The kettle whistled, but Anjali didn’t move.
She sat alone in her small Mumbai apartment, staring at the crimson red lighting the evening sky. Three weeks into this new chapter, and it already felt like an ending. Her parents are no more. Friends - none to call. The arranged marriage she had once agreed to had withered quietly; her husband had been distant, cold, more machine than man. He never saw her, never tried to.
The chronic pain in her leg had worsened lately. Some mornings, her ankle refused to move at all. The doctors called it an old injury - possibly from an accident. but she couldn’t remember one. In truth, there was a whole chapter of her past she couldn’t recall, and it pulsed now like a bruise beneath the surface.
In fact, she didn’t remember a lot of things.
The doorbell rang.
Strange. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
At the door stood a courier in a faded cap. He glanced at the paper in his hand, then up at her.
“Meera?” he asked.
The name froze her in place.
Something sharp jolted through her like a switch flicking in the dark. Screams. Metal doors. The stink of sweat. A scarred face snarling at her. Lots of things came rushing but nothing made a whole picture in her memory.
She didn’t mean to respond.
“…Yes.”
she couldn’t understand why the word ‘yes’ had slipped from her lips so easily for the name “Meera”
The man handed her a small box and walked away. She shut the door and locked it twice. Inside the box was a black flip phone. It began to ring.
She answered with shaking fingers.
A low voice said, “Go to 17A, Kalina Industrial Road. No police.”
Click.
She sat on the couch, clutching the phone. The right thing to do was obvious: call the cops. But something inside her, a strange, hollow ache told her not to.
She needed to know what was behind that name. It wasn’t just curiosity that pulled her in, it was the emptiness of her life, the quiet ache for something dangerous, something that might make her feel alive again.
Meera.
Her name.
She took a cab a little away from the location. From there, she walked. Slowly. Limping. Guided not by logic but by something else familiar streets, signs that triggered feelings she couldn’t name.
Kalina Industrial Road.
She stopped outside an abandoned warehouse, its windows shattered, vines crawling over the roof. Her breath hitched.
She’d seen this place in dreams.
Nightmares.
Inside, it was worse. The air smelled like rust and rot. Her legs trembled.
Then - A voice from the shadows.
“Well. I was wondering if you’d come.”
A man stepped forward. Older than she remembered. Beard rough. But the scar, twisting down his right cheek was exactly as it had been the night she escaped.
Everything crashed back.
She had been a teenager. Abducted. Locked in a warehouse like this with other girls. Beaten... Ready to be sold...
Until the night she slashed this man’s face with a broken pipe and jumped out a second-floor window. She hit the ground hard. Her ankle shattered. In that moment, she believed a shattered leg or even death was a small price to pay compared to being sold into the living hell or being dragged back into that nameless hell. She crawled until someone found her. That escape led the police to a major trafficking ring.
They gave her a new identity. A new life. Her name became Anjali. Adopted by loving parents.
And she forgot. Or maybe she made herself forget. The trauma had been too much for her mind to bear, pushing her into a fog of partial amnesia.
Until now.
“I was in prison for thirteen years,” the man said, circling her. “You ruined everything. I thought of you every day. The things I would do to you If I ever see you”
Anjali backed away, panic clawing at her throat. “What do you want?”
“I want you to remember before I end you.”
He lunged.
Pain exploded in her ribs as he punched her to the floor. She gasped, blood already in her mouth. He yanked her up by the hair, slammed her into a pillar. The room spun.
“Thought they could hide you forever?” he hissed.
She tried to fight, but her body was limp. The world dimmed at the edges. Her mind screamed, Not like this.
Gunshots. Two. Then silence.
Shouts. Boots. Flashlights.
Hands pulled her away.
“You’re safe!” someone shouted. “We’ve got her!”
The hospital ceiling was white, blurry. A police officer stood beside her bed.
“I’m Inspector Rajeev,” he said gently. “You’re safe. He’s dead.”
Anjali blinked. “How… How did you find me?”
“We never lost you. You were under witness protection program. After what you did back then... we always kept watch, just in case he came back.”
Tears spilled from her eyes.
“He asked for Meera,” she whispered. “I didn’t even know I was still her.”
Rajeev nodded. “We traced your phone. We had men on standby. You walked into that trap, but you also brought it to an end.”
“He nearly killed me.”
“But you survived. Again.”
A week later, Anjali stood on her balcony, watching the city buzz below.
She remembered everything now. The girl she had been. The hell she had escaped. The family who had adopted her. The marriage that numbed her. And now, this new beginning, painful but honest.
That accidental yes brought the past crashing back.
But it also set her free.
React
