Chapter 8: Board Exams and Bitter Hope

After that night, I stopped going to school. For a week, I lay on my cot, staring at the ceiling, listening to my mother’s cough and the traffic outside. My textbooks gathered dust. The world was too heavy.

I was ready to drop out, but the school let me skip classes and only come for board exams. The headmistress, strict but kind, called me in. “Just come for exams, beta. We know you can manage.”

Relief flickered in my chest.

If the Sharmas ruined my education, I’d never get another chance. Nani’s words echoed: “Padho, Ananya. Only knowledge can save you.”

I staked everything on the board exams. I wrote until my fingers cramped. I studied by torchlight during power cuts, recited English essays while stirring dal, ignored my mother’s curses—“Kuchh nahi hoga tumse! Main toh barbaad ho gayi!”—and filled my mind with formulas instead.

Because her leg hadn’t healed, it was ruined. She could no longer walk. Neighbours whispered she’d never work again. She stared at her limb, bitterness twisting her lips.

A strange relief came over me—at least she couldn’t try to crawl back to the Sharmas.

Her temper turned violent, her face more twisted by the day. Sometimes I caught her muttering at her reflection, the broken woman in the mirror frightening even me.

As I picked up broken plates, I said softly, “Maa, let’s live well. Let’s work hard and make it on our own. Wait for me to get into college, wait for a job. It’ll get better.”

A lie, maybe. But it was the only hope I knew.

She laughed, then sobbed, and threw a pillow at me. It hit my arm, knocking my books to the floor. “Get out!” she screamed.