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‘Show me your face,’ Surya Aunty said fondly as she leaned back and held Koyal’s face in her hands. ‘Gosh,’ she gushed. ‘You look beautiful.’
Koyal stared at Surya Aunty. Lined, a bit tired, still beautiful and very familiar. God, so familiar. Her face, as she had feared, reminded her of Ma. And that was when the tears started to flow. A moment later, she had again wrapped her arms around Surya Aunty and was sobbing inconsolably.
‘Shh,’ whispered Surya Aunty, tears flowing unabated down her cheeks too. ‘Shh, my darling, shhhh.’
But Koyal, try as she might, couldn’t stop crying. Everything about this woman reminded her of her mother. Koyal had been looking for Ma everywhere. In the whisper of leaves, in the sounds of the river, in the fragrance of flowers, to no avail. Ma was her first home, her first friend, her first love, she was her everything. And now she was no longer there.
Hugging Surya Aunty felt like she was touching a bit of the Ma she had lost to the ether of the universe. And her soul rejoiced and sang.
‘Koyal?’
‘Surya Aunty?’ Koyal replied, grinning through her tears. Surya Aunty grinned back.
‘After all these years.’
‘After all these years,’ Koyal repeated, nodding her head, her eyes boring into Surya Aunty. The two women stared at each other, thinking of all that had happened.
‘Come on in,’ Surya Aunty said quietly, with a smal
l smile, discreetly wiping off a tear.
Koyal stepped in gingerly, painfully aware that she was now in Atharv’s house. She wondered how, when she had spent the last decade hating Atharv, she had let this happen.
Suddenly, Koyal looked up and stilled.
A huge six feet by six feet portrait of a familiar face smiled at her from a large wall leading off from the reception room into the living room.
For the millisecond it took Koyal to recognize the face, Koyal was taken aback by the beauty and goodness that emanated from the portrait.
The face of an angel, as pure and innocent as a fairy, she thought, and then realized it was a framed black-and-white photograph of the woman she had hated with all her heart for the last ten years.
Nili.
And in that one moment, it hit her.
She had to, just had to, forget Nili. No, not forget – harder still, she had to forgive.
A little voice, a voice that often reasoned with her, a voice that sounded a lot like Ma’s now, spoke up. What did she do, Koyal?
‘She did something that I would never ever do, not even to the person I hate the most, Koyal fumed silently.
You are not Nili. By not forgiving her, can you change the past? the voice asked.
No.
But by forgiving her, you can change the future, the voice said wisely and Koyal took a deep breath.
Silence and then the voice spoke to her again. There is good in the worst of us and there is evil in the best of us. Pretend she is apologizing to you.
What?
Yes, pretend she is apologizing to you and accept her apology, the little voice in her head said determinedly. She is saying sorry to you, for she didn’t know that what she was doing would break your heart, spirit and soul. She could have been gentler, dealt with this differently, been kinder, and she is sorry. She forgot to be kind for a bit, that is all.
Forgot to be kind.
Forgiving is being kind too, the voice continued. Be kind to her, even if she wasn’t to you.
Koyal stayed silent and stared at the photograph, feeling an odd kind of calm descend upon her.
