My Heartless Knight

Part 1

About 30 km far from Lucknow, the ancient city of Nawabs, is situated a village called Belwa. It is a small village which serves as a resident for less than 800 people. There are almost 136 houses and in one such house lives the Gupta family.
It's a normal monday morning and everyone is busy doing their usual chores in Gupta Nivas, just then a loud voice is being heard by everyone.
"Amma! Where is my bag, I am getting late for work" a girl is hysterically moving around in her room, searching for her office bag.
"It must be in your bitiya. Look carefully" said her mother, coming in her room.
"It's not. I have searched everywhere" she said, a bit annoyed for not finding her bag.
Her mother scans the full room and found a pink string peeking from underneath the bed.
"Here it is" she said, picking up the bag from the floor and showing to her daughter.
"Oh! It was here" she passed a sheepish smile to her mother.
"Grow up Khushi!" her mother comments leaving her room and enters in the kitchen to continue making breakfast.
"How much more she needs to grow up Garima? She has aleady taken all of the family's burden on her at this young age" came the reply of Khushi's Bua who is doing the morning Arti.
"Buaji, it's my duty to take care of you all. So don't you dare speak like this again" Khushi retorted coming out of her room, all ready to leave for work. She takes a paratha from the kitchen isle and making a roll of it she starts eating while making her way to the front door with hurried steps.
"Bitiya you are forgetting your lunch" her mother shouted, running behind her with a lunch box in one hand.
"Thank you Amma" said Khushi while taking the box from her mother's hand and stuffs it in her bag.
"Ok bye Amma, take care of everyone" with the final adieu Khushi leaves for the bus stand to board a bus to reach her work place in Lucknow city.

Khushi is the elder one from the two daughters of Shashi and Garima Gupta. They were a happy family untill 2 years ago but an unfortunate incident took away all of their happiness. Shashi was a Hindi teacher in the local government school of the village. The salary was not that good but he was providing basic necessities of life to his family - food, a shelter, clothes and education to his two daughters. Everything was good untill a road accident snatched Shashi's all abilities, leaving him paralysed.
After the incident, the family has already been broken emotionally and upon that the medical expenses of Shashi's treatment has broken them financially too. All their savings have been spent on his treatment but still there is no sign of recovery in him. It was after 3 months of the accident when they were out of all the money, Khushi decide to take a stand for her family. She started doing odd jobs to earn money, enough to atleast feed her family. In the morning she worked as a house help in the house of a village's zamindar and in evenings she gave maths tutions to some children. Her mother and Bua did not like her working as a maid and her mother even insist once to take her place in zamindar's house but Khushi refused by saying that her mother should be with her father as he was still weak and needs proper care.
The money she got from her work was enough to fed them all and it could not cover all the expenses. Neither she could buy her father's all medicines nor could submit her sister's school fee.
Even though her family was morally supporting her but she was loosing hopes. And one day a ray of hope shone through the dark clouds of sadness. A friend of her father told her that a huge clothing company from Mumbai was opening a new branch in Lucknow and they were hiring new people who have a good knowledge of hand embroidery, specially chikankari. And to Khushi's goodluck she is an expert in different types of hand embroidery which she has inherited from her widow Bua. Hence, to try her luck Khushi applied in the company, and after an interview and few practical tests she got selected. The day Khushi got this job was the happiest one in the last 6 months for Gupta family.
Now she is working as an embroiderer with a satisfying pay which covers all of their expences.

After an hour long journey the bus stoped in Lucknow and Khushi descends from it. It takes her another 15 minutes of walk from bus stand to reach her work place, AR Designs.
"Your ID?" asks the watchman who is standing outside a lavish 8 storey building.
"Here it is" Khushi said smilingly.
Showing her ID card she walks inside the building and takes the stairs instead of elevator to reach embroidery department on the second floor.
"Hello Khushi. How are you?" said a colleague of Khushi.
"Hi Priya di! I am fine. How are you? And how is your son." Khushi replied in a cheerful manner.
"Everything is good dear" she replied back.
After sharing few more pleasantries with her other colleagues, Khushi starts working on a red lehenga, the one she is being making for the last 2 weeks.
"So pretty! Isn't it Priya di" said she in amusement after giving final touches to the dress.
"Yes! And she will look soo beautiful"
"Who?" Khushi frowningly asked.
"The one who will wear it" Priya heaves a sigh and continues speaking.
"You know I wanted to wear something like this on my wedding day, but I guess we are only destined to make these dresses, not to wear them"
"Di you were looking beautiful on your wedding" Khushi tries to console her.
" Sometimes I feel bad to think that we are not allowed to even touch these dresses once they are out in stores, the dresses we worked so hard for. All we could do is watch some heroine flaunting them infront of cameras" Priya scoffs, scunching her nose.
"You should not think like that" Khushi said softly, even though she doesn't like her behaviour. 
"Why? Have you never felt this?" Priya questioned again.
"No, I've never, because this is my job and it provides a good living for my family. It doesn't matter to me if I get to wear these dresses or not, what matters to me is my family's well being and happiness" Khushi replied, having a smile of satisfaction on her face.
"Anyways, I have lots of work. See you in lunch break" with these words Khushi makes her way towards another lilac dress that needs her attention.

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Hey friends! Here is the first part for you.
Hope you all like it.
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