But here he was, a decade or more later, still reliving the dreadful horror he vowed never to go back to. It visited him night after night, but he dealt with it, reasoned with it, pleaded, cursed, tried a truce with his nightmare and so far had survived.

With Rajjo, he had bonded like a sibling. He would never let her leave at any cost. He was going to make sure she stayed. Raahat immediately caught himself going down the slippery road of teary emotion and his cool drawl was back in place. He called out to the others for some blocks of ice.

Rajjo’s brain throbbed with activity, as she thought over the problem at hand. How was she going to stay on when Kuljeet wanted her out? In her absent-mindedness, Rajjo accidentally scraped her finger against a protruding nail not hammered in properly. Hurriedly she found a newspaper to wrap around her finger. The yellowed paper’s headline screamed. ‘Rajiv Gandhi Assassinated’. Rajjo wondered how she had missed that. Reet her sister had kept cutouts of the PM like he was her prospective groom. She liked that he was fair and spoke well when they saw him on TV. Rajjo checked the date – it was from a few months ago. It seemed the world had passed her by in the compound and she felt so removed from the happenings outside.

She shrugged, focusing on the preparations around. The stage was almost ready as it stood in the middle of the giant ground opposite the ashram. The tents were being put up. All the loudspeakers were mounted on poles ready to blare as soon as someone took to the mike.

The life-size cutout of Rani Maa was being brought out from the godown that was situated in the back near the orchards. While four people deferentially carried the cutouts, others turned to fold their hands and pay their respects to the wooden board. The cutouts with Rani Maa’s smiling face were placed at regular intervals on the stage and the entrance.

Amused, her gaze stopped on a well-dressed man with neatly combed hair, striped shirt and brown pants, fixing small bulbs around the giant cutout, in order to make Rani Maa sparkle. Raahat muttered in her ear, ‘He is the owner of the lights, Akash Studios. He personally comes here for events, to set up stuff as a mark of his devotion. I think he is infatuated with her. So how are we going to stop Kuljeet? Let’s talk to Arjan. He seems to have a thing for you or something.’

‘Do you know everything about everybody? How big is your gossip tank? And Arjan is not like that!’

‘It’s as vast and as huge as the Lord’s belly!’ Raahat folded his hands sanctimoniously and sauntered off as someone called out his name urgently. But his parting shot had Rajjo worried yet again, ‘We have to think of something, you can’t let Kuljeet make you leave.’