PART 1: The Return

The diya had burned every single night for 26 years.

Vidya Mehra placed it on the windowsill of the prayer room, always at 7:15 PM, the exact time her daughter Anaya was taken. The flame flickered stubbornly through seasons of monsoon and drought, through births and funerals. And Vidya—aging, stooped, yet unbroken—lit it as a promise: If you’re alive, find your way back to me.

On the evening of June 12, a girl arrived at the gates of the Mehra estate in Jaipur.

She wore a simple kurta, a woven bag slung over her shoulder, dust caked at the hem of her salwar. Her eyes were the color of roasted almonds—wide, waiting, wounded. The guard at the gate was about to turn her away when the dog barked. Not just any dog. Golu. Blind in one eye, slow with arthritis. He hadn’t barked in months. But now he raced from the porch, past startled servants, and flung himself at her, whimpering, licking her hand.

The girl knelt and cried into his fur.

Vidya watched from the window. She dropped the lighter before the diya was lit.

PART 2: The Doubt

“She says her name is Anaya,” the cook whispered behind the kitchen curtain.

“Could be a scam,” said the driver. “Families like this, all that money—people pretend all sorts of things.”

But the girl had no demands. No media. No threats. Just one sentence: I think I’m your daughter.

The family gathered. Vidya. Her husband Raghav. Their two sons—Karan, the elder, and Rajiv, who’d been just five when Anaya vanished. And at the center, the girl.

She had Anaya’s birthmark—a tiny half-moon behind her left ear. She knew the lullaby Vidya used to sing. She knew about the broken pane in the attic window and the elephant toy with a missing trunk. She even remembered that Rajiv had once locked her in a cupboard as a prank. He went pale when she said that.

Raghav was the first to speak. “Where have you been all these years?”

She paused. “I don’t remember everything.”

A lie? Or trauma?

“I was found at age four in a village near Surat,” she continued. “Adopted by a woman named Amba. She died when I was sixteen. Only last year did I find some papers. A photograph. Your address.”

Karan leaned forward. “Why now? Why not sooner?”

The girl looked down. “Because I was scared it was a lie. Or worse… that you didn’t want me back.”

PART 3: The Whispered Past

That night, Vidya finally lit the diya—but her hand trembled.

She didn’t sleep. At midnight, she stood outside the girl’s room, listening. The girl was humming. A broken melody, halting. Then words.

“Nindiya ki rani… sapno ke ghar aaye…”

Vidya’s knees buckled. She used to sing that when rocking Anaya to sleep. She hadn’t sung it in 25 years.

In the morning, a retired police officer came by. Vidya had called him in secret. “Do a DNA test,” she said. “But keep it quiet.”

He nodded. “You’re afraid of what?”

“I’m afraid she’s mine,” Vidya whispered, “and of what that means for the rest of my family.”

PART 4: The Photograph

Two days later, Anaya—if that was truly her name—sat with Rajiv in the backyard. He was more open than the others. Maybe because part of him had never let go of his sister either.

“I remember the swing set,” she said.

Rajiv smiled. “You fell once and broke your tooth.”

“I didn’t cry,” she said proudly.

“No,” he agreed, “you made me cry by yelling at me.”

She laughed. “Sounds like me.”

Then she pulled something from her bag. A photo. Faded, edges curled. Four people—a man, a woman, two small children. Raghav, Vidya, Karan, and Anaya.

Rajiv stared. “Where did you get this?”

“Amba kept it in a tin box. I only found it last year. She told me she saved me. But never from what.”

Rajiv swallowed. “Did she say who gave you to her?”

“She said… a man. Well-dressed. With a gold watch.”

Rajiv’s heart sank.

Their father had a gold watch. A custom one. With the family crest on it.

PART 5: The Ghost of Room Six

The Mehtras once had a live-in maid named Latha. She vanished a week after Anaya’s disappearance. Everyone assumed she’d fled because she felt responsible.

But after Anaya’s return, Vidya did something she hadn’t done in decades—she opened the guest house in the garden. Room Six had once been Latha’s quarters. The door creaked as she stepped in. Dust. Cobwebs. A broken bangle near the pillow.

Vidya sat on the bed. Beneath it, wrapped in old saris, were bundles of letters.

Letters from Latha to someone named R.

“I’m scared, R. She heard you shouting. She saw. She told me. If your wife finds out, it’s over.”

“R, I swear I won’t say anything. But if that girl tells someone, we’re both ruined.”

“R, she’s missing. What did you do?”

Vidya felt her heart stop. R. Raghav.

PART 6: The Truth

The DNA results came back.

A 99.7% match. The girl was Anaya Mehra.

Vidya didn’t show the paper to Raghav. She just placed it beside his teacup the next morning and said, “Tell me what you did.”

Raghav was silent for a long time.

Then he said, “I tried to send her away. But not like that.”

Vidya froze.

“I was weak,” he continued. “Latha threatened to tell you. I paid a man to take Anaya away—to an orphanage. Somewhere far. But I made him promise she’d be safe.”

Vidya slapped him. She slapped him again. And again.

“You gave away my baby like she was a problem!”

Raghav didn’t fight back. “I couldn’t bear to lose everything.”

“You already did,” she said, walking away.

PART 7: The Final Song

Anaya stood on the rooftop that night, where Vidya had hung lanterns for her 2nd birthday.

Rajiv came up with two mugs of chai.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”

She sipped. “It’s not your fault.”

“I hated that cupboard memory,” he admitted. “I thought it made me a monster.”

“You were a child,” she smiled. “We all were.”

Then she asked, “Do you think it’s okay if I stay?”

Rajiv looked out at the flickering diya in the window. “It never went out.”

She nodded. “Neither did I.”

EPILOGUE

Raghav left the house within the week.

Vidya told people he’d gone abroad. No one asked further.

Anaya changed her name officially back to Mehra. She enrolled in university. Began learning Bharatanatyam again. The diya now burned not as hope—but as remembrance.

And every time someone new asked about her story, she said, “It’s too long for now.”

But someday, she would tell it all.

Because sometimes, the light never goes out for a reason.