The sun was high above Venice Beach when the little boy disappeared.

It was just after one in the afternoon, and the promenade buzzed with life. Skateboarders, kite sellers, children building castles in the sand. 

The three-year-old was there too, holding his grandmother’s hand one moment, chasing the surf the next. The waves shimmered. Seagulls cawed overhead. Somewhere in that ordinary blur of beach life, the boy vanished. 

His grandmother, thinking he was right behind her, looked up from her beach chair to find only the wind and the waves. No sign of the child. No cry. No splash. Just silence, and two tiny slippers resting on the sand, pointed toward the sea. 

By evening, the beach had changed. Volunteers, beachgoers, and first responders scoured the sand and nearby alleys through the evening. People returned to old photos on their phones, zooming in on blurry backgrounds. Had they seen him? Pale blue T-shirt, denim shorts, dark curls? 

Night fell, to the anguished howl of the child’s mother… no one left. 

Locals gathered with candles and coffee, murmuring prayers under their breath. At dawn, the search began again. The beach was quiet now, the way places grow quiet after something terrible has happened. His family waited. Still hoping, still looking toward the sea, refusing to give up on the boy whose slippers stood, small and solemn, in the sand.

***

The airport vibrated with babble, foot-fall and the shuffle of luggage wheels. 

“Here, Mother,” Anish said, “I’ll check you in.” 

Daneen sat down on the chair he’d found her. She gave him her ticket and passport and sighed as she rested her back.

Her husband, Jay’s death had left Daneen’s life arrested. When the doctors said it was cancer, fast, inoperable, Anish had flown back without hesitation. The first time she’d seen him in a decade. He’d stepped into Jay’s study, fielding calls, paying bills, receiving mourners. She knew he wept a lot in the privacy of his room. …he had adored Jay. He spoke only when necessary and didn’t make eye contact. He worked all day and most of the night, …a successful lawyer now, he knew how to get Jay’s estate and papers back in order.

“I’ve booked you into a hotel,” he said after the funeral, when she complained that too many people were coming to condole. “You won’t have to see them.” She spent two weeks in that hushed hotel suite, meeting with a handful of friends she trusted.

“I don’t want to stay in Delhi,” she said. “I don’t want anyone’s sympathy.”

Anish didn’t answer. He merely drove her back to the mansion to pack for LA.

“Just for a few months,” he said. “Until you’re stronger.”

And now, a fortnight later, here they were at the airport. 

How would Alka react to her mother-in-law’s appearance on her doorstep?  Ten years of agony and blame stretched between them like an unspoken assertion. She felt the grit of sand beneath her feet again each time she thought of Alka. She closed her eyes. The drone of the airport dissolved into another time as Daneen drifted into an uneasy sleep. 

She is fifteen again, a slip of a girl with skin like sunlit saffron and hair that falls to her waist in auburn waves. She sits on their creaking houseboat on Dal Lake in Srinagar and sells flowers. They are poor, her family, flower sellers who pray every day that the blossoms will bring them fortune. Daneen hears stories of big cities from tourists, and she travels far and wide in her imagination. 

And then there is Jay Malhotra. A tycoon from Delhi. He cruises past on a shikara, dressed in crisp linen, eyes the color of river stones. He buys all the flowers they can sell. He visits their houseboat for three days running. He proposes marriage. Daneen’s mother hesitates. Jay showers her parents and three sisters with money and gifts in exchange for their daughter who has captivated him. Excited at the thought of an adventure with her fairy tale prince, Daneen takes a small bundle of clothes and a pocket full of wisteria seeds when she leaves the lake behind her.

Jay’s mansion glitters. The carved mahogany front door, the polished marble floors, the crystal, the silver… She has a room to herself. So large.  She holds her bundle of clothes to her chest. The place swarms with men and women dressed in sparkling white--They look at her as though she’s a stain. Let me show you the bathroom, a woman sniffs, …this is where you can keep your shoes. …She sanitizes her hands and leaves. Daneen wants her mother. She doesn’t eat. She lies curled up in a bed too soft, too large, longing for the narrow cot she shared with her sisters. She misses the chatter of neighbors drifting in through the wooden walls of the boat. The smell of the lake, the rough edge of her mother’s pheran against her cheek. Even the silence in this big city is different. Too heavy. She opens the window so she can cry into the night.

In those early days, Daneen stays in her room. She hugs her knees and hums songs about the lake and the mountains.  No one talks to her. Food is served in her room and cleared away in an hour even if she hasn’t eaten.  She ventures out of her room after a week and waits for her captor to show himself.  When he eventually does, he hurries away into his study. The voices of the white phantoms around her are smooth and clipped, speaking words she mostly doesn’t understand. Every polished surface reminds her she doesn’t belong. She closes her eyes and tries to picture home: the flicker of lanterns at dusk; her sisters’ laughter; the rice and haakh eaten together.…. Memory blurs, as though it too, is slipping away, leaving her stranded in this place of icy strangers. 

I want to go home, she says as Jay brushes past her on his way to the office one morning. She has spent the night sitting on the steps outside his room, waiting to intercept him. Jay looks past her. His voice is cold. Ask for anything but that, he says. You are my wife now and this is your home. You must learn the ways of city dwellers. Become like us and you’ll be happy. Let the housekeeper know exactly what you want, and you’ll get it. He walks away. 

Daneen roams the garden. She cries softly so no one can hear her. She is given new clothes and shoes she hates.  She wears her own clothes until one day the housekeeper burns them. She is forced into silks and chiffon, voile and satin. The embroidery pinches her soft skin. The heels make her sway like a drunk. When her yearning for home becomes too wild, Daneen finds her wisteria seeds. She plants them in different places in the vast garden. She tends to them and wills them to grow in this alien soil. 

A tutor appears to teach her English. She must learn how to cook and how to conduct herself. 

“But why?” she asks. 

“So that sir can present you in polite society,” the housekeeper says. 

She is a prisoner here. After a lot of resistance and misery, she realizes she will have to obey. Daneen learns quickly. She eavesdrops behind velvet curtains and watches the posh ladies in low cut blouses smoke, drink, laugh. Jay comes bearing blue velvet boxes. He insists she wear jewels.  Defeated by her captor, by this noisy busy city which churns on, unmindful of the suppressed scream hidden in her chest, Daneen gives in. 

Jay is pleased as he watches his enchanting wife emerge from her cocoon. Her beauty confers style on anything she wears.  She folds his napkins in the shape of ducks and roses. His garden blooms like it has never done before. Jay moves her to his room. He floods her with jewelry, and she sparkles. He takes her out to parties with him and claims her publicly.  He watches with pride as she floats amongst his guests. A triumph, his trophy wife who carries a stone in her heart. 

 He is overjoyed when she becomes pregnant. He showers her with diamonds, rubies, and pearls in celebration. But Daneen doesn’t want Jay’s child. She can’t bear the thought of unleashing yet another superficial socialite into the world. Desperate, she locks herself in her room and starves herself. When little Anish finally arrives, he is frail and gasping. A blue-lipped, squealing bundle of bones. Daneen hands him to the first of many nannies and makes sure he is kept hidden from the world. But Anish becomes the center of Jay’s universe. Jay spends all his time at home with the child, watching over him for hours, bathing him, feeding him, and playing with him as though nothing else exists.

Daneen awoke with a start. The terminal had grown quiet. She glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed. The queues had vanished. Anish must have gone to eat. She reached for her carry-on. The seat beside her was empty. Everything she needed for the journey was in that bag. She fumbled for her phone. No messages. She dialed Anish. No connection. Airports were full of dead zones. She stood and craned her neck.

“Excuse me, madam.” A solicitous airline attendant appeared. “Are you looking for something?”

“Yes, I…I’m flying to California tonight. My son is with me. My bag seems to have been… well I don’t see it here..”

“Please, give me your son’s name. I’ll have him paged. But all US flights have departed.”

 The announcements came and went. Nothing. Daneen sat back down and tried to breathe deep. They searched every lounge. Every gate. Hours passed. Her heart skipped in her chest. When she tried to buy water, her credit card was declined.

“There seems to be some issue,” the cashier said apologetically, tapping the side of the machine.

She tried calling her driver, her old cook. No answer.

“How can we help, madam? Can we take you home? Do you know the address?” 

 Of course, she knew her address. 

The drive home was silent except for the hum of the road and her shallow breath. She should have asked to see the flight roster—he was definitely there somewhere.  Would he be worried to find her gone? She didn’t really know her son. Not like Jay did. Anish had always been a bit of a sissy. Never well enough to play outdoors. Always whimpering and needing attention. Each time Daneen dismissed a nanny, they were all so inefficient, he would stand in the doorway, choking on apologies taking on the blame. He was too sick to be easy. Against Jay’s wishes, she’d sent him to boarding school, to toughen him up and keep him away from the life she still hated even though she was a part of it now. She remembered his crayon scribbles and pleadings for her to visit. If she’d gone to him, he would have asked to come home. So, Jay went. She never did.

And then from college in the U.S., he wrote to his father. Some rambling confession about how he had fallen in love with a South Indian scholar. A dark, plain girl if the photos were to be believed. Daneen was shocked. Alka loves me, Dad, without conditions and without disappointment. She asks nothing of me, except that I exist near her. She makes me laugh, remembers if I’ve eaten. It’s a kind of quiet thing.… And Jay had blessed their marriage. He hadn’t asked for Alka to change, to learn to fit in to his social circle.

And then their baby arrived. Another child brought into a world of hope and disappointment. Daneen saw only photos until he was three. Then Anish called. Come to celebrate his third birthday. Daneen was reluctant to go, but Jay insisted. “I’ll follow,” he said. “You go ahead.” The child loved the beach. They lived right near the water. She looked away only for a few minutes…

 She felt the surf between her toes once again. Heard the gulls, the lap of the incoming tide.  They had attacked her. Neglectful, they called her. Hateful. Even Jay had turned away.  When Alka came out of the sanitarium, she was changed, unresponsive.  And Anish hadn’t spoken to his mother in all these years.

The car slowed at last. She pressed her palm to the window, willing the familiar walls to appear. The sentry box was locked. Dawn broke as they swung into the driveway. It washed the garden in amber light. Purple wisteria cascaded from the roof, dew-diamonds winking in the blooms. She’d wake Ram Singh and ask for a cup of tea. Her head ached but she was home. For fifty years, this house had been all she knew. These walls had witnessed her change from mouse to gazelle, from captive to mistress. 

The driver hurried to open the door. Daneen pressed the bell. No answer. She rang again, then again. The door opened. A puffy face looked out.

‘Yes?’

Daneen’s legs turned weak. She clenched her fists. 

‘Where is Ram Singh..?’ She managed to ask. 

The man’s face hardened. ‘Look madam, I don’t know who you are, but I don’t appreciate being woken up at dawn on a Sunday.’

She couldn’t see. 

‘This is my home…I live here. Where are my staff…?’

‘No madam, this is my home now. I live here with my staff. Mr. Anish Malhotra sold this property to me.’

The door banged shut, leaving Daneen, the little Kashmiri girl, standing on the porch, with her blooming wisteria. Suddenly common. Unaware it no longer belonged. Soon its petals would curl inward like forgotten promises. A final bloom before fall.

And beneath her feet, the sand shifted.

Inspiration Note

This story grew out of a haunting sense of dislocation I have known.  Of a home that never felt like one. Of bonds that failed under pressure. I was impacted by how displacement can alter the soul. Thence was born Daneen and her fictional   predicament of being abandoned when everything she once leaned on is taken from her.