To Forget and Be Forgotten

Kavitha sat across from the professor, suddenly aware of how small the staff room felt with just the two of them inside. The ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, stirring the warm evening air without cooling it. Outside, the last students were leaving, their voices fading into the distance.

She hadn’t planned to say anything. Not really. The words had simply slipped out before she could stop them.

Seren waited, patient and still, her hands resting lightly on the desk. There was no pressure in her silence. No expectation. Just… space.

Kavitha swallowed.

“My father,” she began, voice low, “told me I could come to college. But only if I promised that the moment I get my degree, I’ll marry. He will choose the groom.”

The words tasted bitter as she spoke them. She stared at a crack in the wooden desk, tracing it with her eyes.

“I said yes. What else was I supposed to say? After everything that happened with my brother… the house was already breaking. I didn’t want to be the one who broke it completely.”

Seren didn’t interrupt. She simply listened, her expression quiet and unreadable.

Kavitha continued, the words coming easier now, like something long held back had finally found a crack to leak through.

“Arjun was twenty-three when he died. He hanged himself from the twenty-third floor of a British office building. They sent us a letter full of clean words - ‘regret’, ‘dedicated service’, ‘tragic circumstances’. Nobody in my house has said the word suicide even once since then. We just… carry it. Like furniture we don’t know where to put.”

Her fingers tightened around the edge of her bag.

“And now my father wants me to marry. To fix things. To make the family look whole again. As if a wedding certificate can erase the fact that his son chose death over continuing to serve the same people who broke him.”

She let out a shaky breath.

“I’m tired of it. Tired of pretending. Tired of being told my life has only one acceptable shape.”

The room was very quiet after she finished. Even the fan seemed to slow.

Kavitha finally looked up.

She expected pity. Or polite discomfort. Instead, Seren was watching her with something heavier. Something that looked almost like recognition.

“I’m sorry,” Seren said softly. “That kind of weight… it doesn’t get lighter just because people stop talking about it.”

Kavitha felt her throat tighten.

“Why does it feel easier to tell you this?” she asked, almost to herself. “I barely know you. And yet… sitting here, it feels like I’ve known you longer than I have. Like we’ve had this conversation before, somehow.”

Seren’s fingers stilled on the desk. For a moment, something flickered across her face - pain, maybe. Or exhaustion so deep it had no name.

“Sometimes,” she said carefully, “we meet people who carry similar silences. It makes speaking feel less dangerous.”

Kavitha studied her. The professor’s posture was as composed as always, but there was a tiredness in her eyes that didn’t match her age. A kind of ancient weariness that made Kavitha wonder, not for the first time, who this woman really was.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Kavitha admitted quietly. “I come to college every day pretending I have a future I can choose. But at home, they’ve already decided what my life should look like. And I don’t know how long I can keep pretending to agree.”

Seren leaned forward slightly, her voice gentle but firm.

“You don’t have to decide everything today, Miss Raman. Just… don’t let them take your voice before you’ve even had the chance to use it.”

Kavitha felt something loosen in her chest. Not solved. Not fixed. But a little less suffocating.

She stood up slowly.

“Thank you,” she said. “For listening.”

Seren gave her a small nod, the kind that carried more weight than most people’s words.

“Anytime you need to talk… the door is open.”

Kavitha walked to the door, then paused with her hand on the handle.

“Professor?”

“Yes?”

Kavitha turned halfway.

“Do you ever feel like… you’ve lived more than one life?”

Seren’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes deepened.

“More often than I’d like,” she answered.

Kavitha lingered for another second, then gave a small nod and left.

The corridor outside felt different somehow. Quieter. As if the weight she had carried into that room had shifted, just slightly, into something she could bear a little longer.

But as she walked home under the fading evening light, one thought kept circling back to her.

Why does she feel so familiar?