Maq Masi Blog

The night was a fragile thing, a thin veil of darkness held together only by the sound of his voice. For Vaishali, these endless conversations with Aryan were not a luxury; they were oxygen. Each word was a stitch suturing a wound that threatened to reopen at the slightest silence.

Her voice, usually so soft, could turn to steel when her greatest fear surfaced. “Don’t,” she would whisper, a desperate plea into the receiver. “Don’t even speak of a world without you in it. If something happened… Aryan, I would not survive it. I would not want to. Those words are forbidden. Do you understand me? Forbidden.”

He tested her sometimes, a foolish man prodding a sleeping lion with a stick, making a hollow joke about his eye wandering. Her response was instantaneous, a crack of lightning that left his ears ringing. “If you ever make that joke again, I will shatter this phone. I will break it with my own hands. A person cannot love two people. The thought is a betrayal. The joke is a wound. Don’t you feel it?”

This wasn’t the gentle love of poetry. This was something forged in fire, tempered by a lifetime of being let down. What she offered Aryan was not affection; it was a vow. A total, terrifying, and absolute surrender.

That ferocity knew no bounds. It spilled over, shocking even the sacred boundaries of motherhood. When her young daughter once teased her to name her favorite, Vaishali’s answer came not as a gentle deflection, but as a seismic truth. Her voice trembled, not with uncertainty, but with the sheer force of the confession. “I love him more than anyone. Even more than you.”

Aryan, hearing it, felt the world tilt. It was not a statement of comparison, but of scale. He was looking into the core of her and seeing a devotion so vast it dwarfed every convention he knew.

And yet, the world outside their private universe made its demands. Family, with all its complicated love, called. Her son and son-in-law asked her to watch her granddaughter. She cradled the child, her heart an overflowing cup of silent, fierce adoration. But duty, that old master, summoned her—a brief commitment to her cultural organization. Just minutes. She entrusted the precious girl to relatives and left.

When her son returned, he did not see the love. He only saw a momentary absence. His words were not thanks, but a blade, finely honed and casually wielded. “If you can’t take care of her, we would have made other arrangements. Next time, we won’t ask.”

The air left her lungs. The cut was so clean, so deep, he couldn’t possibly know the damage he’d done. Inside her, a silent scream echoed: You have no idea of the depth of my love for you. For her. If you tried to measure it, the entire ocean would not be enough. You are drowning in it and you call it a puddle.

She climbed the stairs, a queen dethroned, and closed the door to her chamber. The tears were hot and silent. She ached for Aryan’s voice, the only balm that could soothe this specific, familial poison. But she stopped herself. He was unwell that morning. She would not add the weight of her sorrow to his. This pain, she would carry alone.

But a heart that full has to bleed, or it will burst.

Later, a different compulsion took hold. She did not scream into the void. She did not name names. Instead, her fingers, trembling with a quiet fury, typed out her pain on her WhatsApp status. She posted two messages, one after the other, a diptych of her despair:

The first was a warning, ancient and universal: “Lost things can be recovered, but never unwise words.”

The second was a lament, a prophecy for the bloodline she feared was fracturing:
“The lost generation maintained relations.
The current one is breaking them.
The future generation will live without them.”

It was a message in a bottle, thrown into a digital sea. It was not a direct accusation but a curated exhibit of her devastation. See, the quotes whispered. See the irreversible damage of your words. See the legacy you are destroying. I need you to feel this, too.

Her son saw it. The confrontation was inevitable. “Mother. Why would you put such things online? Those statuses… they were about me.”

Vaishali did not flinch. She met his gaze, her eyes holding the storm he had unleashed. Her voice was low, steady, and final. “I posted one truth and one observation. If you see your reflection in them, that is for you to ponder. It is my page. If you believe I am incapable, then your decision is made. Never ask me again.”

She let the silence hang between them, a verdict.

“But,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument, “never—never—question the love I hold.”

She turned. She did not wait for a reply. She climbed the stairs once more and closed the door.

Behind it, a love so profound it mourned the end of kinship itself stood alone, unshaken, and defiant in the quiet.