Nishaan -

He pointed to the horizon, where the ber tree stood alone. “To live,” he said. “That is the only target worth aiming for.”

He threw it high into the air, a silver ring against the vast, indifferent sky. It spun, catching the sun, and then sailed far, far away, landing with a soft thud in the tall grass of the Yamuna’s bank.

He did not throw it at the tree.

There was no one left to kill.

In the dusty, saffron-hued village of Kheri, where the Yamuna river bent like an old woman’s back, the word nishaan meant everything. It meant a mark, a sign, a target. But for the men of the Rathore family, it meant one thing: revenge. nishaan

Old Thakur Ajit Singh had been murdered five years ago. No one knew who held the smoking gun, but everyone knew why . A land dispute. A whispered insult. A line crossed. The nishaan of the killer’s boot had been found in the wet mud by the well—a distinctive half-moon crack on the heel. For half a decade, Ajit’s only son, a quiet, intense young man named Arjun, had kept that cracked imprint burning in his mind like a hot coal.

“The mark is all that is left of him, Mother,” Arjun would reply. He pointed to the horizon, where the ber tree stood alone

She looked at his empty hands. “What is your mark now, my son?”