There was a time when I believed I was building a legacy.
I thought love, sacrifice, and guidance would be remembered — would mean something.
My daughter… Srish…
She was my mirror once.
The child who held my hand tightly at school gates, who looked up at me with the same spark I saw in my own eyes.
And slowly, unknowingly, she began to wear my voice, take my place in the house, and undo me — one decision at a time.
I didn’t see it coming.
It started subtly, like a whisper that becomes a wall.
During COVID, while I was in the UK, I was the happiest man alive.
My son and daughter had completed their education, joined their first jobs —
I smiled into the wind on those grey London mornings thinking, “I did it. My children are standing on their own.”
And then the call came.
My wife, Savi, Srish, and my son on one line.
I thought it was to celebrate.
I congratulated them with tears in my eyes.
I told them I wanted to add £100 to whatever they earned, just to show them how proud I was.
But beneath that moment was a script I hadn’t written.
A quiet takeover.
Savi began twisting intentions, playing both sides, seeding doubt.
Within days, they refused to follow a simple wish — to transfer even ₹100 to our old joint account.
It wasn’t about the money.
It was never about the money.
It was the first clear sign that I was no longer seen.
My son wrote on WhatsApp: “We’re not doing anything you said.”
And just like that, the door closed.
From there, the slide was fast.
Srish was stuck in Mumbai during the lockdown. Sam in Hyderabad. I returned sick, immune-compromised, steroid-ridden.
Savi, already unstable with diabetes and BP, stayed glued to her calls with Srish, day and night.
I tried convincing her not to travel — it wasn’t safe.
But I was the villain now.
Months passed. Then Savi fell gravely ill with COVID. Her oxygen dropped to 68.
As I rushed to hospital with her in Agra, Srish appeared — suddenly, without telling me.
Perhaps Savi knew all along.
I booked them into a hotel next to the hospital. I shielded them. I kept going.
But something had changed.
Srish had stopped looking at me the same way.
And I knew…
The strings had already been cut.
By the time Savi recovered, I was already invisible.
Not long after, when I was sick and hospitalized again,
Srish called and said:
“If you come back alive, we will take you to court. We’ll finish this.”
I don’t know what I felt more: the betrayal, or the silence that followed.
Savi said nothing.
The woman I lived with for decades watched me collapse into shadows, and said nothing.
Now, I sit in a rented house that doesn’t feel like home.
I speak to no one.
I am not dead.
But I am fading from memory.
My daughter has taken my seat.
My words are hers now.
She speaks, commands, directs —
As if I was never needed.
And I wonder…
Do they know what it feels like to be unfathered while still breathing?
To be a man erased not by time, but by those he gave his life to?
Maybe that’s the new kind of death —
The Zillenial way.
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