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Character Sketch:
Krishna Thakur: He's the quintessential bad boy. Growing up on the metaphorical 'wrong side of the tracks' he led a life a lowly thief till he was rescued by the lawyer Shyam Saxena and brought to live on the glitzy, flashy Allahabad East Street. He falls in love with the perfectly unattainable society girl Pratigya.
Pratigya Singh: She's the society glamour princess, daughter of the richest most influential businessmen on East Street. She leads the perfect life, has the perfect boyfriend, drives the perfect car and goes to the most perfect parties. Still her life is missing something which makes her uncomfortable among her other high-society friends. She meets a dark-haired stranger, so different from her world that she can't help but fall in love with him.
Chapter One:
24th July,East Street, Allahabad
Outside Saxena house,11pm
He stood outside the side of the terrific house..no..mansion..terrific mansion..he corrected himself. It was an insult to such a magnificent structure to call it something as commonplace as a house. Glancing through the gate, he checked that the lawyer/professor was still in the mansion, visible through the enormous bay window at the side of it. He lit a cigarette and stepped away from the large driveway to a little spot at the side of the mansion. As he exhaled casually he glanced up at the person standing opposite him, in front of yet another beautiful mansion. The headlights of a passing Jaguar revealed that the person was actually a skinny young girl about his age.
She really hated going to his friend's parties. The boys always ended up drinking too much and then passing out at the beach. The girls bitched about everyone's everything, smoked some weed and then spent the rest of the night bragging about their fabulously rich lives. She knew all these people since her childhood and still couldn't connect with them. She always ended up overcompensating for feeling alienated and revealing some gossip about someone, which she often overheard in her mother's kitty parties, and then felt fantastically guilty about it. Her stupid, drunk boyfriend was late as usual but she didn't mind not going early to the party. She glanced down the road to check for his car and she saw a tall guy standing outside the Saxena's house.
He immediately lowered his eyes when he saw that she had seen him checking her out. Surprised at his own reaction he accounted the sudden uncharacteristic shyness to nerves. A new affluent neighbourhood had already tweaked his street-smart senses on top of which seeing a pretty girl had totally fried his overwrought nerves. He gave her another quick glance to see that she was now climbing into the backseat of a superb stretch limo. He couldn't help but notice the expression of mild irritation etched on her face. As the limo zoomed by, his eyes locked with hers for a second and he was shocked to see the reluctance and disgust reflected in them.
Destiny always screwed him over and spat him out in the strangest of places. 2 days ago he was lying bruised and bleeding in jail in a downtown ugly neighbourhood and here he was now, feeling completely out of place, in this magnificent, tree-lined, posh area, populated with only the filthiest of the filthy rich. He inhaled one last nicotine-filled lungful of smoke and leaning against the ivory pillar beside the gate, he closed his eyes.
23rd July,Mumfodganj Jail,Allahabad
Meeting Room 11,6:30 pm
These kind of places always filled Shyam Saxena with a weary kind of optimism. A look at the wasted youth of the country, rotting away in the most unhygienic of conditions never failed to remind him that, it was education that had saved him from ending up here himself. The sunken eyes peering at him through the bars of the 9x12 feet cells saddened him and he always swore that he'd increase his case-load to try and help every single wrongly accused person behind bars.
Shyam Saxena was the district appointed attorney in juvenile cases. The victims he tended to were mostly boys below the age of 21 who were not legally adults and had no means of appointing lawyers. Almost all of them were held for petty, trivial crimes and were let off with only the proverbial slap on their wrist. Saxena himself came from a poor family living in the very heart of the slums of Allahabad. His elder brother was a small-time thief who taught the tricks of his trade to his younger brother. When Shyam was 12, he got caught conning a couple into giving him their jewellery to triple it, and was thrown in jail. The police inspector at the time was a portly, kind fellow who recognized the spark of intelligence in the young boy's eyes and struck a deal with him. He told Shyam that he would let him go only if Shyam agreed to go to school and study hard. It turned out to be the best deal that Saxena ever made in his life. The inspector funded his entire schooling after which Saxena took up some odd jobs to help him through college. It was pure good luck that prompted him to start delivering tea at a big shot lawyer's office. The lawyer saw the same spark in Saxena that the inspector had once seen and soon hired him as an office boy. Slowly, Saxena started helping the lawyer out in cases by giving him invaluable advice using his childhood skills of negotiation and cunning. The lawyer won many valuable cases and helped Saxena through law school. The day he got his degree, the lawyer made him a partner in his firm. Saxena helped the medium-level firm achieve national recognition and the lawyer married his beautiful daughter to Saxena. Saxena never forgot his humble roots and keeping in mind the fertile brains that got corrupted from lack of opportunities in the slums, he started a sort of finishing school that gave the unprivileged youth in the slums an as equal standing as their educated counterparts. Saxena himself took lessons at the school when he got time from his daily cases. He was a very tough taskmaster but understood the problems of the youth and thus connected with them on an essentially fundamental level. Saxena had earned the nickname of 'Professor' and everyone in Allahabad, including his wife and son addressed him by that.
That day he had come to tend to the case of the 20 year old boy who was detained in a car robbery case. The boy along with his elder brother had hotwired a car and had crashed it after a hot police chase. The brother was sentenced immediately as he was a major but the boy was still not legal and hence Saxena was appointed as his DA. Saxena stepped in the cramped meeting room of the jail to see the boy sitting with his head burrowed in his arms. Hearing the clang of the metallic door, the boy lifted his head up to see a middle-aged man walking towards him with a grim smile on his face. The man had an air of authority about him and from the talk of the guards in the jail, the boy came to know that the DA was a tough cookie and had never once lost a case.
Saxena was surprised to see the boy looking curiously at him. Usually the jail inmates were scared to even look him directly in the eye. The boy had on the usual prison garb of white pyjamas and the striped oversized kurta. His hair were longish and were currently flopped down on his forehead and the boy kept pushing them back impatiently. A nervous action, Saxena observed. He had heard from the jail warden that a couple of days back, the boy had got into a fight with the more senior inmates of the jail. The evidence of the fight was still visible on the boy's face. One eye was swollen shut and bruised to an ugly blue-black colour and there were some unhealed cuts on his forehead which his hair was concealing. Saxena pulled out a chair and sat in front of the boy.
The DA didn't look intimidating at all and to his untrained eye, his garb of loose trousers, shirt and an earth-coloured sleeveless jacket, he appeared as a mild-mannered bank clerk. His simple sandals and shoulder bag gave him the look of a homely, honest Gandhian who looked completely out of place in the dreary jail.
"Krishna?isn't that your name?"
Krishna looked at the DA and nodded.
"Good evening Krishna. I am Shyam Saxena. The DA. I'm going to defend your case. Now lets start with the clichd question, why did you do it?"
Saxena had studied the case file and knew that Krishna was just an innocent bystander in the robbery. It was his brother that had popped open the locks and driven the car. There were 3 eyewitnesses confirming to the same fact and yet the warden had told Saxena that Krishna had confessed to stealing the car. Saxena understood the protective gesture and was adamant on getting the true story out of him.
"I saw the car, slit open the lock, sat in the seat and drove off. I hit another car in the way and the police car chased me causing me to panic and hit a wall?", Krishna began in a monotone but his expressive brown eyes gave away his faade of nonchalance.
"Stop lying to me! I know what happened and I want the court to know what happened. So stop lying and tell me the truth so we can get your ass out of here."
Krishna looked at him in surprise at the hint of anger in his voice and stood up to leave the meeting room.
"Sit down. Stop trying to protect your brother. He has already confessed and is on his way to prison as we speak. So sit down and stop trying to ruin your own life."
Saxena laid his hand on Krishna's shoulder and made him sit down again.
"I know it feels like the entire world is against you. Your parents don't care and the only support you had is now imprisoned. Believe me when I say that I have been there. There is a light at the end of every tunnel and I am not bragging when I say that I might be your light."
Krishna scoffed and looked at Shyam angrily.
"What do you know?.. You look like someone who'd never even raise his voice at someone.. "
"Is that so?..well I know that there are 14 different ways to kill a man so that even when he's writhing in pain, all his senses are active and receptive?I know the intricate sensibilities of a human mind can be manipulated into believing even the most radical of lies..hell, I've made people believe the most radical of lies..i was a conman for the first 12 years of my life and I've been pick pocketing since I was old enough to walk..so don't give me any patronizing speeches about how difficult your life is..i've lived it once.."
Krishna was too surprised to say anything and continued staring wide-eyed at Saxena.
"I changed my life..i went the proverbial good way and was rewarded with the broadest of terms..i've seen your record and you have really good marks even though you are careless about your attendance..with a bit of encouragement you'll be able to get a good job and secure a good future for yourself.."
"For what?..i've read somewhere that housing security is going to run out by the year 2011..jobs and services are going to be crammed with nepotistic deviants..government jobs will run out by the year 2013 and the middle class is going to dissolve into the uncertain realms of economic poverty..then why should I worry about getting a job?.."
Saxena was impressed by Krishna's articulateness and patted him on the back.
"The fact that you are concerned with all of this indicates your ambition for achieving knowledge and applying it. I'll be very happy to see you in my school..we just need to clear the charges against you first..you can't change the world from behind bars..sign the statement.."
Krishna looked indecisively at Saxena. The earnest emotions in his eyes prompted him to pick up the pen and sign the statement release forms. Saxena grinned at him and told him to stay put while he submitted the papers for verification.
"You'll be out in about an hour..start thinking on how to make housing secure so that it doesn't run out in 2011.."
Krishna cracked an unwilling smile and felt lighter for the first time in many years.
Author's Note: Please bear with any mistakes and/or inconsistencies. I am known to not edit my work... Also bear in mind this is my very first EVER fic, please be kind in your reviews..*hides under desk and covers eyes...gulp*
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