Dawn was yet to break, and Pramod had been waiting for a public bus for the past half an hour. Dark clouds were looming in the sky, signalling another dull day. He had not slept the whole night. Despite his numerous attempts to get some sleep, he failed to do so and had spent the night tossing and turning in bed.

He scanned the people at the bus station to kill time. A woman, who was as quick as a squirrel, caught his eyes. She ran a small tea shop, and she already had multiple customers that early in the morning. They were all sipping tea and reading newspapers. He gazed at the woman for a while. Her face was full of wrinkles, each of which seems to tell a story. Just beside her tea shop was a newspaper stall.

Despite his attempts to distract himself by observing the people in his surroundings, Pramod couldn’t help but feel bogged down by his own thoughts. He had reluctantly walked towards the bus station that morning. A part of him kept telling him there was no point travelling to Jiri, and that he should return home. But there was a discrepancy with the other part within him. Deep down his heart, he felt obligated to make this trip.

Finally, his bus showed up. He found a window seat. After an hour’s drive out of town on the pitched road, the bus took a turn onto a bumpy dirt road. He had not visited his ancestral home in Jiri since his father’s demise ten years ago. Home never felt the same for him since then. His mother had died when he was five. Bank balance, mansion, cars, holiday home, media coverage, he had everything today. He had landed his dream job and was living an affluent life with his beautiful wife and a daughter.

Instead of enjoying the beautiful scenery of meadows and mountains, Pramod was still occupied by his thoughts. A small forest that he saw from the bus window made him nostalgic. The forest was an important part of his childhood. As he walked down memory lane, two children appeared before his eyes. They were him and Shyam, his stepbrother. They, along with his friends, used to come to this wood every day. A small rivulet in the woods used to be a pool for them during summer. During vacations, they used to spend entire days there. That day, he, however, did not feel any shred of those alluring emotions that he used to feel there when he was a child.

The bus’s conductor shouting “Jiri aayo Jiri” brought Pramod out of his reverie. As he got off the bus, he noticed that the sky was overcast. There was noisy thunder and lightning too. Pramod knew that a heavy downpour was imminent. His ancestral home was within walking distance from the station. In fact, he could spot the silhouette of Shyam at a distance.

Shyam seemed to have been waiting for him for a while. They embraced each other. It was a long hug. Being an introvert, Pramod had always been poor in articulating his thoughts. He could say nothing.

“Where is she?” Pramod broke the silence.

Shyam pointed towards the room in the attic. Sharala, Shyam’s wife, greeted him. Sharala was such a garrulous person that she was seldom silent. But that day, the silence was all over her. She led Pramod’s way to the room. A chill shadow crept over him as he entered the house. His legs felt heavy as he lifted them to climb the stairs. He felt withered. Lying in bed was Pramod’s stepmother, dumb and deaf, breathing some last breathes of her life.

Pramod had never been able to stand her since the day she got married to his father. The young Pramod was not able to accept the fact that someone was going to replace his mother in the family. As he grew older, his hatred towards her became stronger. Even during rare times the two communicated, Pramod had always made sure that she felt the deep-seated rancour he had for her. After his father died, he never bothered to care about her. He felt like a free man and was living an urban life with his family in Kathmandu. Had he not received a call from Shyam and had known about the critical condition of his stepmother, he would not have batted an eyelid for her.

On the contrary, his stepmother was an amazing woman. She brought up Pramod and Shyam with equal love and affection. However, Pramod was too stubborn to let her fill the void of his mother in his life. Despite her numerous attempts, he never gave her a chance.

Pramod knelt close to her bed. He gathered all his courage and grabbed her hands. She woke up from her deep sleep, and their eyes met for the first time. She seemed a different person to Pramod that day, someone very close to his heart. Pramod discovered that her eyes were the same as those of his mother’s. They were glittering. He felt strange, very strange. He felt ashamed for having never respected her. He wondered how his life would have been if he had dared to be more accepting of her presence in his life.

Pramod turned pale. He tried to open his mouth, but something choked him; he could not utter a single word. Guilt stung his eyes, and tears impeded his eyesight. He, with his head down

on her knees, started sobbing. Suddenly, he felt tender hands caressing his hair. It was his stepmother’s. He looked at her. She looked at him with her kind and gentle eyes, and just the way she looked at him made Pramod feel better. His heart felt lighter.

Pramod caught a bus back home around three that day. As the bus reached the forested area where he and Shyam had spent many days playing, it stopped raining, and the sky cleared up. He could see the orange rays of dusk playing hide and seek in the forest. The wood that he felt so drab a few hours ago, soothed him on his way back home—something that he used to feel there when he was a child.