rock hearts

I was fifteen the day my faith collapsed. It was an ordinary day in October. I was done with my academic exams and spending time with my mother and my elder sister, who was visiting over a festive Diwali weekend. 

After a hearty lunch together, my mother mentioned a bit of chest pain, nothing dramatic, nothing that warned me what was coming. I was a teenager who couldn’t clearly differentiate between indigestion and what was actually happening to her. Eventually, my sister made the call and together we bundled my mother into a cab and rushed to the hospital.

I remember the eerie quiet of that waiting room…