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meera's pov

The morning light filtered in softly through the half-open window, painting golden shapes on the floor as the breeze swayed the thin white curtain gently. I stood at the threshold, my hand resting lightly on the wooden doorframe, watching his retreating figure.

Gora Sahib had left for work. His back was straight, steps brisk, boots stirring up the soft dust of the courtyard. 

Once the sound of his footsteps faded down the road, silence took its place—an emptiness that settled inside the house like smoke, invisible and choking. I closed the door slowly, feeling the weight of the day ahead press against my shoulders. The wooden bolt slid into place with a soft click, and that was it. The outside world disappeared.

I was alone.

Truly, deeply, terrifyingly alone.

My bare feet brushed the cool floor as I walked back inside, each step echoing louder than necessary. There was no one else in the house.

 No voices. No movement.

 Just the quiet rustle of the neem tree outside, the occasional chirp of a distant bird, and the thoughts inside my head that had started long before the sun rose.

What am I supposed to do now?

It had been three days. Three long days since that budha zamindar sorry that so called husband died. Three days since the pyre. Three days since the screaming stopped. Since the whispers began. Since my identity—wife, daughter-in-law, woman—was stripped away and replaced with just one word:

Widow.

I don't know how to describe this silence, but it isn't peace. It's not even grief anymore. It's something deeper. A gnawing, aching hollowness that sinks into your bones and makes you question the very ground you stand on.

My parents... they love me. Of course they do. Ma loves me but never shows me . Baba would bring sweets from the temple wherever he go there for me and my bother .

I know Ma and Baba love me. I know it like I know how to breathe. But love isn't always enough—not in this world. After a husband's death, a woman cannot return to her parents. They won't say it aloud, but their eyes would. I've seen those eyes before—on a neighbor, a cousin, a stranger.

'Suhagan jaaye toh ghar hota hai, vidwa jaaye toh bojh.' (If a married daughter returns, she brings joy; if a widow returns, she brings shame.)

I know. I've seen it.

A widow cannot return to her father's home. No matter how much love there is, she brings shame with her. She becomes a weight. A whisper. A cautionary tale.

That's what I am now. A burden.

I pressed my fingers against my temple, trying to quiet the noise within. But it wouldn't stop. The questions kept growing.

If not there, then where?

Do I even have a place left in this world?

A flicker of panic rose in my chest. My breaths came shorter, tighter. I stood up suddenly, The motion startled even me.

I walked into the tiny kitchen area. Not to cook—who was there to feed? Just to move. To feel like I was still human. Still capable of action.

i think they will come

The villagers.

They will come to take me away on the name of traditions.

I know it. I can feel it in the weight of each morning. In the silence that stretches longer with each hour. They will come again. Maybe not with fire this time. But with words. With rules. With expectations.

And who will stop them?

He saved me once. Gora Sahib. When they tried to push me toward the fire. He stopped them. He threatened them in that calm, sharp voice. They stepped back. But for how long?

He is not always here.

He cannot always protect me.

I cannot expect that of him.

And even if he did—how long would it last? What would people say?i know villagers has already started questioning on me, like

"She's living under a British officer's roof."

"What is their relation?"

I cannot stay.

I cannot live here.

(I am a burden.)

I cannot repay him for saving my life, but I can leave. That would be repayment enough. To not become his problem. To not taint his name with mine.

My legs carried me to the small storage chest. I opened it, slowly, reverently. Inside were my things—what little was left of the life I knew. A blouse. A shawl.

I'd heard of places. Ashrams and Temples in distant towns. Places where widows lived in , away from the world. No one judged them there. No one asked who they were.

Maybe that's where I belong now.

Maybe that's the only place left.I imagined it. Waking up to the sound of temple bells. Washing my hands in the river. Living in a corner without a name, without questions, without anyone expecting anything from me.

It sounded like exile.

But it also sounded like freedom.

The thought gave me strength. Just enough to fold the blouse. Wrap the shawl. But then, as I stood there, clutching that tiny bundle to my chest, the fear returned.

How will I go?

I don't know the way.

I cannot read.

I don't know which road, which direction. I don't even know how to ask.And if someone stops me? If someone demands to know who I am, where I'm going?

Who am I now?

Nameless.Rootless.

I sank to the floor.

I buried my face in my hands, the sob breaking free from somewhere deep. Not the sob of grief—but of helplessness. Of being alive when you don't know how to live anymore.

All I want is to disappear.

Not to die.

Just to... vanish.

Fade into the world like I was never here.

But even that, it seems, is not in my control.

The world outside continues.

And I sit here, waiting for something I cannot name.

Waiting for the silence to end.Hours passed. The shadows on the floor shifted their place as the sun moved higher, but inside me, time remained still. I didn't eat. I didn't move from that spot on the floor. I just sat—listening.

To nothing. To everything.

i tried to imagine the journey. The road to ... where? Banaras? Vrindavan? Some temple town?or near town

What if I reached and they didn't accept me? What if they looked at my face and said—we have too many like you already? What if they sent me away?

Even widowhood had rules. Even exile had conditions.I couldn't stop the tears that slipped from my eyes again. I hadn't known it was possible to cry so much without running out. I kept wiping them away with the edge of my saree, but they kept coming. Slow. Silent. As if my soul was trying to drain itself from my body.I thought of my ma again. Her face when she saw me during the last festival before I was married.

Now they'd never say that.

Now I am the shadow.

And even if they wanted to welcome me back, society would never allow it. The neighbors would speak. The relatives would question. The other daughters' rishtas would be threatened. And in the end, they would make a choice.

To shut the door on me.I understood. I truly did.

But that didn't make it hurt any less.

Another wave of thoughts came crashing over me— Would they drag me out and finish what they started?

I clutched my knees tighter.

I didn't want to live like this—waiting every day for someone to claim my life again, to decide my fate. I didn't want to survive simply because of the presence of a foreign officer in this house.What kind of life is that?

Even birds choose trees to nest in. But I have no tree. No branch. No sky.

I forced myself to stand again. My legs had gone numb from sitting too long. They trembled under me like a child taking first steps. I went to the pitcher and poured a little water into the brass tumbler, my fingers shaking.

The water was cool, but it didn't quench anything inside me. My throat still burned. My chest still ached. My mind... was a storm.

But I was still hollow.And then... something strange happened.

A small bird flew in through the window.

It hopped once, twice, across the floor. Peered at me. Then flapped again and perched near the door. It looked around, chirped, and flew out.Such freedom. Such ease.

I smiled.

And then I cried harder.

Because I was jealous of a bird.

I went to the mirror. The one near the back wall. I don't know why. I hadn't looked at myself in days.

My reflection startled me.

Gaunt face. Hollow eyes. Hair falling loosely around my shoulders. I looked like someone who had drifted out of a funeral and never returned.

i touched my face, then my hair.

They had tried to cut it.

I had screamed, fought, clawed. And then Gora Sahib's voice had thundered through the courtyard, stopping them all.

The silence in the room was not cruel like the one back at my husband's house. This one... it wrapped around me like an unfamiliar shawl—neither warm nor cold—just strange. Strange because it didn't carry the weight of taunts, of sharp commands, of distant wails from the courtyard.

I sat near the low wooden bed, my back pressed against the wall, knees to my chest. The floor beneath me was clean, polished, even fragrant in a way I didn't understand. Nothing here screamed for my pain. Nothing reminded me of the blood, the burning wood, the widow's scream I once thought was my own.

And yet... my body refused to believe I was safe.they tried to harm me but now

Now... I won't hold onto their memories anymore.

I wasn't going to remember them. I wasn't going to cry for them. Not now. Not ever again.

if they dont care about me then why to cry over them'

I'll stay here. 

But even as I whispered that, my eyes flickered to the heavy wooden door across the room—the one he had stepped out from.

Gora Sahib.

He had not returned since leaving a while ago. The house felt too big without him, too quiet. And yet, every knock of the wind on the windows startled me. Every creak in the wood made my heart jump.

I had grown up hearing tales of British cruelty—soldiers dragging men from their huts, beating them till their bones cracked, demanding taxes they could never pay. I had seen them too—white men on tall horses, shouting orders that turned strong men into trembling leaves.

And now I was in one of their homes... alone.A sick, curling fear started to take root in my stomach again.

"Woh bhi toh angrez hai... kya pata... agar woh bhi wahi kare jo doosre karte hain?"

(He is British too... what if he does the same as the others?)

My arms tightened around my legs.

What if this silence was just the beginning of something worse? What if this comfort was a lie? What if tomorrow, I'd be treated not as a guest, but a prisoner?

No, no, stop thinking like that, Meera.

But I couldn't help it.

I remembered how my feet had stumbled across his threshold, bloody and numb, and how he hadn't said a word in anger. He had wrapped me in a shawl. He had placed warm water near me. He had spoken... gently.

And not once—not even once—had he looked at me like I was something to pity or something to touch.

He had only looked... concerned.

"Par... kyu?"(But... why?)

I looked around again. There were books stacked neatly on the nearby shelf. The chair beside the window had a long coat draped over it. The air didn't smell of smoke or liquor or sweat. It smelled of ink, paper... cinnamon?

The strangeness of the place crawled deeper into my bones.I wasn't used to this... absence of pain.

You've seen gora saheb . Since the moment you came, he has done nothing but help.

So why is your heart still trembling like a cornered animal?

Because kindness was foreign to me.

Because I didn't know how to believe that someone could offer help... and not ask for anything in return.

I lowered my head to my knees, eyes stinging.

Maybe he was different. Or maybe I was too broken to see clearly.

The small lamp on the table flickered once and then steadied.

Outside, I could hear the distant howl of a jackal. The village felt far away—too far to touch me, and yet its taunts still whispered in my ears.I curled tighter.

They would never let me live peacefully. And now... now I didn't belong anywhere. Not to the dead. Not to the living. Not to the village. Not to the sahib.

I was a name without a place.

A woman without a world.

But still... I wanted to believe.

I wanted to believe that this house... this place... this stranger might be the beginning of something that didn't end in flames.

My body had grown heavy—too heavy for my bones. The cold from the floor seeped through the thin cloth of my saree, but I didn't move. I had sat like this many times before—in corners, in kitchens, near the smoke-choked chulha—but tonight it felt different.

This corner did not smell of oil or ash. It was clean. Silent. Still.

But silence too can scream.

My hands were trembling as I placed them flat on the floor, as if grounding myself in something real. This house was real. The walls did not echo with the sound of slap or scorn. The air did not hum with rage. Still, my heart... refused to rest.

Sleep had not come to me in days. Not after what they tried to do. Not after I saw the fire, the ropes, the priest chanting louder than my screams.And yet...

Here, in this corner, under this lamp's soft glow, my eyes began to grow heavier.

The warmth from the shawl he had placed around me still clung to my shoulders. I held it close, clutching it as if it could protect me from the ghosts still haunting my skin.

"You're still alive.," I whispered to myself, breath shallow.

A breath in. A breath out.

I shifted slowly, not daring to lie on the bed—not even daring to touch it. That bed wasn't mine. That space wasn't mine. I was just a shadow inside someone else's world.

So I laid myself down on the cold floor instead, wrapping the shawl tighter, like a cocoon against all that I had survived.

My cheek touched the stone floor. Hard. But real.

It didn't hurt as much as the lies I had lived with.

I blinked slowly. Once. Twice. My eyelashes were wet, but the tears no longer burned.

Somewhere, far in the back of my mind, I wondered—where was he now?The man they called the surveyor. The British officer. Gora Sahib.
I didn't understand him.

"Woh alag hai kya?"

(Is he different?)No answers came.

Only the weight of sleep began to press against my shoulders. Gentle at first. Then deeper.

I hadn't meant to fall asleep.But my body had decided long before I gave it permission.

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Hope you all enjoyed today's chapter!  ,i know this part was boring 🥲🤍 The next part will be updated tomorrow as it's still unedited. 

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