Quiet Despair

Hope fell silent, one dream at a time,

every promise faded out of rhyme.
Life moved on, though my heart stayed still,

learning how to breathe without a will.

Echoes in the Adoption File - Part 5

 

The First Blood

Anika didn’t remember dropping the knife.

She only remembered the sound it made—metal kissing tile—soft, final.

Vikram Rao watched her carefully, the way one observes an animal deciding whether to fight or freeze.

“You see?” he said calmly. “Truth breaks people. Lies keep them alive.”

One of the men moved to grab her.

That was the mistake.

Anika reacted on instinct, not thought. She swung the bedside lamp with everything she had. It shattered against the man’s skull with a sickening crack. He went down without a sound.

The second man reached for his gun.

Too slow.

Anika slammed the door into his arm, heard bone give way, then shoved him back with a force she didn’t know she possessed. He stumbled, hit the wall, and collapsed—breathing, but broken.

The room went quiet.

Vikram didn’t shout.
Didn’t panic.

He smiled.

“There she is,” he murmured. “Your mother had the same fire.”

Anika grabbed the knife again, hands slick with sweat. “Where is she?”

Vikram stepped closer, unconcerned by the blade pointed at his chest. “If I tell you… you’ll die trying to save her.”

“Then I’ll die,” Anika said. “But not like you.”

For the first time, his smile faltered.

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

Vikram stepped back. “I called them. Self-defense story already prepared.” He adjusted his cufflinks. “You attacked my men. You fled the scene. You killed an officer yesterday.”

Anika’s blood turned to ice.

“You framed me.”

“I owned you,” he corrected. “From the day you were found in that cupboard.”

She ran.

Through the window.
Down the fire escape.
Into the rain-soaked street where anonymity still existed.

Behind her, Vikram Rao calmly dialed a number.

“She’s awake,” he said. “Initiate Phase Two.”

---

By morning, Anika’s face was everywhere.

WANTED FOR QUESTIONING
SUSPECT IN MULTIPLE ASSAULTS
LINKED TO RETIRED OFFICER’S DEATH

She sat in an abandoned bus depot, soaked, shaking, reading the news on a cracked phone she’d stolen from one of Vikram’s men.

That was when the message came—from an encrypted app she didn’t recognize.

If you want your mother alive, stop running.

Attached was a location.

A hospital.

But not on any map.

Anika followed it anyway.

The building looked abandoned—windows boarded up, sign rusted beyond recognition. Inside, the smell of antiseptic mixed with decay.

A woman lay on a bed in the far room.

Thin.
Pale.
Alive.

Anika knew her instantly.

“Amma…” she whispered.

The woman’s eyes fluttered open.

Recognition bloomed—then terror.

“They found you,” her mother croaked. “You should have stayed hidden.”

Anika knelt beside her, tears falling freely now. “I won’t leave you.”

Her mother’s fingers tightened around her wrist with surprising strength.

“You already paid the price,” she said. “Now make them pay.”

Footsteps echoed in the corridor.

Slow.
Deliberate.

Her mother whispered the last truth Anika hadn’t been ready for:

“Your father wasn’t the only one murdered that night.”

The lights went out.

And Anika realized—this wasn’t a rescue.

It was a trap.

And she had just walked straight into it.

Echoes in the Adoption File - Part 4

 

The Name That Kills

Anika didn’t attend Inspector Iyer’s funeral.

Not because she didn’t want to—but because attending it would have been a death sentence.

The news channels called it a heart attack. A lonely retired officer found dead at his desk. No signs of struggle. No suspects. Closed within hours.

She watched the report from a roadside lodge miles away, the curtains drawn, the TV volume barely audible. Lies came easy to people who had been lying for decades.

The sealed file lay open on the bed.

Inside, beneath the crime photos and falsified reports, was something Iyer had hidden well—a handwritten statement, unsigned, unstamped.

A confession that was never allowed to exist.

Arjun Rao was auditing Rao Industrial Estate.
He discovered shell companies, ghost workers, and missing funds.
The money funded something illegal. Something violent.

Anika read the next line three times.

Orders came from within the Rao family itself.

Her hands shook.

Rao wasn’t just a surname.

It was a network.

She flipped the page.

Names.
Directors.
Trusts.
Political donors.
Police transfers signed overnight.

And one name circled repeatedly, darker than the rest:

VIKRAM RAO

Chairman. Philanthropist. Media darling.

Her adoptive uncle.

Anika’s breath stopped.

Memories crashed into her—family gatherings where Vikram Rao’s smile never reached his eyes, the way conversations died when he entered a room, the way her adoption papers had been processed too fast.

Trust no Rao.

The words burned now.

Her phone rang.

This time, it wasn’t an unknown number.

Vikram Rao (Uncle)

She let it ring.

Again.

Then a message.

Anika, beta. I hear you’ve been asking dangerous questions.

Her stomach turned.

Another message followed.

Your parents were weak people. They couldn’t handle the world we live in.

She typed back before fear could stop her.

You killed my father.

The reply came instantly.

No.
I saved you.

The door downstairs creaked.

Anika froze.

Footsteps climbed slowly, deliberately, each one measured like a countdown. She grabbed the knife again, heart pounding so hard it hurt.

The handle outside her room turned.

A familiar voice spoke softly through the door.

“Anika. Come home. This isn’t your fight.”

Her uncle.

Standing on the other side.

She backed away as the door opened.

Vikram Rao stepped inside, impeccably dressed, eyes calm, almost kind. Behind him stood two men with no expressions at all.

“You should have stayed an orphan,” he said gently. “You would have lived longer.”

Anika raised the knife, tears streaking down her face—not from fear now, but rage.

“You murdered him,” she said. “You erased my mother.”

Vikram sighed. “Your father chose the wrong ledger. Your mother chose to run.” He paused. “She didn’t get far.”

The room tilted.

“She’s dead?” Anika whispered.

“No,” he said. “Worse.”

One of the men stepped forward, holding a file.

Vikram smiled.

“She’s alive. And she’s been waiting twenty-six years for you to stop digging.”

Anika’s scream tore out of her chest as the truth finally settled in:

Her mother wasn’t missing.

She was imprisoned.

And the only reason Anika was allowed to live…

Was because she hadn’t remembered who she really was.

Yet.

The Unseen Hand

Life never walks the road we plan,
it turns without warning, soft or steep.
Just when we believe we understand,
it changes while we sleep.

Some call it luck, a random flame,
some name it blessing, whispered and kind.
Either way, it reshapes our frame,
and rewrites what we thought we’d find.

A fall becomes a hidden door,
a loss, a path we couldn’t see.
Was it chance… or something more,
guiding us where we’re meant to be?

Life never explains its hand
it only moves, and asks us to trust the land.

Life speaks

I begin without asking, and move without pause,
sometimes as a blessing, sometimes as a cause.
I teach through loss what joy cannot say,
I bend you at night, then heal you by day.

I give you dreams and take them away,
not to punish, but to show you your way.
I test your faith with silence and time,
then answer softly, never on time.

I am not fair, nor meant to be,
yet I shape who you dare to become and see.
Love, pain, hope — all carry my name,
for I am life, ever changing, yet the same.

Main shaayar to nahin - lyrics

 Main shaayar to nahin

Main shaayar to nahin

magar aye hanseen

Jab se dekha main ne tujhko mujhko

Shaayari aa gayee

Mainn aashiq to nahin magar aye haseen

Jab se dekhaa maine tujhko mujhko

Aashiqi aa gayee

Main shaayar to nahin...

Pyaar ka naam maine suna tha magar

Pyaar kya hai ye mujhko nahin thi khabar

Pyaar ka naam maine suna tha magar

Pyaar kya hai ye mujhko nahin thi khabar

Main to ulajha raha ulajhanon ki tarah

Doston mein raha dushmanon ki tarah

Main dushman to nahin

Main dushman to nahin

magar aye haseen......

Jab se dekhaa maine tujhko mujhko

Dosti aa gayee

Main shaayar to nahin... magar aye hanseen

Jab se dekha maine tujhko mujhko

Shaayari aa gayee

Main shaayar to nahin...

Echoes in the Adoption File - Part 3

 

The Man Who Wasn’t There

The power returned after exactly seven minutes.

Anika counted every second.

When the lights flickered back on, the apartment looked unchanged—no broken locks, no overturned furniture, no sign of intrusion. That disturbed her more than chaos would have. Someone had been there. She could feel it in her bones.

Her bedroom door was now fully closed.

She hadn’t touched it.

Anika didn’t sleep that night. She sat on the couch with a kitchen knife in her hand, the adoption file open on her lap, replaying every detail again and again until dawn stained the sky a dull gray.

At 6:12 a.m., she made a decision.

If official records didn’t exist, she’d find unofficial ones.

By noon, she was standing outside the city records office—an aging concrete building that smelled of damp files and forgotten crimes. Inside, behind a counter cluttered with yellowing folders, sat Inspector Devraj Iyer.

He was retired.
Officially.

But retired cops still had habits. His eyes scanned people the way others scanned exits.

“What do you want, Miss Rao?” he asked, before she even spoke.

Anika stiffened. “Do I know you?”

He studied her face for a long moment. Too long.

“No,” he said finally. “But I knew someone who looked like you. Long ago.”

Her grip tightened around the folder. “I’m looking for information about a murder. Around twenty-six years ago. Near Rao Industrial Estate.”

The name did it.

Iyer’s jaw clenched. His fingers stopped moving.

“That place burned,” he said. “Along with everything in it.”

“People survived fires,” Anika replied. “Records too.”

He leaned back slowly. “Not that one.”

She slid the photograph across the counter.

The scratched-out face stared up at him.

Iyer’s face drained of color.

“Do you recognize him?” Anika asked.

“Yes,” he whispered. Then louder, sharper: “You shouldn’t have this.”

“Who is he?”

Iyer looked around, then stood and locked the door behind the counter. The click echoed like a gunshot.

“That man,” he said, “officially never existed.”

Anika felt cold.

“He was reported dead in a robbery gone wrong. Case closed in forty-eight hours.” Iyer’s eyes hardened. “But he wasn’t robbed. And he wasn’t the only one who died that night.”

He pulled out a hidden drawer and placed a thin file on the desk.

CASE STATUS: SEALED

Inside was a crime scene photograph.

A body sprawled on the floor of a small house. Blood smeared the walls—not splattered, but written, dragged in streaks like someone had tried to crawl away.

Anika swallowed hard.

“That’s my father,” she said, though she had never seen him alive.

Iyer nodded. “Name: Arjun Rao. Textile accountant. Clean record. No enemies. At least, none that showed up on paper.”

“What about my mother?”

Iyer hesitated.

“She was the witness.”

Anika’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Witness to what?”

“To fraud. To embezzlement. To men who wore suits by day and carried knives by night.” He closed the file. “She disappeared before she could testify.”

Anika’s voice shook. “And me?”

Iyer looked at her, something like guilt flickering in his eyes.

“You were found crying beside your father’s body.”

Silence swallowed the room.

“She hid you,” he continued. “In a cupboard. Wrapped you in a towel soaked with her blood so the dogs wouldn’t find you.”

Anika’s stomach turned violently.

“Who killed him?” she asked.

Iyer didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he reached into his pocket and handed her a card.

On it was a single sentence, handwritten:

Trust no Rao.

Before she could ask what it meant, the office phone rang.

Iyer picked it up.

He didn’t say a word.

His face went pale.

Slowly, he placed the receiver down.

“They know you came here,” he said quietly. “You need to leave. Now.”

A crash echoed from the back of the building.

Footsteps.

More than one.

Iyer shoved the sealed file into Anika’s hands. “Go through the fire exit. Don’t look back.”

“What about you?” she asked.

He gave her a tired smile. “I’ve been dead to them once already.”

As Anika ran, a gunshot rang out behind her.

She didn’t stop.

She didn’t scream.

Outside, hidden among the parked vehicles, she finally collapsed—gasping, shaking, alive.

Her phone buzzed.

A new message.

He shouldn’t have helped you.

Attached was a photo.

Inspector Devraj Iyer.
Lying on the floor.
Blood pooling beneath his head.

Another message followed.

You were never supposed to survive either.

Anika stared at the screen, tears burning her eyes—not from fear anymore, but fury.

They hadn’t just stolen her past.

They had murdered everyone who tried to protect it.

And now, she understood the truth that changed everything:

She wasn’t searching for a killer.

She was the last loose end.