The Beijing negotiation chamber was a study in controlled pressure. The air was cool, scentless. On one side of the long, polished table sat General Guo Feng, flanked by two silent aides and a representative from CNPGC in a sharp suit. On the other sat Rajendra, with Huilan positioned stiffly between them as translator and reluctant bridge.
They had spent the morning dissecting the Trans-Siberian Consortium agreement. The terms were favorable, a masterpiece of mutual benefit that Rajendra himself had designed. The General had listened, nodded, asked precise questions. It was going well. Too well.
As they broke for tea, the General did not reach for a cup. He steepled his fingers, his gaze settling not on the documents, but on Rajendra.
"There is a matter of trust," the General said, his voice filling the silent room. Huilan translated, her voice flat, but Rajendra saw the minute tightening around her eyes.
"A consortium of this scale, spanning borders, dealing in resources that are the lifeblood of nations… it requires more than a contract," the General continued. "It requires a bond. A personal bond. One that assures me your interests and China's interests are… aligned in perpetuity."
Rajendra felt a cold trickle of understanding. "What manner of bond, General?"
"The bond of family," Guo Feng stated, as if announcing a logistical fact. "You and Huilan were married. A paper arrangement, for her benefit. I knew of it. I allowed it." He paused, letting the implication hang—I allowed you. "That arrangement is concluded. But the foundation remains. A real marriage. A public, formal union. It would resolve all questions of loyalty. It would make you family. And in this family, I am the head."
The trap was sprung with breathtaking elegance. It wasn't a threat. It was an offer of unimaginable elevation—to become the son-in-law of a Chinese military titan. The price: his sovereignty. He would be absorbed, his empire becoming a branch of the Guo family tree.
Huilan had gone pale. She translated the words, her eyes fixed on the table, seeing her carefully won freedom evaporate.
Rajendra's mind, usually a storm of calculations, went preternaturally calm. This was a checkmate in three moves. To refuse was to reject the Consortium and make a powerful enemy. To accept was to become a vassal.
"I… would need time to consider such a significant proposal, General," Rajendra said, his voice diplomatically neutral. "The personal and the professional are deeply intertwined."
The General gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, as if he had expected the stall. "Of course. We resume tomorrow morning. Consider well, Mr. Shakuniya. The future is built on such decisions."
The call came to the old Shakuniya bungalow in Pune not on the secure line, but on the simple cream-colored rotary phone in the sitting room. Mrs. Laxmi Shakuniya was kneading dough for puris, her hands moving with a rhythm older than empires. Her neighbor's daughter, Sunita, answered and called out, "Aunty! For you! It's Rohan-bhaiya from Bombay! From Rajendra-bhaiya's office!"
Laxmi wiped her hands meticulously on her apron. Rohan, Ganesh's soft-spoken younger brother. A good boy. The one she had quietly taken aside when Rajendra gave him the job. "Beta, you write to your mother every week, no? Such a good son. Write to this old aunty too sometimes. Tell me what my Rajendra is doing in that big world. He only tells me 'business, business.' A mother's heart worries." She had pressed a box of homemade ladoos into his hands. A small thing. A motherly thing.
She picked up the receiver. "Rohan beta? Is everything well?"
"Everything is excellent, Aunty-ji!" Rohan's voice was bright, bubbling with the excitement of being near the engine of great things. "I just had to tell you! Rajendra-bhaiya is in China! For the biggest deal yet! They say it will change everything! Even the big Chinese General is there!"
Laxmi's spine straightened a fraction. "China? A General?"
"Yes! And… and Captain Huilan is there too! The Chinese officer who helps him. She is very important to the talks, they say."
Laxmi's mind, a repository of a thousand subtle social and familial codes, locked onto that single, dangling thread. Helps him. A Chinese officer. A woman. In the heart of a high-stakes deal with a General. Her son, unmarried, brilliant, alone in the world. A pattern clicked into place with the quiet, devastating certainty of a temple bell.
"Thank you, beta," she said, her voice calm as a deep lake. "You are a good boy to tell me. Enjoy your work."
She hung up. She stood perfectly still in the quiet, sun-dappled room. The fragrance of dough and turmeric hung in the air. She saw it all with terrifying clarity. They would try to bind him. Not with contracts alone. With a woman. With marriage. A political marriage to cage her brilliant, restless son.
A slow, fierce fire ignited in her chest. He could build his towers of glass and steel. He could talk to generals and move mountains. That was his dharma, his burden and gift. But this? This was hers.
She walked to the old Godrej cupboard, unlocked it, and took out her passport—used once, for a pilgrimage to Singapore. Then she picked up the phone again. She did not call her son. She called the manager of the Pune MANO office, a man who still remembered her late husband with reverence.
"Jain-sahib," she said, her voice brooking no argument. "My son is in Beijing. At the State Guesthouse, I believe. I need to be on the next flight. And I will need two of your most reliable men to accompany an old woman. Yes. Today."
In Beijing, the negotiation had reached its precipice. General Guo Feng had laid his masterstroke on the table: a real, binding marriage to Huilan, the ultimate guarantee for the Consortium.
Back in his hotel room, Rajendra felt the walls of the trap closing in. He showered, the scalding water failing to burn away the chill of the choice before him. Sleep. Think tomorrow.
The next morning, in the sterile quiet of the negotiation chamber, the air was thick with impending verdict.
"Mr. Shakuniya," General Guo began, his tone leaving no room for further delay. "Your answer regarding the familial bond that will secure our mutual future?"
Rajendra drew a breath, his mind racing through thin, unsatisfactory options. He was about to speak when the chamber doors did not merely open—they were held open by two very large, very out-of-place Punjabi security men in ill-fitting suits.
And between them, a small, immovable figure in a sky-blue silk sari walked in.
The click of her Kolhapuri chappals on the polished floor was the only sound. She ignored the stunned Chinese aides, the gaping CNPGC representative, the frozen Huilan. Her eyes, sharp behind her spectacles, went straight to her son. A flicker of profound relief—he is whole—then her gaze swept to the man at the head of the table, the one radiating power.
General Guo Feng stared, his strategic mind completely unable to process this input.
Laxmi Shakuniya stopped in the center of the room. She did not bow. She offered a slight, dignified nod, the acknowledgment of one power center to another.
"General," she said in clear, deliberate English. "I am Laxmi Shakuniya. Rajendra's mother."
Rajendra was on his feet, a choked "Maa!" escaping him. The world of billion-dollar deals and geopolitical brinksmanship had just been invalidated by the arrival of its primal source.
Laxmi turned her steady gaze back to the General. "I understand you are discussing a marriage for my son."
The General, recovering a shred of his formidable composure, gave a slow, stiff nod. "It is a matter of uniting our families for a shared vision."
"Of course," Laxmi said, as if discussing the weather. "A marriage is the union of families. Not of contracts." She paused, letting the distinction hang. "My son may do many things. He may build businesses and talk to generals. This is his path. But if he is to marry…"
She turned now, fully facing Rajendra, her voice dropping into the mother-tongue Marathi, every word a soft, unbreakable law.
"...he will need my permission first."
The words, simple and absolute, echoed in the stunned silence. They were not a negotiation point. They were a foundational truth, delivered from the soil he sprang from, in the language of his first breath. They demolished the General's elegant trap. The marriage could not be a political lever between two men. It was now, and forever, subject to the Matriarch's veto.
She had not come to negotiate. She had come to claim her territory. And her territory was her son's soul. The most powerful sovereign in Rajendra's life had just entered the room, and the game had changed forever.