Gowrigaatha - A love story [Completed](The story of Gowri)

9.Battle of the young turks

Three  years ago

After returning from the capital with a heavy heart following his break-up, Vasudev did not get a single moment of peace. About 25 kilometers from the village, in the Western Ghats was one of their spice estates. Their neighbours were planning to sell their estate since they were shifting to USA. Subramaniyam wanted to buy the estate, but he had quoted a very low price to take advantage of their haste and he also had prevented other people from buying it either by hook or crook. But Keshavanunni and Prakashan had managed to get the deal and before anyone could know, Kalarikkal family became the owners of the property. This infuriated Subramaniyam who ordered some of his workers to torch the cardamom plants in their estate. The situation spilled from Western Ghats and rolled into Kaniyankara with a fight breaking out between their relatives in the local market that ended four people in hospital.

At that time the younger generation never got involved in any fight, they merely conducted the family business and when things went awry they let their father or grandfather deal with it. But this time it was different, there were many physical fights which pushed all the old guards from both the families aside. In one such event Vishnu, the eldest grandson of Subramaniyam got seriously injured in a fight with Pranav and his men. When Vasudev came from the capital, he heard the news. With his mind already upset and angry at the things that were going on his life, something snapped inside him when he saw Vishnu in the hospital bed. All through his life, he had Vishnu as the probable leader of his family from his generation and that helped him in slacking off on his role towards the family business. Now he had to be the leader with only Mahadevan on his side owing to the youth of Anand and Vasant and he will never let his sister Lekshmi deal with any of it.

He and Pranav organized different methods to sabotage each other's businesses, such as destroying lumber, plantation or shops and this went on for months. During one of such sabotages, Subramaniyam had called Sreekumar to help Vasudev and Mahadevan. Vasudev was happy at first at getting extra help, but immediately regretted it. Sreekumar was a ruthless man, just because it was not his village and would never have to deal with the consequences of his actions, he went full savage. The final straw was him destroying the house of a tenant of Kalarikkal and abducting their daughter. She was eventually rescued by Dinesh, the brother of Pranav. But by then Vasudev had enough of Sreekumar and asked him to go back much to the irritation of Subramaniyam, but he put his foot down and finally Subramaniyam had to accept that he was old enough and capable of making the decision. But the abduction incident left a sour taste for the villagers and a mediation was done by Shanmukhan master for the peace. Finally, Pranav and Vasudav sat in front of each other and sorted their issues and reached a compromise. Though Subramaniyam and Keshavanunni were not too happy with all the terms of the compromise, they had to accept that the boys are grown up and they should be heading the family in some matters. Eventually Vishnu's wife had convinced him to shift to Idukki estate and the entire family business now fell on Vasudev to handle with the help of his other brothers, father, uncles and grandfather.

With the new found place in his family and gaining courage, Vasudev tried to contact Smitha to let her know that he would speak on their behalf to his family. But she had stopped receiving his calls and from some friends of her, he came to know that she shifted to Mumbai to be with her father.

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Real time

10:30 AM - PWD office

It had been three days since the dynamite issue and the flash flood. Pranav and his cousin Anjaneyan were sitting in the PWD office to sort out a bill. The Irrigation Department engineer had already informed Pranav that she would be arriving at 11 AM to the dam for inspection. Pranav was getting anxious and he had asked his men to be near the main road to escort her to the dam. Unknown to them, she was taking a different route with her driver to the dam which did not come though the main road. As Pranav was waiting in the office, she and her jeep were already at the place where the untarred road to the dam started.