Dil Bole Oberoi-The EARLY CHRONICLES-18th December (Chapter 3 Page 6)

Hello ladies! You may have seen that I have a fiction series called Dil Bole Oberoi, which are one shots/short stories which are set in four years in the future, featuring the entire Oberoi family, Anika and their happy life together.

But how did they get there? How did Shivaay and Anika manage to go from hate to love? Where did Ishana come from, how did Tia disappear, what happened with Rudra and Soumya?

So today, I am introducing a parallel set of stories, set just AFTER the upcoming Shivaay-Anika marriage, so almost parallel to the current track. You will find them related to the main series, only with my take and my story arcs!

These stories are, I guess, the PREQUEL to Dil Bole Oberoi, so here they are, the early chronicles! I hope you will enjoy them, and comment! If you want, please suggest your own ideas or plots/themes you would like to see, I aim to please!

DIL BOLE OBEROI: THE EARLY CHRONICLES -- CHAMPA

CHAPTER ONE

It started at the dining table, with Soumya and Rudra bickering as usual. After watching "XXX-The Return of Xander Cage" 23 times, Rudra in increasingly hysterical, cry-baby tones, declared that he wanted a bike. While the Oberois didn't want whatever brains their Rudra actually had spilled out in some gruesome bike accident, Rudra's brothers were going to give in to him, as usual. But unexpectedly, it had been Soumya who had put her foot down. She'd looked at Rudra across the living room, narrowed her eyes when she heard him whining, and said "NO!!" Just that. NO. And even more incredible, Rudra had actually, somehow, accepted her word as law.

That didn't mean Rudra wasn't sulking or trying to convince Soumya to let him get a bike-- all day, every-day. Everyone had watched, stunned, as the biggest, most spoilt man-child among them apparently now needed this quiet slip of a girl's permission to go and do what he wanted. So, today was the third day in a row that everyone's breakfast was being made horrible by Rudra's whiny begging, and her irritated denials. Today, Soumya had tried logic. She explained to Rudra how many people died every day in India from bike and scooter accidents. The number was staggering, and it made Rudra shut up, for once. And -- it made Shivaay, as he stared at his silent wife sitting across from him, suddenly focus on something other than Anika Singh Oberoi.

"Bike and scooter accidents, Soumya??" Startled to be spoken to by Bade Bhaiya, who rarely had time for anything beyond ghooring his icy wife, Soumya nodded. "Bike AND scooter?" Shivaay repeated, his eyes getting glassy and oddly opaque.

"Yess..." Soumya said, while Rudra gulped, warily noting the blue vein now throbbing away in Shivaay's forehead. "Then that's it. I've told you this before, and you've ignored me, but now it's decided. That ridiculous red scooter of yours goes to the scrap heap today. From now on, you will take Kishore, and the new Bentley, Anika. To go see Sahil at boarding school, to go to that stupid little event management office of yours. If you insist on working at least you can go to work in a decent car, one suiting my wife. The black Bentley is now yours. From today, you won't take Champa, you will take..." the sound of his wife's chair being pushed back, and quiet footsteps leaving the dining room ended Shivaay's husbandly commands. Anika-- JUST Anika, thank you-- no matter how many times Shivaay screamed her full name--- had just left the dining room, as silently as she'd entered it.

Rudra now stared, aghast, at Shivaay's expression. His always controlled brother looked like someone had gut-punched him, and he couldn't catch his breath from the pain. Then, instantly, the look of utter agony was gone. The usual burning rage again suffused Shivaay's face. Soumya winced as Shivaay pushed his own chair back and thundered out. Rudra grimaced as he heard Shivaay screaming his wife's (full) name, screaming they were NOT DONE.

"Mereko koi bike-wike nahi chaiye, Sumo. Tum right ho. Tumko yeh three days unnecessarily pareshan kiya. Sorry!!" Rudra said in a small voice as he passed Soumya a plate of parathas, which she now accepted as the peace offering it was. Above them, the sound of Shivaay screaming and slammed doors from Shivaay's suite reverberated throughout the Mansion.

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First, Shivaay had taken the keys out from her purse. Keys he had assumed were for Champa. But, as the only way to start Champa was a specially bent hairpin she kept in Champa's basket, Anika had already reached her office by the time she knew this. She fished inside her bag, missing the main door key, and then realized Mr. Oberoi was trying to control her, again. Shivaay had received her furious phone call, had broken his phone, then had Khanna go to Madam's office, with Anika's office door keys in his hands.

The next day, Shivaay took away her helmet. Anika sailed out without wearing it, ready to pay the fine and (frankly), to drive extra slowly. She had not gotten fifty feet down the driveway when she was spotted by Shivaay, sitting on Champa, hair flowing in the wind. Shaking with fury, Shivaay roared at his wife to stop from his second floor study, where he had been waiting for her to come to him.

She did not.

The sight of five security guards chasing down his Bhabi, and his furious Bhai tossing a helmet out his study window at her, should have amused Omkara. Strangely, as Om looked at Shivaay's ravaged face, as his brother stared after Anika (properly helmeted) puttering away on Champa, it wasn't all that funny. At all.

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The third day, Anika had stayed home to take care of Dadi-ji's sudden fever. Shivaay had also not gone to work. He stayed close by the living room sofa, where Dadi rested with them around her. Or, rather, more accurately, it would be better to say that he had not moved 20 feet away from his wife's location, all day. He had stepped away, just once. Leaving Om to make sure Anika didn't leave the house on that monstrosity that was pakka going to get her killed, Shivaay dragged Prinku aside, to call her cop boyfriend. What it had taken Shivaay to turn for help to the one man he hated more than anyone else in the world was a mystery to Priyanka. But just one look at her brother's face was enough to stop all questions.

One did not refuse to help someone when that person was drowning. Priyanka asked ACP Ranveer Randewa, as a favor, to do a fast-check on Champa's registration papers. As Shivaay paced her room, Prinku's puzzled cop called her back. The scooter number the ACP had been given came with a clean record and a good road fitness report. Shivaay growled that Mumbai's traffic policemen could be bribed to approve absolutely anything, and stormed out of his sister's bedroom. He had spent the rest of the day glaring at his wife as she quietly took care of Dadi-ji, not once looking up at the arctic blue eyes burning holes into her skin.

Anika was utterly calm -- not once acknowledging the man who stood barely ten feet away from her, locked within his own private hell, as he obsessively followed her every move with desperate eyes. Priyanka, helping Anika with Dadi's cold compresses, caught just one of the looks her big brother was directing at his distant, indifferent wife. Love, when it was un-returned, was the very devil. Priyanka sighed.

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Two days later, Champa just disappeared from Oberoi Mansion's garage. Anika had taken a spot at the very back for Champa, away from the main floors, back where the house servants parked their cycles and bikes. So, it took Shivaay almost an hour to even find her damn scooter. Even Khanna had not known where she kept Champa, and Shivaay could not bring himself to ask the Oberoi house drivers about anything related to his wife. By the time he found Champa, Shivaay was sweating, and burningly conscious of the mechanics staring at him as he wheeled a beaten up red scooter out to Khanna's waiting open-pickup.

As Khanna drove the red death trap away, he passed by Prinku's ACP as he drove up the driveway. Randewa was about to say something appropriately rude as greeting, when a relaxed looking Shivaay Singh Oberoi turned, waved and then smiled politely at him. This confused the ACP, but it was nothing to what he felt when Shivaay offered his long-established enemy a whiskey and a game of pool before his dinner date with Prinku. The ACP was so startled, in fact, he actually accepted Shivaay's pleasant offer.

So, the ACP had front row seats when Anika stormed in 30 minutes later, demanding to know what Shaitan Singh Oberoi had done with poor, missing Champa. Where was she? WHERE?

For the first five minutes of the showdown, the ACP really thought that there had been another murder in the Oberoi khandan. He turned to Omkara and Rudra, also playing pool, and who were now watching the fight with shuttered expressions. Who the hell was this missing Champa--- Shivaay's mistress? An ex-employee? Anika's close friend? WHO?

Shivaay denied touching Champa, he hadn't seen her. Anika insisted he wanted to get rid of Champa from day one, since the day she'd been forced into the Mansion, as his blackmailed bride. Shivaay screamed that he did not care about such low class things, he couldn't care less about Champa. Anika screamed she always knew that he hated Champa. He'd gotten rid of her. She didn't matter. Anika by now was choking back tears--- maybe he had broken Champa, destroyed her, like he wanted to break and destroy Anika. Maybe Champa was for sale, somewhere, like Anika had been for sale, since the day he had met her. Shivaay froze, silenced, his face now absolutely bone-white. The stiffness that crawled over Shivaay patrician face made even the ACP cringe. Omkara and Rudra were without words as well-- their brother, without even moving, seemed to shatter into a million shards before their eyes.

Anika did not register the devastation, or, perhaps, she was just too far away from Shivaay to care, even if she did. Turning now to the ACP, Anika demanded that police should investigate Champa's disappearance. Ranveer Randewa flipped open his notebook and was about to do his duty, when Omkara and Rudra hissed at him-- Champa was not a woman, but a scooter.

Deeply uncomfortable, knowing now that he was basically a witness to the weirdest crime of his career, the ACP was about to confess, when Shivaay saved him the trouble. Turned away from him grieving wife, his hands shaking, Shivaay fumbled for his phone. He barked at Khanna to return with the scooter. Anika whirled away to go wait outside for Champa. The ACP, muttering about madness in rich families, went to get Priyanka. Shivaay destroyed phone no. 231, as Rudra and Omkara silently walked out. They had seen enough.