Krishnaa's eyes instantly shot up as the clock struck 6. She pressed the bell hastily. There was just one boy sitting inside the library.

"Leave." She said, blowing a strand of her hair out of sight.

The boy stared back. "I need to get this book issued."

"Kid, you should've got it done before 6. The library's closed."

"Fine!" He huffed. "Let me just put it back."

"Oh! Leave already. I'll have to arrange the rest of the books anyway."

"Firstly, you're mean. Secondly, I'm not helping you. I'm just putting it somewhere where it will be safe and out of sight from other people so that no one-"

"Fine! Fine! Do it already."

Krishnaa watched as the boy chose his spot and left. As soon as he did it, she dashed her way to the tables and picked up all the books, stacked them wherever she found enough space.

"Good! I'll just come early tomorrow and put these books back in the sections they belong." Krishnaa sighed while dusting her hands on her black and red checked kurti.

She locked the gate and practically sprinted her way out of the quiet library straight into the noise of the market. Today was no ordinary day. It marked the day her best friend Chandni had finally decided that she was done waiting for the man she liked to come around and confess to her. So, she had to do the work herself. Krishnaa had her anxiety dancing at it's peak. She had to meet her and know what happened before the last auto left for her village. Would she appear nosy to a bystander? Or would she appear like another textbook defined good friend? The truth was a concoction of some of this and some of her deeper queries. How can someone just bare their heart to another person? How could one person give another one the power to make them or break them in one conversation? How does one forgo their pride and become clay in someone else's hands for a while?

Krishnaa was learning the difference between synonyms for fear. She wasn't just afraid but was petrified for Chandni's self esteem and sense of self worth in case she was rejected. How does one even move on from that?

An overflowing rickshaw accelerated its way into the bus stand that was in the outskirts of this lazy town, Siwan in the Indian State of Bihar. Standing tall in its pride in being the birth soil of the first President of this country but with flimsy ropes of the present developmental burden. 

Krishnaa got off, handed over the money and rushed towards her friend, who was idly sipping tea from a roadside shop.

"I'm here! I'm here!" Krishnaa clutched her chest as she gasped for breath. "Tell me. Don't leave out any details."

"Sister, slow down. Breathe." Chandni said.

"How are you so relaxed? What happened? Are you sad? Did he say no? You don't look sad!" The fear left Krishnaa's eyes as the realisation knocked in. "So? Did he? Did he say, yes?"

Chandni blushed.

"HE SAID YES! OH MY GOD! HE SAID YES!" Krishnaa exclaimed, leaving all her apprehensions behind. 

"Keep it in your pants!" She tried to dismiss her friend's (over) excitement.

"That stupid dentist crush of yours said yes and you want me to calm down? I can't."

"You promised not to call Ayush stupid."

"I won't. I'm sorry."Krishnaa calmed down. "Now, details. I have rushed all the way from the library to meet you and hear the full story. FULL STORY."

"Okay. So, I went to his clinic, just like I always do with my fake sensitivity complaints"

"It's a miracle he hasn't caught on to your facade. Then?"

"... and when I had my appointment and he asked me what brought me to his clinic, I told him-"

"you? God, that's cheesy. Please don't tell me that." Krishnaa closed her ears to protest.

"LET ME FINISH! OH GOD! I told him I like him and he was dumbstruck like the clueless fool that he is-"

"- He did take eons to catch up on your actual diagnosis and I'm sure he felt a little faintish when you said that."

"Yes and he was blushing a lot. I had to ask him again and he said yes."

"You said you like him and he said yes? Yes to what? Doesn't even sound like a proper reply."

"Sssh with your judgement already. You know how he is. He would've passed out if I asked him to say anything more. Your auto's waiting by the way."

"I don't wanna go!" Krishnaa whined.

"When do you ever? Now hurry and move."

Chandni pushed her friend towards the auto and made her sit inside. Not for one second did the duo break their giddy smiles. 

Krishnaa met Chandni while they were in school and the two had been friends since, even after being poles apart - kurti and leather jacket poles, long and short hair poles, tattoo and it's going to hurt poles, anxiety and confidence poles.

"I'll call you." Krishnaa pouted like a baby. Eyes still shining with the glint of Chandni's happiness.

"I'll be busy." Chandni winked. "I mean the phone will be busy."

"Yes, Sister. Sure!"

Krishnaa waved her friend bye as the auto's engine made its accelarating noise. She was going home happy and excited today. This was rare. Even when nothing went wrong in her days, going home was never a happy and relaxing feeling for Krishnaa. She lived in Ziradei. A village that never got it's due credit or share of fame for being the exact location where Dr. Rajendra Prasad was born. Her family was the wealthiest of her lot and owned most of the land in the village. As soon as the auto turned into the road leading uptp the village school everything that came into sight belonged to the Trivedi name. From her auto stop, till she walked all the way back to her house everything that she could see was hers, or so the court would say if it ever came down to it.

She belonged to a family of 10 - her grandmother, her father, mother, brother and she who actually stayed there and the other 5, the family of her Uncle -  her father's brother, lived in Delhi where he worked as an entrepreneur. She had heard the story a million times, how he travelled to Delhi with hardly 10 bucks in his pocket and how he was in a position to supply employment himself, now.

"The sun is down." Krishnaa heard her grandmother, Mrs. Damyanti Trivedi, speak as soon as she entered her house. She was sitting on a chowki and fanning herself in the aangan, the courtyard.

She removed her shoes, tied her hair in a pony lazily. "It's so hot!" She seemed to speak to no one in particular but the grandmother noticed how she was being told to shut up.

"I believe I said something." Her grandmother wasn't one to back off.

"I believe I chose not to respond to it." Krishnaa replied without even looking at her. She had learnt not to back off from the best.

"Where do you think the sharpness of this tongue of yours will take you?"

Krishnaa casually walked up to the kitchen, took a glass and began filling it with the water of the hand pump.

"Delhi." She said after a while. "My test went well this morning. I'll be an IAS soon if my mock test results are to be trusted but" Krishnaa took a dramatic pause and said in a different, mocking octave, " -where will this bitterness take you Dadi?"

"YOU-"

"Didi!"

The grandmother's spite was cut short when her brother, Raghav arrived at the scene. The rest of Krishnaa's day would be spent in making him finish his homework, scolding him to work harder, doting on him but just enough to not let it get to his head as the only son of his father and that was it. She woke up everyday to prepare for her UPSC, completed her shift at the library, met Chandni, taught her brother, study some more and sleep.

Krishnaa Trivedi led an uneventful life and she had no hope for anything, no hope for anything  to get any better. All she wanted to do in her life was teach but she was challenged by her grandmother that she could never do anything great and so, she joined a coaching centre for UPSC. She wasn't motivated or driven. She was just tired, bitter and spiteful about how life had always been to her. She knew very well that nothing great was ever going to happen to her and she accepted it. This was her life and this was it. It was always a battle between her grandmother and her, between something she was supposed to be and someone who she was.

The only thing that had ever been interesting about her was how her name was kept. Her parents, Jamuna and Arun Trivedi were wishing for a boy and her mother, being a devotee of Lord Krishna wanted to name her son after him but she got blessed with a daughter and decided to go with the name decided earlier anyway.

Krishna hated her name. Not because of some vengeance against the Lord and his plans but because she could never understand why her parents would name her after a boy.

"because you are our son." Her father would reply proudly.

But she wasn't. She was a daughter and was reminded of it every second till her brother was born when she was 14.
Krishnaa never understood why she or any girl could be given a boy's name but no parent would ever name their boy after a girl or how girls could be told that they are equivalent to sons but the reverse was never told and it bugged her.

In 7th grade when her class was taught about Mahabharata in Hindi was when she came upon another name for Draupadi, Krishnaa and that was when she added another 'a' to her name, to make it feminine and to reminder herself of the woman whose disrespect caused the downfall of an entire dynasty. Initially it was just a change of spelling over her notebooks but when her mother called it a phase, she vowed to change it officially during her 10th boards. So 16 year old Krishna Trivedi became Krishnaa Trivedi even when no one agreed to accompany her to the Board office, Aadhar Card Center etc etc. With the birth of Krishnaa, came the birth of the reputation of her being stubborn, headstrong and too egoistic for her own good but for Krishnaa herself, it was the birth of a confidence in herself that got her through most days.

She was done teaching her brother for the day and was finally going to study for herself. She had just started reading when she heard a knock.

"Did you fight with your grandmother today?" Her father was standing at the door with slumped shoulders and a gentle voice.

"God! Not this again."

"Why did you fight with her?"

"I did not fight with her per se. I just reminded her of our future geographic possibilities."

"We have gone through this. She is old and will not change her mindset about women so you can at least be-"

"Be oblivious to the fact that she exists? Yes. Thank you." Making clean cut incisions on people's hearts with her words was one of Krishnaa's many other talents.

"Being a little respectful to your elders will not hurt you, beta."

"I won't respect anyone if the criteria is just them being thrown on this God forsaken planet before me."

" I do everything for you that I would do for a son. I have never deprived you of anything you have ever wanted. You know what maa says doesn't hold any authority over my actions. Can't you just ignore what she says as senile babbling and not hurt her in return?"

"Wow! You have done great favours for me by fulfilling the basic duties of a parent. Shouldn't have birthed me in the first place." Krishnaa knew this statement would hurt her as much as her father. A part of her knew he didn't deserve it but she still completed it. "Your fault. You live with the consequences."

"I can't. I just can't talk to you right now."

"I wasn't the one who called you here."

Arun opened his mouth to scold her but he closed it as soon as he heard someone calling him outside.

"Go. Go help strangers. Maybe they would respect your mother by being burdened by your favours even when her words make their lives living hell" She had to scream the last bit of her sentence over the stairs that her father took to quietly leave the scene. She slammed the door to her room shut behind her. With moist eyes, she looked out of the window where her father would appear in a few minutes to meet the little gathering waiting for him. She wondered how long would it have taken for him to shed the effect of her rage and meet these villagers with a pleasant smile. Not long. Not long enough. He was standing in between the villagers in perfect composure.

"Arun ji, someone robbed the passengers in the train, pulled the chain and ran out of the Vaishali express. The police wants our permission and help to patrol our fields." The man who was calling Arun said.

Krishnaa saw her father nod and move with the mob.

__________________

"The police will do their job, sir you take the tea." A tea vendor reassured the passenger who's eyes were fixed out of the window looking at the mob approach.

"You're sure ,bhaiya? It has been half an hour already." The passenger asked.

The tea vendor inspected the passenger from top to bottom. Who would ask such a question? Everyone knew the police wouldn't actually be able to find a thief at this hour.

"Where are you from? You don't look like a local."

"I am from here. I mean, Siwan. I am from Siwan. My family used to live here but father does his medical practice in Delhi. I am visiting my uncle's family. My name is Dr. Pranay Singh Rajput." Pranay replied with a soft smile.

"Doctor Sahab, you drink that tea and don't count the minutes."

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