Page 8 of Scars and Crowns

Seven years ago I walked away from this estate believing I'd never return except as a guest. I can still remember the weight of my duffel bag digging into my shoulder as I slipped out through the back gate.

I was nineteen.

Certain. Certain that life was waiting for me somewhere beyond these walls. Certain that hard work would be enough. Certain that dreams only needed time.

I had plans. It always revolved around books though, sometimes I wished to have my own publishing house, sometimes it was a bookstore and on rare occasions I thought I could become an author.

I'd imagined Maa standing there, smiling after I had made it.

My daughter did it.

I wanted that sentence more than I wanted success itself. I'd spent my entire childhood watching her scrub someone else's floors until her knees refused to cooperate. Watching winter split the skin on her hands because good soap was an unnecessary luxury. Watching her apologise for being tired.

I promised myself that cycle would end with me. And somewhere beneath all those dreams—buried so deep I barely admitted it to myself—there had always been another reason.

I wanted to become someone who could stand beside him without people lowering their voices. Someone who didn't look like the housekeeper's daughter pretending she belonged inside a palace. Someone he would never have to explain.

Instead . . . Life happened.

Mumbai took everything I thought I knew about certainty and quietly proved me wrong. Now, seven years later, I'm standing in the very same estate, tying the strings of a coarse grey apron behind my back.

Not as a visitor. Not as someone who made it.

As kitchen staff.

Sara is colouring quietly in a room barely bigger than a storage cupboard. And she is the best thing that has ever happened to me. There isn't a single part of me that doubts that.

But sometimes—only for the briefest moment—grief slips in beside gratitude.

She didn't choose any of this. She didn't ask to be born into the ruins of dreams that collapsed long before she could understand what dreams even were.

She arrived . . . and simply became the reason I kept going. Some days loving her feels like the only uncomplicated thing left in my life. Some days it doesn’t.

I tighten the apron strings. One deep breath. Stay quiet. Stay invisible. Do your work. Go back to Sara. Repeat. There is absolutely no reason for the Maharaja of Devgarh to notice another kitchen maid.

Even if we happen to cross paths somewhere in these endless corridors . . . he won't recognise me.

How could he?

I've changed.

Motherhood softened my body in places that never quite returned to what they were before. The dark hair he used to tease me about is gone, replaced by a dull brown shade I paid too much money for in a tiny Mumbai salon because I wanted to disappear.

Forgettable.

That was the goal.

Forgettable women are left alone.

The girl who laughed too loudly . . . Ran too fast . . . Argued too much . . . The girl who dragged him into trouble every other week . . . I buried her somewhere between hospital corridors and rejection emails.

Sometimes, when I look into the mirror first thing in the morning . . . Even I can't find her anymore.

And yet . . . God, this is the part I'm almost ashamed of.

The part I wouldn't confess even to my own self—a tiny, foolish part of me still hopes.

Not that he'll remember everything. Not even that he'll speak to me.