Sarika woke up when the bright morning rays fell directly on her face. “How did I sleep for so long? By now, mother should have made at least three trips to my room - one with the hot coffee mug and then twice to remind me that the coffee has turned cold,” she thought. It was then that she started recollecting the previous day’s events. “Oh, my mother!!!” she let out a shrill cry as she remembered her mother’s body being taken to the crematorium and pushed into the furnace after the rituals. She fell back into the bed, sobbing and fathoming the real depth of the loss after all the relatives had left following the cremation. 

 

“Oh, I am all alone in this world,” she kept repeating. When she looked up,  the door, window panes through the curtains, the almirah, and the ceiling fan, all were staring at her, wondering how she would live alone in the house. 

 

She got up and walked out of the room to avoid their stare. On the way to the kitchen, the walls, couch, table, and television set hung from the wall looked worried about her. The utensils in the kitchen were sad and dry, missing the hands that carried them from the stove to the sink and then to the cabinet. They missed the vegetables that were still locked up in the fridge.

 

Everything in each room, including the kitchen, reminded Sarika of her mother. Life in that house felt like a life term sentenced by some cruel judge. It was then that she realised how important and inevitable her mother was for her.

 

She walked into her mother’s room. Her mother’s fragrance was still trapped in her sarees, blanket, and bed sheet. She held them close to her nose and breathed heavily, inhaling the smell as much as possible. She thought of ways to preserve the smell forever. 

 

She opened her mother’s cupboard. The smell was intact inside. She decided to keep it shut and lock her mother’s fragrance within so that she could come back from time to time and inhale it. 

 

The blue saree hanging in the right corner caught her attention. It was the saree her mother had worn when Sarika came back from her husband’s house. The saree had tiny silver sequins and when she hugged her mother and cried, the sequins pricked her face. That evening Vineeth had turned up at home for the last time. She saw him through the curtain hung in the front door. 

 

“I want to talk to Sarika,” he said in a raised voice. 

“You could have done that when she was in your house. You missed the opportunity when she left your house,” mother said in a stern voice. She placed Sarika’s wedding ring in front of him on the table and asked him to leave his. She then slammed the door behind him. 

 

Sarika had fights with Vineeth over his coming late from the office and hanging out with his friends for a long time. She felt as if he never enjoyed her company and wanted to spend leisure time with his old friends. She felt as if she was an unwanted element in his life. They fought several times until he rushed out of the house one day and did not return that night. The next morning she came back to her mother without waiting for him.

 

Her mother had rightly observed the confusion on her face. “Today he left you for a night. Do you want to wait till he leaves you forever? Your father never enquired whether we survived or perished after he left us. You can’t believe men,” she said.

 

“Mother was right. There is no point in sticking to a marriage where you don’t have a role,” she thought.

 

Sarika searched for the ring Vineeth had left with her mother. She found it in the jewellery box. The ring had her name etched on it. Among her mother’s jewellery she found an old digital watch. “My first watch! I still remember when my father bought this for me. I was probably six years old. For a week, the watch controlled all my activities. I noted down the time I consumed to brush my teeth, take bath, finish meals, and do homework….I would look at it at least 100 times a day and would sleep wearing it on the wrist,” she remembered. But she could wear it only for a week. The day he left, her mother snatched it away and asked her to never wear it again. At that moment, losing the watch seemed a bigger loss than losing her father. “Probably, then I hoped that my father would come back,” she reasoned. 

 

Her parents had an argument that day. She was not allowed inside their room. A few days before that, they had stopped talking to each other and father was coming home drunk. Then he left after hugging her tight. Sarika kept asking him not to leave. Her mother sat on her bed like a stone. She did not show any emotion. “My mother was strong. Her strength became more evident after he left. She brought me up single-handedly and never kept me wanting for anything except my father,” she thought. Once again her eyes brimmed up. 

 

In the jewellery box, she saw an unfamiliar stone-studded gold pendant of ‘little Krishna with his flute’. “I have never seen my mother wearing this. But, it seems I have seen this earlier, probably someone else wearing this….Someone wearing this stooped down to me, smiled at me, and pinched my cheeks and the pendant dangled before my eyes,” she searched through her childhood memories. 

 

“Yes, it was Chandra aunty. I remember now,” she told herself. Chandra aunty and Ravi uncle were frequent visitors to their house during her childhood. They did not have children and they would pamper her with gifts and toys. After her father left them, they too stopped coming. 

 

“But what is this pendant doing in my mother’s jewellery box? It is quite unlikely that she would have gifted it to my mother. If not Chandra aunty who else? Ravi uncle? But why would Ravi uncle give it to my mother? If so, why did she never wear it?” Sarika had a lot of questions about the pendant.

 

She searched answers for her questions among her mother’s belongings. Inside an old diary, she found two letters. The letters had lost their colour and the writings had become blurred over the years. She picked the first one, which was never posted. It was handwritten by her mother and addressed to Ravi uncle.

 

“I told him the truth last Tuesday upon the assurance you gave me. He was quite upset and has been coming home drunk. Two days back he left home. I did all this placing my trust in you. But, you have let me down for the second time. If you did not have the courage to accept us, you should not have given me false promises. I have lost faith in you and I have lost faith in all men. I don’t want any man in my life,” she read out. 

 

“What was the truth she told father?” Sarika was puzzled. 

 

She opened the second letter. This one was from her father and addressed to her mother. “Sorry, I left you in a sudden surge of emotion. But now I have understood that I can't live without you and Sarika. She will always remain my daughter no matter whatever you said. The happiness she has filled in my life since her birth, her fond memories and the bond we share …. nothing can be denied. I want to see her. Can I come back?” 

 

She kept the letters back inside the diary and opened the jewellery box. She took Vineeth’s ring and the digital watch from it. She picked up her car keys and walked out of the house.