Page 98 - You Only Live Once [BooksLD]

‘As she was raised in an orphanage, she longed for attention, longed for a
loved one. Why do we want to feel protected? How will we grow? I used to
tell her. But the worst thing she did was to leave her career and marry that

stupid Czech NRI.’
‘Mind your language. You’re talking about my dad.’ While I have a lot to
settle with him myself, I certainly can’t let Ricky abuse him for no reason at
all.

‘Okay, sorry!’ he replies in a rude way.
‘Tell me more.’

‘About what?’
‘Mom.’ I demand, feeling weirdly like a stubborn young kid.

‘I don’t remember much. It has been a very long time now,’ he says as he
continues to walk ahead of us.

‘Anything?’
‘She loved dogs. Is that information?’ He passes a wicked grin.

‘Ricky, you really act weird at times. I thought we had something
concrete to find here.’
‘That’s all I know, dear.’

‘Aarav? Parvathi? Let’s go back to the PG and try to find out more?
Madhuri and Maria have a lot more information, I guess.’

Ricky grabs me by the shoulders and looks straight into my eyes.
‘Everyone we know will leave us someday, Alara. You need to come to
terms with the reality. I wanted to help you discover your mother’s past so
you could momentarily step into her shoes. If she were alive, she would
have come back. Or at least written to me. I was her only family. If she
didn’t, she is not here in Goa.’

‘What about the folder that I discovered in the morning?’
‘She is famous now, isn’t she? It could be some journalist who picked it

up from the orphanage and forgot to return it for a long time. So many
people now want to write on her, about her. The orphanage and the PG are
hardly 2 kms apart. Goa isn’t that huge.’

‘She is alive.’
‘And nobody noticed? She is popular. Don’t tell me it is to do with the
plastic surgery shit from daily soaps.’ These words by him make me hit