Shorts: An IPKKND Collection

Khushi's Laad Governor: Part 1

Author's Note: I've always watched the typewriter scene at the beginning of IPK with fascination. It's a very simple scene on the surface but the closer you watch it, the more you realise how much going on.

Specifically, Khushi's eyes reveal a lot.

This is the first time Khushi glimpses Arnav, the man behind ASR. It obviously had an impact on her beyond the comedy - their later exchange at the dining table proves that this incident humanises him in her mind.

It's also the morning after their Rabba Ve moment in the carpark - holding one another in the rain, their faces mere inches apart. It's the day after the photo shoot - his eyes roving up and down her form, his lust undisguised, she staring at him in turn.

Surely, some of the emotion from last night lingers ...

*****

"Please don't take Mami's words to heart, she ..."

Khushi looked up at Anjali-ji, whose sweet, smiling face was pinched with concern.

"No, it's nothing like that," Khushi stretched her lips into a wide smile, ignoring the way her heart had dropped into her tummy at the insults, "Just ... where's Sir? I have to give him these papers and typewriter."

"Chhote is watering the plants by the poolside," Anjali-ji smiled, and Khushi marvelled, yet again, at how different she was from her arrogant, rude, bear of the brother.

"Watering plants?" she mumbled, trying to conjure up the image and failing miserably.

The great Arnav Singh Raizada, doing something as normal and – dare she even think it, domestic - as watering plants?

Surely not.

"Let's go, I'll take you there myself. Follow me."

"Anjali-bityaa," Nani-ji's voice rang out from some hidden corner of this gigantic house.

"Yes Nani, coming!" Anjali-ji called before smiling at Khushi, "Just go straight ahead, Chhote's room is at the end. Don't get lost this time."

"Okay," Khushi smiled at the joke.

Alone in the living room, Khushi allowed her smile to slip as she swallowed nervously, trying to gather the courage she needed to face her boss. She raised her hands in a quick prayer.

Hey Devi Maiyya please stay with me.

Upstairs, Khushi shuffled reluctantly along the corridor Anjali-ji had indicated, the files balanced in one hand and the typewriter in the other. She passed one set of closed doors after another.

Just how big is this house?

She froze when she saw that the final pair of doors on the right-hand side of the corridor was ajar.

That must be his room.

Khushi approached warily, expecting him to swoop through the French doors at any moment and barrel past her, all stern and serious in a three-piece business suit and severely knotted tie. But he didn't appear, not even when she knocked tentatively, so she stepped inside.

She recognised it immediately as the room she'd found the goat – Lakshmi-ji – in. Then, she'd wondered how many people lived in its enormity. Now she knew.

One Laad Governor.

Sighing, Khushi looked around as she stepped over the threshold. The glass doors on her left led to a private pool.

Watering plants at the poolside, she recalled Anjali-ji's words.

Devi Maiyya, please protect me ... Khushi. You can do this. Just return the typewriter and the papers, and leave.

She stepped through the doors and froze. Her jaw dropped.

He was watering plants, just as his sister had said. He held a green watering can and seemed fully absorbed; singularly focussed on this one, bewildering task. Khushi blinked, trying to clear her vision, sure that she was hallucinating.

There was no way that Arnav Singh Raizada, the Laad Governor, was taking care of plants.

But he was still there when she opened her eyes.

His three-piece suit was gone, replaced by a dark sweater – its sleeves pushed up to his elbows – and light-coloured pants. The muscles in his back flexed as he moved, and she followed the line of them to his shoulders and arms. She could see the tension in the muscles there despite the fabric that covered them.

She was transported, instantly, to last night's adventure in the car park, where she'd wrapped her hands around those very muscles as he held her close. He'd been warm despite that rain that'd cascaded around them, plastering his hair to his forehead and causing his shirt and suit to cling to him.

Is he always that warm? What would it be like to just reach out and ...

The idle thought caught her by surprise, and she quickly dropped her eyes to the ground.

Hai Devi Maiyya, what am I thinking?

She swallowed down her inexplicable longing to do the unthinkable and approached just as he set the watering can down and turned. Her eyes dropped from his face and settled on his chest, focussing on the triangle of skin exposed by the V-neck of his sweater. His shirt and tie had always covered it before. Heat suffused through her as her skin prickled unexpectedly, and her eyes found the ground again as she blushed.

He seemed to register her presence in the same moment and Khushi saw his feet step up to the edge of the pool in an attempt to avoid their collision. He lost his balance.

"Sir!"

Her hand rose instinctively to catch him while he, in turn, wrapped a hand around her upper arm. They swayed as he balanced precariously. The typewriter fell, forgotten, as she steadied him. His momentum carried them both towards the pool, and now both of his hands were gripping her tightly in an effort to save them from an unscheduled dip.

The files dropped from her hands as she gripped onto him, pulling them both away from the pool. She over-corrected, his nearness turning her pulse erratic and exciting the butterflies that lived in her stomach, and he was forced to pull her back. Her gaze clashed with his, and suddenly, there wasn't enough air in the universe.

His eyes softened as he took her in, his mouth opening slightly in surprise. His hands, still on her upper arms, were warm, and their every movement – every slight tightening of his fingers – unravelled something inside her. She swallowed.

Khushi drowned – in his eyes, in his scent, in the raw physicality of him that never failed to rob her of sense and decorum. Overwhelmed by his intensity, she tore her eyes away from his face, only to find that her fingers were still twisted into the sleeve of his sweater.

She released him and felt his hands leave her at the same time. Inexplicably, she missed their warmth. She struggled to draw breath under the weight of his focussed scrutiny, her eyes roving along the floor in an effort to not look up at him. A soft gasp escaped her when she glimpsed the ancient black case that held the typewriter floating in the pool, and his eyes left her to regard it.

Finally, she could breathe.