Ruhi sat alone, knees drawn to her chest, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, the weight of silence pressing down like a mountain on her chest and she didn’t know where it began or where it would end because everything felt like a mess and everyone had something to say, everyone had something to blame. And somewhere between their expectations and disappointments, she had completely disappeared.

He said he didn’t believe in rituals, said there was no need for fasting, no need to hold onto something symbolic, something sacred, and maybe it shouldn’t have mattered, maybe it was just a tradition like he said but it wasn’t just that, was it, it was something she did with hope, with care, with this naive little belief that maybe even if things were falling apart in her life, even if she had no one to celebrate it with, even if everything was confusing and incomplete, at least she could do something that felt like love, something that felt like she mattered.