Among the two great families, everyone carried their grief differently. My paternal grandparents moved with silence and strategy, while my parents held their pain as prayer. But my uncle, Rajendra Sharma, and his wife, Anjali Sharma—both strong, ambitious, and deeply loyal—chose another path.
They refused to mourn quietly. They chose to chase the truth.
To the world, Rajendra Sharma remained the name that turned business into art—India's unstoppable businessman whose ideas crossed borders and industries. His reach extended to finance, trade, and technology. People admired his rise from a disciplined soldier's son to a global tycoon.
Beside him, Anjali Sharma, a senior IPS officer now posted with the CBI, was the steel and fire of the family. She was known in newspapers as "The Iron Lady of Law. To the public, they were a power couple—one who ran the economy, the other who guarded the nation.
But behind their calm professionalism ran a deeper fire—a shared promise made the same night the news arrived that I had vanished.
That night, in their study, Rajendra smashed a glass of water against the wall. "We have everything—money, power, name—and yet a five-year-old child disappears beneath our noses?!" he shouted, his voice trembling more from heartbreak than anger.
Anjali stood still, eyes wet but sharp. "Crying won't bring him back."
He glared at her. "Then tell me what will."
She walked toward him and placed her police badge on the table. "What's seen can lie. What's hidden tells the truth. If the system can't find him, then we'll build one that can."
From that moment, their vow began—not spoken aloud, but burning in both their hearts.
In public, their grief appeared disciplined. Rajendra gave large donations to child rescue programmes, international disaster relief funds, and orphanage support organisations—everywhere that a missing child might appear. He even founded The Mukul Foundation, claiming it was to honour "all lost children". He smiled before the cameras and cut the inauguration ribbons.
Yet no one knew that behind the foundation's bright walls and smiling staff, his team of analysts and data experts worked for one purpose only—to trace me.
Using his business empire as cover, Rajendra built what he named Project Aruna, secretly hidden within his global corporate structure. To employees, it looked like a division for research and logistics. In truth, it was a vast information network that collected satellite data, flight logs, and shipping records across several continents.
He used legal systems, diplomacy, and trade routes to quietly trace any coastal anomalies—unsolved coordinates, unmarked islands, or surviving children found by fishermen or coast guards.
His network stretched farther than even his father's shadow operation. He bribed, negotiated, and protected—without ever revealing whom he really searched for. Only his personal assistant, a man who had served him for fifteen years, knew the name Mukul Sharma.
Meanwhile, Anjali worked differently.
Her world was one of laws and secrets. In her CBI office, surrounded by files and investigations, she reopened old international liaison reports marked closed. She pulled classified data through diplomatic channels—rescue attempts in East Asia, ocean security logs near Chinese and Indian waters, and missing passenger lists.
She worked silently, behind the system she protected. Every night after her shift, she would walk into their hidden study, change from her uniform into casual clothes, and start over—cross-verifying, decoding, tracing unspoken leads.
Her job allowed her access to faces the rest of the world never saw. Through it, she built her parallel network inside the system itself, a web of loyal officers who owed her debts of trust. "Forget everything you read in reports," she told them. "Find truths that don't exist on paper."
To the public, her dedication looked like duty. To insiders, it became a whisper—the creation of an invisible investigation force called The Phoenix Unit.
When asked by the media about Mukul's case, she always spoke plainly: "The file is cold. The evidence is gone. But I don't close files—especially not this one."
Outside, the world thought her relentless; inside, she was broken—but focused.
At home, when the rest of the family despaired, Rajendra and Anjali never lost that spark. Late nights, in their quiet study, lights burnt while the rest of Delhi slept. He cross-checked maps, while she read field reports. Sometimes they argued over leads, sometimes held hands in silence.
Once, when she found him dozing at the desk after forty sleepless hours, she touched his face gently and whispered, "You've built empires, Raj. You can build his path home, too."
He looked up, eyes tired but fierce. "And you'll make sure the path is safe."
They both smiled faintly—partners in faith and war.
In public, their vow came dressed as kindness and law. In private, it was a storm.
Over the years, their missions started to overlap. Rajendra's Project Aruna began noticing strange offshore readings—electromagnetic waves along Indian Ocean lines. Around the same time, Anjali's officers discovered untraceable radar signals around those same waters, resembling artificial energy storms.
One night, they placed both files side by side on the table. The locations matched.
"Impossible," Anjali whispered.
Rajendra frowned. "Or maybe not."
He looked to the far end of their study, toward a framed photo of me, and smiled faintly. "Tell me, Dodo," he said quietly, using the nickname my cousins once teased him with, "is that where you're hiding?"
From that evening, they changed their course. While the family sought comfort in faith, they sought answers in movement. Together, through their twin networks—corporate and covert—they began quietly arranging an expedition into forbidden waters.
Only they knew it. Not even my grandparents. Not even my father.
Anjali reforged old partnerships with Navy officers who owed her loyalty. Rajendra funded research through false companies labelled "marine study programmes". All of it led to one unseen truth: somewhere across the unseen ocean, there was an island that refused to exist on maps.
Before every new mission, they spent a moment by the veranda's light, fingers intertwined. "If we find it," Anjali would whisper, "I'll bring him home, no matter the cost."
"And if the world tries to stop you?" he'd say.
"Then I'll bend the law. Just once."
They smiled at each other, aware they'd already crossed that line.
And that was how my uncle and aunt—the Builder and the Protector—took their silent oath. Hidden behind the face of power, they searched not for glory but for family, building bridges of truth through walls of secrecy.
While the world praised their success and integrity, only they knew their greatest work wasn't their careers—it was the hunt for a boy lost beyond the sea.
And under the silent skies of Delhi, when all lights went out, two hearts whispered through the night:
"We'll find you, Mukul. No matter whose laws we must break."