She Lived Twice

6 || Can Jaipur Be the Answer?

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"Did you find anything else?" Rajesh asked.

Agent Bhavya Pratap Rathore was sitting across from him, with a file with the name, 'Anika M.' printed on it in typewrite.

The young but intelligent beauty with brains was hired for the case of unraveling the mystery of Mr. Maheshwari's eldest daughter, Anika. Bhavya had been a little hesitant to take the case at first, because she didn't want to be helping a father spy on his own daughter, but Rajesh assured her that whatever he was doing was for the benefit of Anika. "To give her an identity," he had said.

She looked through the files for the third time since they had been printed and faxed to her department.

"Anika seemed to have financial troubles when she was 21," Bhavya said, looking at the working records.

"What does that mean?"

"Anika worked in a college canteen when she was of age to actually attend college classes. And it seems that she was also working as a caterer and had her own event management branch. Three jobs starting at 21? It seems safe to conclude that Anika was not in a stable living situation.

"It says here that she lived with her adoptive brother and his aunt, Sundari Chaturvedi. It seems that Ms. Chaturvedi lives in Jaipur, today. Would you like for me to run an interrogation on her? I have a chopper that's leaving for Jaipur tonight itself, actually."

Rajesh nodded. "That would be great. Thank you, Agent Rathore."

"Of course, sir," Bhavya smiled as Rajesh stood up to leave.

When he was gone, she immediately dialed her supervisor and asked for permission to leave for Jaipur.

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Anika's eyebrows creased, a frown playing on her pretty lips. Of course, it was a beautiful day outside, and why anyone would want to sit inside and read a book with a look of disapproval etched on their face was beyond Nisha.

"Anika," she called for the umpteenth time, but her words fell on deaf ears, because Anika was too immersed in the land of dragon-slaying princes to say anything apart from, "Hm?"

"Anika," Nisha said, more firmly, and Anika looked up. If Nisha didn't know any better, she could have sworn she saw a look of annoyance flash across Anika's facial expressions, as though Nisha had committed some atrocity by interrupting her in the middle of her reading session. "Yes, Maa?" Anika asked, quickly recovering from her little display of pique.

She was 24, for goodness' sake, not a moody teenage girl anymore. "What, 'Yes, Maa?' It's such a beautiful day outside, why don't you go and enjoy yourself, rather than be cooped up in here with your nose buried in some book," Nisha reprimanded.

Nisha was never against books—no, that was far from the message she was trying to send. She just didn't want her daughter to while away in some corner of the house, secluded from the world. Anika had lost her memory, not her ability to re-enter the world and function like normal 24-year-old women do.

Anika's orphan help program was doing fantastic, and Anika came home from her weekly trips to the orphanage with a bright smile on her face, which eased Nisha's worry. But even Gauri could not keep Anika busy enough with exploring the city of Mumbai, and Anika was to be found all other days of the week, roaming around Maheshwari Villa, indulging herself in tedious tasks that any other young woman would be grateful to avoid.

Despite knowing Anika as her child for over a year, some of Anika's habits made Nisha stop in her tracks and scratch her head. Anika seemed like she had not much to do in life, and that made Nisha nervously paranoid. Yuvaan had once mentioned, jokingly, that Anika wasn't one who got out much, and he'd been extensively reprimanded by Rajesh after passing such a comment. However, he wasn't wrong to say that Anika needed excitement, thrill, a spotlight.

Nisha feared that Anika was turning into a background character in her own life. After closely inspecting Anika, Nisha could safely conclude that Anika had been quite the firecracker in her past. Extraordinarily bright, with the power to light up the house next door, if she all but cracked a smile.

The last thing Nisha wanted was to lose that lively Anika from the past. Even if Nisha never knew that Anika personally, she would absolutely hate herself if she let that Anika slip away into the blur of a new life where everything was already artificially perfect, and there was no reason to be loud or obnoxious.

Anika smiled at Nisha's worried voice. "Gauri can't always be at my beck and call, Maa. She has a life of her own," she said, knowing exactly where her mother was going with this. Nisha frowned. "Well, couldn't you go out by yourself or make some new friends?"

Anika sighed, tucking her bookmark into her book carefully and placing it to the side. She stood up to leave the room and get ready for the huge Mumbai awaiting her exploration, and was about to leave the room when Nisha tugged at her wrist. "Ani, I know you must be tired of me pestering you like this, but I just don't want you to miss out on anything in life. This accident, I see it only as a setback in your life, not as a roadblock." Nisha's voice was pleading, her eyes were big and watery, as she tried to justify her behavior. The last thing she'd ever want was for Anika to misinterpret her concern.

"I wasn't like this before, was I?" Anika asked, and Nisha looked up in confusion. "I must have always ached to be outside, to be with my friends. There must have been a time where you could never imagine me to sit still in the house all day long. Right?" 

Oh, how Nisha so desperately wished she knew. How desperately she wished she could tell Anika with a sense of sureness that, yes, Anika loved going outside before her accident. But no matter to all that. Anika needed assurance that this false reality was not false, and Nisha was the one who'd have to deliver the lie. 

Nisha smiled and nodded, though questions arose in her heart and she wanted answers. Answers which she planned to seek from her husband, when he returned from the office of Agent Rathore, who was going to search through the past so that Anika could be free of the web of lies which she had been trapped in. 

But then, another thought crossed Nisha's mind, as thoughts tend to do at the worst possible time. What would become of Anika's relationship with the Maheshwaris? It was possible that Anika's disappointment at being lied to would destroy her will to stay with Nisha and Rajesh, as their daughter. After the revealing of the truth, Anika might be prone to an emotionally sore heart. What if that sore heart blamed the Maheshwaris as the cause of her pain? What if Anika was no longer as attached to Maheshwaris after she came to know that she was never more than an adopted child to the Maheshwaris, though of course, she had grown to be much more.

But what if she couldn't see that? 

Nisha immediately looked up to see Anika leaving the room. "Anika, wait!" 

When Anika stopped, Nisha stood up and ran towards her daughter, misty-eyed. She was quick to lock Anika in a tight embrace, and whisper the words, "Come home soon," in her ears. Anika smiled and hugged her mother back, not understanding all of the insecurities behind the words, all the restraint. 

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