Abhiram had always lived two lives. One was defined by intellectual precision and sterile laboratories nestled in the pristine, orderly landscape of Switzerland—his adopted home of over two decades. The other was more spectral: a fragile tether to a birthplace he had not returned to in twenty-six years. In Zurich, and later Lucerne, he was celebrated—Dr. Abhiram Ramachandran, a pioneering medical engineering researcher whose work on neuroprosthetics had gained global recognition. Conferences, keynote addresses, academic journals—his life was built on achievement and logic, a world where emotion had little space, and certainty reigned.
Yet, even as he walked the marbled corridors of institutions, presented innovations before international panels, or accepted accolades from scientific bodies, there remained a presence that trailed him like an echo: the quiet ache of a family he had never quite understood, and a homeland whose air had once filled his lungs but now felt foreign. Home was a word he used sparingly—if at all. For what meaning did it carry, when every memory tied to it came knotted with silence?
His relationship with his father, Ramachandran, had always been defined more by absence than presence. Their interactions, even in childhood, had resembled diplomatic meetings—formal, restrained, rarely emotional. There were no long walks, no bedtime stories, no outbursts of laughter. They coexisted in the same space, spoke in the same language, yet never truly communicated. Conversations were economical, pleasantries exchanged like obligations. And in the silence that followed, something deeper had always lurked: questions neither dared to ask, emotions both refused to confront. Then, on a brisk autumn morning in Lucerne, as the Alps stood like distant spectators to his routine, the call came. Ramachandran was gone. Sudden. Unceremonious. Final.
What followed was a blur of rituals wrapped in European detachment. The funeral, conducted in Switzerland per the family's migration years prior, was an austere affair—elegant, dignified, and devoid of drama. Meenakshi, his mother, stood motionless beside the casket, her expression unreadable. She neither wept nor raged. Her grief was not loud; it was frozen. Like glass: beautiful, fragile, and unreachable. His sisters, Shweta and Divya, moved like dancers in a well-rehearsed performance—executing rituals with precision but evading memory. No stories were shared. No laughter over old anecdotes. Just a respectful silence, heavy and hollow, that filled the air with something almost oppressive.
Abhiram had expected sadness. What he hadn't expected was this—absence within absence. It was as though no one truly knew who Ramachandran had been. Or worse, they had known, and chosen to forget.
Days later, amid the sterile scent of old paper and mothballs, Abhiram found himself alone in his father's study. It was as he remembered it from his last visit—meticulously organized, untouched by chaos, preserved like a museum exhibit. Dust had settled on the spines of law books and engineering volumes; the air was stale, unmoved for weeks. He traced his fingers across the mahogany desk and paused at a bookshelf, where a hidden corner revealed an object tucked deliberately out of view: a small, wooden box, timeworn and locked. Next to it lay a folded sheet of paper bearing his name.
He unfolded the letter with hands that trembled despite his training in steady precision. The handwriting—Ramachandran's—was unmistakable. It bore the hallmarks of a man who measured his words as carefully as his silences.
"If you wish to know who I was, go back to where I began. The truth isn't in what I gave you. It's in what I left behind."
No dates. No names. Just that. A whisper from the grave. Not a revelation—an invitation. A challenge. A haunting.
Abhiram could not sleep that night. The words lingered, replaying themselves endlessly like a melody stuck between consciousness and dreams. What had his father meant? What had he left behind? That night, something stirred in him—not scientific curiosity, but something older. A child's longing for answers. A son's unspoken ache.
And so, he made the decision. He would return. To India. To the place he had avoided for half his life. Not just to perform rituals, but to follow the trail of a man he had never truly known.The return was not triumphant. It was laden—with history, humidity, and hesitation. Chennai met him with its characteristic heat, its air thick with incense, dust, and distant honking. The ancestral home, nestled in a once-proud neighborhood of Tamil Nadu, stood aged but defiant. The iron gates moaned open like an old throat clearing itself after decades of silence. Inside, the house was dimly lit, the walls yellowed with time, the air steeped in scents of turmeric, sandalwood, and decay. Furniture sat exactly where it always had, covered now in thin plastic sheets like shrouds over old memories.
Shweta and Divya remained reserved. They performed the necessary ceremonies but avoided conversation. Their expressions were practiced. They carried the weight of expectation but refused the burden of emotion. They moved as though walking on sacred ground, too afraid to disturb what lay beneath.
Meenakshi was another story. She moved through the house like a shadow of her former self, pausing at family portraits, whispering verses under her breath, lighting lamps in the prayer room with mechanical devotion. She did not speak of Ramachandran, nor respond when Abhiram tried to gently probe. Her grief had hardened into something less pliable than sorrow—perhaps guilt, perhaps fear. Abhiram's attempts to find clarity met resistance at every turn. His cousin Ammu, once a bundle of mischief and energy, was now a quiet woman burdened by domestic routine. She welcomed him with warmth but sidestepped any mention of the past. Paddu, ever the talker, now spoke in riddles—half-memories, incomplete anecdotes, always trailing off before anything definitive could be said.
"Your father was... complicated," she said once over tea.
"There were things... best left buried." His old friend Tanish, the one person he had hoped would bring some grounding, was nowhere to be found. Phone calls went unanswered. His house was locked. Neighbors shrugged when asked. And then there was Varma—his cousin turned politician. Once close, now aloof. He welcomed Abhiram with the same charisma he likely used at campaign rallies but offered little else. Any mention of Ramachandran was brushed aside with vague platitudes.
"Let the past rest, Abhi. It has teeth." Yet the past refused to rest. It pulsed in the walls of the house. It whispered in the hallways. And every time Abhiram looked at the locked box, he felt it more intensely—that something had been hidden. Not forgotten. Concealed. With care. With purpose.
The truth, whatever it was, had been waiting. Waiting for him to return. Waiting for him to open what was once locked—both in wood and in blood.