The arranged marriage

The question....?

The hills of Dehradun were quiet that evening, the kind of quiet that settles over a house when the people inside are holding their breath. Daya had arrived three days earlier, the weight of Mumbai's crime files still clinging to his shoulders like an old coat he couldn't quite shrug off. Senior Inspector Daya, thirty years old, the man ACP Pradyuman trusted with the hardest cases, the one who never flinched from a gun or a lie. Yet here, in the modest government bungalow of DCP Ajatshatru, he felt young again. Small.

He had looked up to the DCP for years. Ajatshatru's name was spoken with respect in every CID office Daya had ever entered. Integrity. Unbreakable. The kind of officer who could stare down politicians and still sleep at night. When the invitation came, an informal visit, just a few days in the hills,Daya had taken leave without hesitation. He owed the man that much.

On the second evening, after a simple dinner , Ajatshatru asked Daya to stay behind on the veranda. The older man's hands trembled slightly as he poured the tea. The Himalayas stood dark against the sky.

"I have been diagnosed with a terminal illness," Ajatshatru said, voice steady in the way only a man who has given orders under fire can manage. "The doctors give me months, if I am careful. Perhaps less."

Daya's cup stopped halfway to his mouth. The air left his lungs.

"Sir-"

"I am not telling you this for pity." Ajatshatru's eyes, still sharp, held him. "I am telling you because there is something I must ask while I can still ask it as a father and not as a dying man. My daughter, Shreya. She is twenty. Gentle. Intelligent. She has lived a quiet life here. I know the kind of man you are, Daya. I have watched your career. You are honest in a profession that eats honesty for breakfast. You would never raise a hand to a woman. You would never abandon your duty. You are a man of integrity . I want you to marry her, Daya."

The words landed like a physical blow. Daya's mind flashed, unbidden, to a small flat in Mumbai, to a woman's laugh, to the soft promise of a future he had been slowly building. He had not spoken of her. He would not speak of her now. Not to a man who was already fading.

"Sir... this is sudden. Shreya doesn't even-"

"She does not know. And she will not know until the time is right. I am not asking you to love her tomorrow. I am asking you to give her a home, a name, a man who will not leave her alone in this world when I am gone. Think on it. Please. For the respect you once held for me."

Daya sat in silence for a long time. The tea grew cold. He did not want to hurt a dying man. He could not bring himself to say no. In the end he only nodded once and asked for time. Ajatshatru's hand, thin and warm, rested briefly on his shoulder. Gratitude lived in that touch.

Shreya remained unaware. She moved through the house like sunlight through leaves,soft, present, never demanding attention. She was twenty, with quiet eyes but eager, for what was out there in the world. She spoke little about herself. When she did, it was about the college she attended, the books she loved, the places she wanted to travel,the way the monsoons turned the hills green.

___

On the third day the stroke came without warning.

One moment Ajatshatru was speaking about an old case file he wanted Daya to look at. The next, his face tightened, one side of his mouth pulling down, and he crumpled. The cup shattered. Shreya's scream tore through the bungalow. Daya was already moving, lifting the older man, shouting for the driver, calling the hospital on a phone that felt suddenly too small in his hand.

The ride was a blur of sirens and Shreya's broken breathing in the back seat as she held her father's hand. At the hospital the doctors moved with the grim efficiency Daya had seen too many times. The diagnosis was swift and merciless. The stroke had been massive. There was little left to do but keep him comfortable.

They were allowed into the room. Machines hummed. Ajatshatru's eyes, when they opened, found Daya first, then drifted to his daughter. Shreya was a mess, tears streaking her face, shoulders shaking, one hand clamped over her mouth as if she could hold the grief inside by force. She looked smaller than her twenty years. She looked lost.

Ajatshatru's voice was a rasp, each word costing him.

"Daya... come closer."

Daya stepped to the bed. The DCP's free hand, the one not tangled in tubes, reached for him. The grip was weak, but the will behind it was not.

"Promise me." The words were labored, wet. "Promise me you will marry her. Give her... a life. A home. Do not leave her alone. Promise me... in front of her."

Shreya made a wounded sound. "Papa-no-please-don't-"

Ajatshatru's eyes, already dimming, held Daya's. There was no room left for refusal. No time for explanations about a girlfriend waiting in Mumbai, about the life Daya had planned, about the fact that Shreya was a stranger who had only ever poured him tea and asked soft questions. The man who had once stood for everything Daya believed integrity could be was dying in front of him, and he was asking for one last act of loyalty.

Daya's throat closed. He felt the weight of every case file, every oath he had ever taken, every time he had told a victim's family that he would not rest until justice was done. This was different. This was personal. This was a dying man's last command.

He took Ajatshatru's hand in both of his.

"I promise," he said. The words came out rough, scraped raw. "I will marry Shreya. I give you my word."

Ajatshatru's lips curved in the ghost of a smile. His gaze drifted to his daughter one last time. Something gentle and final passed across his face. Then the monitors began their long, flat cry.

Shreya's sob broke open. She collapsed against the side of the bed, forehead pressed to her father's still hand, crying as if the sound could bring him back. Daya stood frozen, the promise still burning on his tongue. He had said the words. He had sealed them with the man's last breath. There was no undoing it.

He did not reach for her yet. He did not know how. The room smelled of antiseptic and endings. Outside, the Dehradun evening continued without them, indifferent. Inside, two people who had never chosen each other were now bound by a vow spoken over a deathbed.

Daya closed his eyes. Somewhere in Mumbai a woman waited for a call that would never come the way it was supposed to. Somewhere in this hospital corridor a future he had not wanted was already beginning. And on the bed, the man he had admired for so long lay still, having extracted the only thing that mattered to him at the end.

Daya opened his eyes again and looked at Shreya, twenty years old, shattered, unaware until minutes ago that her father had already decided the shape of her life. He felt the weight of the promise settle into his bones like a second skeleton.

He had given his word.

He would keep it.

Even if it broke him.

Even if it broke them both.