The wrought-iron banister felt cool beneath Imtiaz Ali’s palm as he climbed the spiral staircase to the second-floor executive wing.
Ahead of him.
Rudra moved with fluid, unhurried precision.
Imtiaz watched the young titan’s broad back.
The effortless balance of an athlete who owned the ground he walked on.
There was no nervous fidgeting, no rehearsed posturing, and none of the desperate, cloying flattery common to star kids eager to please a festival-favourite director.
In those liquid-gold eyes.
Imtiaz had glimpsed only clear, unvarnished respect for his craft.
“He carries himself like an ancient king returning to his throne…” Imtiaz mused silently, stepping onto the polished teak floorboards.
They entered Jackie Shroff’s private study.
The room was lined with vintage mahogany bookcases, leather armchairs, and brass awards tracing three decades of Indian cinema.
Rudra’s gaze drifted across the central display plinth, lingering over his father’s three Filmfare trophies:
1990’s Best Actor for Parinda, followed by Best Supporting Actor honors for 1942: A Love Story in 1995 and Rangeela in 1996.
A quiet, melancholic sigh caught in Rudra’s chest as he remembered the ghost of Boom in 2003.
The pirated overseas master leak had gutted the family’s finances, forcing Jackie to surrender his ancestral properties.
But for Jackie, the deepest wound hadn’t been the lost real estate.
It was the stolen opportunity.
The performance he had poured into that raw script had been meant for the National Award.
The only honour Jackie truly revered above the glossy commercial circuit.
Rudra remembered Jai’s buried childhood memory.
The muffled midnight sobs echoing down the dark hall.
Jackie sitting on the rug with bloodshot eyes.
Ayesha holding him in silence while twelve-year-old Jai watched through a crack in the doorway.
A flash of titanic wrath flared behind Rudra’s golden irises before sinking deep into his bones.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dad, Rudra swore silently, his jaw tightening.
‘When my empire rises, I will tear the piracy syndicates down to the root.
‘The distributors who leaked that cut will pay their debt in full.’
Rudra pulled out a high-backed leather chair, offering it to the director with a warm smile.
“Please have a seat, Imtiaz sir.”
Imtiaz nodded gratefully, setting his canvas messenger bag on the desk as Rudra sat opposite him.
Rudra leaned back, crossing his arms, a roguish glint returning to his eyes.
“So, Imtiaz sir…
let me guess.
You aren’t here to pitch an action flick or a light-hearted campus comedy.”
“Given where you stood in the crowd last night, you’re carrying a tale of heartbreak, madness, and music.”
Imtiaz blinked, letting out a dry, startled laugh.
“You read intentions quickly, don’t you?”
“It’s not hard to read a poet,” Rudra chuckled softly, his deep velvet baritone settling into an analytical cadence.
“Your filmography tells a continuous story.”
“Your three features explore the exact same spiritual core, yet each approaches the fire from a different horizon.”
Imtiaz sat up.
His dark, soulful eyes locking onto the young man with intense curiosity.
“Go on.
Tell me what you see in my work.”
Rudra didn’t hesitate.
“In Socha Na Tha, you explored the friction of Love versus Duty.
The suffocating weight of social obligation cracking beneath honest attraction.”
“In Jab We Met, love evolved into Liberation and Self-Awakening.
Two wandering souls healing each other’s blind spots.”
“And in Love Aaj Kal, love became Eternal, proving that while the language and tempo of romance shift across generations, the primal ache remains unchanged.”
Silence descended on the office.
Imtiaz’s breath hitched in his throat.
Those were the exact three thematic pillars he had scribbled in his personal diary during his lone backpacking trips across Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.
He had never shared those precise phrasings with a single film journalist or studio executive.
Yet this twenty-year-old youth had dismantled his creative soul in three clean sentences.
“Extraordinary…” Imtiaz murmured, shaking his head in quiet wonder.
“Did I miss the mark, Imtiaz sir?” Rudra asked with a modest tilt of his head.
“Drop the ‘sir,’ Rudra,” Imtiaz smiled, his eyes shining with profound artistic warmth.
“We speak the same language.
Age is meaningless in the presence of real understanding.”
“Fair enough, Imtiaz bhai,” Rudra smiled, resting his elbows on the polished desk.
“Show me the storm.”
Imtiaz reached into his canvas bag, pulled out a thick, bound manuscript, and slid it across the mahogany surface.
Embossed across the matte-black cover in jagged, crimson lettering was a single word:
ROCKSTAR
Rudra’s golden eyes flared with quiet recognition.
The crown jewel of Indian angst.
He opened the first page.
His fingers flipping the paper with rhythmic, hypnotic speed.
“Imtiaz bhai, go ahead with the narration.
I can read and listen simultaneously.”
“You can read a shooting draft while processing dialogue?” Imtiaz asked, raising a skeptical salt-and-pepper brow.
“Try me.”
Imtiaz leaned forward, diving into the emotional arc of Janardhan Jakhar.
The clumsy Hindu College student desperate for the pain that breeds artistic genius.
As Imtiaz narrated.
His eyes repeatedly flicked down to Rudra’s hands.
Rudra was turning a page every eight to ten seconds.
Imtiaz’s brow furrowed.
‘Is he just skimming the scene headings to act clever?’
Normally.
An A-list actor required three hours for a preliminary script reading, frequently pausing to demand vanity adjustments or hero-entry revisions.
Yet Rudra maintained the same blistering, mechanical pace.
At the sixteen-minute mark- exactly as Imtiaz paused to describe Jordan’s exile from the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.
Rudra closed the hundred-page draft with a crisp, definitive snap.
Imtiaz frowned, crossing his arms with a trace of quiet disappointment.
“Rudra…
a screenplay isn’t a magazine.”
“You can’t just flip through an emotional canvas.”
Rudra leaned back, tapping the closed cover with his index finger.
His velvet voice ringing with photographic precision:
“Page forty-two, scene sixty-eight.
The third paragraph of the descriptive block.
Janardhan is thrown out of his family home onto the pavement by his older brother.”
“He sits beneath the neon sign of the bus depot, looking down at his bruised palms, and realizes his name no longer fits his skin.”
“The transformation into Jordan doesn’t happen because of artistic ambition; it happens because the hearth that birthed Janardhan severed the cord.”
“Column two: Jordan walks into the Dargah, and his acoustic scale shifts from Western four-four rhythm into a desperate, open D-minor cry to the heavens.”
Rudra paused, fixing his piercing golden gaze directly on Imtiaz’s stunned face:
“Page eighty-nine: Jordan stands on the Prague arena stage.”
“He doesn’t look at the cheering thousands; he looks at the empty VIP balcony where Heer promised to stand.”
“The heartbreak doesn’t make him a rockstar.
The heartbreak makes him a dead man holding a guitar.”
Imtiaz sat frozen, the colour draining from his face.
He stared at Rudra as if gazing upon a ghost.
“Page numbers…
dialogue blocking…
scene numbers…
You absorbed the entire draft in sixteen minutes?”
Rudra broke the tension with a bright, boyish chuckle, flashing his trademark Casanova grin:
“I know I’m exceptionally handsome, Imtiaz bhai, but please stop staring at me like that.”
“If your wife Preety finds out you looked at another man with this much love, she’ll accuse me of stealing her husband!”
Imtiaz burst into rich, breathless laughter, shaking his head in absolute, helpless surrender.
“You even know about Preety?”
“Of course,” Rudra smiled, his tone turning warm and sincere.
“I respect you, Imtiaz bhai.
You’re a Muslim director from Jamshedpur who honoured your wife’s Hindu faith with a traditional ceremony, and she honoured yours.”
“You built a home for your daughter Ida on mutual reverence, not hollow rhetoric.”
“In an industry where people wear secularism like a cheap PR badge while weaponizing Hindu stereotypes behind the scenes”
“You keep your focus locked on the sacred purity of human love.”
Imtiaz lowered his gaze, visibly moved.
“I don’t hold an acting diploma,” Rudra continued evenly.
“But I study the architects of the stage.”
“The stars are merely the puppets under the spotlight.”
“You, the writers, the cinematographers, and the light technicians build the world.
Everyone deserves respect.”
Imtiaz leaned forward.
His soul entirely captivated by the young titan before him.
“Then will you take it, Rudra?
Will you be my Jordan?”
Rudra stood up, walking around the desk to pull Imtiaz into a firm, grounding embrace.
“It would be an honor, Imtiaz bhai.”
Breaking the hug.
Rudra looked into the director’s dark eyes.
His golden gaze turning analytical.
“Now tell me the truth, bhai.
Why me?
When I read this script, my mind immediately points to Ranbir Kapoor.”
“He fits the urban vulnerability.
He has the backing.”
“Why walk into this house to cast a raw, untested outsider?”
Imtiaz’s smile faded.
A quiet, familiar bitterness darkened his features.
“Because the board at Eros International is suffocating me, Rudra,” Imtiaz confessed, running a hand through his unkempt curls.
“They want Ranbir.
They want the Kapoor pedigree.
But Ranbir is already a packaged product.”
“If I cast him, the trade will say the star carried the film, not the story.”
“I want to build this storm from the dirt.
I want the world to look at Jordan and see raw, unshielded madness…
not a safe studio choice.”
It was the ancient curse of the auteur.
Pouring blood into the manuscript, only for the lead actors and executive producers to claim the glory while the creator vanished behind the lens.
Rudra placed a heavy, reassuring hand on Imtiaz’s shoulder.
“Bhai, hold your vision,” Rudra murmured softly.
“The era of the artist being treated like disposable fuel is coming to an end.”
“Stand by your story.”
Imtiaz smiled faintly, patting Rudra’s hand.
“We’ll see what the road brings, little brother.”
Two hours later.
The second-floor meeting concluded.
Ayesha and Jackie invited Imtiaz to stay for a late lunch.
Where Ayesha served a rich, slow-cooked mutton curry she had prepared for their guest.
Imtiaz was pleasantly surprised to discover that both Jackie and Rudra maintained a strict, lifelong vegetarian diet.
While Ayesha and Krishna enjoyed non-vegetarian meals without domestic friction.
“Jaggu never imposed his habits on the house,” Ayesha smiled warmly, serving Imtiaz a warm roti.
“Freedom and respect keep this family whole.”
“You are truly blessed, Ayesha ji,” Imtiaz noted, watching Jackie and Rudra playfully roast each other over a bowl of dal.
“I see where Rudra gets his balance.”
Down at the building’s portico.
Rudra personally escorted Imtiaz to his car.
Imtiaz paused by the driver’s door, turning back with a lingering question:
“Rudra…
those two unreleased songs you played at Worli last night…
Sawaare and Kesariya.”
“Are they truly your own compositions?”
Rudra paused, touching his Rudraksha beads.
In the timeline of March 2010, those melodies had not yet been conceived by Pritam or Amitabh Bhattacharya.
“Yes, Imtiaz bhai,” Rudra answered with a calm, unblinking smile.
“They are mine.”
Imtiaz chuckled, shaking his head.
“A genuine rockstar who writes his own anthems…
No wonder Arijit and that fiery Gulaabi Queen look at you like you hung the moon.”
Rudra laughed, but his expression tightened into sharp, commercial focus.
“Good luck with Eros International, bhai.”
“Remember: you are the master of this tale, not the studio suits.”
“I won’t back down,” Imtiaz nodded firmly, stepping into his sedan and driving out the gates.
Rudra stood on the sunlit tarmac.
His smile fading into a cold, predatory smirk as the sedan disappeared down Carter Road.
Pulling his iPhone 3GS from his pocket.
He glanced at Mohini Kashyap’s unread message.
His deep baritone slipping into a dark, prophetic murmur:
“Oho, Imtiaz bhai…
tum sach mein bahut shareef ho.
Bollywood ka asli maalik hamesha production house hi hoga, aur aap jaise log bas ek sone ka anda dene waali murgi.”
“Aur jab anda dena band, toh aapki zaroorat khatam…
yeh log aapka keema bana kar khaa jaayenge.”
“Aur jab aapko dhokha milega, jab saare darwaaze band ho jaayenge…
tab main aaonga.
Ek masiha bankar…
ek bhagwaan bankar.”
(Oh, Imtiaz brother…
you are far too gentle for this world; The true masters of Bollywood will always be the corporate studios, while visionaries like you are treated merely as hens laying golden eggs.
And the moment the eggs stop, your utility expires…
they will chop you into mince and devour you whole.
And when you are betrayed, when every studio door is slammed shut in your face…
that is when I will descend.
As a savior…
as a living God.)
Up on the fourth-floor balcony.
Jackie and Ayesha were leaning against the railing, enjoying their afternoon tea.
Jackie had his arm draped around Ayesha’s waist, whispering a teasing compliment that made his wife laugh and playfully swat his shoulder.
Spotting their son on the driveway, both parents smiled, waving him back upstairs with warm, welcoming hand gestures.
Rudra looked up at his family.
His golden irises catching the blinding midday sun, a chilling whisper leaving his lips:
“Na hi main Shakuni hoon…
aur na hi main Krishna…”
(Neither am I Shakuni, the architect of ruin…; Nor am I Krishna, the detached shepherd of dharma…)
His lips curved into an all-consuming, terrifying smirk:
“MAIN DONO HOON.”
(I AM BOTH.)
[ Chapter End ]
I hope everyone now senses who Rudra truly is .
The storm and the calm, the light and the shadow.
And to my female readers, I know you love Rudra more than anyone.
You will cry for him.
His entire existence is a tragedy in itself that all I can say for now.
Love you too, my sexy female readers, haha.