Rudra came to a halt beside him and stood there with his arms crossed, not in defiance, not in ease, but with a restraint that had been learned early and practiced often. The morning had stretched itself thin over the estate, the lawns running long and disciplined like thoughts that had never been allowed to wander. Dew still clung to the grass, catching the pale sun, while beyond the hedges the hills of Himachal rested in their ancient patience, indifferent to inheritance, blood, or regret.
For a while, neither spoke.
Mr. Roy remained facing forward, his gaze fixed on the breadth of land that had borne his name for decades. The silence between them was not empty. It was weighted, deliberate, a silence that had been shaped over years of things left unsaid.
Rudra broke it at last, his voice low, even, stripped of haste.
"Still the habit of standing as if the world were an audience," he said. "As if authority must always be visible."
The words carried no heat. If anything, they carried distance. A tone shaped by control, not rebellion. The kind of voice that had learned how to mask feeling beneath precision.
Mr. Roy turned his head slightly. It was not a full movement, not a gesture of confrontation. His lips moved, just barely, a flicker that could have been mistaken for breath, or remembered amusement. It would have been difficult to call it a smile, yet impossible to deny that something softened, briefly, in his face.
He studied his son as one might study a familiar landscape altered by time. Rudra had grown leaner. Sharper. There was an economy to his presence now, a refusal to waste motion or expression. Mr. Roy recognized it immediately. He had worn the same discipline once, long ago.
"You mistake superiority for survival," Mr. Roy said calmly. "In this country, especially now, standing tall is the only way one remains standing at all."
Rudra inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the point without surrendering to it.
"Survival," he replied, "does not always require performance. Sometimes it requires silence."
That earned him a longer look.
They turned, almost together, back toward the lawns.
"The tea estates are stable," Mr. Roy continued, as if they had merely paused a conversation begun years earlier. "Margins are tighter, but predictable. The British left us structures, not loyalties. We had to learn quickly which to keep and which to dismantle."
Rudra listened, his eyes following the distant tree line.
"You adapted," he said. "Most men of your generation resisted."
Mr. Roy's voice remained steady. "Adaptation is resistance, when done properly. Jawaharlal Nehru speaks of a new India built on ideals. Ideals do not run plantations. Men do. And men require certainty."
Rudra considered this. "Certainty can become a prison."
"So can doubt," his father replied.
The wind passed through the gardens, stirring the leaves like muted applause. Somewhere within the estate, a clock chimed softly, marking an hour that felt heavier than its number.
"You will have to decide," Mr. Roy went on, "whether you wish to inherit what exists, or correct what you believe failed."
Rudra's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"I do not wish to correct you," he said. "I wish to understand you."
That, more than any argument, unsettled Mr. Roy.
After a pause, he spoke again, quieter now. "The will is prepared. Assets divided with care. Provision made for contingencies." He hesitated, just once. "Your mother insisted on balance."
At the mention of her, something shifted in the air. The estate seemed to draw inward, as if listening.
"She believed," Mr. Roy said slowly, "that inheritance should not become a burden disguised as privilege."
Rudra looked down then, at the grass beneath his feet. "She believed many things."
"Yes," his father agreed. "And paid for them with grace."
Another silence followed, heavier than the first.
It was broken by the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.
Jaydev emerged from the bungalow, his presence immediate, unmistakable. Two years had not altered him in any way that mattered. His posture remained straight, his movements precise, as though time itself deferred to his discipline. He wore a crisp traditional coat over a simple kurta, the fabric dark, well-kept, carrying the quiet authority of old service. His face was composed, but the seriousness in his eyes betrayed urgency.
He stopped a few steps from Rudra.
Without turning toward Mr. Roy, Jaydev reached for the briefcase resting near the garden bench and placed it gently into Rudra's hand. His fingers lingered for a fraction longer than necessary.
"You're late, baba," Jaydev said softly.
The word struck like a blade.
Rudra froze.
For a moment, his mind refused to translate what his eyes were already beginning to understand. Then the truth arrived without warning, sharp and merciless, settling into him with a cold finality. He turned toward his father, almost unwillingly, as if movement itself might confirm what he feared.
Mr. Roy had not moved.
There was a stillness about him that did not belong to patience or authority. It was the unnatural calm of something concluded, a silence that pressed against the room, heavy and watchful, as though time itself had chosen to stop there.
Rudra did not wait. The briefcase slipped from his grasp and was caught by Jaydev before it hit the ground. Rudra was already running.
He crossed the lawns in long, uneven strides, breath tearing at his chest. The bungalow loomed ahead, its corridors suddenly endless, its walls too close. His heart burned with thoughts he did not want, memories he had buried with care.
He ran as he had run eight years ago.
Then, too, there had been a summons. Then, too, there had been servants standing aside, eyes lowered, voices hushed. He remembered the echo of his own footsteps, the way the world had narrowed to a single door.
The corridor blurred as he moved through it. White walls, old portraits watching without sympathy. His breath came fast, shallow. Fear clawed upward, ancient and familiar.
Near the chamber, servants stood lined along the walls, heads bowed. Their silence was complete.
Mr. Bhatt stood near the doorway, a familiar figure now aged, lighting a cigar with deliberate calm. He did not look at Rudra. He did not need to.
Rudra pushed past him and entered.
The room was vast, the bed dominating its center like an altar. White sheets lay smooth and undisturbed. Upon them rested the authoritative figure that had shaped his life, now still in a way that no discipline could command.
Mr. Roy lay as though at rest.
Not the rest of sleep, nor of age-weary pause, but the kind that follows a life when all argument has ended.
Rudra halted just inside the threshold, his body refusing to cross the distance his heart already had.
The silence in the chamber was complete, vast, and suffocating, the kind that absorbs breath and leaves behind only the sound of one man realizing he is suddenly, irrevocably alone.