Capital, Chandragarh
Prithvi was really missing Shaurya on ground right now. For the past couple of years, the guy had become his most trusted weapon to be used for the protection of their country, especially in a situation like this. He recalled that the murmurs of what was playing out today had been first brought to his attention by the young lad at the beginning of the current academic year. So much had happened since then that it felt like a distant event.
Does this mean that he had finally run out of all other options? Was now the time to come out of the shadows? His mouth pressed into a thin line and he went to stand in front of his wardrobe. Taking out a pair of well-fitted black pantaloons and a same coloured small kurta, he changed quickly, removing all the accessories from his hands and hair. He pleated his long hair to tie it in a secure top knot.
It was time to face the enemy head-on. It seemed that his caution was being interpreted to be his cowardice. He picked up his wooden stick which contained a deadly and poisoned sword inside it. It was cold but to the man stepping out of his house, there was only a burning sensation inside. He summoned two eagles and sent them out after tucking respective messages under their wings.
"Saraswati, wake up! Uff, this girl has grown old but still sleeps as if she has sold all her horses before going to bed. Wake up…" the old Vaidya shook his daughter hard.
After his loud shouts which threatened to shake the entire Gurukul, Saraswati finally sat up and grumbled with a dark expression in her eyes. Since there was no one else in the Admin department these days, the entire work of the Suraksha chakra and also the tournament coordination was resting on her tired shoulders. It felt that she hadn't shaken off the fatigue of Southern zilla and new weights had already been placed on her.
"An urgent message has come for you," her father said with all seriousness.
Rubbing the fatigue out of her eyes, she took the folded parchment from him and opened it. After a second, her mouth fell open.
Was the man trying to kill her? She was now supposed to manage the entire show by herself for the next three days. The next round of stage two was going to be conducted the next day. How was she supposed to coordinate and supervise the event, liaison with the royal palace and manage the desk at the Admin building?
"Father, you have to help me out for the next few days. I beg you. My boss has gone AWOL," she turned her red-rimmed eyes towards the white haired Vaidya.
The day of round two, stage two was finally here.
Since there had been no preparation to be done, most girls had spent the interim period between the first round till now in fretting. Maybe that had been the objective behind giving the break between these two examinations. The venue was the same auditorium where the previous written test had been held.
There were different coloured rolled sheets kept in a small earthen pot on the table of the invigilator which held a question each. Every participant needed to pick one along with an empty paper on which the answer was to be attempted. The duration of this exam was the 'entire day' which meant that the participants could take the whole day to come up with an answer to the question which they had chosen from the pot.
It was a confusing format because there was no set word limit to the answer. The invigilator announced that the girls could take as many sheets as they wished to fill in the answer. Did that mean that a lengthy answer was expected or was this to throw them off their game? No one knew but it did add to another whistle to the pressure cooker in everyone's minds.
In total, Prithvi had come up with four questions for this test. The main purpose of keeping this test was to get an insight into the examinee's psyche. Since there was no right answer, the possibility of getting a true response from everyone, was higher. Handling ambiguous situations and fighting pressure were just the side effects, which helped understand the examinee's mental strength.
With a deep breath filling her nostrils, Mriga rolled open the question scroll and looked at it.
"The most stubborn of all are..."
Huh? Was that it? Gosh! It was as vague a question as it could be. She stared at the sheet in consternation. Even though she knew the question to be open ended, it was supposed to give her some sort of a clue, right? She could think of many people who would fall in the category of stubborn, herself also included sometimes. But she was sure that the answer wasn't supposed to include her name or of those whom she knew of. Was she supposed to think about the famous people in the past who had had such personalities? Damn, even a whole day may not be enough to come up with an answer to this.
And how many did she have to list down? Two, four?
"Guruji..." she gave a frustrated shout in her heart.
Far end to her right was Yuvati, the acrobat who actually belonged the family of street performers. Not extremely bright in the academic sense, she had always held bigger dreams than her family. She was a good student at the Gurukul and had studied in the same grade as Mriga from the age of nine.
Due to her specialisation being science, she had been aware of Vindhya and her self-proclaimed QIT aspirations for the past many years. Instead of this being a deterrent, it had instead ignited a competing flame inside Yuvati when the inclusion of her batch into the competition was announced.