No! Never! I won't accept anyone else as my father. My only father left us four years ago," Amayra retorted angrily.
Tears streamed down Nitara Ji's face. Holding Amayra's hand tightly, she said, "I know, my child, that you can't accept Bhavesh Ji as your father. But I made this decision only for your future. I'm not your enemy, and my love for you hasn't diminished since your father's passing."
"The circumstances were such that I had to marry Bhavesh Ji. Trust your mother, my child; before making this decision, all I thought about was you. After your father passed away, we faced so many difficulties. Relatives turned their backs on us... and I had no one else."
"With your future in mind, your school, college fees, and your father's dream of making you a doctor, everything was on my shoulders."
"Even if I had tried to manage everything alone, this society wouldn't have allowed a widow with a young daughter to live peacefully. They say a woman can live alone after her husband's death, but they don't show the reality where a widow is looked at with lustful eyes."
"When the sole breadwinner's shadow is gone, a woman has to face a lot. After you left for school, men with filthy minds would try to do wrong with me. They would come to our house, bang on the door, and say things that would make me hang my head in shame. But still, I didn't give up. But when they started eyeing you and tried to scare me using your name, I got scared."
"I got scared for my daughter, whom I carried for nine months, held close to my heart. I got scared for the last piece of your father that I had left. I loved your father so much that I couldn't let anything happen to you at any cost."
"And then, when Bhavesh entered my life, he told me his children needed a mother too and proposed marriage. I agreed, thinking only of you, that you would receive a father's love and a better future."
"Tell me, where did I go wrong, that my daughter refused to see my face, leaving me without a word at the Mumbai airport? Did I become so bad that you couldn't even come to meet me?"
"In these three years, there hasn't been a single day when I didn't think of you. Tell me, Amayra, have I really become so bad that I unknowingly took away my child's happiness?"
Nitara Ji's tears flowed continuously, her voice choked with emotion. She could say no more.