अन्तः अस्ति प्रारंभः।
The end is the beginning.
A caterpillar dies, to birth a butterfly. Water evaporates to rain down. Dead carcasses fill the stomachs of vultures.Life gives way to death and death to life. In a vicious circle of different karmas...
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"We must leave, please!"
Mihira pleaded with the people she had come to consider her guardians, if not parents.
She knew how Lakshita had a serious love for earrings but hated bangles because of their noise. Knew how she hated any weight on herself and often pushed off both her husband and her daughter off when they hugged her too long. Knew she had an acquired taste for even the most absurd things as long as they were sour and had a bad habit of eavesdropping, like every Indian mother Mihira had met.
Mihira also knew Atharva, perhaps better than she knew Lakshita. The man was an open book, ironically. He loved his rudraksha armbands more than anything, had a taste for only neutral colours, was a perfectionist. He hated anything that was not symmetrical. He did horrible embroidery on one of his shawls as a coping mechanism to deal with the stress of being a doctor.
And, perhaps even when she did not want to believe it, Mihira had known what the answer to her pleads would be.
Parental figures —Vitthal Rakhumai, her parents, her uncle and aunt, and now Atharva and Lakshita— had never adhered to her wishes and pleads before, after all.
Atharva shook his head silently and sighed before saying,"We cannot leave, Mihira. This is our motherland. We have some responsibilities towards it, my child."
"Have you no survival instincts, Father?" Mihira frowned at the man and stopped writing on the palm leaf she was noting the known wrongdoings of the King. "Your motherland will see you dead if we live here!"
Lakshita swatted Mihira's arm in warning, shaking her head minutely. She admonished her daughter,"Do not talk to your father like that, Mihira. Is this what we've taught you?"
Mihira sighed in frustration but paddled back instantly. "I'm sorry, but trust me, the things happening in this state has gone long past the borders of adharma and now is entering inhumane levels of cruelty. Please, we cannot live like this."
Atharva sighed and ran a hand down his worn face in resignation. "Mihira," he said through clenched teeth,"We cannot leave this place forever. This is where we were born, met and wed, where you were born. You do not leave a mother behind in shackles."
His voice turned firm at the end, almost challenging Mihira to protest his words. However, Mihira knew self preservation and survival all too well to back down and she had seen her own family destroyed one too many times to take amature risks again because of something as fickle as sentiments.
She urged,"Listen to me, please. What does land matter when we no longer exist to make it our mother? When our Dharma is abolished, what does land matter?" The question had been one she had asked before and in reply, the same withering glare was placed upon her. She continued nonetheless,"Today they forced a priest to defy his own Dharma. What is the assurance that it won't happen to any of us?"
