18th July 2018, Wednesday, Chennai.In a premier Beach Villa, rather far from the busy noisy city. A 6-foot tall muscular silhouette stood under the shower, steamy hot water forcefully hitting right on to his face. The water was too hot, the entire bath was covered with water vapour like blinding fog, giving a tinge of ethereal touch.
Still a sensitive skinned person might even get mild burns, from this hot water. Yet the man below the shower stood there like stone statue with utter disregard to the burning water, even his eyelids were still.
A few minutes later, he closed the shower and the fog slowly receded revealing the silhouette"s prominent well-defined muscles. His muscular hands reached out the towel, and sluggishly wrapped it around his waist.
Though the guy had a perfect stature, his peerless figure wasn"t a beautiful sight to behold; it was rather a scary hideous portrait. Every inch of his body from the neckline to ankle were riddled with endless scars.
Of that humongous torso, only his face was spared; the wounds ranged from long slashes, cuts or large burn marks.
Most people would have a trauma just seeing those hideous scars; yet this man somehow survived such inhumane torture and is still very much alive to tell his tale.
The muscular guy is Hariharasudan a retired soldier, nothing but a poor soul pushed into the world of ordinary man after decades lurking in the darker side of the world.
Hari stood before the mirror observing at his not-so-handsome yet a flawless face and all the stomach-churning scars below the neckline; though Hari had a pleasing face, his eyes lacked the l.u.s.tre of life in them.
Still he had a small smile on his face albeit, an artificial one almost like a lifeless puppet.
His eyes had long lost their sparkles, all that remains now is yet an empty eye with an unsettling numbness and those everlasting unreal smile. Hari"s pride-filled indomitable heroic spirit was nothing but a part of a distant yet unforgettable past.
His career as a soldier ruined in a simple scouting mission, crippling a valiant soldier through strange unimaginable coincidence. Hari was bit against a force he has never fought, or could never fathom to fight against, The Nature.
The iron-hearted soldier had to take the hardest decision of his life and retired from the Indian Army; returned back to his family.
His parents were clueless about his Military career; Hari somehow managed to fool them for 14 full years from being a non-existent student in a reputed college to an urban-vagabond genius employee jumping from company to company in pursuit of new challenges.
He moved to Chennai, one of the metros after his retirement and settled for a measly job as an a.s.sistant accountant in a decent company.
In fact, he could live a life of luxury if only he had accepted anyone of the money bags from his pile of rewards or if he hadn"t donated all his hard earned saving from all the missions.
Hari turned down all the awards military offered for his legendary service, he even refused the basic minimum privileges given to any Indian soldier. Anything remotely connected to the army would evoke memories leaving bitter taste in his mouth.
His odd behaviour didn"t pa.s.s unnoticed, and his dead fish eyes weren"t giving convincing signs either; thus, parents easily discerned something amiss. They used every dirty trick in the books to pry the tight sealed mouth of his; of course, they turned empty hands.
Prying information from a hardened soldier is easier said than done especially when the soldier is a member of special squad but his parents used emotion blackmail to force him into an arranged marriage.
Last week he married Shreya, a typical cold beauty and escaped his parent"s torturous questions. But it wasn"t a normal marriage, it was more like a facade to ward off both their parents.
Hari and Shreya married with a non-involvement contract. They lived under the same roof but that"s all they had in common with normal married couples.
Both of them moved to a suburban mid-size villa but lived in different rooms, Hari knew nothing about her except her name. Hari followed the contract by word and a led peaceful new married life thus far.
Surprisingly enough, the agreement was actually Shreya"s initiative and Hari gratefully accepted her plan; his brain was already smoking just thinking of ways to escape marriage and his parent"s nosy enquiries.
"Life can really screw anyone huh."
Out of nowhere Hari suddenly remembered that fateful day, the day a peerless soldier, the captain of the best team in the army regressed to a low tier white-collar employee.
Back in the day his Team "Nine Chakoras of India" was the most successful team with an envious track record under their belt.
Their Team fed upon the dark and evil, the weeds in the society, "Where Red Chakora goes blood trail follows" and they never failed to live up to their reputation.
2 years ago, Hari led 3 of his team members to scout out the caves in a remote pockets of Himalayan Range, which was supposed to be a terrorist hideout.
After hours of search the cave turned out to be an abandoned outpost with few broken pots and animal bone, Hari and his teammates were cursing that incompetent informer while munching on the tasteless hard nutrient bars.
They were forced to camp in the caves to escape the sudden bone freezing storm. Little did they know the storm was just a minor step for the onset the series of disasters that followed.
After a few hours the storm strengthened further, building tension in the makeshift camp; while Hari and his friends were cracking jokes and giggling to lighten the mood, a sudden deafening thunder dashed all their efforts.
Following a ma.s.sive landslide shifting half the mountain above them neatly sealing the cave"s narrow entrance.
Hari was running out of ideas, the weather made it impossible to send any sort of signal. They must at least survive a week without food or water. But their greatest problem was air, every single Chakora were survival experts.
They could go for months without food and last at least week without water but no matter how hard you train no one can survive without air.
Hari could sense the shadow of death looming over them, the cave wasn"t large enough for all 4 of them, they might survive a couple of hours before suffocating to death.
While Hari was fiddling his fingers, the tension was slowly building it up. Everyone"s is smart enough to figure out what"s going on. All his comrades briefly looked at each other before nodding their head and silently retrieving their pistol.
*BANG BANG BANGGG*
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[Chakora
It is a red partridge in Indian mythology which feeds on moonbeams. It is said to be a devotee and is obsessed with the moon.]