Vodka on the rocks

Part - 1 | Rise

I won't just survive
Oh, you will see me thrive
Can't write my story
I'm beyond the archetype
I won't just conform
No matter how you shake my core
'Cause my roots, they run deep, oh

Oh, ye of so little faith
Don't doubt it, don't doubt it
Victory is in my veins
I know it, I know it
And I will not negotiate
I'll fight it, I'll fight it
I will transform

When, when the fire's at my feet again
And the vultures all start circling
They're whispering, you're out of time
But still, I rise
This is no mistake, no accident
When you think the final nail is in, think again
Don't be surprised, I will still rise

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Seven years later...

Pallavi stood plastering a painfully fake grin for the thousand and one cameras flashing in front of her face. She gave them a turn around when they asked for the inspiration of her latest design and explained how she has always loved stars. Stars sparkling like a thousand diamonds on the blank black expanse of the sky. And though we all love seeing the twinkling specs of lightyears away, dead planets.. what makes the stars beautiful is the night sky.

So her latest designs are all inspired by the massive oblivion of a starless sky. And she was currently donning one of them. The paparazzi overjoyed with her answer blinded her again with a set of photographs. Finally she managed to escape the melee and swept away the party floor to reach towards the bar.

"On the rocks.."

She said sighing while climbing up the high stool precariously and leant over the cool table while the bartender scrambled to make her order. Her kohl lined eyes made to look larger with the help of the smoky effect over it gave a half hearted glance around the room filled with the city's who's who. She sipped her Vodka carefully and arranged the shimmering pallu of her black saree on her lap to turn around.

More than half a decade later she was back in this city. This city she has called home for as long as she remembers, back to meet the few people left in her life worth remembering.

Seven years ago, Pallavi had walked off from her home, her life and everyone she had loved fiercely, throwing her crushed heart somewhere at the sidewalk towards a new beginning. She had taken both her mothers' blessings and had hugged her sister, Amrutha, fiercely and had taken a heavy promise from them to never call her or try to find her. She would reach out to them once she finds herself back again. With a heavy heart, they had...

And here she was.. Pallavi.. just Pallavi, now a successful fashion line owner and award wining designer having worked with several of the silver screen celebrities and round the world fashion houses and hosted a couple of fashion shows herself. Her new brand of sarees had been launched both in the Lakme' Fashion week and the Spring collection of New York. Everyone in the fashion industry knew her name and kept a desire to work for her. She was an enigma for the glamour world. Bold, beautiful, ferociously ambitious and most importantly seemed to possess no feelings whatsoever. Ruthless... they called her. The Ice Queen of the Indian Fashion Industry, the media had so graciously named her.

She was undaunted and undeterred. She had won. She had finally found herself. The real Pallavi hidden behind years of grime and piles of broke dreams and a painfully shattered heart. And now, she knew that revenge was ultimately the most potent force of them all.

Yet, to her utter frustration sometimes, very rarely, she found herself yearning for that lost part of hers which she had ripped apart from her body to leave behind in the recesses of a soul consuming darkness with a man, all those years prior. A part of her which she had lost somewhere in the past, stuck adamantly with someone she would rather like to forget.