MEMORIES
ANAMIKA
Sara has been talking about this since breakfast. No—that isn't quite right. She's been campaigning for it.
The moment she finished eating, she latched onto Yuvaan's hand and began tugging him toward the study with the determined persistence only a five-year-old possesses.
"I want to see baby pictures." She'd announced it as though it were the most obvious request in the world. "I want to know if Mister was also this tiny."
Yuvaan had looked at me over her head with the helpless expression of a man who already knew he wasn't going to win this argument. He never even tried.
Now he's crouched in front of one of the lower cabinets beneath the study bookshelves, pushing aside a few old files before pulling out a thick leather-bound album.
The cover is worn smooth around the edges, softened by years of being opened and closed, held by hands that clearly came back to it often.
"I think this is the one," he murmurs.
Sara immediately climbs onto the sofa beside him, bouncing impatiently while he settles the heavy album across his lap.
I expect formal photographs. Royal portraits.
The sort that hangs framed in palace corridors—little Yuvaan standing stiffly beside his parents in embroidered sherwanis, smiling politely because someone behind the camera told him to.
Instead . . . The first page steals the breath straight out of me. It's us. Not one photograph. Not two. Page after page.
Us.
Not posed. Not formal. Just . . . Living.
A picture of me sitting cross-legged on the old ramparts with both hands full of freshly picked daisies, grinning proudly at the camera.
Another of the two of us drenched from head to toe after getting caught in one of Devgarh's sudden monsoon showers, laughing so hard that the entire photograph is blurred from movement.
A third catches me in the middle of an argument, finger pointed accusingly at his chest while he's looking at me with that familiar mixture of long-suffering patience and barely contained amusement.
I stare at the pages. I don't even remember someone taking half of these. "You . . . " My voice comes out much softer than I intended. "You kept all of these?"
He doesn't look at me. His fingers lightly brush the corner of one photograph before he answers. "There wasn't much else I wanted to keep."
The sentence is spoken so casually that it almost sounds insignificant. It isn't. It settles somewhere deep inside me, heavy enough that I have to look back down at the photographs because suddenly looking at him feels like too much.
Sara, blissfully unaware of the emotional earthquake quietly happening beside her, climbs straight into Yuvaan's lap as though it's the most natural place in the world to sit. She points enthusiastically at another photograph. "Mumma!" Her eyes widen. "Why are you sitting in a tree?"
I lean forward. Oh. The old mango tree near the staff quarters. I laugh before I can stop myself. "Because your Mister challenged me."
"I did?" Yuvaan sounds genuinely offended. "You absolutely did."
I point at the photograph. "You told me girls couldn't climb as high as boys."
Sara gasps dramatically. "He said that?"
"He did." I nod gravely.
"So I climbed three branches higher than him."
"I made one very unfortunate mistake," Yuvaan says with equal seriousness. "I underestimated your mother." He shakes his head, "You refused to come down," He reminds me.
"I was making a point."
"You were proving you were impossible."
"I only admitted defeat because you threatened to stay up there until dinner." He shrugs.
"I meant it."
"I know." He sighs dramatically. "I've never recovered."
"You sulked."
"I absolutely did not sulk."
I raise one eyebrow. Without saying a word, he turns the page. The next photograph immediately proves my point.
He's sitting on the palace steps with both arms folded tightly across his chest, wearing the unmistakable expression of a fourteen-year-old who has been deeply, personally wronged by the universe.
Beside him, I'm smiling so broadly my cheeks look ready to burst. Sara stares at the photograph. Then slowly turns toward him. "Mister . . . "
"Hm?"
"You look exactly like this when Kairav Chachu wins." I don't mean to laugh. I truly don't. But the sound escapes before I can stop it—a completely undignified snort that makes Sara collapse into giggles.
Yuvaan pinches the bridge of his nose with exaggerated suffering. "I'd like it officially recorded . . . " He gestures toward the album. " . . . that I was not sulking."
"No?"
"I was contemplating life."
"You were fourteen."
"I contemplated very early."
Sara nods thoughtfully. "I don't believe you." Neither do I. The afternoon slips away almost without any of us noticing. Every page holds another story. Another memory. Another piece of a childhood I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined.
A photograph of the two of us feeding stray dogs outside the market gates despite repeated instructions not to.
Apparently Amma Saheba caught us halfway through and, judging by the expression on Yuvaan's face in the picture, had delivered quite the lecture afterwards.
Another shows us sitting through one of the palace's endless formal dinners. My head is resting against his shoulder. Fast asleep. I stare at it for a long moment. I don't remember falling asleep that evening. But I remember feeling safe enough to. What catches my attention isn't myself.
It's him.
He's looking down at me. Not at the camera. Not at anyone else. Just . . . Me.
There's something so open on his face that it almost hurts to look at now.
Peace.
Contentment.
A kind of uncomplicated happiness I don't remember fully appreciating back then. "Mister!" Sara tugs impatiently at his sleeve.
"Tell me another one."
He laughs. "What do you want to hear?"
"The funniest."
So we do. The stories come easily. Easier than I expected.
He remembers details I'd completely forgotten.
I remember the parts he never noticed. Together they somehow become whole again.
We tell Sara about the afternoon I accidentally opened the wrong latch and released every ceremonial pigeon the palace owned.
She laughs so hard she nearly slides straight off Yuvaan's lap.
Without looking away from the album, he catches her automatically with one arm, settling her securely against him before continuing the story as though he'd been doing it his entire life.
I find myself watching him instead of listening. The careful, reserved Maharaja disappears page by page. The man sitting beside me now looks younger somehow.
Lighter.
Every photograph strips away another layer of responsibility until, for a little while, all that's left is the boy I grew up with.
I don't realise I'm smiling until my cheeks begin to ache.
Then . . . I see it.
The photograph.
My breath catches.
My eighteenth birthday. The same photograph. The one hidden carefully inside my wallet all these years. The corners of mine have long since softened from being folded and unfolded too many times. In this version, untouched by years, he's laughing.
Properly laughing. His head tipped back. His eyes squeezed shut.
I . . . I'm not looking at the camera. I'm looking at him. Entirely. There is something written across my face that eighteen-year-old me never would've admitted. Adult me recognises it instantly.
Love.
Quiet.
Uncomplicated.
Already there long before I found the courage to call it by its name.
Something twists painfully beneath my ribs.
For one impossible second . . . I wish I'd never boarded that train.
I wish I'd stayed. I wish there were another version of my life.
One where those seven years simply . . .
Never happened. Where I never learned how lonely survival could become.
Where I never had to discover how much of myself could disappear simply trying to make it through another day.
The thought barely forms before guilt crashes into it so hard I almost flinch.
Because that version doesn't have Sara. It can't. There is no life where I erase those years without erasing her too.
No version where I somehow keep the greatest blessing of my life while removing the road that led me to her.
They're tangled together forever. The worst thing that ever happened to me. The best thing that ever happened to me. The same story. The same thread.
I look at my daughter.
She's laughing so hard over the pigeon story that tears have gathered in the corners of her eyes. She's tucked comfortably against Yuvaan, completely unaware that her mother is quietly falling apart beside her.
And I know. With absolute certainty. I'd choose her again.
Every single time. If someone offered me the chance to rewrite my life .
. . To erase those seven years completely .
. . But asked me to give up her smile in return .
. . I couldn't. I wouldn't. The only thing I wish I could rewrite was that Sara’s father be Yuvaan .
. . in every sense he is right now . . . but biologically too.
But I'd walk every painful mile of that road again if she was waiting at the end of it. And yet . . . The question still comes.
The same question that visits me on quiet nights when sleep refuses to arrive.
At what cost? What exactly did surviving that year take away from me? Could there have been another path? Another version. One where I still reached her . . . Without first having to lose so much of myself.
There has never been an answer.
Maybe there never will be. I've stopped trying to solve it. Some questions aren't puzzles.
They're weather. You don't fight them. You simply wait for them to pass. I draw in a slow breath. When I lift my head . . . Yuvaan is already looking at me.
His expression doesn't change. He doesn't ask what's wrong.
He doesn't interrupt the silence by trying to fix something he doesn't yet understand.
He simply looks at me with that same quiet steadiness that's becoming so familiar.
Like he's seen something flicker across my face.
Not enough to know the story. Enough to know there is one. Our eyes hold for a long moment.
No words. None are needed. Then Sara claps both hands together. "Next page!" The spell breaks. Yuvaan smiles softly before turning another page. The moment slips away as quietly as it arrived.
Not gone.
Just . . . Folded carefully back into my heart.
Waiting for the day I'm finally brave enough to place the whole story into his hands.