Always

How it Began

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.....................

No, wait. It's not that story, though we first heard about that story on the same day.

Let me start again

About fifteen years ago, (the boy could tell you exactly how long it's been) a boy met a girl.

Well, perhaps I should go back a little further than that, really, shouldn't I?

Prologue

Many many years ago, two young men started out as petty crooks on the docks of Bombay (as it was known then). The two men genuinely disliked each other, though they worked together from time to time for convenience sake. As the years passed, they both became fairly successful in their line of work.

The first man- Malik- decided his fortune lay far across the world, and so he made his way to Eastern Europe, where he reached the top of the local mafia-tree. He married the daughter of a rival, turning the rival into an ally, and in due course he fathered one daughter and then (fifteen years after the first one) another. Malik's elder daughter Meera was a quiet, self-contained child. She watched the world around her, noting the way her father ran his business. Malik found something of himself in her; when his second attempt at producing a male heir failed to produce the correct gender of offspring, he decided his older child would do. He started her training at the age of fifteen, and by the time she was 20 she was his second-in-command. When Malik's younger daughter Ishita was 7, his wife died; the little girl was unceremoniously dispatched to boarding school where she stayed out of sight and out of her father's mind. Meera was devoted to her little sister, the only person apart from her father that she seemed to have any emotional connection to. She visited her as much as she could, talked to her every day and, as much as possible, took the place of the mother Ishita had lost.

The second man- Bakhshi- made his name in Bombay, but eventually the lure of the West enticed him too and he also ended up in Eastern Europe, where he began making his mark (much to the anger of his old acquaintance). Along the way, he adopted a boy, the orphan son of a woman he had occasionally spent time with. Some years after adopting his son, he met a woman and fell head over heels in love. She was a genuinely good, kind woman; the kind of woman nobody ever believes exists. She took his son to her heart, became the mother the child had never known and for a short time, Bakhshi was truly happy with his family. He had always had a softer side to him, which was part of what made Malik despise him so much, and it was that side that came to the fore during those years.

The little family of three eventually became a family of four; Bakhshi's wife gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. The boy's elder brother was given the task of naming him, and he chose something as far from his own name as he could; if he had to tolerate being saddled with Kaali, he would make sure his adored brother had a name he could be proud of. He chose Veer.

The first six years of Veer's life were the happiest time in any of their lives. Kaali was fifteen years older than his little brother, and had been brought into his father's business from a fairly early age. But Veer and his mother were kept cocooned away from the true ugliness of that world, and the family home was a bastion of normality.

Everything changed when Veer was six. Bakhshi's wife was expecting another baby, a matter of great happiness to the whole family; when she was six months along, tragedy struck and both she and the baby died. Bakhshi was brought to his knees by the loss, and it was only Kaali's leadership that kept their business running. He looked after his father and his brother and the business for the year it took for Bakhshi to emerge from his grief.