The Sunny Sky Calls Us

Chapter Seven: The Quiet Intrusion

It began with Sunday calls.

Just fifteen minutes. A chance for Maahi to speak with her grandparents, sometimes Raghav. Anjali believed in not severing ties abruptly. “Children are not divorcees,” her therapist had once said. “They still deserve love from both roots.”

So she made space.

She even stepped into the kitchen during the calls, giving Maahi privacy.

Until one night, Maahi asked—

> “Mumma… why did you take me away from people who love me?”

Anjali froze, the spoon in her hand clinking against the steel saucepan.

She turned slowly.

“Who told you that?”

Maahi hesitated. “Dadi said... you were angry. That maybe I’d be better with them. That they would never have taken me away from you.”

---

Anjali didn’t answer right away.

She poured the daal into a bowl and set it aside, then sat beside her daughter on the couch.

“Do you know what gaslighting means, Maahi?”

“No.”

“It’s when someone tells you a version of a story so many times that you start to question your own memory, your own truth.”

Maahi looked confused. “But why would Dadi do that? Or Daddy?”

Anjali didn’t answer with bitterness. She had promised herself she would never speak poison into her daughter’s ears, even when it came from others’ mouths.

“Because they miss you. And sometimes when people miss someone, they try to make the story fit what they want. Not what really happened.”

Maahi’s eyes welled up.

“I feel like I’m in trouble with everyone. Like… no matter what I say, someone will be sad.”

Anjali pulled her close, her voice low and sure.

“You are not responsible for anyone else’s sadness. You are a child. It’s the grownups who made the mess. And I’m doing my best to clean it without making you dirty.”

---

That night, after Maahi slept, Anjali opened her laptop and emailed Ritu — her lawyer back in India.

Subject line: Communication boundaries.

> “They’ve started turning Maahi against me. I allowed the calls thinking it was fair. But it’s emotional trespassing. I’m considering supervised contact or structured therapy-based interaction. I want to protect her without making her feel imprisoned. Please advise.”

---

Within a week, Anjali enrolled Maahi in play therapy, a space where feelings weren’t facts but could still be explored with crayons and miniature dolls.

Maahi talked about the phone calls, about the guilt, the whispers, the confusing messages.

Her therapist nodded and helped her name things: Sad. Confused. Torn. Loved. Safe.

And when asked, “Where do you feel most like yourself?”

Maahi pointed to a drawing — a tiny brown house with stars in the window and a woman with long hair cooking something on the stove.

> “There.”

> “With Mumma.”

---

From that point on, Anjali allowed contact only through recorded video messages once a month — Maahi could choose when to respond. Slowly, the power returned to the child.

Because love shouldn’t feel like a battle.

And motherhood shouldn’t feel like defense.