Yamini was reckless, proud, and impulsive. Subtle, however, she was not.
Breakfasts returned unexpectedly to his mind. Deliberately scraped chairs. Sarcastic replies. Challenges issued with visible irritation and very little strategy. Then there had been the kitten. The anger in her voice. The relief in her eyes.
No. His wife was not subtle.
That thought stayed with him longer than necessary.
He turned away from the desk and walked toward the narrow door at the far end of his home office.
Unlike the rest of the palace, this door had no carvings, no ornamentation. Just smooth wood and a discreet lock.
The door slid open silently.
The studio beyond was dimly lit and spacious, and meticulously arranged.
Easels stood at measured distances from one another. Brushes were laid out by size and texture, aligned with mathematical precision. Canvases, some blank, some half-complete, some turned deliberately to face the wall, lined the room.
This space had existed long before boardrooms and steel plants.
He had been nine when one of the psychiatrists had suggested painting. Not as therapy, but as structure. A way to place thoughts somewhere outside himself when they became too numerous to organize internally.
Bharat closed the door behind him and crossed the studio, movements calm and practiced. He stopped in front of the largest canvas, the one positioned beneath the skylight.
For a long moment, he did nothing. Then he picked up a brush.
The act grounded him in a way nothing else did.
He studied the canvas with intense focus.
Outside this room, there were protests, politicians, environmental audits, legal reviews, and operational failures demanding resolution. There were his brothers coordinating across three empires and investors demanding answers to problems they barely understood.
Those things belonged outside. They remained easier to organize.
His attention returned to the canvas.
It didn't remain there.
Instead, his thoughts drifted elsewhere.
To Yamini. Running through overgrown grass with her lehenga lifted. Sitting in her father's drawing room, holding ateacup too tightly. Looking out a helicopter window with an expression he hadn't cataloged and couldn't quite set aside.
He dipped the brush into paint and lifted it slowly.
Hours passed differently inside the studio.
Not faster. Simply quieter.
When the clock struck half past eleven, his hands stilled.
The canvas remained unfinished.
Most things worth understanding usually were.
He cleaned the brush carefully and returned everything to its place.
Thirty minutes remained until midnight.
He switched off the lights and left the studio behind, already reorganizing his thoughts toward midnight.
