S̳h̳a̳k̳h̳i̳-̳l̳a̳c̳i̳o̳u̳s̳

EPISODE 16 RECAP

Shaurya and Anokhi separately get ready for their day out, and Shaurya's burdened expression contrasts sharply with Anokhi's excitement. He finds Ronny's toy train in his wardrobe, and it reminds him of little Anokhi.

Finally on the Snowflake Train, Shaurya writes busily in a notebook while Anokhi enthuses over the scenery. She fakes seeing a deer to snatch his notebook from him, and reads off a list of questions : hobbies, favorite colors, favorite things. He defensively reminds her that she told him that if they took a trip together, he could get to know her more. She laughs at his strictly regimented schedule, and pounces on one of his items... which finds them playing the Zero game.

His slow reactions crack her up, and she gleefully delivers wrist-smacks as punishment. When he declares it all invalid, his callback to Ronny makes her grin even more. They scramble off at their stop.

Inside the train hang postcards they've written commemorating the happy moment. Anokhi thanks him for keeping his promise, and Shaurya's characteristically says, "Remember : 26th February, 2015."

Skipping ahead, Anokhi tells Shaurya her newly remembered memory. She was playing with a train set with another kid, and they promised to take a faraway train trip when they grew up. She tells him that Pawan would say the kid was him, but she knows it wasn't.

Grandma gets the report that Shaurya's uncle is urgently seeking a child. Her aide adds that her longtime boardroom supporters had a secret conference with Uncle, and points out that firing Shaurya has left her at a disadvantage for the upcoming shareholders meeting. The suggestion that she might want to recall him makes her grim.

On his way out, the aide catches Shaurya's mom listening at the door.

Mom dines with Uncle, who guesses the reason she summoned him is to take care of Shaurya. Since she's only after capitalizing Shaurya's interests, it doesn't matter whether it comes from Grandma's side or his. Mom wants him to fork over the management for the group's department store and car subsidiaries to Shaurya, which is more than Uncle has in mind. He wants to know what's in it for him.

Shaurya giggles at Anokhi's kimbap-fail, and she swears they didn't look like that in the morning, ha. As they slurp noodles, she confesses her two failings : she can't cook (unlike her mom), and she sucks at arithmetic (like Dad). He asks her how she takes after her brother, and she quips that they have a tendency to use their fists before their words. Also, neither can refuse other people's requests, and they share a fear of basements. The last almost makes his smile slip.

An interlude takes us back to his conversation with Pawan the day before, when he told him he had read "The Child in the Basement." He fills Pawan in on how the story continued: The girl and the boy promised to meet every night at 10 o'clock, in the basement where the girl was locked up. Pawan asks why the girl had to be hidden away. Shaurya hasn't found that out yet, but he begins to tell the story of what happened there 21 years ago.

In the present, Pawan packs up and drives somewhere while Shaurya's story continues in voiceover. Keeping their promise to meet was hard, he says, because if the boy was found out or did something wrong, his father punished the girl instead.

Anokhi and Shaurya madly pedal a railrider along a country track, cheering each other on, while Shaurya's narration continues :
Shaurya: "The boy who could not protect that girl took his memories of despair, pain, and powerlessness and sealed them up. And then he carved up his own self into pieces. But the sealed memories went wrong. He mistook the terrible abuse the girl suffered as his own memories, because he had wanted to suffer that abuse instead of the girl. Because he'd earnestly hoped that he'd be the one to feel the pain that the girl suffered."

Pawan reassures Shaurya that he isn't to blame : He didn't stand idly by, and was a victim himself. Pretending not to see anything is always easiest - if just one of those bystanders had done something, then the victim's soul wouldn't have been ravaged, Pawan says.