Warangal Forest – June 19, 2025
The forest swallowed the daylight in shades of green and shadow. Vines curled over broken stone, birdcalls echoed in the canopy, and the only path forward was a barely visible trail that twisted through gnarled trees and moss-covered roots.
Anushree and Naveen moved in silence, following the cryptic directions scrawled on a note slipped into their hotel room door that morning. A red thread tied to a thorn bush had marked the turnoff. Then the sound of chanting, faint as breath, guided them the rest of the way.
They didn't know what they expected to find. A safe house? A madwoman? A lie?
Instead, they found an ashram, hidden in a clearing like a forgotten dream. Weathered stone walls. Faded saffron flags fluttering in the humid breeze. And a grave.
Unmarked. A shallow rise in the earth, incense burning beside it.
And her.
Rathnadevi knelt in silence, her back to them. Her hair was loose, streaked with silver, her sari plain and colorless. She didn't flinch when they stepped into view. As if she had known this moment would come.
Anushree froze. Her pulse roared in her ears. She wanted to run to her. To scream. To strike her. To embrace her.
"Why?" she asked. The word came out hoarse, her voice fractured by years of resentment and days of heartbreak.
Rathnadevi didn't turn. Her fingers placed a fresh marigold on the soil.
"I came here to mourn someone," she said quietly. "Twenty years ago, the man I loved was killed. By our father."
Anushree's breath caught.
She had never heard those words spoken aloud. Not in two decades. Not once.
Silence swelled between them, thick as smoke.
"I didn't board the flight," Rathnadevi continued. Her voice was calm, but her shoulders trembled. "To come here. To be unseen. To mourn in peace."
She finally turned to face them—her face older, softer, but marked by guilt and exhaustion.
"Then the crash happened."
"You let the world believe you were dead," Anushree said, her voice laced with fury and disbelief. "You let me believe it."
"I had no choice," Rathnadevi whispered. "Not once they started covering it up. Not once I saw what that crash really was. I was afraid. I'm still afraid."
Anushree knelt beside her, trying to steady her breathing. The weight of everything she'd discovered bore down on her. Slowly, she told her sister the full story—about the engine defect, the buried report, the erased footage, the missing journalist, the sabotage.
When she finished, Rathnadevi was crying silently.
"My silence," she said, her voice breaking, "killed them. I should've come forward. I should've… done something."
Naveen stepped back, giving them space. He knew this was no longer about facts. It was about blood. About history.
Anushree placed a hand gently on her sister's arm. "Then do something now."
Rathnadevi nodded. She wiped her face and stood, straighter than before. A woman who had lost everything. A woman who still had a chance to make it right.
"I'll surrender."
"I'll tell them everything."
And somewhere in the trees, the wind shifted—as if the forest itself had exhaled.