Siddharth punched the thick wooden door and dimly registered the wave of pain that travelled up his arm. He exhaled and then punched the door again. He would definitely have bruises later. 

With fumbling hands, he dug into his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. He pushed open the window next to his bed and lit his cigarette, inhaling the nicotine in rapid succession. 

It failed to soothe him.

He lit another cigarette as echoes of his Tauji's requests mixed with flashes of his past in the Rajput household. The slamming of doors, the yelling, the accusations, the abuse, the neglect. The list of their collective grievances ran long in his head. 

His father was not even a factor here. The audacity and utter selfishness of that man astounded him to his core. How could he stand before Siddharth and ask him such a thing? 

How could he expect, in a million years, that he would be willing to do something like that for him? Especially after the reasons he stated for his request? 

His Tauji wanted him to represent his father, a man Siddharth despised the most in the world? 

He had carefully scrubbed away every last memory of his father from his brain. They had slowly started creeping back in this week. He had barely managed to keep them at bay, distracting himself with his work, with his music and Chetna. 

It was like a tidal wave and Siddharth felt himself getting swept in the current. 

***

"That boy needs to learn some respect!" Prithvi Rajput yelled from his bedroom, "How dare he question me, Yamini?"

Seven-year-old Siddharth hugged his knees as he cowered behind his bed in his own room where he could hear the sound of his father yelling and his mother begging him to keep his voice down. 

"I am a strong boy, I will not cry. I am a strong boy, I will not cry..." Siddharth kept repeating to himself as tears streamed down his face and sobs threatened to choke out at any moment. 

His heart dropped to his stomach when he heard the door of his room slam open and his father yelled out his name. 

Siddharth had never been more terrified. 

***

Thirteen-year-old Siddharth was finally happy. 

He had found something he loved doing. Music classes were quickly becoming his highlight of the week. He was good at the keyboard and the guitar. His teacher Ms Angela called him a 'natural talent'. She promised he could have vocal lessons along with the instruments from the next month. 

Siddharth felt such gratitude to his mother. She was the only one he could tell how much he hated going to Karate classes. He did not like the drills they made him do or the sparring for that matter. He was forced to go because his father had enrolled him. 

She had risked everything by lying to Siddharth's father and enrolling him in the music classes instead. She had even secretly bought him a guitar and drove him to and from his class. His father didn't have to know. 

If he somehow came to know Siddharth couldn't even imagine the hell he would raise. 

Which is why when he walked out of his music teacher's house clutching his guitar case, expecting to see his mother waiting for him, he paled and almost buckled on the ground with fear. 

His father stood in the distance leaning against the car talking on the phone. 

He wanted to run away but his father's gaze had him frozen in place. 

He motioned for him to get in the car and continued his phone conversation the whole ride home. Siddharth debated jumping out of the moving vehicle but he knew he just had to take whatever was coming his way. There just was no other way.

His first guitar was smashed to pieces right outside the gates of his house as soon as they pulled in. His cousins looked on in sympathy as his father dragged him inside by the collar of his shirt. Everyone was well acquainted with Prithvi Rajput's ways of disciplining his only son. 

This was just another day.

Siddharth did not touch another instrument till he was 16 and his father had long since died. 

***

Contrary to how his mother babied him, Siddharth was no longer a child. He could see the way his relatives treated his mother after his father's death. 

She was an untouchable pariah. 

Nobody would eat whatever she cooked in the kitchen, a constant onslaught of insults were directed her way whenever she came out of their room and she didn't have access to most amenities of the house. She had even been kicked out of her own room. 

Prithvi Rajput's room was to be preserved. The family clung on to this relic for months. His belongings were sacred which was why even his wife's presence was not tolerable. 

Siddharth's mother had immediately moved to his room and neither of them complained. They had both been conditioned to keep their mouths shut. 

Yamini had borne all of the taunts, humiliation and emotional abuse with the patience of a saint. He didn't understand why his mother didn't fight back? And why did she keep staying in this house?

His mother refused to even think of moving out of the house that held nothing but terrible memories for them. 

She stayed true to her resolve until the day that shattered it. 

It had been more than half a year since his father's last rites had been conducted. Things had settled down but not completely. Siddharth was somehow managing to keep up with his school as his tenth boards were approaching. 

He had been up late studying last night and he felt terrible the next morning. He hadn't had breakfast so his mother had saved him a parantha from the dining table as she often did. 

He refused to eat and it was soon apparent that something was wrong. His mother checked his temperature and discovered that he was running a temperature of 101 degrees. 

She immediately made him eat some cookies and then swallow a tablet she got out of the first aid box. His temperature fluctuated throughout the day but never dropped below a hundred. 

Late at night as his mother nursed him, Siddharth could feel his condition worsening. He sat up quickly, ran to the bathroom and dry heaved in the toilet. His body could not keep anything down. 

Yamini was a mess when she saw her son wasn't getting any better. She ran to the family's driver and frantically asked him to help carry Siddharth down the stairs and drive them to the hospital. 

Their driver, who had been a loyal employee of the family, informed her that he was under strict instructions to report to someone before he drove them anywhere. 

She rushed to her brother-in-law's room and knocked. Siddharth's Tauji and Taiji did not take kindly to being woken up in this manner but his mother quickly explained the situation and asked for their help. His Tauji heard what she said and then started walking towards Siddharth's room. 

Siddharth vaguely recalled the unfamiliar touch of his Tauji's bony hands as he felt his forehead. 

He then went back to his room and handed his mother a pack of Crocin.

"He just has a fever. Don't worry. Give him the medicine and go to sleep. We don't need to take him to a doctor." 

With this, he and his wife shut their door and went back to sleep. 

That was the last night they spent at the Rajput residence. Siddharth remembered his mother calling for a car service at night and getting him to the hospital all by herself. It turned out he had dengue fever. 

Siddharth spent three days at the hospital. 

His mother stayed with him most of the time but made simultaneous arrangements for their move. She rented a small flat for them and got help from her sister and her husband. Their belongings were in the new house by the same night and no one protested the move.  

Siddharth came back to a new home. 

He remembered his mother welcoming him to the new space and then hugging him. Her tears dampened his cotton t-shirt as she mumbled "Sorry," over and over again. He didn't even want to ask what she was apologizing for, he was quick to assure her she had nothing to be sorry about. 

That was the start of a new chapter in both their lives. One that was filled with happiness, contentment and respite from the awful people in their lives. 

It was Siddharth and Ma against the world. Nobody else mattered now.

***

Siddharth hadn't realized how much time had passed when the door beeped and his mother entered the room. 

She seemed to be in a hurry to get something but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her son sitting on the floor with a dazed expression on his face and glassy eyes. The smell of cigarette smoke permeated the room and ashes were scattered around the window. 

"Siddharth?" she called out his name. 

Her voice came out unsure and bewildered. 

She hadn't seen her son in this state in years. Something had happened to him. 

With quick steps, she approached him, knelt and shook him by the shoulder. He finally snapped out of whatever trance he had slipped in. 

"Ma," he said breathlessly. 

Then he engulfed her in a hug that shocked her even more. 

"Siddharth beta, what is it?" she begged. 

Her throat was clogged up with emotion. She couldn't stand seeing him this way. Especially when she didn't know why.

The hug lasted a few minutes. Both refused to let go of each other. 

When Siddharth finally pulled back there were tears in both their eyes. It was like the time they had moved into the new house all over again. When she had held her boy in her arms and apologized to him. He was the most important thing in her life. How could she have been foolish enough to endanger him? 

"Please just tell me what happened," she begged again. 

This time he nodded and stood up. They both settled on his bed and he turned to her,

"I want you to be a hundred per cent honest with me," he said gazing at his mother intensely. 

"Absolutely," she agreed, "whatever you need to know."

"Have you really forgiven them?"

Yamini took a long pause to reflect on her son's question. She knew she would have to answer this question sooner or later but how could she ever explain her rationale to her son? How could she ever justify her own actions to the innocent person who also suffered its consequences? 

"This may not be the answer you were expecting but I was never really angry at them for what they did." 

Siddharth was stunned by her admission. She continued, 

"This will not make sense to you because you are the rational, logical one. Unlike me at your age. My decisions were not dictated by merits or demerits. I jumped to conclusions and took snap decisions. My parents weren't attentive enough to correct my faults and I became the person I am today by learning through trial and error.

My decision to marry your father also was one of those things I did out of spite. My parents had let me live in their house till I was 18 and then they wanted me out of there, married and settled. The person I loved did not want to marry me then. He had dreams and aspirations of his own and I gave him an ultimatum. When he didn't choose me I resolved to move on and marry a better man. 

Your father's proposal came along and he seemed like everything a girl could ever want in life. Rich, successful, good looking, from a good family. We belonged to the same caste so that was all our families needed to approve."

Here she took a pause and looked at her son's reaction. He still had the same look of shock on his face. She had never talked about her relationship with her son. It had been years since she had talked out loud about him, her first love, to another person. 

"If I had left in the first year maybe I had a chance of being a completely different person. But I didn't have the courage to do that. It got easier and easier to just put up with the treatment I received because I had slowly convinced myself that I deserved it."

She was startled when Siddharth's hand reached to grip hers. 

"I believed it to be my penance. Everything that happened after that was just a consequence of what I had done. I had abandoned the only person I had ever loved and I had married your father whom I couldn't love. His family was right to shun me--"

Siddharth couldn't hear anymore.

"That is insane," he interjected passionately. 

"I know that now, Siddharth. I was blinded to how my ridiculous penance was affecting you. It took almost losing you for me to see how stupid I was being. I am sorry for what I put you through," she said and then burst into tears. 

Siddharth wrapped his arms around his mother and cradled her head in his arms and gently rubbed his hand down her back. 

"Ma, I said this to you almost ten years ago and I say it again. You have nothing to be sorry for. How can you blame yourself for the actions of others?" 

Once she had composed herself she gave her son a grateful smile. 

"We are all human, Siddharth. We are capable of being as cruel as we are of being compassionate. If you can understand my reasons then maybe try to understand that different people grieve differently. They may not understand what they did wrong but maybe we can understand why they did what they did." 

"Oh tauji was kind enough to explain in detail," he said. 

He then recapped briefly what had transpired between them both a while ago. His mother listened with rapt attention. 

"That is very... unexpected," she finally managed to say when he was done. 

"I don't know what to do, Ma. The way he talked... he said he wasn't here for forgiveness. How does he expect me to react?" 

"Siddharth your Tauji is a very haughty man. Never once in the years I spent at that house have I seen him display any emotion. I didn't even see him cry at your father's funeral. That was Sooraj Rajput's way of an apology. He bared his soul to you." 

Siddharth was annoyed at what his mother had said. Partly because deep down he knew she was right. 

That was indeed Sooraj Rajput's attempt at baring his soul. He knew the man enough to conclude that.

"You know that I am not going to force you to comply with his request. This is your decision." 

That seemed to be the question swirling in his head as he digested the information his mother revealed and the conversation he had had with Tauji. Should he accept his Tauji's lacking attempt at an apology or should he refuse him?  

"So what do you intend to do?" his mother asked.