A member of the mafia, Nawab, falls prey to the temptation of wooing a woman during a mission outside Mumbai. Under the identity of Manik Malhotra, he meets Nandini Murthy, a walking-talking panic button, and feels undeniable attraction for her.
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𓆩𓆪
Parking his bike along a muddy trail by the entrance of a rundown factory, Nawab stretched a leg off the vehicle and pulled off his shades, examining the building thoroughly. Its brick walls were scathed and its plaster crumbled inwards, exposing cavities in the ruins. Right next to it was a makeshift hut with a corrugated metal roof above it housing two large oil drums, both dented in different places.
What a peculiar place Mr. Malhotra had chosen for their rendezvous.
He tucked his sunglasses in his black buttoned shirt pocket and kicked a pile of dust behind him with each stride. Stumbling through a gap in a maroon-painted iron door that screeched when it was yanked, Nawab made his way into the dungeon.
Thin tubes of lights were equidistantly affixed on the centre ceilings, leaving the rest of the room dark, and their dim glow enhanced parts of the collapsing structure further. There the old man was, in the middle of a few stacks of firework bundles, pacing thoughtfully on bare concrete as he scanned the premises. Nawab assumed his loud entry would have startled him but on not receiving the attention he had imagined, he moved ahead.
That was the exact moment Mr. Malhotra registered someone else in the room and spun into the daylight behind the intruder, halting Nawab in his footsteps with a start.
"Ah, you're here." Mr. Malhotra said to him mindlessly, earning a suspicious eyebrow raise from Nawab. It was their first meeting, and that too a semi-forced orchestrated by Madhyam, so there definitely was nothing to reminisce in that aspect. Perhaps the old man had been nostalgic on some other thought, Nawab deduced.
"So you were the one who brutally murdered my Dutta and left him lying in a pool of his own blood on my cruise," Mr. Malhotra claimed, headed towards Nawab.
Resisting the urge to flinch at the grave mistake he made in a desperate split-second, he uttered boldly, "It had to be done."
"You're right, I was very proud of you for stepping up and doing what my useless boys couldn't even when you had no reason to. It brings me peace to know that when adversities arise, our rivals have our backs. Come, I'll show you around," He said placatingly, putting an arm around Nawab who was a few inches taller than he had imagined.
Nawab let himself be pulled along, wary of his rival's moves. On some levels, the whole setup was a bit eerie to him. First of all, he was asked to come to a secluded location in the middle of nowhere; as if that was not sufficiently suspicious, Mr. Malhotra also knew of the item in Nawab's possession and dearly wanted it back. Those two conclusions alone brought along a myriad of threatening possibilities.
The two men surpassed some pallets of wood and gunpowder canisters scattered around the room and paused at a patch under a metal chair where the concrete was a darker shade, most likely from an oil leak. Mr. Malhotra tapped his sparkling white loafer on the area. "This... this is the exact spot where I made peace with this factory in my local goon days." With a blank stare, Nawab tried to picture what might have transpired to leave a lasting remark of that sort on those premises.
