A Race For Two

Chapter 2: Mayank

Dedicated to @Bibliophile005, for all her encouraging comments. Thank you for being one of my first readers!

________________________________________________________________________________

Mayank dreamt of his dad.

Despite the sharp pain that usually accompanied memories related to his father, his dreams were always sweet. They were like a breath of fresh air in the garden of yesterday where he was only met by the pleasant memories of his family as a whole—not the broken state it was now in. With his mother so traumatized about everything that was going on, his little sister practically held them together—and he could only wish that his father was with them again.

Amar Singh Chauhan was not anything like your normal father. Well, there was a teensy-weensy part of him being a R&AW agent that no one but their family knew about, but, as I said, it hardly made a difference.

For the rest of the world he might be a State Bank of India employee that had to go out of station because of his frequent transfers, but only their little family consisting of his younger sister Akari, his mother and himself knew about his operations that took him out of the state and sometimes even abroad. He wasn't what you would expect a normal dad to be like. 

First of all, due to his affiliation to the military, he believed in training his children army-style. That meant, unfortunately for Akari and Mayank, getting up at 4.30 am and running laps, doing drills and working out till 6.30, by which time the sun would have already risen leaving them with roughly half an hour to get ready for school.

It was clear after a few years that it was near impossible for Akari to train each morning and reach school by 7.20. So, it was kacchi-puri  for his sister and advanced training for him. While he was jealous of her in the start, seeing how she got off easy and only had to exert herself in the evening (yes, they had two training sessions a day), he soon realized that this advanced training was much more interesting than the repetitive drills he had to endure every morning.

His father trained him in the art of handling firearms, and their training sessions were often occupied with discussions on the current state of military in India. It was as if in these moments, Mayank found himself in another world altogether, toting his rifle at the enemy while standing on the border, or discussing intelligence gathering strategies with agencies like the DIA.

A characteristic feature of their debates was the tense posture Mr. Chauhan always adopted whenever they came close to breaching a topic around which his mission was centered. Initially, Mayank tried his best to throw questions at him that would indirectly extract information from him, or give an allusion to his current operation (after all, which kid wouldn't be curious as to know what his father did, most importantly, when it concerned national security?). But he quickly stopped, for his father's powers of evasion were proof of why he was an agent of one of the country's most revered and hallowed intelligence agencies.

It was one of these training sessions that came to Mayank's mind when he was dozing off peacefully, far from worldly problems for once.

"That's enough for today, son" his father called out to him while he did his laps.

He was shocked; rarely did his father call off training so quickly (he had done just twenty laps; he still had drills to complete!), and most of the times it was because of Akari, who hadn't been training with them in the morning for almost a week now.

"I understand your dazed expression, but I was thinking of doing something different for today."

Mayank approached him warily. The last time his father had behaved cryptically was when he had made the both of them hike for about 8km in Jaipur (they had lived there for five years before arriving in Delhi), and dip into a lake in the chilly autumn morning air.The sun had risen by the time they crested the hill, but it had been October nonetheless!