Chapter 1
They say I was born on a hopeful morning — not just into the world, but into a wish.
While I floated quietly, yet to cry, my father was busy whispering hopes into temple walls.
Each day, he climbed those stone steps, hands clasped and heart full.
“Please let it be a girl.”
In a world where sons were prized like gold, he wished for me.
And when the nurse peeked out, grinning, and said, “It’s a girl,”
he jumped — like a monkey set loose from a dream.
The room paused. Nurses blinked. Fathers don’t usually cheer like that for daughters.
So they did what any amused witness would do —
They declared, “Such joy must be celebrated! Feed us, it’s a party!”
And my father, still dazed with happiness, ended up buying a full meal for the entire staff.
That was the day I arrived:
A daughter,
a prayer granted,
and apparently… an accidental host of her own birth celebration.
But not all prayers bring celebration. Some stir dust in corners too long ignored.
We lived under one roof, like many families stitched by generations —
My parents, grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousin.
Laughter in one room. Silence in another.
My grandfather — the patriarch, the name-bearer —
refused to hold me.
For a whole year, his arms stayed folded, cold and certain.
“What’s a girl going to do?” he said.
“It’s the boys who carry the blood.”
I was a name without worth to him. A shadow beside a son.
But where one branch of the tree turned away, another reached for me.
My grandmother, tired of raising only warriors, welcomed the gentle chaos of a granddaughter.
She clapped at my babbles. Danced around me like I was a festival returning after years.
To her, I wasn’t a second choice. I was a long-awaited answer.
And so I grew, cradled in both silence and song.
Ignored by one, adored by another.
Learning early that love can bloom in corners where disdain once stood —
and that some arms, no matter how close, will always stay closed.
There are moments in life that don't echo — they hum. A low, constant hum in the back of the mind, like a memory you never asked for but somehow always hear.
