I am Saanvi, a weaver’s daughter from Ayodhya, once known more for broken strings than beautiful patterns.
The day Amma found out Baba had used the temple fund to repay debts, silence flooded our home like winter fog. Even the thread on my loom stopped tight at the knots. Baba didn’t speak. He folded his hands before the elders of our community, eyes down, shame like a weight on his spine. I was fifteen and didn’t understand the kinds of pain that hide behind grown-up mistakes.
But I knew what it felt like to stop trusting someone you love.
For weeks, Amma moved around him like he was glass. Not touching. Not breaking. I followed her lead. I would look at Baba but not see him. Only hear his sandals at the door and feel something twist in my stomach. I wanted to believe he was sorry. That he was still my Baba — the one who used to recite stories from the Ramayana under the neem tree.
But I couldn’t yet.
One morning, when the rains were late and tempers in the fields were worse than usual, I went to the river. Not to pray — just to be alone. I sat in the mud quietly, my fingers digging into the earth. The Ganga, our sacred river, moved softly in front of me like breath.
A phrase floated into my mind, uninvited: “In times of loss, the self must not be shaken.” I blinked at the water. It was from the Bhagavad Gita. I’d heard our priest speak it during Bhagavad Gita Jayanti last year. Krishna says it to Arjuna — the warrior too scared to fight his own kin.
The self must not be shaken.
But my self was shaken. If a father lies, what then? If he steals from a god?
I knelt, cupped the river, and let it wash my palms. Then I did pranams to the water. I didn’t know what I was surrendering — my anger, maybe. My desire to see him suffer.
That evening, Baba brought milk from the neighbors. And two guavas. He offered them to me first.
“We’ll pay it all back,” he said. “Even if it takes years.”
I didn’t answer. But I let him sit next to me. That was the first time.
Faith didn’t return all at once. It came like our winter sun — slowly, behind clouds, low and unsure. It came in the way he started walking to the temple every morning, not to beg forgiveness loudly, just to sweep the steps before anyone arrived. Quietly.
It reminded me of Sita from the Ramayana — her strength not in shouting, but in standing steady even as the world doubted her.
Trust, too, is like that.
Now, when I weave saris, the knots no longer feel broken. They feel chosen.
And sometimes, Baba sings in the evenings again.
Not every story has a clean repair. But the Gita says, “Even a little of this dharma protects from great fear.”
Maybe that’s how we begin again.
Not with certainty.
But with a single thread.
I am Saanvi, a weaver’s daughter from Ayodhya, once known more for broken strings than beautiful patterns.
The day Amma found out Baba had used the temple fund to repay debts, silence flooded our home like winter fog. Even the thread on my loom stopped tight at the knots. Baba didn’t speak. He folded his hands before the elders of our community, eyes down, shame like a weight on his spine. I was fifteen and didn’t understand the kinds of pain that hide behind grown-up mistakes.
But I knew what it felt like to stop trusting someone you love.
For weeks, Amma moved around him like he was glass. Not touching. Not breaking. I followed her lead. I would look at Baba but not see him. Only hear his sandals at the door and feel something twist in my stomach. I wanted to believe he was sorry. That he was still my Baba — the one who used to recite stories from the Ramayana under the neem tree.
But I couldn’t yet.
One morning, when the rains were late and tempers in the fields were worse than usual, I went to the river. Not to pray — just to be alone. I sat in the mud quietly, my fingers digging into the earth. The Ganga, our sacred river, moved softly in front of me like breath.
A phrase floated into my mind, uninvited: “In times of loss, the self must not be shaken.” I blinked at the water. It was from the Bhagavad Gita. I’d heard our priest speak it during Bhagavad Gita Jayanti last year. Krishna says it to Arjuna — the warrior too scared to fight his own kin.
The self must not be shaken.
But my self was shaken. If a father lies, what then? If he steals from a god?
I knelt, cupped the river, and let it wash my palms. Then I did pranams to the water. I didn’t know what I was surrendering — my anger, maybe. My desire to see him suffer.
That evening, Baba brought milk from the neighbors. And two guavas. He offered them to me first.
“We’ll pay it all back,” he said. “Even if it takes years.”
I didn’t answer. But I let him sit next to me. That was the first time.
Faith didn’t return all at once. It came like our winter sun — slowly, behind clouds, low and unsure. It came in the way he started walking to the temple every morning, not to beg forgiveness loudly, just to sweep the steps before anyone arrived. Quietly.
It reminded me of Sita from the Ramayana — her strength not in shouting, but in standing steady even as the world doubted her.
Trust, too, is like that.
Now, when I weave saris, the knots no longer feel broken. They feel chosen.
And sometimes, Baba sings in the evenings again.
Not every story has a clean repair. But the Gita says, “Even a little of this dharma protects from great fear.”
Maybe that’s how we begin again.
Not with certainty.
But with a single thread.
