Chapter 3: Ashes of Yesterday Part 2
735 Words
As Aarav walked back into the village, the last light of the day was fading, and shadows crept across the broken homes. He could see children chasing a tire down the path with sticks, laughing despite the dust and broken glass. Resilience, he thought. Sometimes it’s in children more than grown men.
When he reached the school shelter, Meera looked up with worried eyes.
“Where did you go?” she asked softly.
“Just for a walk,” Aarav replied, sitting beside her. “Had to clear my head.”
His mother was silent. She had known him too long to be convinced by such a short answer. Her hands, once always busy with housework, lay still in her lap. She looked tired, not just physically, but from carrying the emotional weight of a family trying not to fall apart.
Later that night, once Meera was asleep, Aarav leaned close and whispered to her, “Ma, I’m thinking of leaving. Only for some time.”
She didn’t answer right away. Her fingers curled around her sari, gripping it tightly.
“To where?” she asked finally, her voice barely above a breath.
“Anywhere I can work. Maybe to Jabalpur or even beyond. There are relief camps and people hiring. I can earn something… send money home.”
“You want to leave your sister behind?”
“I don’t want to leave either of you,” he said, “but staying here, with nothing… Ma, we’ve lost everything. Even the grain is gone. I can’t just sit and wait.”
She looked at him, her eyes wet but proud. “If your father were here, he would have said the same. Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t lose yourself out there.”
Two days later, before sunrise, Aarav stood at the same village edge again. This time, with a torn backpack over his shoulders. Inside was a second shirt, a bottle of water, a small packet of rice, and the broken radio. Meera had placed a note inside it: “Come back soon, Bhaiya.”
He didn’t let her see the tears in his eyes.
The villagers were still asleep. Only the old man from the temple watched him go. He nodded at Aarav but said nothing. Some journeys need no blessing, only courage.
The road was rough and muddy. His sandals squelched through puddles. The rising sun threw gold across the trees, and the distant sounds of morning birds filled the silence. Aarav walked steadily, thoughts swirling like storm clouds in his head.
Every step forward felt like a betrayal of what he was leaving behind.
But staying in the ruins would’ve been worse.
By noon, his legs ached and his throat burned from the heat. He passed through a half-abandoned village, much smaller than his own, where a few women offered him water and flatbread. He ate in silence and thanked them with folded hands.
“Where are you headed?” one asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Wherever something survives.”
Further down the road, he reached a riverbank where floodwaters had receded. The bridge had broken at one end, forcing him to wade through waist-high water. On the other side, he sat on a rock to dry his clothes in the sun, listening to the wind.
A truck passed by on the highway above, its horn echoing through the trees. For a brief moment, Aarav imagined climbing into the back and disappearing into another life. But his legs remained rooted. This was not a movie. This was real life—and he would have to walk his own story, one step at a time.
As evening approached, he reached the outskirts of a town called Baksar—larger, louder, and far more alive than his village had ever been. Lights glowed in small shops. Buses honked. Street vendors shouted prices. And the smell—fried food, smoke, dust, perfume—rushed into his senses like a flood.
Aarav paused at the entrance gate of a shelter marked “STORM RELIEF CENTER – GOVT APPROVED.” A line of people snaked around the building—some with bruises, others with babies, most with eyes full of tiredness.
He stood in line. No one asked his name. No one asked where he was from.
It didn’t matter.
Everyone here had lost something.
- Writer
