Arhi FF: Orchid's Bloom (Ch:3 updated) 21/9 page 15 - Page 4

Loved the prologue dear .

wow! such an interesting story and wonderful update... loved it dear... would like to read more of Rajkumar Arnav and Doctor Khushi 👍🏼

Amazing concept
loved the starting
thanks for pm
plz continue soon

OMG Wardha, Thank you so much for your kind words and generosity in dedicating your beautiful story to me 🤗 I'm really honored and humbled and a bit speechless 😳 May you continue to enthrall more and more readers with your brilliant imagination and penmanship! More important, may the love for writing continue to gladden your heart and guide you towards new horizons :) I loved the prologue and Ch 1...eagerly looking forward to more ❤️

Loads of love and best wishes,

Jenny:)

Wonderful start.. loved it.. prologue was interesting.. looking forward to read more.. best wishes and happy writing Orchid's Bloom 😃

Banner Credits: Koeli_Appy

CHAPTER TWO:
THE STIRRINGS OF TOMORROW

The lone moon adorned the navy black sky, the stars bejeweling the heavens. The breeze was supple as if hauling the warmth of love and vigorous life. His steps led him to the garden area where the swing hung from the thick limb of the banyan tree. Some distance away, an entertaining and glamorous sight feasted his eyes. A small girl dressed in lehenga choli swayed merrily in the swing. Her small jhumkis and bracelets tinkled with the movement. Eyes closed in concentration, her captivating angelic voice zoned around.

Kesariya Balam, Aavo ni, Padhaaro maare des.
(My Saffron Darling, Come, Welcome to my country.)

Piya Pyaria Dhola, Aavo ni, Padhaaro maare des.
(Sweetheart, Beloved, Come, Welcome to my country.)

Sone ri dharti, jhatadi, chaandi ro aasmaan,
(Golden land below, skies of silver.)

Rang rangilo, ras bharyo, maaro pyaaro Rajasthan.
(Flooded with colour, brimming with vigour/vitality, my beloved Rajasthan.)

Kesariya Balam, Aavo ni, Padhaaro mhaare des.
(My Saffron Darling, Come, Welcome to my country.)

To his astonishment he found himself enjoying the song, the words deeply moving him. Unexpectedly the small girl opened her eyes and looked straight at his gazing form. Streaks of annoyance began marring her ivory complexioned and beautiful face. She alighted from the swing and spoke out in a self-assured startling voice, "Who are you?"

"Who am I? I guess the preliminaries are delivered incorrect. I should be the one asking you who you are?" he replied, pointing his finger towards her.

Nearing him she naively retorted, "It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is why were you surreptitiously scrutinizing me? Were you admiring me? Aren't you taught the basics of decency?"

"You have a lot of intellect and wits for a girl of your age, and no, admiring you would befall in the least of my interests. I am the Rajkumar of Jodhpur, silly girl."

"A girl of my age? My honest apologies, Your Royalty." She reverentially bowed down finishing the act with a displayed mockery by the looks of her smirked up face. "And you are what? 60?"

"This insolence of yours can cost you your head, you know?"

"Are you implying I should be scared out of my wits from Your Royalty? Apologetic to disillusion you, but I am not. And who would be bothered enough to execute a 9 year old for committing the transgression of enouncing her mind to the today-turned 10 year old Rajkumar. Who indeed?"

A mirthful laugh escaped his lips making her face aglow with pronounced surprise and uncertainty. She had anticipated him to snap.

"You are comical." He burst out, laughing some more. She looked at him properly for the first time. With his child-like handsomeness and his caramel colored eyes, albeit the Royal attire he was vacant of all hotheadedness and nonchalance which normally came with the Royal grade.

"Can you please stop ridiculing me?" She pleaded, clearly embarrassed. The plea sobered up the Rajkumar and he continued.

"So you are acquainted with the art of requesting? I was beginning to behold the opinion of you being born to be an unassailable tempest." Repenting on considering her open mouthed shocked state he hastily added, "I wasn't ridiculing you. It is not in my character to disgrace the state's subjects."

"You cut a marvelous paradigm of a figure among the cyphers."

"I should to be taking it as a galvanizing offense but keeping aside the imperial designation, tell me what your good name is?" He inquired, enthused the slightest by her felonious comment.

"Mother taught me not to befriend all and sundry."

"I am all and sundry?"

"You proposed to keep aside the royal designation so it does make you all and sundry."

"Diffidence is patently not one of your traits." He pressed.

"Your perceptiveness amazes me. Allow me to take my leave, Your Royalty. The procession of the courtesans should be exiting now." Having said that she sauntered forward as her ankle twisted, making her fall down. The Rajkumar swiftly helped her up.

"Are you alright?" He inquired, concerned.

"Yes." She replied with a resolute firm voice.

"You come with them?" He questioned, aiming to keep the judgment out of his inquiry.

"Yes. My mother is a courtesan." Her acknowledgment came as an arrogant retort, not at all diffident or mortified.

"She is here?"

"No she is back at "the house of courtesans". Her ailment restricted her to bed."

"Then why did you accompany the procession here?"

"My mother made me come here. She didn't want me to see her dying?" She replied with an unsettling calm.

"How do you know she is going to expire?" he asked dubiously.

"I know it. In here." She placed her finger on her heart.

"And you don't care? You seem astonishingly indifferent."

"Mother says our external doesn't always elucidate the state of our internal. I am terrified for having being left unaided in this tarnished world. I am tormented for my mother, my only family member will be taken away from me but yes I am contented. My mother's fears and adversities are lastly come to an ending." At a loss of words, the Rajkumar remained tongue-tied.

"I know now." She initiated.

"You know what?" Curiosity took over the better part of his lingual ability.

"Not all Royals are evil and mean." Her candidness so pertinently exuded out from her.

She looked at the shell-shocked form of the Rajkumar one last time and trotted away into the retiring horde. What a night of surprises it was? That transient encounter preserved the fate of two people coming from inclusively diverse worlds and backgrounds. The weighty seal embossed deeply in time, the resonance reverberating around circulating into the precincts of fate and destiny.

Destiny is a queer thing, erecting and demolishing fates and beliefs, dating from the beginning of universe and still traversing the path of life. Destiny had played its role and so it was for the time to play its fraction.

1985, Umaid Bhawan Palace

The Maharani's deteriorating ailment demanded paramount than typical measures. The Maharaja though callous about his wife's wellbeing had taken to the threshold of building nominal sympathy. Moreover, his subjects had never thought too highly of him and making them take hold of concrete abode about his heartless deportment was the last fixation in his beckoning. So he had dropped a line to his various associates to arrange for a Physician of the locality. Within a matter of days the job was done and the Palace was walked in through, by the elected physician.

*

Rajkumar Arnav Singh having finished his edification was now urgently and summarily summoned by The Maharaja who stayed as impolite as ever to his faltering resistance. Rendered unaided he had set out on the voyage back to his native land on the third day of the urgencies.

*

The Maharani was flabbergasted when a tentative, stunning, auburn haired girl had entered her chamber, toed along in sync by the Maharani's classified maid, claiming to be her physician. The world was really progressing on the expressway. She had a definite well-kept poise that was in those days allied with the Maharanis and Rajkumaris. If not for her knee length grayish befitted negligee, a white overall and the astonishing verity of her body being dispossessed of every piece of jewelry, that was considered the pride and necessitate of the woman of Rajasthan, she could have easily passed for a Royalty.

With her sophisticatedly bowed form the girl, after acquiring the sanction of the Maharani had started on the standard medical. Her dainty fingers skillfully moving around, her hazel orbs lost in attentiveness. After a series of questions and affirmations the Maharani was informed that maybe she was suffering from cholera and she needed to confirm it through some tests. When the streaks of terror and anxiety had appeared on the Maharani's face and her eyes began tearing up she duly assured her that she would put all her efforts in making her well and under her own steam again. She took her abscond then, reverentially bowing down.

Her escort took her to the chamber that lied in close propinquity with the Maharani's chamber. Upon soliciting she was enlightened that she was expected to be near the Maharani round the clock and so she had been given this particular chamber. The respond was also followed by a gallant derisive addition of that she should be haughtily balloting around in bliss, not every girl unconnected to the royal pedigree or the stained status of concubines and courtesans was blessed enough to be graced with such nobility. She had passed a gratifying smile and entered her chamber.

Not every smile originates from the heart. Some are conveyed out of propriety, some out of coercion, and others out of state rectification. If anyone could just look through the transparent drapery that hung around her heart, they would know in the wake of that smile was a vast puddle of impair and anguish, the abode of hopelessness and the resonating footfalls of imminent evil.

Hopelessness is never the end; it is the beginning of a sinister world where even the most attractive things turn into quintessence of unsightliness. But a heart can never be drained out of hopefulness, even an ounce of optimism, with just the right time and measures can do marvels and so she had had, that diminutive amount of hopefulness, residing in the a tiny county of her heart, unknown and unfound...yet.

A silver and gold embossed four-poster bed lied in the heart. The sheets an appealing color of cherry and amethyst, gold threaded with the plush round cushions aligned along the bolster. Royal artworks gilding the wall and the ceiling frescoed with multi colors. The left wall of the room gave way to the attached veranda and the lattice high arched doorway erected in the launch. Pulling off her overall she walked past the cloisters and into the confines of the terrace. She didn't know the extent of her luckiness on being thrown into the hurricanes of this situation but she did know she was blessed enough to have a terrace attached to her room. The open air and the ever-stretching periwinkle sky with cottoned fluffy pure pallid clouds rejuvenated her being. The underneath expanded thriving gardens and the budding flowers calling out to her.

Amidst her visual exploration her sight trapped a certain well-bodied, English suit clad figure; followed by a dozen pickets, disappear in the palace. After an infinitesimal of mind-provoking contemplation the recognition dawned upon her sinuously and her lips that were weary and splintered from smiling, out of propriety, curled into a face glowing beautiful crooked smile on their own accord.

*

Why do people consider birth in the royal family the premier form of a blessing? Aren't their better more imperative, considerate, soul refreshing blessings than the over weighed deposition in the lineage? The helplessness doesn't do any good, always getting ordered around by the Highest Royalty.

These were the sole thoughts engaging the mind of the elder heir of Jodhpur when he was taken into the services of the Maharaja. Walking up to his throne he bowed respectfully, "Your Highness," he began.

"I see you are back after all."

"That I am. I am taught not to flout the orders of the Maharaja." He replied, straightening up. The exclusive use of Maharaja instead of father was spoken as a deliberate travesty. Conversely, the Maharaja unheeding to that spoke out again,

"The Maharani is ailing. There are liable probabilities she would not be able to pull through. Even then I have called upon the services of a renowned doctor. After all she is my wife. It was only fair to regard her with this much placation and assurance. However meager it may appear to her at this irredeemable phase." His father's apathy and the indication to the inexorable demise of her mother chagrined him to an uproarious point. His caramel orbs brimmed over with impertinence for his father, his jaw line perceptibly rigid.

"I am well-aware father." He began with fluently concealed anger. "But I believe mother will live through her ailment. Shouldn't we always cling to the luminosity of hope? Evacuating hope from hearts only escorts the occurrence of the dreary scenarios we invoke in our psyche. What we imagine and believe in the very same happens to us."

"You weren't convened in my court to lecture me the subject of "what we believe in and what we don't." So I suggest you keep this Firangi' discourteous attitude of yours to yourself...Rajkumar Arnav." He added derisively after a pause, urgent on the word Rajumar, evidently making him mindful that his grade fell beneath the Maharajs.

"Pardon me your Highness. I would not dishonor the Royalty in this manner in the future."

"You aren't permissible to ignominy me in any manner, may it be any other. It would be exceedingly recommendable to you if you abstain from further riposte of any nature."

"Yes Your Highness."

"One more thing you need to get out of this attire. It does not go well with a Rajkumar illustration to acclimatize to the Firangi wear. What would our subjects think?"

Since when did you start thinking about the considerations of your subjects? He almost bit out.

"Your words are my command, Your highness." He acquiesced rather grudgingly.

"Very Well. You are dismissed." He concluded swishing his right arm in the air.

He bowed again as a sign of final departure and marched out followed in toe by two guards, dressed in the representative wear, with a turban on the top and an erected sword in hands. Aggravated to the core he lashed out, "Stop hovering over me! I'm not likely to get attacked!"

"But you are a Rajkumar Your Royalty. You just got here. We are strictly ordered to be around you. We are just abiding by the orders." The second guard spoke out unfalteringly, scared nonetheless.

"I understand but for now I would really appreciate some seclusion. You can do this much. Can't you?" He breathed out, collecting his nerves.

Taken aback by the pliable request from the Prince himself they bobbed in admittance after a hush. He conceded a beam of gratitude and walked away leasing his thoughts tour wayward.

His father had never been much of a father to him. In fact he hadn't been a father to any of his children, may it be him or his brother. The word father had only reduced to a label. His memory lane still vivid with the pains he took to just grab hold of his father's consideration, to save a few words of endorsement when he did fine in studies or the sword fighting practices. His youth had passed by in the anticipation, just an insignificant bit of it, to be embraced once by his father. His father never resorted to thinking or lending significance, even in the name of duty, to his blood. Even now his only intention in the wake of this act was to preserve himself an heir. He had abandoned long gone to seek out his father's concentration or appreciation. He had started knowing that the nobility and affairs of being a Maharaja were more chief than to be bountiful to his own blood. He was forever and a day too preoccupied in the prolific lifestyle, traveling innumerable times to the British assembly, boasting of his capital and position when it was all a mockery. His infantile heart which apprehended a high-flying legroom for his father began dipping day by day, year by year until it had naught but the title of a Maharaja left in it for his father. He was just that to him now, a mere maharaja who held no compassion for any living soul apart from himself. At times the Maharaja's egocentricity revolted him to no bounds. No amount of crying in wilderness could make the Maharaja see sense, because he was plausibly blind. Weary of the vacant charade Royal life he had put all his eggs in one basket to dig his way into the Cambridge University. Not on the labels of being a Prince but on the accounts of his own uphill struggle.

Even his mother had never really been a mother to him. Sure at times she did have this maternal spirit to show but most of the times she was too cosseted in her beautification and body embellishment. She had invested her time in all her espoused interests from dancing to learning to singing but what she hadn't done was make time for her children. He by no means had a merry childhood, one that has the tendency to make the bearer amble in the marine of blissful memories, when it came to parents. His cousins and his brother were much the same, indulged in the futile. All he had got was the camaraderie of his youngest cousin, Rajkumari Anjali. He had grown into a man all by himself, tended by reserved maids and ayahs, in that huge overpowering palace where the sumptuousness was too insult-yowling and the archways too condescendingly high, the ceilings too richly adorned and the rooms too unnecessarily filled up. All completed with the blood and sweat of the subjects who got nonentity more than a few coins by the regime.

Sighing in trounce, he reached the eastern wing to meet up with his mother. He notified the guard, who had instantaneously bowed on seeing him to his utter annoyment, to let the Maharani know he was imminent to see her. The guard blew the baritone announcing in a cavernous strident voice, "Rajkumar Arnav Singh is coming through!"

And that was when the entirety of the situation sunk deep into him. He had left behind his customary contented lifestyle to be in this sham of a Palace. All this was what he would see and be from then. The comprehension made him growl indignantly.

He entered the wing making the Rajkumaris, who sat around in canopy swings and plush cushions in the main center busy in their various activities, enthuse with greetings. He carried this looming dynamic aura, one that awaits on the sightseer and makes him comprehend the reliability of an intellectual authoritative character. Even though he held no intention of feigning off the Royal status his poise was unconsciously set to rectify his designation. Head held regally, tall-built and ramrod, he walked gracefully towards his Mother's chamber, on the way elegantly nodding in admission to his cousins and their mothers.

His mother lied back on her bed, with the blankets cocooned around her. She looked pale and fragile, drained out of energy. Her enthralling caramel eyes, which he had inherited, glued to his form. He bowed down.

"Your Royalty."

"Arnav..." She breathed out and the counter made his heart thump. It held love and need, a mother's need for his son's support and love. It was after ages he had really heard his name from her lips, without the preamble of rajkumar. He had gotten too used with her addressing him as Rajkumar or rajkumar Arnav akin to everyone else in the palace did. One auxiliary look at her, and her ache filled eyes and worry etched face made him overlook everything, the resentment, the complains, the indictments he held for his mother, buried deep inside.

He ran up to her and embraced her weak form in his arms.

"I am so sorry I couldn't come earlier Maa. Nobody ever informed me about your much deteriorated health. I was under the impression of this all being the signs of aging, if more than mere weakness."

"It's alright Arnav. I am not complaining." She replied tenderly, extracting her form from his embrace and leveling it up to his. "I heard about your completed studies. You made me proud beta."

"Thank you." He smiled at her. "What did your doctor say? I really need to meet up with him."

"It's a she. I am suffering from Cholera but she has assured me she would do anything to make me healthy as a horse again." She laughed wryly at that part. "Though I feel I don't have much time left."

"Don't speak like this Maa. You would be okay. Trust me."

"I trust you."

"You should rest now. I would be back tomorrow."

"Please do comeback. I have a lot to catch up with you. You must be exhausted for now I can see. "

"I will Maa. And yes where is this doctor staying."

"In this wing."

"Really? In this wing? Well that's a surprise. I can just speculate about her echelon of exhilaration and pride," he chuckled and added "I am not judging. Rest Maa."He kissed her on her forehead and left after passing a hearty smile.

"Your humbleness isn't surprising me Arnav. You were always like this." She spoke to his back. His steps faltered for a second but something compelled him to walk out of the room, without any response.

*

Do 'Like and 'Comment'.

Adieu

Mischief Managed

The Marauder

Brilliant chapter.

Nice update & can't wait to read the next update dear.

Interesting

Hey, when I just open ur mssg I saw ur writing a story of rajkumar arnav n doctor khushi, n within a fraction of seconds I taught of IMPENETRABLE HEARTS by one n only JENNY, n without a second taught I wanted to read ur new story, coz am very much sure u will write it @ ur best, u r god gifted with words n weiving it with all felt emotions.