The morning sunlight sliced across the sticky yellow puddles of spilled mango juice coating the Italian marble of the Bandra penthouse.
Jackie Shroff scrambled to his feet with surprising veteran agility, dusting the sticky pulp from his linen kurta.
Shaking off the utter indignity of tipping his chair.
He smoothed his salt-and-pepper moustache and threw his arms wide with booming, theatrical warmth:
“Oye, Imtiaz, bhidu!
What a pleasant surprise, man!”
Jackie pulled the slender filmmaker into a crushing bear hug.
Imtiaz Ali chuckled warmly, patting the older star’s back with easy, familiar affection.
Jackie caught Ayesha’s gaze over Imtiaz’s shoulder; she offered a subtle, sharp nod.
Thirty years in the film industry had taught the Shroff household one unwritten rule:
An A-list auteur never arrived unannounced at a star’s breakfast table unless he had a script ready to pitch.
In the hallway.
Krishna glanced at the antique wall clock, adjusting the heavy strap of her gym duffel.
She stepped toward Ayesha, whispering under her breath:
“Mom, I’m heading out.”
“We have the inter-house swimming qualifiers and the sports council prep today.
I’m taking the car.”
Ayesha kissed her daughter’s cheek, smoothing down her collar.
Krishna slipped through the front door, letting out a long, shuddering exhale as she pushed the lobby call button:
“I just hope to God SHE isn’t at school today…
Keep her far away from me.”
Back inside the penthouse.
Rudra stood by the breakfast counter, wiping the fruit residue from his jaw with a linen napkin.
His liquid-gold eyes remained fixed on the visitor, analytical wheels turning behind his brow.
‘Imtiaz Ali…
at our front door at eight-thirty in the morning,’ Rudra thought, crossing his broad arms over his white henley.
‘Dad’s mostly taken supporting character roles and gritty B-grade projects lately to balance the books.
If Imtiaz is here, he must have a character role carved out for him.’
‘ Dad deserves an A-list director in his corner.’
Ayesha stepped forward, her regal composure fully restored as she gestured toward the velvet living room set.
“Imtiaz, please sit down.
Let me fix you some fresh tea and breakfast.”
Imtiaz held up a polite, slender hand, offering a soft shake of his wild salt-and-pepper curls.
“Please don’t trouble yourself, Ayesha ji,” Imtiaz murmured, his voice quiet, melodic, and deeply grounded.
“I didn’t come here to eat.
I came here for my upcoming film.
And I came here for him.”
He turned his gaze.
He didn’t look at Jackie Shroff.
His dark, soulful eyes looked straight past the veteran star, locking dead onto the 6’3″ youth standing in the archway.
Rudra’s eyebrows twitched.
A warm, selfless smile touched his lips, assuming the director was politely acknowledging the household before diving into business with his father.
‘I’m genuinely happy for Dad,’ Rudra mused inwardly.
‘He held this family together through the worst storms.
He deserves this break.’
Rudra took a step back, gesturing toward the corridor.
“I’ll give you two some privacy to talk shop.
I’ll head up to my room.”
He had no intention of hovering like a privileged star kid fishing for an unearned introduction.
In his eyes.
He hadn’t proven a single thing in the trade yet; unearned familiarity was cheap.
“I didn’t come here for Jaggu dada, Rudra.”
The sentence dropped into the room like a silver coin falling into still water.
Rudra froze mid-stride.
Jackie and Ayesha’s eyes widened in sheer, paralyzed disbelief.
Rudra turned slowly on his heel.
His golden gaze meeting the director’s calm, unblinking stare.
Imtiaz reached into the deep pocket of his olive linen shirt, pulling out a folded, glossy print from that morning’s early trade run.
He opened it: it was the national spread of Rudra beneath the Worli moon.
His fingers bleeding across the black acoustic strings, his head thrown back in a weeping, joyful roar.
“I came here for my Rockstar,” Imtiaz spoke softly, his voice carrying the weight of a sacred decree.
“I came for your son, Jai…
or should I say, Rudra.”
How did he track me down…?
Rudra’s mind raced.
Within two seconds.
His hyper-analytical intellect replayed the entire timeline of the previous night.
The stage lights, the five thousand screaming faces, the colored smoke screen, the exit through the delivery alley, the sprint down the sea link—
‘The delivery bay,’ Rudra deduced with absolute clarity.
‘A shadow leaning against the transformer near the alley.’
‘He didn’t just watch the show; he stood in the back, saw me exit, caught the temporary plates on the M5, and pulled the RTO registration before dawn.’
It was the same razor-sharp, lightning-fast processing that had allowed him to shatter All-India Rank 1 without coaching and claim international coding championships as a casual pastime.
Beneath his roguish Casanova veneer sat an architectural, polymath mind that left brilliant academics like Suniti Sharma entirely mesmerized.
Jackie broke the silence with a loud, chest-deep roar of laughter, slapping his thigh:
“Are you serious, bhidu?!
Don’t tell me you were in the crowd at Worli last night?!”
Imtiaz chuckled, his expressive, poetic eyes softening with profound artistic reverence.
“Jackie dada…
what your son did on that stage wasn’t just music.”
“His register…
the transition between agonizing, bleeding heartbreak and absolute, transcendent surrender…”
“I have never witnessed that kind of spiritual violence in an artist.
Why in the world did you hide this boy from cinema?”
Jackie and Ayesha fell quiet, an old, familiar ache settling between them.
They hadn’t hidden him out of cruelty.
Jai had woven his own dark cocoon to escape the shame of the 2003 distribution collapse and the ruthless tabloid vultures of 2009.
Ayesha looked at her son.
Her hazel eyes glistening with unmasked maternal tenderness.
“We didn’t hide him to hold him back, Imtiaz,” Ayesha whispered softly.
“We kept him shielded because the world was too harsh for his gentle heart.
But yesterday…
that shell broke.”
“The boy standing before you today isn’t my frightened child anymore.”
“He is a man who carries the blazing warmth of the sun…
someone born to heal the broken and spread light.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
Jackie smiled softly, nodding in quiet agreement.
Rudra stared at his mother.
Hearing her words.
A raw, ancient ache tore through the deepest recesses of his immortal soul.
In his previous mortal life.
He had grown up as a forgotten, nameless orphan in the concrete sprawl of New Delhi.
He remembered every single Mother’s Day, sitting alone in the cold shadows of the dormitory, listening to the joyful chatter of classmates speaking with their families.
Weeping silent tears into his thin pillow, cursing his fate that he had never possessed a single sacred soul on earth whom he could look in the eyes and call Maa.
A single, hot tear broke from Rudra’s liquid-gold eye.
He crossed the floor in two long strides, dropping to his knees before Ayesha, wrapping his massive, muscular arms around her waist, burying his face into her lap.
“Maa…” Rudra whispered, his deep velvet baritone cracking with raw, unshielded emotion.
Ayesha’s breath caught.
Her hands instinctively sank into his thick obsidian waves.
Her fingers gently stroking his scalp with boundless, protective grace.
“I will make you proud, Maa,” Rudra choked out against her linen dress.
“I swear it on my life.”
“The world will never make you lower your head again.”
Tears spilled over Ayesha’s lashes, tracking down her cheeks as she leaned over him, kissing the crown of his head.
“You made me proud the second you drew your first breath, my son,” Ayesha whispered back, her voice shaking with unconditional devotion.
“You gave me the greatest honor of my life the day you made me your mother.”
“You don’t have to prove a single thing to this world.”
“Just live your truth, Rudra…
and let your light heal whoever is fortunate enough to stand in your warmth.”
Imtiaz stood motionless by the window, watching the scene unfold with an intensely soulful, understanding gaze.
‘That is why his voice bleeds’, Imtiaz thought, his hand resting over his heart.
‘His art isn’t manufactured by drama school technique.
It is the uncoiling of a lifetime of suppressed devotion.’
‘No actor in this country can fake that texture.’
Jackie cleared his raspy throat, blinking away his own tears before clapping his hands loudly to shatter the heavy emotional gravity:
“Alright, bhidu log!
Enough weeping over the mango juice!”
“Rudra, take Imtiaz down to the second-floor office.”
“Sit across the desk and hear the man out.”
The Shroff residence wasn’t merely a luxury penthouse.
The lower two floors were structured as Jackie’s private executive production suites, where distribution agreements and script narrations were held away from domestic life.
Rudra stood up, wiping his cheek, looking at his father with genuine hesitation:
“Dad, you’re the thirty-year veteran.
I don’t know the first thing about contracts, and I don’t even have a portfolio.
You should be in the room.”
Imtiaz stepped forward, resting a gentle hand over Rudra’s broad forearm.
“A raw diamond doesn’t need a portfolio, Rudra,” Imtiaz said, his voice quiet and firm.
“A polished cut is meant for window displays.
I am a miner looking for the unyielding stone that breaks the chisel.”
Jackie pointed an authoritative finger toward the stairs, puffing out his barrel chest in the deadpan cadence of a stern military officer:
“Beta, you wanted to carve your own path without relying on my surname, didn’t you?”
“Destiny kicked your door down before you even had your morning chai!”
“Now march down those stairs and handle your business!”
Rudra chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck as he surrendered to the command:
“Alright, alright, Captain!”
“You don’t have to channel your sexy Air Force pilot character from Border right now!”
The room burst into rich, shared laughter.
Rudra led Imtiaz down the spiral staircase toward the second-floor study, their footsteps fading down the hall.
Ayesha leaned into Jackie’s side, watching her son’s broad silhouette disappear through the office doors, a quiet awe lingering in her voice:
“Rudra…
what a magnificent, terrifying name.”
“He dissolved his old fears and forged himself into something untouchable.”
Jackie tightened his arm around her shoulders.
His gaze drifting toward the brass idol of Lord Ganesha in the dining foyer, whispering with deep reverence:
“He carries the fierce grace of Mahadev, Ayesha.
The ultimate force of dissolution and rebirth.”
“Ganpati Bappa Morya.”
Bandra-Kurla Complex — Dhirubhai Ambani International School
The state-of-the-art campus of DAIS was an impenetrable fortress of elite privilege.
Guarded by multi-tiered private security perimeters, biometric gates, and strict anti-paparazzi protocols.
It was the sole sanctuary in Mumbai where the scions of Bollywood royalty, corporate billionaires, and high-ranking diplomats could study without a single lens invading their space.
Jackie had sold an ancestral agricultural plot in Khandala to secure Krishna’s immediate transfer here following the 2009 media circus, ensuring his daughter would never be ambushed by tabloid hounds between classes.
Krishna strode through the sunlit glass atrium.
She was an elite athlete.
A state-level gold medallist in freestyle swimming and an unyielding force in the boxing ring.
The administration had formally appointed her the Student Head of Female Sports, earning her genuine respect among her peers.
Today was dedicated to inter-house aquatic trials and cultural scheduling ahead of the upcoming Holi festival.
She slipped into the cavernous, tiled athletic pavilion, making her way to the female aquatic locker room.
It was barely nine in the morning; the polished stainless-steel rows were deserted and tranquil.
Krishna exhaled a long breath of relief, setting her sports bag onto the wooden bench.
“Thank God…” she muttered, dialling the combination on her locker.
“If I can just finish my fifty-meter heats before the council meeting, I won’t have to cross paths with that girl.”
“I missed you too, my sweet Kishu.”
The breath turned to ice in Krishna’s lungs.
A soft, warm whisper brushed directly against the nape of her neck!
SLAM!
Krishna spun around, slamming the steel locker door shut on pure athletic reflex, backing her shoulders against the metal!
Standing less than two feet away, leaning casually against the adjacent row of lockers, was a seventeen-year-old girl.
She wore the tailored navy-and-white school uniform with effortless, insolent nonchalance.
She was petite, fair-skinned, with soft, rounded peach cheeks, expressive doe-like eyes framed by natural dark brows, and a small, delicate mouth that curved into a sweet, disarming smile, punctuated by a faint, adorable dimple on her left cheek.
She was the Student Head of Cultural Affairs.
An academic underachiever who possessed a terrifying, innate genius for dramatic manipulation and stage direction.
“What are you doing here?” Krishna demanded, her voice tight, her athletic frame squaring up defensively.
“The joint sports-cultural liaison briefing isn’t until noon.”
The girl giggled.
A high-pitched, girlish sound that didn’t match the strange, calculating stillness behind her eyes.
“Oh, Kishu…
why so cold?” the girl purred, closing the distance, draping a familiar arm over Krishna’s tense shoulder.
“We’re best friends, aren’t we?”
“Can’t a girl check in on her favorite sports captain in private?”
Krishna reached up, firmly peeling the girl’s fingers off her blazer, stepping sideways. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“Drop the act.
You never do anything without a script running in your head.”
“What do you actually want, or do I walk out to the pool right now?”
The girl’s sweet pout evaporated, replaced by a gleeful, sharp smirk.
“Straight to the point…
I like that.”
Reaching into her designer leather satchel, the girl pulled out a rolled, high-gloss paper sheet.
With a crisp flick of her manicured wrist, she unfurled it across the steel locker door.
Krishna’s heart skipped a beat.
It was the morning edition of the Times of India.
The full-bleed, high-resolution poster of Rudra from the Worli concert, bleeding over the strings, his golden eyes blazing through the paper.
The girl tilted her head.
Her dark eyes tracing the contours of the young titan’s chiselled jawline, before shifting her gaze onto Krishna’s impassive face.
“You didn’t look surprised when this dropped, Kishu,” the girl whispered, her dimple flickering with dark amusement.
“It’s almost as if you already knew who he was before the rest of the world woke up.”
Krishna crossed her arms, keeping her expression locked in stone.
“I don’t know who the hell he is.
He’s an underground rockstar.”
“Hot guy.
Good voice.
That’s it.”
The girl burst into a fit of sudden, uninhibited laughter, clutching her ribs.
“Oh, Kishu…
You’re a brilliant swimmer, darling, but your acting is utterly amateur!”
“And to think you’re the biological daughter of the legendary Jackie Shroff!”
Krishna clenched her fists inside her blazer pockets, biting her tongue.
She was numb to the subtle pedigree taunts.
Their fathers had shared screen time in the nineties, but their domestic worlds were lightyears apart.
Krishna stepped forward.
Her athletic posture looming over the shorter girl, her voice dropping into a flat, dangerous register:
“Tujhe aakhir kaar chahiye kya mujhse?!”
(What the hell do you actually want from me?!)
The girl’s sweet smile vanished.
Her gaze dropped to the glossy poster.
She slowly raised her index finger, pressing the pad of her manicured nail directly over the printed image of Rudra’s lips, tracing the curve with slow, wanton precision:
“Mujhe Rudra chahiye…
Aur woh tu mujhe de sakti hai.”
(I want Rudra…; And you are the only one who can deliver him to me.)
Krishna felt a cold drop of sweat slide down her spine.
“You’re out of your damn mind.
I don’t control random musicians.”
“Don’t lie to me, Kishu,” the girl purred softly, her eyes gleaming with manic excitement.
“Kyunki mujhe ek bohot bada raaz pata hai…”
(Because I happen to know a very dangerous secret…)
Krishna’s throat went bone-dry.
“Kya pata hai tujhe…?”
(What could you possibly know…?)
The girl’s smile split wide across her rounded face.
A massive, unhinged grin that stretched until every white tooth showed.
Her eyes burning with an obsessive, chaotic madness that mirrored the darkest tendencies of her eccentric filmmaker father.
Reaching back into her satchel with her other hand.
She slowly slid out a second photograph.
It was an old, candid high-resolution shot taken three years ago at an inter-school athletic meet:
A reclusive, broad-shouldered teenager named Jai Hemant Shroff.
Sitting alone on the bleachers.
His face partially buried beneath an oversized grey hoodie and thick, dark tortoiseshell spectacles.
Yet catching the afternoon sun through the heavy lenses—
Were two unmistakable, piercing, and titanic liquid-gold irises.
The girl slid the old photograph directly beside the new Filmfare poster, aligning the golden eyes in perfect, undeniable symmetry!
She leaned close to Krishna’s frozen face.
Her breath hot, whispering with chilling, absolute triumph:
“Mujhe pata hai ki Jai hi Rudra hai.”
(I know that Jai and Rudra are the exact same person.)
Krishna stared at the two images side by side.
Her mind completely short-circuited.
Her athletic discipline shattered.
A single, horrified, and unfiltered curse exploded from her lips, echoing off the tiled walls in pure Jackie Shroff style:
“SAALI…
BAAP KI AANKH!”
(HOLY…
MOTHER OF GOD!)
The girl threw her head back, laughing with wild, victorious delirium!
Standing in the locker room was the second daughter of Bollywood’s most provocative, unhinged romantic visionary, Mahesh Bhatt.
A girl who carried the exact same volatile, all-consuming creative obsession running through her veins:
Alia Bhatt.
[ Chapter End ]
Hahaha!
totally shocked everyone, didn’t I?
I’m not here to recycle some old Bollywood template about film sets, shooting schedules, and drama.
Just imagine what’s coming when the actual shooting begins… music videos where the main actress goes insane the moment she smells him, touches him, feels his breath, and kisses him.
You can’t even imagine the madness I’m about to unleash.
Mad paparazzi.
Crazy female fans willing to do anything for him.
Powerful women who want to devour him alive.
Welcome to my dark R18 Bollywood world.
A world that will swallow Hollywood in the future.
I’ve travelled from America to Japan to the EU, and yes, I know Hollywood inside out.
But that comes later.
For now, more than 150 chapters will be dedicated strictly to Indian cinema.
I’m not some fool mixing Bollywood and Hollywood together.
I strictly follow the Pyramid Principle — one step at a time, one empire at a time.
Have a great day, my readers.
The storm has only just begun.