Indira's Page
Aditi Patil grew up in Delhi, India. Her father owns controlling interest and a position on the board of a major textile company that has been in the family for generations. She grew up in the lap of luxury and never knew a day of discomfort, save for the normal growing pains of a young girl.
Her father had trouble in marriage, devoting most of his time to his job and caring little for other people. Aditi never really knew if the woman her father married was truly her mother, which was the source of strife for a messy divorce that happened when Aditi was just hitting her teenage years. Her father never remarried, leaving her as an only child. Her messy home life contributed her lackluster devotion to her family name—everything around her said she should feel more loyal and do what was best for the family, but family had never done anything for her. Oh, sure, the money was nice, and her father paid for the best nannies, private tutors, and university education he could buy, but she never felt a real connection the way she felt she should.
Her Awakening happened slowly over the course of many years, starting when she switched from private tutors to expensive private schools. She began to feel the connections between people, though she couldn’t explain exactly how or what it felt like, and couldn’t figure out why some people had them and some didn’t. Some claimed to love people they clearly didn’t, and some hated but couldn’t separate themselves from their targets. When her father started bringing her to corporate events to meet people in the business world, she could tell who cared about whom, but was constantly frustrated by not being able to understand more.
The actual moment of Awakening came after a jarring moment after the fourth lunch meeting she had with her fiancé (a carefully-selected candidate picked by her father, whom she was told she would be marrying her final year at the university). They were polite to one another, both trying to do what was best for the family, but the few meetings they had made it clear there was no spark between them. Aditi thought it wasn’t a problem and they would just have to work on it, until another man came to pick him up from the restaurant. In the glance they shared, she saw a profound connection that she would never be able to match. In that moment, she realized if she continued to sit back and go along with the life her father carved out for her, she would never achieve that connection with anyone. She’d be like the rest of the businessmen—flirting at friendships and lovers, but really only developing lasting relationships with their enemies and rivals.
In short, she had to get out, else she would never have her own life. In that moment of clarity, she vowed to remake herself as her own person and took control of her own destiny.
In the next formal party she went to, an American businessman in the recognized her for a newly-Awakened mage, and offered to help mentor her in her new life. When she mentioned her desire to get out of her life, he helped her relocate to America under a different name. He helped arrange things so her father wouldn’t immediately find her and drag her back, but in exchange she had to spend a few years in the middle of nowhere Arizona. Her mentor told her to climb the ranks of the local Silver Ladder—it was just another corporation, after all—and once she had some prestige he would help her get where she wanted to be.
Stryck Wiki