Zoya

The kids were after Zoya again.

Sitting in the drawing room he could hear nothing. See everything. How little Zoya stamped her feet. How she was answering them. How their heads bobbed as they chanted the harsh truth of her life as if it were a rhyme learnt at school.

“Zoya is adopted. Zoya is adopted….”

Zoya’s eyes welled up. She pushed some of the boys and ran away. How could someone her size have so much courage, Sagar wondered.

“Like mother, like daughter” replied his head.

He always wanted a boy. Not because of some medieval tradition of carrying forward the name or something. But simply because he did not know what to do with a girl. Their house had always been full of boys. 3 brothers and 5 cousins who fought and played with each other.

How the heck do you deal with a small girl?

But Naina wanted a girl, so they brought home Zoya.

He found Zoya sitting amidst the plants. When she shook her head while crying, her curls bounced up and down. Naina would have loved her curly hair.

He sat there beside her. She looked at him waiting for him to say something.

He didn’t.

Finally she spoke.

“I’m not yours”

He sighed. She was five and already ‘impossible’.
None of the arguments that would placate someone her age would work here. No sir, he had to say something…something more … more honest. That’s what Naina would have done.
When Sagar and Naina had begun courting, Sagar would steal lines from obscure Japanese love films and quote them to her as his own. They made him sound ‘deep’.
Naina would say something very ordinary and mundane. Like how their love did not give her butterflies in the stomach or weak knees. But just a deep sense of calm like she was home. It sounded so unromantic yet he knew that it meant a lot more than the Japanese dialogue because it was true.

A little wiser, he knew, today, none of the emotional ‘dialogues’ would do just one honest true admission that would convince Zoya that she was theirs.

He searched his memory for something.

And found a diary.

It was amongst the few belongings of Naina’s that he had saved.

His mind turned the pages till it reached an entry on September 28. The first time Naina had dreamt of a little girl with curly hair. There was nothing extraordinary about the dream. Yet something had made Naina write it.

Sagar remembered the next dream. He was in Bombay. Naina had made an STD call to tell him she had dreamt about the little girl again. In this dream Naina had sent Sagar away shopping with a hot seductress because the little girl had invited her for a tea party.

They had laughed about it.

The little girl continued to visit Naina in her dreams. A little more frequently now. So Naina christened her Zoya. Finally, she told him they had to invite Zoya home. A few tests at the hospital revealed they couldn’t have a child.

On December 23 they visited the Hope Foundation.

And 5 months after Zoya had first come in Naina’s dream, she came home.


Zoya looked up at her father. Her eyes dry.
“I’m really yours. Mummy knew me”

It had worked.

How could it not. The truth always works.