Page 101 of Mrs. Pandey
“Tell me about her,” Riddhima said gently.
And I did.
I told her about Ira’s laughter, how it rang like temple bells in the early morning, unshaken even by the uniform’s weight on her shoulders. How she was a lieutenant in the Indian Army. How her smile was the first thing that came to me when I thought of home.
I told her how I loved her. Not the kind of love that needed constant words or promises, but the kind that anchored me,made me believe in something larger than uniforms, borders, and endless wars.
When I spoke of Ira, the ache in my chest shifted. It didn’t disappear, but it softened, like the edge of a wound when healing begins.
Riddhima listened. And for the first time in months, my voice carried something other than anger or despair. It carried longing, memory and love.
“You don’t smile when you talk about her,” Riddhima observed once. “But your eyes change. They soften. That’s a good sign.”
I wanted to tell her I didn’t know how to smile anymore. That my lips had forgotten the curve, that my laughter had been buried in the rubble of that prison cell. But I stayed quiet, because some truths are too heavy to release all at once.
______
Rehabilitation was its own battlefield.
They strapped braces onto my legs, pushed me into exercises that left me breathless and trembling. Every step was war. My shoulder resisted every stretch, my ribs screamed at every twist. Sweat pooled across my scarred skin, and I cursed under my breath as physiotherapists urged me on.
Some days, I collapsed back into the bed, chest heaving, convinced my body had betrayed me forever. But Riddhima reminded me: “Every step you take is defiance. Every breath you fight for is victory. The men who hurt you would want you to give up. Don’t hand them that win.”
Her words echoed in my ears during the endless drills. Slowly, my body remembered. I could stand. Then I could walk, first with support, then alone. Each milestone was small, but each one carved a notch in the wall of my despair.
But the nights were still heavy.
One evening, after another nightmare had left me gasping for air, I told her the truth.
“I don’t know if I can ever be who I was. They didn’t just break me but they erased me. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see Prashant anymore. I see a ghost.”
Riddhima leaned forward, her eyes holding mine. “Then stop trying to be who you were. You’re not that man anymore. Trauma doesn’t erase you...it reshapes you. The question is, will you let it make you weaker, or will you let it forge you into something stronger?”
Her conviction was iron. At that moment, I realized she wasn’t just healing me. She was challenging me. Forcing me to confront the man I could still become.
_______
One year after my rescue, I walked the hospital courtyard under my own strength. The winter sun warmed my skin, the air sharp with Delhi’s chill. Other soldiers saluted me as I passed through them. Survivors, all of them. Men missing limbs, men with burns, men who carried scars deeper than any visible wound. For the first time, I didn’t feel alone.
That night, I spoke to Riddhima about Ira again.
“She doesn’t know what they did to me,” I admitted. “She knows I was missing, that I was tortured. But she doesn’t know how much of me they broke. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
Riddhima shook her head, her voice quiet but firm. “Prashant, she’s a soldier too. She understands more than you think. And love isn’t about showing someone your strength. It’s about letting them see your scars and still believing you’re worth standing beside.”
Her words stayed with me, reverberating in my chest long after she left. That night, for the first time in months, my dream of Ira wasn’t twisted by smoke or screams. I saw her clearly, standing tall in her olive-green uniform, her eyes shining with quiet pride, her hand reaching out for mine.
______
I waited. I kept waiting, hoping she would show up, hoping she would prove she still cared. Not a single day passed without Ira in my thoughts: how I would speak to her, how I would tell her about the hell I’d survived, about what they did to me.
Would she feel my pain? Would she understand? I wondered how she would look at me, how her emotions would surface when we finally met.
But one year passed and she never came, not even once.
She was in the army, I knew she had heard the news about me, about my condition but still, she hadn’t come to see whether I was dead or alive.
My heart longed for her face, her smile, her teasing words. I wanted to see her so badly that I could hardly function. Ira consumed my every thought. And when I heard she had been posted in Delhi not far from where I was I could no longer wait.
