Chapter 8

 1. Anecdote: From Arundhati’s Journal

I don’t know when the mirror stopped reflecting just a face and started showing me everything I’m failing to become.

Every morning, I get up and rehearse the same routine: wear confidence like a sari and tie courage into my hair with every pin. I smile at Dheemahi as if I have answers to all the questions life will ask her. I laugh with the little one as if my own heart isn’t aching with unknown fears.

I know my shadows. I’ve met them in the dead silence of the night, in the gaps between my own words. And yet, I must stand strong—because mothers can’t afford to break down in front of their children, right?

But I fear the day when they will start seeing through me.

The day when my daughters will catch the tremble in my voice, the vacant blink in my eyes, the sighs between sentences. That day, I will no longer be their hero—just a woman trying hard to be one.

So, I wrote something last night. Something I couldn’t say to them aloud, not yet.

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✍️ 2. Poem – By Arundhati (aka Amita Joshi)

How do I live up to what you see in me,

When the strength you name feels far from free?

I wish I were all that you believe,

But only these truths can help me breathe.

A misfit in life, yet I’ve won with you two—

Your love is the compass when I’ve lost the view.

Not boundless—my courage comes and goes,

But in your eyes, my purpose grows.

Someday, you’ll see the cracks I hide,

I just pray you’ll be kind—and stay by my side.

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💬 3. Tara’s Reflection (Prose)

I’ve seen this face before. The face of a mother smiling through shattered glass. I remember this woman in my neighborhood—Rekha didi. People said she became ‘strange’ after childbirth. She’d walk down the lane with her baby pressed close, whispering stories to herself. Her husband left. Her parents dismissed her “change” as weakness. Her in-laws called her selfish.

But I saw something else.

I saw her asking for help, silently—until she forgot how to ask altogether. They said she lost her mind. I think she was just left too alone with it.

And now, looking at Arundhati—who hides her fragility like folded laundry—I wonder how many more women are quietly falling apart just to keep the ones they love intact.

We must write this. Not just for her, but for all the women who are brave enough to feel deeply and still show up.