VARDHAN: THE FALL

CHAPTER ONE

The Last Lot

Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu

2026

The hall was filled with people who rarely needed an introduction.

Old industrial families sat beside collectors and antique dealers. Museum representatives spoke quietly near the back. Wealthy families from across Tuticorin had come for the final lots, and almost everyone in the room seemed to know someone else.

At the front, the auctioneer turned the final page of his catalogue.

“Lot one hundred and seventeen.”

An assistant removed the black cloth covering the final item.

A silver cigarette case rested on a small velvet stand.

The auctioneer lifted it carefully.

“Indian silver cigarette case. Circa 1980 to 1985. From a private collection. Provenance unknown.”

He turned it slightly beneath the lights.

Something had been engraved into the silver.

An inscription.

Old enough that the edges of the lettering had softened with time, but still clearly visible.

The auctioneer did not read it.

He simply placed the case back on the stand.

A man sitting near the centre of the hall leaned towards the woman beside him.

“That’s a Vardhan piece.”

The man was Arjun Menon, a middle-aged antique collector whose family had been in Tuticorin for generations.

The woman beside him, Meera Nair, looked at him.

“You’re certain?”

“I’ve seen their collection before.”

Before Arjun could say anything more, a young man sitting in the row behind them leaned forward.

“Come on. You don’t actually believe the Vardhan story, do you?”

Arjun turned slightly.

The young man smiled.

“My grandfather used to tell us about them too. The Vardhans controlled half the city, disappeared overnight, had some secret empire, all that.”

Meera looked at him.

“So you think none of it happened?”

The young man shrugged 

“I think people in Tuticorin have been adding things to that story for forty years.”

Arjun looked back at the cigarette case.

“That’s what most people say.”

The young man smiled.

“Because it’s true.”

Meera glanced at Arjun.

“I think this cigarette case belongs to her” 

The young man laughed.

“Anastasia?”

He said the name almost mockingly.

“That part is definitely made up.”

Arjun remained quiet.

Meera looked at Arjun.

“You agree?”

Arjun gave a faint smile.

“I didn’t say that.”

The young man shook his head.

“See? This is how these stories survive.”

At the other end of the room, an old woman sat alone.

She looked to be somewhere in her early sixties.

Her hair was completely grey, cut short and neatly brushed back from her face. There were fine lines around her eyes and mouth, the kind that came with age rather than vanity. She wore a simple ivory sari with a thin border and a plain wristwatch.

Nothing about her appearance demanded attention.

She had no jewellery that glittered beneath the lights. No companion sat beside her. No assistant stood nearby.

She looked like someone who had come to observe rather than participate.

Until the cigarette case appeared.

Then she had stopped looking at everything else.

Her eyes remained fixed on it.

The auctioneer began.

“Opening bid, two hundred thousand.”

A paddle rose.

“Two hundred.”

Another followed.

The bidding moved quickly.

“Five hundred.”

The auctioneer looked around the room.

“Eight hundred thousand.”

The old woman finally lifted her paddle.

The auctioneer looked towards her.

“Eight hundred and fifty.”

A man near the front immediately raised his paddle.

“Nine hundred.”

The old woman responded immediately.

“One million two.”

The auctioneer looked around the hall.

“One million two hundred thousand.”

No one else bid.

“Going once.”

The old woman remained perfectly still.

“Going twice.”

The hammer came down.

“Sold.”

A brief round of applause followed.

The assistant placed the cigarette case inside a small velvet-lined box.

The old woman stood.

She walked towards the collection desk without hurry.

As she passed the auctioneer’s table, she looked once more at the box.

Outside, the rainwater still clung to the streets of Tuticorin.

The city continued around Preston House, unaware that an object from another time was being sold now 

And somewhere beneath the polished surface of that silver case was a story that had begun years earlier.

1980

A old Tuticorin. The city people once called Vardhan 

A  Vardhan family.

And a girl whose name would eventually become something people argued about

Anastasia Vardhan.

In 1985, she was already part of a world built on money, power and fear, though no one yet knew how far she would take it.

Before she became a rumour, she was a Vardhan.

Before she tried to erase herself from history,she was already making her mark on it.