I breathed deeply as I made my way towards the bus stop. I wouldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable. Not now. Not because of a man. Sitting at the bus stop, I pulled my phone out of my bag and began to scroll through my notifications. A comment caught my eye: ‘You are so beautiful, I wish I had your life,’ it read. I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘If only you knew.’

2

ASHRAY

My alarm was set for two hours before I would normally wake up. When it went off, I rolled over; eyes closed, I swiped left, knowing that it would give me the extra ten minutes I needed to pull myself out of my deep sleep. I made a mental note to make sure the sound of the alarm going off wouldn’t get loud enough to wake my mother. I had told her the previous night, while I ironed my shirt, that it was not necessary to get up early with me. I knew she probably would anyway. Lying in bed now, I reflected on my life since I had come to live with her.

‘Akshita’ means permanent, and at the time that I came to live with her, I needed someone permanent and steadfast in my life. I was a baby when I was left on the steps of an orphanage in Mumbai. I never knew my parents or whoever it was who left me there; I was never allowed to grieve for the loss of my parents. I was an orphanage child, that was my life. In a cruel twist of fate, it turned out that I was a particularly soft child, one that needed a lot of love and attention. This was not readily available at the orphanage. There were too many of us, and all too often it was the older kids, the funnier kids or the more assertive ones that drew the attention of our caregivers.

I do not remember when Akshita came into my life, but she told me she used to visit the orphanage often from when I was very young. What I do remember is that she was beautiful; kind brown eyes followed me while I played, and we would often spend time together during her visits. She was widowed and visited the orphanage to fill her life with the love of children. We formed a bond which felt to me to be unbreakable. She soothed my childlike mind and brought out a light in me that I didn’t know existed. But every time she left, panic consumed me. A panic that gnawed at me, telling me that she would never come back. At that young age, I already felt things far too strongly. In the orphanage, those feelings were fear. Fear of the other children, fear of being hurt and taunted, and fear of never seeing the beautiful woman who showered me with love again.

She stayed true to her name though, and by the time I was five, she had adopted me, and Akshita was never to be called by her name again, at least not by me. She was now my Maa, and she was as attentive to my needs at home as she was in the orphanage. I always had a loving ear to speak to, with an abundance of advice being returned by her. Together we worked through my internal pain and fears. She was never impatient, instead always lovingly soothing me when the fear welled up inside me that she wouldn’t be standing at the school gates waiting for me at the end of the day.