BingTheWing — Roleplayer Guild

5'11
155 lb

Rajan Solehani

Age: 25
Gender: Male
Citizenship(s): Kashmiri, Indian

Date and place of birth:
March 9 2035, Srinagar, Kashmir

Official occupation:
Biotechnologist

 Profile                         

Residence: Harbourfront

Affiliation: HaraTech Innovations, subsidiary of CD Asia

Appearance:

Rajan is rather scrawny, yet he could have been incredibly agile or dextrous were it not for his artificial shin. It's white, plastic, and in the basic curved shape of a foot, but he can still move it around - augmented limbs are way out of Rajan's budget for the meantime. He wears shoes on both feet, and his bottoms cover all of his legs, so the leg comes a surprise to most people, its only indication being a very noticeable dragging limp, as if his leg muscles were incapable of action. He's quite handsome, with a low chin, dimples, tousled black hair, virtually no pimples, and deep dark eyes. He is fond of purple polos and red ties.

Background:

On his twelfth birthday, Rajan Solehani announced to his family that he wanted to become a poet. 

His mother, like all good mothers, cried aloud in fear and anguish, and immediately set off on a rant about the importance of his education, his books, the money his father cranked out day by day to send him to school. And Rajan, like a good son, listened. But he was not content. There was awe to be found in the pores of a leaf, the flapping wings of a dragonfly, the cry of thunder. There was wonder to be found in the sheafs of grain in the farms that surrounded his home, in the glimmer of the sun on rice paddies, in the scarlet dark eyes of a mule. There was beauty in the little things in life, and what better to express it than through poetry? Rajan loved the haikus of the Japanese, the sonnets of love of the British, the odes to the pine forests of the Americans. He loved the expression of the subtle things that the world created, and for this reason he loved nature, greenery, and the environment.

His father, with a stuffing of cake in his mouth, walked over to his son and told him about the cell walls of the leaves, how the trees inhaled carbon dioxide and gave oxygen to humanity to breathe, how the soil was filled with countless minerals that nourished the crops and gave them life. The clear-cut world of Rajan's textbooks did not have to stay eternally apart from the world of words and wonder and life that he loved. It was there and then that Rajan made a compromise - he would go to school, excel in his studies, but only if he could take care of the things he cherished the most: nature. And so, over the course of his high school life, Rajan dutifully conformed to the stereotypical path that all Kashmiri teenagers took - study hard, work harder, and get the family out of this godforsaken place. Rajan felt slighted whenever he saw the Pakistani soldiers cordon off the forests he liked to wander in, or when the Indian tanks trample the rice paddies. One moment he was a Pakistani, according to his schoolteachers, and the other moment he was an Indian, according to the border guard. He wanted the wars and the tensions to be a world away, and to leave him and his family in peace.

Then, for his fifteenth birthday, Rajan received his first artificial leg.

It had all happened so fast. One moment he was at the rally, passion in his lungs, chanting with the crowd some anti-Indian phrase he couldn't remember, then he remembered the grenade launcher firing into the crowd, and gurgled screams and boneshards and the smell of blood. His lower leg felt itchy, so he instinctively reached for it.

He didn't have one.

His family sued, bringing their case before any judge and jury who would listen, but all they got was a halfhearted apology, a court-martial for the persons involved and some money to pay for a leg. 

In 2052, Rajan moved to the University of New Delhi.

Ideally, he would have moved to Lahore, where family members were, but there was civil unrest there and the universities were becoming hotspots for rallies. He was then going into the heart of the enemy, and yet it seemed so far removed from the bloodshed back home. Here, his classmates did not start riots, and the police did not shoot them. His classmates' heads were buried in textbooks, and the policemen did nothing but stand guard. It was heaven. So he studied, diligently as he could, and he graduated batch valedictorian. But then his phone call home was marked with tears of both joy and loss.

It was 2056, and the Kashmir Treaty had been signed. Rajan and his family were doomed to the Resettlement Zone.

Rajan swore that he would never let his family live in that shithole. But their application to get out of it had been rejected, and god knows when their second one would get through. It was either wait for the second application and spend at least a year in the Daladal of Kashmir, or do something now. Rajan knew a few higher ups in Common Development Asia, people who had properties in the places for actual Indians. So he did it. Within a few months and with a little dirty money, they had bypassed normal application standards and owned a small apartment in Harbourfront. It was regrettable, but necessary, and he was also granted a job. To this day he is still working off his debt.

It is 2060, and Rajan has spent four years with HaraTech Innovations, Common Development Asia's biotechnology subsidiary. Instead of working in the Taray ricefields inspecting farm equipment like many of his brethren, Rajan spends his time in Sopahn greenhouses, collaborating with Lue Urbanization Consulting on how to effectively sustain eco-friendly building in urban environments.

Rajan Solehani is twenty-five years old. Will he make it to tomorrow?

Outlook and Motivations:
Rajan wants nothing else in Sopahn except the safety and security of himself and his family - whatever it takes. However, underneath his unruffled, ruthless, corporate exterior is the little boy in Kashmir who loved reading about haikus and walking amongst green forests and rice paddies. Rajan loves the little things in life, things he has had to forget in Sopahn. He wants nothing else but to go back to those days where the skies were clear and there was green all around him. He wants no part in politics - he can't remember why he attended the rally that cost him his leg in the first place - and is neutral about a lot of things. To his family, he is Pakistani. But if his family wants to survive, Rajan must remind them that they are Indian. But his heart, Rajan is Kashmiri.

 Capabilities                    

Language(s): Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi, English (in order of proficiency)

Skills:
Agricultural Engineer - Rajan is one of those talented few who have combined a love of nature with technological expertise. When at work, he reads the world in temperatures, acidity rates, lead levels, soil samples, and genera.
Drive of the Forgotten - Rajan has a rock-solid drive to succeed in life, mostly professionally, and has a list of multiple academic and professional achievements to his name.
Poet - Rajan has a hidden love for poetry, especially that of nature.

Flaws:
Crippled - Rajan is missing his left shin. His plastic replacement is lightweight, and he can still use his knees to bend his legs, but he walks in a permanent limp and definitely cannot sprint or climb.
Desperate - Though obviously not a full-blown criminal, Rajan has learnt the hard way that the only way to live in Sopahn is on the edge. If it comes to abandoning his family or the law, Rajan would gladly choose the latter.
Refugee - Hard as he may try to rise above his station, Rajan is still a Kashmiri, and is thus prone to discrimination and exclusion.
Secret - If anyone finds out Rajan bribed a CD corporate executive to get his family out of the Resettlement Zone, his career - the only thing he has - will crumble in front of his very eyes.

Connections:
Arunav *******, housing executive of Lue Urbanization Consulting, government ambassador to the Kashmir Resettlement Zone, Rajan Solehani's college batchmate
Other CD Asia executives he may have come into contact with

Accomplishments:
umma cum laude in BS Agricultural Science, University of New Delhi, 2056
First runner-up, Indira Gandhi National Poetry Competition, 2047
First runner-up in Biology, Swami Vivekanada Science and Technology Fair, 2050
Employee of the Year, HaraTech Innovations, 2058

Crimes:
Bribing corporate authority, 1 charge

 Inventory                      

Cash, saving and debts:
R6,000,000 - Khariboli Bank International
R7,500,000 - Bank of Smithfield 
R30,000 in debt 

Tools and weapons:
Except the equipment he uses at work, none of particular note.

Electronic devices:
15" laptop, Samsung smartphone, headphones, smart glasses

Apparels:
Polo, tie, brown slacks - when at work
T-shirt, hoodie, shorts or jeans - when at home

Credentials and ID cards:
Social security ID, job clearance certificate, voting ID. 

Jewelry and valuables: 

Consumables: None at the moment.

Load bearing equipment: Wheelchair.

Illicit goods: Technically none, though his residential certificate was illegally obtained.

Vehicle: Commutes.

Pet and animals: None

Other: (optional)

Richard listened to the plan with furrowed brows, a deadset frown, and an ever so slightly increasing heartbeat. As the briefing continued, he felt a slowly rising panic emanating from his diaphragm and, when the subject fell on 'infiltration', climaxed to a palpable, prickly sensation in his mouth. He inhaled and exhaled loudly, and everyone turned to look at him. He excused himself. How he wished he could also excuse himself from this bloody mess altogether. 

He again took another deep breath, and allowed the information floating about him form themselves into readable mental bullet points - this was one of Richard's ways of coping with the babbledegook his professors spouted in their lectures. He made sense of three things:

Something was to be stolen from some bloke's house in Cambridge.
The thing to be stolen was electronically locked.
The only possible way to unlock it was if they made an entirely new flash drive to-

Oh, fuck it.

This couldn't be the only way.

Richard peered over the balcony. The sun was beginning to heave itself over the horizon, as evidenced by the faint mantle of blue to the east. The walls of the apartment building, could, perhaps, be able to be held onto. Richard desperately looked around for bedsheets, or some sort of long cloth to fashion a rope out of. On the other hand, if he ran fast enough, he could barge out the door, make it to the fire escape at the other end of the hall, and disappear into the urban labryinth below. For a brief moment, he briskly strode across the apartment, momentarily putting his hand on the door's brass handle, hoping to god there wasn't a CCTV (though he knew in his heart of hearts there was). He remembered the other male employee that refused to cooperate. He pushed it out of his mind. He was faster. Stronger. He wasn't going to end up like him. He would get out of here.

Then, he noticed the two girls.

Should he leave them?

One side of Richard, long suppressed, yet was just now getting louder, yelling, screaming his situation to him. He could die. He would die. They'd find his body in a bloody ditch, his face plastered all over the bloody Sun or Telegraph or whatever, his legacy merely to be the face of a shock-value frontline news story. He would be the subject of tabloid gossip, the sort of thing that made people hate the evening news. His mark on the world would be that - just that. If he remained here any longer, that is.

Yet another voice told him to stay.

Stay for the others. 

Stay because it's the right thing to do.

Richard sat in the tower of his own thoughts for a long time. 

Then he sighed, and turned away from the door.

He definitely wasn't going to go anywhere with the plan. Perhaps make conversation, gain a little trust before they made it out of here.

"Fucking hell, I'm a bloody politics student. What do they want me for?"

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