CHAPTER 85: CHAPTER 78: A LOVE NOT MINE

Delhi – Imperial Hotel, Connaught Place – January 6th, 1949

The hotel room felt stuffy despite the winter evening. A single lamp threw yellow light across the worn carpet. Heavy curtains blocked the sounds of Delhi traffic outside, but Rhea could still hear the distant honking of cars and the calls of street vendors.

The room smelled like old cigarettes and cleaning soap. It was the kind of place where people came to have conversations they couldn’t have anywhere else.

Rhea stood near the door with her leather bag clutched in both hands. Her palms were sweating even though the room wasn’t particularly warm. The message had come that afternoon. Someone from the Prime Minister’s Office wanted to meet her.

But there had been no official letterhead, no government car waiting outside her flat, or any formal invitation with proper seals. Just a hastily written note slipped under her door.

She should have known something was strange. And should have stayed home.

’Sigh...why did I even come?’, Rhea sighed as she entered the room.

Then the man who had been standing by the window turned around. When she saw his face, her breath caught in her throat. Her bag nearly slipped from her fingers.

"A...Arjun"

"Hello, Rhea." His voice sounded different from the confident tone she’d heard when he gave speeches in Parliament. Softer. Almost uncertain. "I wasn’t sure you would actually come."

She remained by the door. Her hand was still on the handle. "I thought this was official government business."

"It is official business, in a way. But not for the government. Not for the country." He gestured toward two threadbare armchairs placed near a small fireplace. "This is...for us."

Rhea walked slowly to one of the chairs and sat down. She kept her bag on her lap. She still wasn’t sure why she had come here, and she definitely wasn’t sure why she was staying.

"It was honestly quite a surprise when I saw you at the assembly session yesterday," Arjun said as he smiled a bit. He sat in the other chair but didn’t lean back. "And I must say...you look different than you did five years ago, in a positive way of course."

"You would have looked right through me, if I hadn’t called you for that question" Rhea said. The hurt in her voice surprised even her. "For a moment, you had looked at me as if I was a stranger."

"I...was just surprised. Nothing else. Five years isn’t a short time. Not to mention, so much had happened in those 5 years."

Rhea studied his face in the lamplight. He looked younger than his thirty two years. As if he hadn’t ages since she last saw him. His hair was still thick and black, but he carried himself differently now. He sat straighter. His shoulders seemed to carry invisible weight, but with a sense of pride that wasn’t there before.

"So...this is what you became," she said. "The Prime Minister of India." Her voice held both admiration and something that might have been sadness.

"Do you remember what you used to say when we were in college? You said politics was only for old men in white caps who had forgotten how to dream about anything except power."

Arjun let out a laugh that sounded more bitter than amused. "I remember saying that. I also remember telling you that I would be different from those corrupt politicians."

"And now you are the biggest politician of them all." Rhea shook her head slowly. "Sometimes I read about you in the London newspapers. Your speeches, policies and your plans for the new India. It felt like reading about a complete different man."

"Most days I feel like a stranger to myself," Arjun admitted. He rubbed his forehead with one hand. "Do you know what it’s like, Rhea? Do you know what it feels like to wake up every single morning knowing that every decision you make will affect millions and millions of people?"

"Isn’t this what you wanted when you joined the freedom movement?"

Arjun was quiet for a long moment. He stared at the cold fireplace. "I wanted independence for India. I wanted the British to leave. I wanted our people to be free." He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

"I never wanted this chair. Or this weight on my shoulders. But Nehru saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. And when the time came, when someone had to take responsibility..." He trailed off.

"The boy who used to spend entire nights in the library debating whether Socrates was right about wisdom being the knowledge of what you don’t know," Rhea said softly. "Now that boy runs a country of over four hundred million people."

"That boy is no more, Rhea. He faded somewhere along the way," Arjun said. His voice was quiet but firm. "He had to. There wasn’t room for both of us."

The room fell silent except for the distant sounds of Delhi evening traffic. Rhea could hear someone laughing in the hallway outside. Finally, she asked the question that had been burning in her chest for years.

"Why did you stop writing to me?"

Arjun looked down at his hands. They were folded in his lap like he was praying. "You went to London in 1943. I wrote to you regularly at first. Do you remember those long letters I used to send? I wrote about everything and nothing.

About books I was reading, about political meetings I attended, about whether I thought the British would really leave India or just pretend to leave."

"I remember every single letter," Rhea said quietly.

"But then in early 1945, when Nehru brought me into his inner circle, and I started attending the important meetings..." Arjun stopped.

His jaw tightened. "Suddenly I had no freedom anymore. No privacy. Every word I wrote, every person I met, every place I went was being watched. By the British, by our own people, by journalists, by everyone. And the work consumed everything. Days blurred into weeks. Weeks blurred into months. I became someone completely different."

"You just vanished," Rhea said. Her voice was rising. "No explanation. No goodbye. I kept wondering what I had done wrong."

"It wasn’t you. It was never anything you did." Arjun met her eyes for the first time since she’d sat down. "It was what I had to become. Even before I became Prime Minister, I knew that I couldn’t belong to anyone anymore. I couldn’t be just Arjun. I had to be more than that. A person who belonged to this entire country."

Rhea stood up abruptly. She began pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. "You could have told me that. You could have explained instead of just disappearing."

"I...I was scared," Arjun said simply. "But I also hoped that you would move on. I hoped you would build a better life without me. You deserved more than waiting around for a man who was slowly disappearing into politics, duty and responsibility."

They looked at each other across the small hotel room. Years of hurt and love and regret hung in the air between them like smoke.

"I loved you," Rhea said. Her voice was breaking. "Not the leader, or the famous speaker who gives speeches that make people cry. I loved just the ordinary man who spent hours in dusty libraries arguing with me about books and ideas."

Arjun smiled, but it was the saddest smile she had ever seen. "I remember those nights. You used to tease me about my long speeches. You said I was just showing off, trying to impress you with big words."

"I would still tease you about that," Rhea said. For a moment, she almost smiled too.

Arjun walked closer to her but stopped when he was still several feet away. "But that man is gone, Rhea. I am someone else now. I am someone who has to think about millions of people before he can think about himself.

I am someone who has to consider the good of the country before his own happiness. I can’t be yours anymore. I don’t have the right to be yours."

"Then why did you bring me here tonight?"

"To say what I should have said years ago. I’m sorry." Arjun took a deep breath. "I’m sorry for the silence, and for hurting you. I’m sorry for never telling you how much you meant to me, how much you still do."

Tears filled Rhea’s eyes. "Do you think we could have made it work? If things had been different?"

"In another life, maybe. In a life where I never entered politics." Arjun’s voice grew softer. "We would have had a small house somewhere. It would have been full of books and full of arguments and full of laughter. We would have fought about everything and made up over dinner."

Rhea laughed through her tears. "That sounds completely awful."

"And completely wonderful," Arjun said.

They stood there quietly, two people who had loved each other deeply but had been pulled apart by history and duty and the weight of an entire nation’s expectations.

"Rhea," Arjun said, his voice becoming serious again. "I can’t be by your side. I can’t write you love letters or take you to dinner or introduce you to people as the woman I love.

But if you ever need help, if anyone ever tries to hurt you, or if you’re ever in any kind of trouble, I will be there. Quietly, but surely. That’s the very least I can give you."

Rhea looked at him carefully. For a moment, she could see past the Prime Minister, and past the leader that he had become. She could see the man she had fallen in love with in college. "And what can I give you in exchange?"

"You already gave it to me. You taught me how to care about one person before I had to learn how to care about everyone."

Rhea walked toward the door. When she reached it, she put her hand on the handle but didn’t turn it yet. "Don’t disappear this time, Arjun. If I write to you, will you write back?"

Arjun hesitated for several seconds. "Yes. I will write back. But just letters, Rhea. Just words on paper. We can’t try to dig up what we’ve finally managed to bury."

Rhea opened the door. The hallway outside was brighter than the hotel room. Before she stepped out, she turned back one more time. "Goodbye, Arjun."

Arjun didn’t look at her. He was staring at the floor. "Goodbye, Rhea."

Then she was gone. The door closed behind her with a soft click. The room suddenly felt much larger and much emptier. The only trace of her presence was the faint scent of her perfume lingering in the air.

’Sigh’, Arjun sat back down in his chair. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. Outside, Delhi continued its endless evening symphony. Cars honked. People shouted to each other across the street. Vendors called out their prices. Life went on.

India moved forward into its uncertain future.

But for one night, in one forgotten hotel room, time had stopped completely. For one hour, two people had remembered what it felt like to love each other more than they loved their country.

[A/N: Yeah...this love and all is just not my thing, and I personally think this was the best route for him. Though Rhea will still appear again in future.]