Mira had made peace with quiet.
After a year of watching her marriage dissolve into polite detachment and moving into a one-bedroom rental with chipped paint and thin walls, silence felt like a friend. A predictable one.
She taught literature at a local college, ate dinner alone, folded laundry on Sundays, and sometimes imagined her old life as something that had happened to someone else.
One Friday evening, as the sun melted into the horizon outside her window, Mira made tea and curled up on the couch. She was halfway through grading essays when her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Normally, she would’ve ignored it. But something made her open it.
“You don’t know me. But I think I know who your mother was.”
Mira froze.
Her mother, Reema Sood, had died twenty-four years ago. Car accident. Mira had been just five. Her father never spoke of her. There were no photos in the house. Just the official story, and the silence that wrapped it like plastic.
Heart hammering, Mira replied:
“Who is this?”
No response.
________________________________________
She didn’t sleep that night.
In the morning, the sender replied. “My name is Arjun. I’m in Manali. She stayed with my family for three years when I was a child. Her name wasn’t Reema then.”
Was this a prank?
She checked the number. Himachal Pradesh.
Her mind flooded with a thousand questions, but only one made it out:
“Are you sure?”
This time, a photo came through. Faded, scanned. A woman with a warm smile, arms wrapped around two children. The woman had Mira’s eyes.
Underneath, a date: 1996. A full year after her mother was supposed to have died.
________________________________________
Mira stood at the edge of her small kitchen; phone clutched like it could burn her. She called her father.
“Why are you asking about this?” he said sharply. “She died. You know that.”
“Did she?”
Silence. Long and suffocating.
“She left us,” he said eventually. “She was unwell. I said she died so you’d stop asking.”
“You lied?”
“She wanted to disappear. I let her. For your sake.”
Mira hung up.
On Tuesday, she filed for a week of leave.
By Friday, she was on a bus winding through the Himalayan hills. Her hands trembled with a mix of anticipation and fear. What if this Arjun was mistaken? Or worse telling the truth?
She reached Manali at dawn. Arjun met her at a small teahouse. He was in his late 30s, with sharp eyes and a hesitant smile.
“You look like her,” he said.
They walked to his childhood home, now a guesthouse. His mother, Mrs. D’Souza, waited by the door.
“She called herself Asha,” the old woman said. “She came with a bruised heart and a small suitcase.”
Mira listened, mouth dry.
“She used to talk in her sleep. About a little girl. A daughter. But she never said much. I thought maybe she lost you.”
“She left me,” Mira whispered.
“No,” the woman said gently. “She ran. That’s different.”
They showed her old notebooks—sketches, poems, even a short story about a girl named Meera with eyes like winter rain. Mira read each word like it might unlock something in her own memory.
“She left one box,” Arjun said. “She made me promise not to open it. She said maybe someone would come for it one day.”
The box was wrapped in yellow cloth and tied with red string.
Mira held it for a long time before opening it.
Inside:
• A silver bracelet with a tiny bell
• A drawing of a child in crayon
• A letter addressed: "To Mira, when you're ready."
Dear Mira,
If you're reading this, then you found me. Or at least the part of me I left behind. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to stay.
Life with your father became a cage. I didn’t know how to escape without shattering you, too. I thought disappearing was mercy. Maybe I was wrong.
Every day, I missed your voice. Every year, I wondered if your hair had grown longer, if you still hummed in your sleep.
I left pieces of myself here, hoping you’d come looking someday. Because even if I left that life—I never stopped being your mother.
Love always,
Asha / Reema / Mom
Mira sat with the letter pressed against her chest. She didn’t cry. Not yet. She felt hollow and whole at once.
Later that night, she walked alone beneath the pine trees, cool air curling around her like smoke. She thought of the name Asha—Hope.
Her mother hadn’t been a ghost. She’d been a woman trying to be reborn.
Back in the city, everything looked different.
She moved her mother’s letter into a glass frame and placed it beside her desk. She changed her nameplate at work from Mira Sood to Mira Asha Sood.
She began painting again, something she hadn’t done since school. Bright, chaotic strokes of color. Each canvas a dialogue with a mother who wasn’t entirely gone.
She didn’t contact her father again. Not yet.
But sometimes, she drafted letters to him in her journal. Unsent, but honest.
A month later, she got another message from Arjun.
“We found another notebook. It’s full of lullabies. One has your name.”
She smiled. Saved it.
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