His Captive Indian Princess. Tanu Jain

meet her father, whom she had left lying seriously sick when she had fled in shame.

      The lackey bowed and opened the door, and Vikram marched Gauri inside. As soon as he entered he let go of her arm and walked away, almost as if she were contaminating him.

      Gauri looked around, aware of a pin-drop silence which was broken at regular intervals by the beep of a machine. She looked towards the far end of the room where an inert figure lay upon a vast bed.

      Unwilling to believe what she was seeing, she approached on trembling legs and looked down, stunned, at the face of the man who lay comatose on the bed. As she looked on in disbelief she registered just how gaunt and drawn her father looked. He had aged considerably in the last six years and seemed a pile of flesh and bones.

      ‘What happened to him?’ She dragged the words out, stunned.

      ‘He has been in a coma for the last year,’ Vikram replied.

      ‘Coma … but how?’ Gauri asked, turning stunned, pained eyes towards Vikram.

      ‘Madhav’s death hit him hard and he became careless of his health. He began suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes and this resulted in a stroke, which paralysed him and he went into a coma. He hasn’t recovered since then,’ Vikram replied tonelessly but Gauri could sense emotion simmering under the surface.

      She looked for a chair to sit on since she felt her trembling legs give way. She found it difficult to take in that not only was Madhav Dada, her dear brother, gone but Baba, her father, was in a coma.

      Unable to locate a chair, she simply collapsed on the side of Maharaj’s bed. Thick tears clogged her throat and she looked at the now frail and spent man who had protected her and looked after her as well as he could in her childhood.

      All through her childhood years Gauri had been taunted by the bitter truth that she was the result of a one-night stand, conceived as part of her cunning and greedy mother’s devious plan to trap the wealthy Maharajah.

      When her mother had died in an accident, the Maharajah had taken five-year-old Gauri to his home, overruling his family’s disapproval and disregarding scandalous gossip. He hadn’t shirked his responsibility as a father.

      But Gauri hadn’t been able to fulfil her responsibility as a daughter. She bowed her head in shame. In the end she had failed him. And, rather than see the disappointment in his face every day, she had run away. She had wanted to spare him further humiliation.