ABHIMAAN FF-AGAR TUM SATH HO.

ANCHORED IN LOVE !!

Armaan sat in the quiet of his thoughts, the ticking of the clock on the wall his only company. Abhira had left for the client meeting, handling a case that had required all her focus, leaving him alone in the silence of the house.

His family’s recent accusations still echoed in his mind, each word a weight pulling him deeper into a well of frustration and pain. He had been the perfect son, the one who worked tirelessly for the family firm, yet here he was, isolated by the very people he had devoted his life to. Adding to his trouble was Dev Shekhawat.

Unable to sit still with the storm of thoughts raging inside him, he decided to do something, anything to take his mind off it.

"Might as well clean up a bit," he muttered to himself, grabbing a cloth and starting to dust the living room.

As he worked his way through the shelves and tables, his eyes fell on an old wooden drawer tucked away in a corner he hadn't really noticed before.

Curious, he pulled the drawer open, revealing a tattered sketchbook, its edges yellowed with age. The leather cover was soft from years of handling, and something about it tugged at the corners of his memory. As he flipped it open, his breath hitched. The first page was a delicate sketch of a woman holding a baby, her eyes soft with love, cradling the child close to her chest. The baby’s small hand reached out, as if grasping at her warmth. Beneath the sketch, in the lower right corner, were the initials “S & A.”

He frowned, flipping through more pages, each one more tender and full of life. Sketches of the same baby in different poses—sleeping, giggling, being bathed by the mother—filled the pages. The tenderness, the care, the affection in every stroke of the pencil made his chest tighten. His heart pounded, and he traced his fingers over the initials again.

S & A.

Suddenly, a flicker of a memory bloomed in his mind like a faint light in the darkness.

His mother.

He had a faint memory of her sitting with him on the floor of their old house, drawing, sketching, and painting random things while he scribbled next to her. He could almost hear her laughter, her voice calling him her little artist as they sketched side by side. She loved sketching. Yes, she did.

His knees buckled, and he sank to the floor, the sketchbook slipping from his hands. He remembered now. His mother had been fond of sketching, and those initials— S & A—they were their's, Shivani & Armaan, his mother and Him. She had always signed her sketches that way. These were her works, pieces of her soul she had left behind, and all this time, he hadn’t even known they existed.

Armaan’s chest heaved as the dam of emotions broke open, memories flooding his mind. She had sketched him, her baby, immortalizing those precious moments of his childhood. And here they were, hidden in a forgotten drawer, as though waiting for him to rediscover them. He hadn’t thought of his mother’s art in years, burying the memory deep in his heart after her death.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he pulled the sketchbook closer, his fingers tracing the image of the mother holding her child. His breath caught as his fingers caressed the mother’s face, almost as if he could feel her touch through the paper. His lips quivered, and a single tear slipped down his cheek, falling directly on the “S & A” mark, smudging the ink slightly.

“Mumma…” The word escaped his mouth in a broken sob, raw and full of longing. It was as though the years of holding it all in had finally come crashing down. The house, usually full of Abhira’s warmth and laughter, felt empty, echoing with the memories of a mother he had lost too soon.

He felt a deep ache in his chest, and before he realized it, he was gathering all the old sketchbooks, the albums, the letters, everything that had been stuffed away in that drawer. His hands shook as he cradled them in his arms, his heart racing with a mixture of sorrow and bittersweet joy. These were his mother's memories, her legacy.