Chapter Two: The Forge

## Chapter Two: The Forge

The road to Naggar was the kind of road that existed to punish optimism.

Tara had hired an auto from the Kullu stand ; a three-wheeled vehicle driven by a man named Raju who navigated the potholes and hairpin bends with the serene indifference of someone who had accepted that death was a scheduling matter, not a question of if. The auto's engine coughed and whined and produced a sound that was less mechanical propulsion and more asthmatic plea, and the wind that came through the open sides carried the smell of pine resin, river water, and the specific sharpness of Himalayan morning air that felt like breathing glass.

"Lohar Shilpkari?" Raju had said when she gave the address. "Dhruv bhai ka workshop? Haan, pata hai. Bahut bada kaam karte hain — Bijli Mahadev ke gates unhone hi banaye the."

The fact that Dhruv Lohar had made the gates of Bijli Mahadev temple : one of the most sacred Shiva temples in the valley — told Tara something about the family's reputation. This wasn't a roadside blacksmith hammering horseshoes. This was an artisan whose work adorned temples.

The workshop appeared after a bend in the road , a cluster of stone buildings set back from the river, surrounded by apple orchards whose bare branches clawed at the pale sky like skeletal hands. A painted sign, faded by weather: LOHAR SHILPKARI — PARAMPARIK DHATU KALA. Traditional Metalwork. Below it, smaller: "Mandir Punarrudhar. Anushthan Samagri." Temple Restoration. Ritual Implements.

Tara paid Raju. He offered to wait. She declined . the declination of a woman who didn't want a witness to what might become an ugly confrontation.

The yard was clean and ordered — stacked metal rods along one wall, a forge chimney producing thin smoke, the sound of hammering from somewhere inside the main building. The sound was rhythmic, precise, the kind of hammering that was not violence but conversation ; metal being asked to become something other than what it was, and agreeing.

She found an office door. Knocked.

"Aaiye!" A woman's voice, warm and round, from inside.

Tara pushed the door open. The office was small — a wooden desk, a computer that looked like it predated the current century, two phones, and a woman of perhaps fifty with grey-streaked hair pulled back in a bun and the expression of cheerful competence that defined women who ran things while men took credit.

"Namaste." The woman stood. "Aap kisi kaam se aaye hain? Agar garden centre ke liye hai toh woh neeche, "

"Nahin, main Dhruv Lohar se milna chahti hoon."

The woman's eyebrows rose. "American? Nahin — Delhi? Aap Dhruv ji se personally milna chahti hain?"

"Haan." Tara chose her words. "Main unke bhai ki... friend hoon. Lakshman ki."

The woman's face changed. The warmth didn't disappear, but it rearranged : the cheerfulness shifting to something more careful, more guarded, this specific expression of a person who had just heard a name that carried weight.

"Aap rukiye," the woman said. "Main dekhti hoon."

She disappeared through a door that led, presumably, to the workshop. The hammering stopped. Voices — too low to distinguish words, but the tone was clear: the woman informing, a man responding, the response carrying the unmistakable frequency of alarm.

Footsteps. Heavy. Fast.

The door burst open, and a man stood in the frame.

Tara's breath left her.

He was Lakshman. He was not Lakshman. He was the same face , the same high cheekbones, the same dark eyes, the same jaw that could have been carved from the same stone as the mountains outside — but everything around the face was different. Where Lakshman was lean, this man was broad. Where Lakshman's hands were a musician's hands . long-fingered, precise, elegant — this man's hands were weapons. Thick-knuckled, scarred, the hands of someone who worked with fire and metal and didn't always win the negotiation.

His hair was shorter than Lakshman's, his beard longer, his skin darker from outdoor work. He wore a leather apron over a kurta that had once been white and was now the grey of forge ash. His arms ; bare below the rolled sleeves — were roped with muscle that came not from a gym but from that specific conditioning of a man who swung a hammer for a living.

Dhruv Lohar looked at her the way you look at a ghost : with recognition, terror, and the desperate hope that you're wrong.

"Tum." His voice was Lakshman's voice run through gravel. "Yahan kaise—"

"Mujhe Lakshman ke baare mein baat karni hai."

His face closed. The recognition and terror compressed into something harder , a wall, built in real-time, the emotional equivalent of a forge door slamming shut.

"Bahar."

"Kya?"

"Bahar jao. Abhi." He pointed at the office door. His hand was shaking — not with anger but with something else, something that looked, in the moment before he controlled it, like fear. "Yahan se jao. Wapas Delhi jao. Lakshman ke baare mein bhool jao."

"Main nahin jaaungi."

"Yeh tumhare liye safe nahin hai."

The words landed differently than they should have. Not "I don't want to talk" or "leave me alone" . safe. He said safe. As if being here, asking about Lakshman, was not an inconvenience but a danger.

"Safe kaise nahin hai? Lakshman kahan hai? Kya hua usse?"

Dhruv's jaw clenched. The muscle worked — a visible, physical manifestation of a man fighting the urge to speak, the words pressing against his teeth like water against a dam.

"Please," Tara said. The word came out smaller than she intended ; not the professional please of a woman accustomed to academic arguments, but the raw please of a person who had spent three weeks in the dark and needed someone to turn on a light. "Please. Mujhe bas itna batao ki woh theek hai."

Something in Dhruv's face cracked. Not broke — cracked. A fissure in the wall, thin as a hair, through which something that might have been compassion leaked before he could seal it.

"Woh theek hai," he said. "Lakshman zinda hai."

"Toh kahan hai?"

The crack sealed. The wall returned. "Tumhe nahin pata hona chahiye."

"Mujhe pata hona chahiye. Main uski, " She stopped. What was she? Girlfriend? The word felt inadequate. "Hum saath the. Char mahine. Woh mujhse bina kuch kahe chala gaya. Koi phone nahin, koi message nahin. Usne apna passport chhod diya. Apna sitar chhod diya. Apne joote chhod diye. Log jo jaana chahte hain woh apne joote nahin chhodte."

The detail about the shoes hit something. She saw it — a flinch, microscopic, in the muscles around his eyes. The shoes meant something to him. The shoes were evidence of something he already knew.

"Ek din," Dhruv said. His voice was different now : quieter, the anger replaced by something that sounded like resignation. "Tum ek din ruko. Main — mujhe sochna hai. Kal subah yahan aao. Saat baje."

"Kya bataaoge?"

"Main nahin jaanta ki kya bataana chahiye." He looked at her , really looked, the way Lakshman used to look at her when he was weighing whether to tell her something, the way his eyes would search her face as if looking for a structural weakness that would crack under the weight of truth. "Lekin tumne itna safar kiya hai. Aur tum — tum woh nahin ho jo maine socha tha."

"Tumne socha tha main kaun hoon?"

"Koi pagal ex-girlfriend jisko accept nahin ho raha." The ghost of something that might have been a smile touched his mouth. Touched and left, like a bird landing on a wire and immediately taking off. "Tum woh nahin ho."

"Main woh nahin hoon."

"Kal. Saat baje. Kisi se mat batana ki tum yahan aayi ho."

He turned. Walked back through the workshop door. The hammering resumed . harder now, faster, the rhythm disrupted, the conversation between man and metal turned into an argument.

Tara stood in the office. The woman — Kamala, her name was, embossed on a small wooden plaque on the desk ; watched her with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and warning.

"Chai?" Kamala offered.

"Nahin, shukriya."

"Kal aana, beti." The woman's voice was gentle. "Dhruv ji ko thoda waqt chahiye. Woh — pareshaan hain. Bahut dino se."

Pareshaan. Troubled. For a long time.

Tara walked out into the mountain morning. The forge smoke rose behind her, thin and grey against the white sky. The apple orchards stood in their winter bareness, branches interlocking overhead like the fingers of praying hands.

Tomorrow. Seven AM. And she would have answers.

Or she would have more questions, which, in Tara's experience, was always what answers turned into anyway.