His mother stayed another few days before returning to hometown.
She moved quietly through the house during that time.
Cooking without asking.
Folding clothes unnecessarily.
Lighting lamps every evening.
Sometimes she tried speaking normally.
“Eat little more.”
“Hmmm.”
“Anna called?”
“Hmmm.”
Conversations had reduced into fragments.
Not because love reduced.
Because grief occupied too much space between words.
Before leaving, she stood near the gate longer than usual.
“You come home for some days.”
“I’ll see.”
“Don’t sit alone nights.”
He nodded faintly.
Neither of them believed that instruction would actually be followed.
Once she left, nights changed shape completely.
Daytime remained survivable.
Work helped.
Meetings.
Calls.
Targets.
Emails.
People behaved carefully around him in office initially.
Too carefully.
Voices softened when he entered rooms.
Conversations stopped midway.
Sympathy floated everywhere like invisible humidity.
Sudharma hated it.
So he worked longer hours deliberately.
Stayed occupied.
Stayed functional.
But nights—
Nights became something else entirely.
The duplex house turned hostile after dark.
Every room contained echoes.
Every silence felt inhabited.
The television remained on unnecessarily just to interrupt emptiness.
Sometimes entire nights passed without him entering bedroom properly.
He started sleeping on the hall sofa more often.
Old Monk slowly became routine companion after midnight.
Not dramatic alcoholism.
Just enough to dull edges before sleep finally arrived.
Some nights he sat alone on terrace till dawn smoking continuously while stray dogs barked somewhere far away.
The city looked peaceful from there.
That almost felt insulting.
Months passed like that.
Not healing.
Only movement of time.
People slowly resumed normal behavior around him.
Office stopped whispering constantly.
Friends reduced frequency of check-ins.
Which he preferred.
Grief exhausted audiences eventually.
Even compassionate ones.
One afternoon, nearly eight months later, a message appeared unexpectedly on office communicator.
Hi Sudharma. Need small career guidance if free.
The name took him few seconds to place.
Suhana.
He knew her professionally.
Nothing beyond that.
Different unit.
Worked under another reporting structure.
Occasional interactions during reviews.
Competent.
Quiet.
Observant.
That was all.
He almost ignored the message initially.
Then replied:
Come after lunch.
The conversation began formally.
Career growth.
Internal movement.
Management roles.
Certification courses.
Suhana spoke carefully at first, notebook open beside coffee cup inside cafeteria corner.
But somewhere midway the conversation drifted naturally.
Burnout.
Career breaks.
Feeling stuck.
Then unexpectedly she mentioned her own pause from work years earlier after family issues.
Sudharma looked up slightly then.
Not because the story matched his.
Because the exhaustion inside it did.
For the first time in months, conversation with someone did not feel like walking carefully around tragedy.
Suhana never once mentioned Swara.
Never offered sympathy.
Never used soft grieving voice.
She simply spoke normally.
That itself felt relieving.
The meetings continued after that.
Not intentionally.
Sometimes lunch.
Sometimes tea break.
Sometimes random corridor conversations stretching longer than planned.
Mostly work initially.
Then books.
Travel.
Families.
Failures.
Career detours.
Suhana listened more than she spoke.
And strangely, she never behaved as though Sudharma needed emotional handling.
That mattered.
Around office, people of course noticed eventually.
Corporate offices noticed everything.
Especially repeated lunch timings.
Especially men and women slowly becoming comfortable around each other.
One evening Vinay called directly after apparently receiving third-hand office gossip.
“Macha.”
“What?”
“You okay ah?”
Sudharma smiled faintly hearing the caution inside the question.
“Hmmm.”
“People talking.”
“People jobless.”
Silence.
Then Vinay asked more carefully:
“You sure?”
Sudharma understood what he actually meant.
Are you replacing grief with companionship accidentally?
“No,” he answered quietly.
And he meant it.
Because nothing romantic existed there.
Not yet.
Perhaps not even possibility.
Only two adults discovering ease in conversation after long periods of emotional exhaustion.
Suhana eventually visited the duplex house for the first time with office friends after one team outing nearby.
The house still carried traces of Swara everywhere.
Photographs.
Books.
Plants.
Wind chimes she had chosen.
Sudharma noticed Suhana observing all of it silently without asking unnecessary questions.
That too mattered.
Later, after everyone left, she paused briefly near the framed photograph in the hall.
“Beautiful smile,” she said softly.
Then moved on.
No pity.
No awkwardness.
Only acknowledgment.
Slowly, almost invisibly, Suhana became familiar to the house.
Sometimes dropping by after work.
Sometimes bringing food his mother had apparently requested through phone.
Sometimes simply sitting with tea while television played in background.
The strange thing was:
she no longer came only for Sudharma.
His mother had started liking her independently.
Calls happened between them.
Recipes exchanged.
Temple prasadam delivered.
One afternoon Sudharma returned home early and found both women sitting inside kitchen laughing over some old family story.
For few seconds he simply stood unnoticed near the entrance listening.
The sound startled him emotionally.
Not because it replaced anything.
Because the house had begun sounding alive again in fragments.
Relatives started noticing too.
Family WhatsApp groups now occasionally carried:
Who is this girl?
Nice girl.
Very respectful.
His favourite Chikki called one evening pretending casualness badly.
“So…”
“So what?”
“This Suhana.”
“Chikki…”
“Hmmm.”
He sighed tiredly.
“There’s nothing.”
“Okay okay.”
But the family had already started imagining futures quietly.
Only Sudharma himself remained emotionally still.
Or believed he did.
Because every meaningful conversation still eventually reached Swara somewhere internally.
Comparison never happened.
Replacement never happened.
Memory remained intact.
Untouched.
And perhaps Suhana understood that more clearly than everyone else.
One evening during a hometown visit, his mother finally asked Suhana directly while both arranged lamps near the pooja shelf.
“Anything between you both?”
Suhana smiled faintly without looking up immediately.
“He still lives with her in many ways aunty.”
His mother stayed silent.
Suhana adjusted the wick carefully before continuing.
“And I know if I push that space open now… he’ll only move further inside.”
The older woman looked at her properly then.
For the first time, she did not hear restraint alone in Suhana’s voice.
There was longing there too.
Quietly held.
Carefully controlled.
“You like him that much?” she asked softly.
Suhana smiled a little at that.
“Hmmm.”
Then after a pause:
“But some relationships cannot be entered by replacing someone. They have to slowly make space for you themselves.”
No sadness.
No sacrifice.
Just clarity.
His mother looked toward Swara’s photograph for a brief moment and then back at Suhana.
“And if that space never opens?”
Suhana took a few seconds before answering.
“It already has little by little aunty,” she said quietly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t keep coming back here.”
The sentence remained in the room long after she finished speaking.
Sudharma had stopped lighting lamps entirely after the funeral months.
Stopped praying too.
Not rebelliously.
Simply because faith had gone silent inside him.
But Suhana continued the practice whenever she visited.
Whether his mother stayed there or not.
She would enter quietly,
light the lamp before the framed photograph,
adjust flowers if needed,
and move away without performance.
Not because she wanted to remain outside that memory forever.
But because she understood something deeply:
if she ever became part of Sudharma’s life fully, that memory would still remain inside the house.
And she did not want love that demanded erasure as entry fee.
One evening Sudharma stood near the dining area watching her do it silently.
The lamp light reflected softly across Swara’s photograph for few brief seconds.
Suhana folded her hands once.
Then turned away normally as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
“You really believe in all this?” Sudharma asked unexpectedly.
She looked at him for a moment.
“Not always.”
“Then?”
Suhana thought briefly before answering.
“Some people remain part of a home even after leaving it re.”
The sentence unsettled him quietly.
Not because it sounded philosophical.
Because it sounded emotionally true.
Then before the silence became heavy, she added lightly:
“And also your Amma will haunt both of us if lamp not lit.”
For the first time in that conversation, Sudharma laughed naturally without restraint.
Suhana watched the laugh carefully for one brief second before looking away toward the kitchen again.
Not possessively.
Not triumphantly.
Just with the quiet relief of someone who hoped that one day, slowly and without betrayal, life might make space for her too.
Shanbhogue Publications 
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