Chapter 3: A Life of Love and Longing (The Acharya Family and Srishti)

The Acharya residence stood in one of the city’s older, tree-lined neighborhoods—gracious but never ostentatious. The marble floors still bore the marks of children’s races, and the furniture had the dignified polish of years well lived-in. Donations from the family’s hospital foundation kept the community healthy, and their annual charitable galas drew local business leaders and teachers alike.

Part I: Living in Gentle Privilege

Each morning, rays of sunlight spilled over the rose garden Parmeshwar Acharya had planted for his wife and their daughter. Srishti—the child fate had delivered to them instead of their own—never missed a day without fresh fruit, good books, and the soft guidance that comes from parents who believe education opens every future.

Srishti grew up in a home where art and music were celebrated, where the housekeeper’s son and the society president’s daughter sometimes played marbles side by side. Tutors came for English, mathematics, and classical dance. Pratibha ensured her daughter wore clean, pressed uniforms and never let a festival pass without new bangles or a box of her favorite sweets.

Part II: Love with a Bittersweet Undercurrent

Despite all their outward blessings, the Acharyas carried a tenderness tinged with sorrow. Parmeshwar’s laughter sometimes grew distant at school functions, his eyes unconsciously searching the crowds for a face lost years ago. Pratibha would gaze a little too long at baby photographs, her thumb circling unconsciously over the image of the daughter they had named Shrista, wondering where she might be—how she might look, who she’d become.They never forced this grief on Srishti. In her eyes, she was cherished—her smallest achievements hung proudly in the study, her every injury tended with an anxious mother’s affection. Yet sometimes, she sensed an old sadness in the unguarded moments: Parmeshwar pausing by the lotus pendant in the puja room, or Pratibha smoothing a blanket twice over her as she slept.

Part III: Intentional Upbringing

The Acharyas were parents who believed in shaping rather than sheltering. Srishti learned discipline from her father’s nightly chess matches, and kindness from her mother’s afternoons spent distributing medicines to slum mothers and cleaning hospital wards herself. When Srishti asked why her family helped people who could not pay, Pratibha simply answered, “Because we can, and because it’s who we are.”Success and comfort were never flaunted but used as tools—donating to the arts, building a temple library, sponsoring children’s surgeries, and teaching Srishti from an early age that privilege demanded responsibility.

Part IV: Two Kinds of Love, One Kind of Home

Even in a house brightened by opportunity and wisdom, grief lived quietly, woven into the fabric of family evenings and sleepless nights. Parmeshwar never said, “Where are you, my real little one?” He simply kept a drawer of mementoes—hospital ID bands, the photo of their first girl with pearl-bright eyes, the single cradle cap they never had the heart to throw away.Yet Srishti was never a shadow. She was laughter and song, the star in school plays, sweet-tempered and conscientious. The Acharyas gave her what all loving parents give: a sense of home that neither loss nor uncertainty could ever steal.And so the house thrummed with both fullness and longing—a family that knew fortune, nurtured kindness, and still carried the ache of all that fate had changed, but refused to let grief define the daughter destiny brought them.

authors note :

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(O Love ....)

The moment when I saw your eyes of pearl,

my breath ceased fast ,my heart began to whirl .

O Love ..,Your presence is the only sweet that makes my life complete,my world discreet.

A stirring deep within my soul takes hold ,

An ancient memory,brave and clear and bold .

why does a sense of forgotten truth now rise ?

The answer ,love,I see within your eyes.

O Love ..., I long to hold you close to me,