A Tale Of Love (On Hold)

OLD MEMORIES

NANDINI

"Nandu. Go. Go with ulpi. Take her and go."

"Tayi. I won't. I will stay. Let me perish with our people."

"No. Your last of our people. Take Devi and leave along the coast."

"I won't."

"Poku."

"Tak. Tak." I woke from another of my regular nightmare due to knocking on my door. It is just a bit after midnight. No one in their sane mind will come to my door in midnight unless they actually have something important to do.

I opened my door to find Arjun and Ayudhik knocking down my door. Well this is new and by their relaxed faces and lack of weapons on their body I don't think they are going on an attack.

"Another nightmare." Arjun asked. He might have guessed over my pasty and sickly face. "Just another night of old memories." I shrugged his concerns off. It's not a new occurrence. Not even rare. In Vijay Sena three out of five suffer from sleepless nights. Many had witnessed a little too many horrors to sleep throughout the night till the dawn.

"Mangoes." Ayudhik asked as he produced a straw basket filled with ripe yellow mangoes from behind him. So that's what he had been hiding. They brought back the memories of how my father use to teach my brothers and me how to climb trees and how to select the sweetest fruits.

The scent of forest. I miss it deeply. More deeper than anything. "So what brings you here. Certainly not just to bring me mangoes." I questioned as I removed the knife from beneath my pillow and began to skin the mangoes and cut them into pieces.

"We found this." Arjun said putting forward a coded message that I had just sent out this morning to my subordinates this morning and from the looks of it the message got intercepted. Well I already know that this will happen sooner or later.

I picked one of piece and put it in my mouth. "I wasn't aware that I have to explain each and every move of mine or my subordinates to others." Arjun looked down in guilt. Each and every segment works semi independent of each other and unless untill the problem is too massive to deal alone. There is no need to report to each other.

My segment's major work is scouting and searching. Arjun is mainly responsible for supply chain and internal management while Abhi and Raj are in charge of spying and intel collection. But this only matter when all segments work together or else we can control a specific area in other time. We can even encroach on the area outside Vijay Sena control.

But for that we might need help of other segments. Might not must. That's what I did. "Nandini. I don't know what's going on in your mind. But you can just go against Garudesh." Ayudhik said in a stern voice while looking straight in my eyes. I kept my eyes on the mango in my hand. Trying to carve the figurines my elder brother taught me with the help of the seed.

But in reality I am just trying to avoid Ayudhik's gaze. At first when Aditi declared him as the leader of Vijay Sena on her deathbed. I was fluming with anger. Why him and not me. Obviously I stayed longer with her, I had more countable victories, I am much more stronger and have better reputation.

But now after all this year I know that he had left me behind by leaps and bounds. He didn't mixed his personal affairs with Vijay Sena. He could have asked us to help fight on Devgiri. Coaxed us with promise of a free kingdom. But he didn't. Everything he did was on his own. Even now he is ruling on his own other than asking his subordinates help now and then. I am much more inferior to him.

"Why ? Just why this idiocity. The Nandini I know is nothing like this." He said as he flung the small silver of paper containing the code I wrote to assassinate Garudev. "This is worest than suicide. If a mere assassin could kill him I would have done it a long ago." He sneered in disguist as if Garudev is some sort of pest that had been nagging him.