel eyes she had ever seen, and a husky voice ask, "You okay? Look where you're going, please."
Leaving her there, the two men rushed inside. "Must be here for the induction themselves", she thought, before she caught her breath and ran along behind them. Heaving a sigh of relief as she spotted the queue at the registration desk the HR had set up for the day and realised that she was well within time, Dia slowed to a stop and started taking out the required documents from the file, wondering were her friend and collegemate Fida was. "She should've reached by now," she thought, thinking back on her conversation with Fida in the morning.
The formalities over in a few minutes, they were all herded into a large conference room with a split table arrangement, and asked to be seated in the larger of the sectors. With Mr. Aman Verma introducing himself as the representative of the Executive Board, the proceedings started, with each Vertical and Horizontal of the AR Group being introduced by their respective representatives.
The introductory presentations taking place in the pre-tea session, Mr. Verma concluded saying that the next session would be a welcome talk by the Chairman & Managing Director, Mr. Arnav Singh Raizada himself, followed by the Deputy MD Mr. Akash Singh Raizada and the rest of the Executive Board, under whom each of the trainees would work for a fortnight each on rotation.
Stepping out for tea, Dia finally spotted her friend, and walked over to join her for tea. After discussing for a few minutes about the morning session with Fida and a group of other trainees she had been with, Dia turned to the side, sipping tea, while her eyes busily scanned the crowd. Spotting the expression on her face, Fida excused herself and wandered over, "What?", she asked, "What's with that look on your face?"
Not stopping her scanning, Dia asked, "What look?", only to have Fida pull her around firmly.
"This look", she said, moving her index finger in a circle around Dia's face. "I have seen this before. In school, in college, when you're describing some M&B hero, when you stare at that boy in that vampire movie... what's the look doing here? You haven't decided to set your sights on someone here, have you?"
Smiling beatifically at her long-time friend, Dia replied, "This look is a little different. I've met him, Fida... the guy I'm going to marry!"
Laughing now, used to her friends instant romances as she was, Fida replied, "Oh really? That was fast, even for you. Let me guess, you bumped into someone on the way, he helped you get up, and finally sat next to you in the morning session. So where's this latest hero of yours?"
Pouting now, Dia tossed her hair, "Don't you make fun of me, Fida Ali! This is true love. You got the first two things right, but I haven't seen him since we sat down for the session. Fida, I'm not joking. When our eyes met, I felt this 'zap' all over me. I'm sure he felt something too, his voice went all husky! I have to find him...", she trailed off, still staring around, until the announcement to head inside made her troop back disappointedly.
***************
"... and with that, let me conclude my address and welcome our respected Executive Board members, please," announced Aman as the door opened and the office attendant ushered in the men and women led by the Chairman himself.
"Ooh...", Fida heard an excited whisper from her right and not wanting to turn, flicked her eyes to see a blushing Dia sit up straight, staring with starry-eyes at the dignitaries being led to the head-table. Following her gaze, she saw that the Board was led by two young men, with much too much resemblance to be anything but relatives.
Dia stared wide-eyed at the handsome man who she had bumped into on her way in, and realised that for all his youthful looks, he was one of the Executive Board. And a soft gasp escaped her when he was introduced as Mr. Arnav Singh Raizada himself. As he launched into his welcome speech, she sat gazing at him spellbound, and soon, his scanning eyes lighted on her, and stayed for an additional second as he noted the face of the girl who had crashed into him in the morning. Promptly dismissing the incident from his mind, he went on, not realising that for the infatuated girl in the audience, that one extra second's attention was more than enough to weave dreams over.
*****************
"I'm telling you, its fate, Fida... otherwise, why would I, of all twenty of us, be assigned to him?", gushed Dia as she lay on her bed in the staff quarters assigned to her, Fida and three other girls. The trainees had drawn lots over which Board member they would be assigned to first and as luck would have it, Dia had drawn ASR's name. All of Fida's warnings falling on deaf ears, Dia went to sleep, dreaming rosy dreams of her working with ASR, and after a long courtship, being crowned the first lady of Indian business, in a lavish wedding. Not belonging to Delhi, she was yet to hear about her boss's personal life. All that would follow the next day, with her dreams being wrenched away from her.
And miles away, Akash was recounting the events of the day at the dining table, and flicking a naughty glance at his quiet Bhai, he commented, "And Khushiji, a girl bumped into Bhai this morning. And then we came to know that she's one of our new trainees , and then we came to know that on rotation she has been assigned to Bhai. She was a little starstruck... now I think she's going to fall for Bhai!", making laughter sputter across the table.
Even as Arnav sat back, smirking at his brother, Khushi quipped, "Haan, haan... just give her five minutes with him in his ASR avtaar, she'll drop all her ideas and run for her life. Who knows better than I how different ASR is from my Arnavji. It's not everyone who can work up the guts to work for ASR..."
While the table erupted in laughter, Arnav leaned over to murmur in his wife's ears, "And you ran straight into my arms... what does that tell you?"
Only to have her pull his nose and whisper back, "Just that I'm the only one who has the right to set her sights on you, understood?", much to his delight. Khushi in possessive mode was a passionate creature, and the night was still young.
___________________________________________________________________________
Part 2In the pre-dawn light, Arnav turned over in bed, only to have his wife's arms bind even more tightly across his bare chest. Opening bleary eyes to look down at her warm body wrapped only in a sheet and drapped over him, he smiled gently, yes indeed, Khushi in her rare, possessive mode was exhausting, as even someone with his athlete's stamina had discovered in the early days of their marriage.
Combing his fingers through her hair, he murmured, "Can I ask you something?"
"Hmm...", she smiled, rubbing her cheek against his chest.
"How did you bear with the psychological torture I piled on you? I mean, now, when I think back, I'm astounded by the spunk you showed."
Tilting her head to look up at him, she said softly, "First of all, please stop being so hard on yourself, and stop feeling guilty... you already apologised for everything..."
Pulling her closer, he gazed at her, his eyes brimming over with his silent love, "How do you always understand what's going on in my mind?"
"I'm your wife! If I don't understand, then who will?", she smiled, lifting a hand to stroke his cheek gently, only to have him capture her palm against his lips.
"And yes, my ego had risen then. I was working so hard and yet you were waiting for a chance to blame me for anything and everything and throw me out. So I had also decied that I won't surrender and accept defeat", she continued.
Laughing softly against her hair which he was nuzzling, he replied, "And people wonder at how soft you are! Only I have seen the real steel that you're forged out of, Khushi Kumari Gupta!"
Pulling his head down for a kiss, she murmured against his lips, ".. Singh Raizada..."
************
Walking into his cabin, Arnav saw that the new trainee, who he had bumped into, was nowhere to be found. Knowing that the rules of training was that they needed to report atleast half-an-hour before the executives arrived, he flung his briefcase on the side-table irritably and dialled his secretary's number.
"Suman, where is that MT?", he snapped. Suman, who had been counting the seconds since he had breezed by her to when this call would come, replied promptly, "I don't know, Sir. She hasn't reported in as required, and she wasn't answering her cellphone either. Do you want me to try again?"
"No. When she does show up, make her wait outside, don't let her in. Meanwhile, I need you to...", and off he went, listing out the tasks for the day which he had originally planned to assign to the trainee. But on the down side, this made her fall back in her originally assigned work, and any delay being unacceptable to ASR, he was slowly working up to blowing a fuse when a harried Suman called him, "Sir, she's here... Ms. Dia, the MT."
And it was with a shiver that she put the phone down, the after-effect of having heard that husky voice drop a few degrees below freezing point, "Send her in..."
At the same time feeling relieved beyond words that that tone hadn't been aimed at her, and feeling immense pity on the chirpy-looking girl who seemed to have brushed aside her frowns at her late arrival, Suman relyed the instruction, "Please go in."
As for Dia, she had had a late night, thanks to her obsessive searching on the internet about ASR and what she had found had fascinated her so much that she had dreamt the whole night about him. The privacy demanded by the Raizadas being such that only very little of the happenings usually made it out to the press, the major news focuused on his hasty marriage over two years ago, the divorce of his sister, and the sleazy interview of Anjali Singh Raizada's ex-husband about how he had been falsely accused of having an affair with ASR's wife.
The picture of a powerful man trapped in a loveless marriage immediately forming in her impressionable mind, she had barely glanced through the news of ASR's remarriage to his wife, assuming that it had been his strategy of shushing the media attention. And thus, her rosy-hued dreams of rescuing the dark, brooding, romantic hero from the clutches of the evil wife and making him love again. The romantic haze making her immune to the forbidding looks of her boss's secretary, she smiled wide and waltzed in to her new boss's cabin with a cheery, "Good morning, Sir", only to be greeted with a curt, "Is it?"
That caught her attention.
At the confused, "I'm sorry, Sir?", ASR let it fly, "You should be! Ms. Doshi, there is no meaning to holding a gold medal in Business Management if cannot understand the bare-minimum requirements of working in a professional setting. Do you have any idea of how much valuable time has been lost this morning, how my and Suman's schedule has been disrupted because of your irresponsible behaviour? As of this evening, you shall have been removed from your rotation under me. And that means you have this one day to make me change my mind, is that understood?"
And as the shell-shocked girl stood frozen in terror, he started snapping out his next set of instructions to her, which she had to scramble to take down, all her dreams of spending soft, sweet moments getting to know him, smashed to smithereens. And thus progressed the day, with Dia having to snap to attention every time her boss turned around, not being able to even take a lunch-break, even when he himself went out with his brother for a business lunch. Suffice to say, by the time the clock struck six and ASR walked out with barely a glance in her direction, even as he called out a "Have a nice evening..." to his secretary, Dia was ready to collapse in nervous exhaustion.
*********************
"Aap bhi naah... was it necessary to be so tough with her?", Khushi muttered as Akash recounted the first day of the MTs, and how his efficient trainee had outshone his Bhai's 'quaking-in-her-boots' MT. His eyes flashing as he whipped around to stare at his wife, Arnav said, "Khushi, don't. This will not be one of your SOS crusades. Is that understood? This girl is just inept, irresponsible and utterly useless."
"Chotte, I'm not questioning your decision. But it was her first day, shouldn't she be given a chance?" Anjali's soft heart melted, as she pictured in her mind how terrifying her Chotte must have appeared to the hapless girl.
"Di please! I gave her time till the evening, but she just blundered through the day!"
"Aur kya, the poor thing must have died of fright on seeing Laad Governor in his vishwaroop."
Turning to her husband, Khushi asked, "Arnavji, I know better than anyone how scary you are in your ASR mode...", only to be cut off as her husband snapped, "She's not an employee like you were who at yelled at without any reason. You were an incredible employee, and just fell victim to my wrath and inner turmoil. And don't ever compare yourself to another female, Khushi! The way you stood up to me, understood me and loved me, through all of it, cannot be compared to anyone, ever. Am I making myself clear?"
The ringing silence that followed this outburst was broken by a soft sniffle from Khushi, and followed by uncontrollable laughter from Dhruv, who had been a silent spectator to the scene.
"Bhaiyya, you should give lessons on waxing poetic romantic dialogues! The sweeter your words, the more you sound like an army commander giving the order to open fire!"
The laughter that broke out at the table setting the mood for the rest of the meal, the evening proceeded in a riot of laughter, chatter and discussions at Shantivan, while a few miles away, a heart-broken girl recounted the events of the day to her best friend. "I'll know only tomorrow, Fida, whether I'll be able to continue on rotation under him!"
Edited by Appurs - 12 years ago
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