But she remains standing

Setting the bed, Swara watched the father daughter duo. They were playing ludo and giggling like silly. Prisha caught her daddy cheating and jumped on him tickling. And Sanskaar was wholly on the mercy of six year old terror. Their gleeful laughter rang out in the house curving her lips upward.

Though it was a sight for sore eyes, it was not always this way. She and Prisha had gone through lots of ups and downs, a terrible time and bucket loads of tears to be here. It had started seven years back.

She had been madly in love with him. And he too. At least she thought he loved her too. She had worshipped the very ground he walked on. He belonged to rich family and was devastatingly handsome. And she was the daughter of no one significant. But when he turned his eyes on her, she was the one everyone felt jealous of. She tried to keep level head and pay no heed to him. And he was stubborn. Soon enough he had swept her off of her feet and she was madly in love. They were happily in love for almost a year.

Until she caught him cheating on her. With her own half-sister. Her Laksh had cheated on her with Ragini. She was broken. Instead of confronting them on the spot where she caught them red-handed, she drove her scooty away in the pain of betrayal. Her eyes were so blurry due to tears that she saw neither the bridge nor the lorry. She met with accident and was thrown into the January chilled lake. Luckily the aging lorry driver was compassionate one and instead of running away called for help.

Her hypothermic and dying body was immediately pulled out of the water and carted off to hospital. There she started her long journey of recovery. She had broken several bones when she had collided with lake bed and metal scrapes of her scooty had tore through her muscles. He was in ICU for a week where she did overcome a looming death. She was coherent after another week thats when saw him with fake worry plastered all over his face. Medicine induced brain, hurt from betrayal and pain from accident had made her all fuzzy. With an epic showdown she threw 'The Laksh Maheswari' out of his own charity hospital room.

She had been out of hospital in two months time. Her mother had been rock in that situation and Sharmistha Bose stood beside her child. Everything had started getting back on track when another thing hit her.

She was pregnant.

She had cried all day. She had trusted him. And let him claim her. He had made false promises. She had slipped once in judging a person and she was going to pay for it whole life. Apparently the foetus had survived her accident and everyone blamed medicine for her irregular periods in first trimester. Now she was paying for her idiocy. Though initially she was scared of her mother's possible reaction, she had told her predicament to her. Sharmistha was a little upset with her carelessness but she still stood as her mother.

Her father had tried to get her to abort the child and she had been ready at first. But in that first ultrasound her steps faltered. She found the beauty in that soft heartbeat of her child. Beauty even in this cacophony. That medical monitor had showed her the beauty of creation. Then and right there, she decided against abortion. Her father had been furious, and like always when the chips were down, he abandoned her. Her mother had huge fight over that with her spineless and selfish father. Sharmistha Bose had had enough and divorced him. She and her mother kept house they had inherited from Dida and threw the man out.

Troubles had not been over. It had just started. The society did not take unmarried mothers well. A baby out of wedlock was a taboo. And that's how everyone treated her. Still she stood strong. Like her mother had. Afterall her baby had no one other than her.

Laksh came back like a storm and demanded she kill her unborn child. So that that illegitimate child would not soil his reputation. She defied him bravely. Ragini too tried to kill her child more than once. Be it trying to trip her in pavement or trying to overdose her on sleeping pills or set the live wire on her wet bathroom floor. She avoided the foeticide narrowly.