Winner of Wattpad India Awards 2020 (Judge's Choice) in the New Adult category.
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"The lights are cheeky, you can't live without them, and yet if you get too close, they'll blind you. Darkness? Well it doesn't cheat. It's cool and soothing. It's r...
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She was wrong.
Only Kamal was sitting at the dining table when the clock struck nine. Champa had taken Suman and her daughters' tray to their room. Madhu worked hard on concentrating on nothing but the bland taste of roti-lauki prepared without garlic and onions, finishing her meal in five minutes flat and rushing back to sculpt.
She stayed up till one, retiring to bed only when it became clear he would not be back before morning.
Out as soon as her head hit the pillow, Madhu woke up at the crack of dawn with a constricting uneasiness expanding in her chest. She tried to distance the hazy memory of her dream from the mid-second panic it had left her with. Though she couldn't remember what her subconscious had showed her in the handful of hours of sleep she enjoyed, she felt as if she'd missed several steps while walking down an endless staircase.
Registering the aggressive chirping of birds, which was the reason she had woken up so early, Madhu went about her morning routine.
By now it had settled with her that maybe both of them underestimated how far Raju had managed to go. Two, possibly three hours separated the time of him taking off and Nakul going after him. He could be anywhere.
She repeated that in her head while putting her weight over the handpump to push water out, while carrying that bucket to the bathroom, while pouring that water over her head. She repeated that in her head while wrapping a blue cotton sari from her Ma's collection around herself, while shoving down a breakfast of cut up apples down her throat—the most she could do when Champa was still asleep at six in the morning—and while showing up at the Banyan tree outside Brigesh Babu's house, nearly an hour before their decided time of meeting at seven thirty. It was a small wait for she soon saw Sunanda and her three nephews approaching her.
"He isn't back yet?"
"He isn't back yet."
Sunanda didn't reply to that, maybe because she couldn't say much in front of the kids. Instead they walked to the school in silence, passing the people setting up shop in the bazaar and occasionally waving at familiar faces.
Giving board examinations three months after her mother's death had taught Madhu the art of compartmentalising emotions. Subsequent years of backstabbing her best friend while simultaneously building a business from her cramped desk at her father's office had honed that skill. So, going about the motions of teaching basic arithmetic to a class of seventy children proved to be just the distraction she needed. For the first time since waking up, she could feel her stomach uncoiling.
It was only when the five of them were alone in the makeshift one-roomed school, having wrapped up classes and rehearsals in time for lunch, that Sunanda turned to her.
"I need to drop the kids off before Papaji notices they're not at home."
"Brigesh Babu doesn't know they're participating in the Ramlila?"
