Chapter 2: Faces from Another Life

The day I returned, Rohan had taken leave from his sarkari office to receive me.

He stood just beyond arm’s reach, fiddling with his watch strap, searching for a familiar rhythm between us that had long since faded.

"Ananya has grown a lot. But these days, she’s learning painting from Mrs. Shenoy, so she couldn’t come to meet you."

He hesitated, his words weighed and measured. The ceiling fan whirred above, stirring the faint scent of sandalwood drifting from the puja room.

"As for Arjun..." He paused, struggling with the words. "He was just a baby when you left. He doesn’t remember you."

Ananya—my eldest; Arjun—my son. When I fell, Ananya was three, Arjun barely a year. Their baby voices and sticky hands haunted my dreams even now.

Of course he wouldn’t remember me. I tried to accept it, but the ache clung to my chest, stubborn as a Lucknow summer.

Hearing about the children, my heart softened. The memory of their laughter drifted through my mind like the tune of a long-lost lullaby.

In these five years of lost memory, Rohan remarried, and I too found another life. Time, I learned, waits for no one.

There was no reason to come back—except the pull of motherhood. Mamta’s threads, poets say, cannot be snapped by fate or distance.

But letting go of my children was impossible. Even now, my fingers fidgeted with the edge of my saree pallu, and my eyes lingered on their tiny school shoes by the door—small reminders of a longing that refused to fade.

Rohan’s voice turned softer. "You must have heard. Four years ago, I remarried."

I turned to face him, searching for the man I once loved, but his face offered no answers.

When he spoke of Priya, his expression gentled, the same softness I remembered from moonlit terrace walks. "Priya is not like you. She came into the house later, from a humble background—she’s a bit fragile. If she makes mistakes, I hope you’ll be kind."

Each word was a shield for Priya. In that moment, he sounded more a son defending a new bride to his mother than a husband to his wife.

I was caught off guard, but managed a gentle reply. "Why would I make things difficult for her?"

They had found their own peace. My own life had moved on. The ties between Rohan and me were cut, but the strings to my children remained, tangled and unbreakable.

If not for them, I would never have returned. Lucknow’s dust and monsoon scents no longer spelled home—only duty had brought me back.