The Memory House - I
1202 Words
I. House Did Not Forget.
Three days after the storm-night episode, Sharda suggested something she had never dared say aloud before.
“I think we need to go to your childhood home,” she said quietly.
Aanya froze mid-bite, the spoon slipping slightly in her hand.
She didn’t respond or breathe.
Zoya, who had been scrolling through her phone on the sofa, looked up sharply.
“What? Why?” she asked, eyes wide.
Sharda sat stiffly, elbows on her knees, hands clasped.
She looked tired; not physically, but morally, as if she had spent three days arguing with herself.
“Aanya’s past is bleeding into her present,” Sharda said.
“Her triggers are escalating. Her body is remembering things faster than she can repress them.”
Zoya frowned. “So you want her to go back there?”
Aanya whispered, “No.”
Her voice was so soft it barely existed.
Sharda turned to her. “Aanya............”
“No,” Aanya said again, louder this time. “I left that place. I shut it behind me.”
Sharda inhaled deeply. “The problem with locking a door is that what’s behind it still lives there.”
Aanya’s hands trembled.
Zoya’s jaw tightened. “Sharda, this is insane. She’s barely holding together as it is.”
Sharda closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself.
“I’m not saying she confronted anything. I’m saying we need to understand what happened. What patterns. What dangers. What… returns.”
Aanya shivered.
Kabir wasn’t there........he had texted earlier that he would be out of town for two days.......but Sharda and Zoya felt his absence keenly.
They both knew the truth:
The person who triggered Aanya’s panic attack might not be done with her.
The past didn’t stay buried. Men like that didn’t go away peacefully.
Zoya exhaled sharply. “Where is this house?”
Aanya didn’t answer.
Sharda did.
“West Delhi. Vikaspuri.”
Aanya’s eyes snapped at Sharda, startled.
“How do you...............”
“You once mentioned it,” Sharda said quietly. “In your sleep.”
Aanya’s breath stilled.
She looked horrified.
Then exposed...................so small.
She stood up abruptly and walked to the balcony, gripping the railing. Zoya leaned into Sharda, whispering harshly, “You’re pushing too hard.”
Sharda whispered back, “Then help me hold her.”
II. Fear of Touching Old Walls
Aanya stared down at the street, her breath fogging in the evening air. Delhi was cold that December; dry, biting, the kind of cold that seeped into the joints.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
She didn’t want this or to remember.
She surely didn’t want to go back to the house where she’d learned fear as fluently as a native language.
She heard footsteps behind her.
Zoya.
Not touching her; just standing at her side.
“You don’t have to go,” Zoya said gently. “We can burn the place down in your imagination. I can make a field trip out of it.”
Aanya didn’t smile.
She whispered, “It smells like wet socks in winter. The house.”
Zoya paused.
Aanya continued, voice hollow.
“There’s mold on the ceiling in the hallway. And the cupboard door in my room doesn’t close. And the tiles in the bathroom are cracked in the shape of a… of a…”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go back.”
Zoya’s chest tightened. “Then we won’t.”
Aanya finally turned, leaning her forehead lightly on Zoya’s shoulder; not a hug, just a lean. Subtle. Trembling.
Zoya placed a hand on her back. Sharda watched from the doorway, her heart fracturing a little.
She understood the fear as well as the necessity.
Some memories only release their grip when you see the place that held them.
III. The Drive
They went anyway.
Not because Aanya agreed.
But because she didn’t say no again.
And sometimes trauma survivors only have the strength to resist once.
After that, they dissociate into compliance.
Sharda recognized the dissociation.
Zoya recognized the compliance.
Neither liked it.
They drove through Delhi in Sharda’s old Maruti, the heater barely functional. The city's blurred past; flyovers, markets, peeling posters on walls, the sullen winter sun.
Aanya sat in the back, forehead against the window, her breath marking ghost-circles on the glass. She didn’t speak once.
Zoya, in front, kept twisting in her seat to check on her.
“Aanya,” she whispered once, “if you want to leave at any moment, just say the word.”
Aanya didn’t blink.
Didn’t move, and gave no answer.
Her silence terrified Zoya more than screaming ever could.
Sharda gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles whitened.
She looked straight ahead, because if she looked at Aanya she might stop the car and pull her into a hug and never let go.
And she needed to be a doctor, not a mother, today.
IV. Vikaspuri
The colony where Aanya grew up was painfully unremarkable.
Concrete apartment blocks.
A small mandir with peeling paint.
A playground with rusted swings. The grocery shop whose board still read “Provision Sto e”.
Kids ran around with jackets unzipped. Women bargained loudly with vegetable vendors.
A stray dog barked at nothing. It was ordinary.
Too ordinary.
Aanya’s chest tightened. Ordinary places could hold monstrous things.
Ordinary walls could witness unthinkable acts.
The car slowed near a block of flats.
Block C-7.
Aanya’s breath hitched so sharply that Sharda braked instinctively.
“This is it?” Zoya whispered.
Aanya didn’t respond.
Her eyes were fixed on a single apartment window on the second floor.........bars still intact, curtains drawn.
Her childhood room.
The window where she had once pressed her face to the iron grille and prayed for rain to drown out the sound of footsteps.
Zoya’s anger surged.
It came so quickly she almost choked on it.
“What did he do to you?” she whispered under her breath. Aanya turned away from the window, blinking rapidly.
Sharda reached back and placed her hand on Aanya’s knee; light, steady.
“You don’t have to go in,” Sharda said.
Aanya shook her head violently.
“No. No inside.”
“Then we won’t,” Sharda said immediately.
Aanya looked at the building one last time.
She whispered something..........so quiet that neither woman heard it clearly.
It sounded like:
“Why wasn’t I enough to be loved gently?”
Zoya covered her mouth. Sharda closed her eyes and pursed her lips.
Someone’s shadow moved behind the curtain of the second-floor window. Aanya stiffened so suddenly that Sharda nearly climbed into the backseat.
Zoya whispered, “Who is that?”
Aanya didn’t answer.
Her pupils dilated and shoulders trembled. The breath vanished.
Then...............
“Drive,” she whispered.
Sharda’s heartbeat tripled. “Aanya.......”
“Drive.”
“Aanya, wait, was that............”
“DRIVE!”
Sharda hit the accelerator.
The car lurched forward.
Aanya curled into herself in the backseat, arms around her ribs, shaking so violently the seatbelt rattled.
Zoya turned, voice breaking, “Aanya, hey, hey, look at me, look....”
But Aanya squeezed her eyes shut.
She whispered, “He’s still there.”
- Writer
