Her mother-in-law, Mrs. Radha, was a woman of few words, secretive, and absolutely unpredictable.

Maya had been married to this family for five years. In those five years, she had learned one thing: not everything that was clear was true, and not everything that was peaceful was happy.

This three-story house in a small alley in the old town of Varanasi was spacious, ancient with exquisite carvings, but it always seemed to be covered by a curtain of melancholy. The person who brought that melancholy was none other than her mother-in-law, Mrs. Radha. Mrs. Radha was not formidable, not cruel, but she was perfectly cold, and that coldness was encapsulated in one room.

The room was at the end of the second-floor hallway, opposite the family shrine room. The dark teak door was always locked with an old, almost rusty brass lock. It was not a storage room, because there was a storage room on the ground floor. It wasn’t a living room, because guests were only received in the room below. It was a secret, lying there silently like a samadhi

“Why did you lock that room?” Maya had asked her husband Arjun on their honeymoon. Arjun was wiping the sweat from his forehead, shrugging absentmindedly: “It was my old room when I was a kid. Mom said there were a lot of things piled up, and she didn’t want anyone to come in and clean it up and mess it up.” “But do you need to lock it for 18 years? I see that the windows are still covered with old newspapers from a long time ago.” Arjun stopped, his eyes suddenly becoming empty as if drawn to a very far away place. He quickly brushed it off: “Oh, don’t pay attention to Mom’s past. Mom is that picky. Forget it, let’s mind our own business.”

18 years—this number was engraved in Maya’s mind by Radha herself. Once a month, early in the morning on Amavasya, Radha would clean the outside of the door herself. She cleaned the lock, swept the cobwebs off the window frame, touched the teak wood as if touching the flesh of a loved one. 18 years, without a single explanation.

Maya tried to reconcile with Mrs. Radha with all her sincerity. She wanted to know, because she felt that the room was not only a burden for her mother-in-law, but it was also an invisible string that tied Arjun. Her husband was a good man, but he always lived in shyness and fear, like someone who always tried to prove his worth but never achieved a perfect score. He was successful, but lacked complete joy. He loved Maya, but that love always had an indescribable distance.

And then, the opportunity came. This summer, Mrs. Radha returned to the village to visit her seriously ill aunt. Before leaving, she told Maya everything in detail, except for one thing: the room at the end of the corridor. She even carefully took the house keys with her, leaving a gate key and a bedroom key for Maya.

On Tuesday evening, after Arjun had left for a business trip, Maya sat absent-mindedly on the divan. She looked up at the second floor. It was so quiet. The silence of a buried secret. Maya knew that if she did not uncover it, she would never fully understand the man she had married, nor be fully accepted into this family.

An irresistible urge arose in her heart. She needed the key.

Maya remembered Radha’s strange habits. In addition to the large bunch of keys she had taken away, there was always a spare key. It was not in the box, not in the safe. Radha was a woman of old rituals.

She went up to the shrine room where her grandfather’s photograph was kept. She searched the drawers that held dried betel nuts and old notebooks. There were none. It was only when she touched the low shrine cabinet that she remembered. Radha always kept the mother-of-pearl inlaid wooden box containing prayer beads in the corner of the cabinet. Maya gently lifted the box. At the bottom of the box, a small, old-colored copper key was visible, perfectly fitting the teak lock in the hallway.

Maya’s heart was pounding. She felt like a thief, breaking the biggest taboo in the house. But she was determined.

Carrying Arjun’s small flashlight, Maya walked to the end of the hallway. The key fitted into the lock, turning it with a dry “click”, echoing in the quiet space. The lock opened. Maya took a deep breath, gently pushing the door open.

The creaking sound of the old hinges was like a lament.

A stream of old, musty air, the smell of old papers and camphor rushed into Maya’s nose. The room was completely dark. Maya turned on the flashlight, stepped over the threshold, in just three seconds.

The room was not a storage room. It was a terribly preserved bedroom.

Everything stood still, frozen in a moment 18 years ago. The single bed was covered with ivory white sheets, so smooth that it had hardly ever been slept in. On the desk was an old Casio calculator, a stack of physics textbooks with the physics pages open. The brown leather bag hung on a hanger, still intact.

Maya slowly moved the flashlight around the corners. The room was so clean that not a speck of dust had fallen on the surface of the objects, proving that Mrs. Radha had sneaked in to clean regularly, not, as Arjun had said, “pile things.”

Then she stopped at the corner of the wall, where there was a small bookshelf.

On the bookshelf

everything was arranged in chronological order. Excellent student medals, certificates of merit from school to state level. A student yearbook, blue cover, neatly written: “Aditya.”

Aditya. This name was unfamiliar. Arjun had never mentioned it before.

Maya shivered, her heart began to beat faster, fear mixed with crazy curiosity. She walked to the desk where there was a dark wooden photo frame.

In the photo were two twin boys, wearing school uniforms. One boy had a bright face, smiling brightly, holding a certificate of merit. The other boy stood beside him, his face slightly lowered, his eyes somewhat wandering, but overall his face was surprisingly similar to Arjun.

No, not the same. It was Arjun, but the Arjun of 18 years ago, standing next to a brother.

Maya turned the photo frame upside down, trembling. On the back of the photo, Mrs. Radha had written in blurred black ink:

“Aditya (Aryan), Arjun (Advait). Born on 15/05/1985. Both are my pride.”

Maya was stunned. Aryan and Advait. Arjun and Aditya. Arjun’s real name was Advait. But when he married her, he had declared his name on the papers as Arjun. She had never heard of a twin brother.

She slid the flashlight down, to an old tin box placed solemnly next to the photo frame. Opening the box, inside were important papers carefully laminated in plastic.

First was a notarized copy of the Birth Certificate. It clearly stated: Twins. Older brother: Aditya Sharma (Aryan). Younger brother: Arjun Sharma (Advait). Then came a large certificate, from 1999: First Prize in National Mathematics Competition, awarded to Aditya Sharma (Aryan). Next to it, a smaller certificate, Third Prize at State level, awarded to Arjun Sharma (Advait).

By this time, Maya had been standing in the room for nearly three minutes. She felt suffocated. This room was evidence of a parallel life.

She found the last thing, the thing that brought the whole mystery crashing down: a Traffic Accident Report, dated 20/05/2004.

“At 5:30 PM on 20/05/2004, at the intersection of…, there was a collision between a motorbike and a truck. Victim Aditya Sharma (Aryan), 19 years old, died on the spot. Victim Arjun Sharma (Advait) suffered soft tissue injuries and was taken to the emergency room…”

Then there was a handwritten letter, no sender, just Mrs. Radha’s handwriting, tucked away at the bottom of the box.

“Aditya, my dear, you’re gone. I know you wanted to go to IIT, you wanted to be an engineer. Arjun is alive, but he’s not like you. He’s too shy. I told him, from now on he has to live for you, he has to be my Aryan. He has to go to IIT, he has to become a strong man like you. I don’t want to lose both of you. I will keep this room as a promise, that my eldest son will always be the best.”

Maya’s hand fell limp, the flashlight rolled on the wooden floor, the light flickering.

Three minutes. Just three minutes, she had entered the room that had been sealed for 18 years, and the naked truth hit her in the face.

She stepped back, staring at the cold single bed and the stack of physics books.

She wasn’t just marrying Arjun (Advait), she was marrying a man who was forced to live in the shadow of his dead brother. Arjun was the replacement. He was not allowed to be himself, not allowed to choose his own path, not even allowed to have a name that his mother believed was associated with weakness (Advait – single, can be interpreted as passive, as opposed to Aryan – noble, competent).

She understood why Arjun always avoided conflict, always tried to please his mother. He always yearned for complete love, but he knew he was just a faulty copy, a salvation after tragedy. Every success he had achieved—from his IIT degree, his software engineering job, to buying a house—was to please Mrs. Radha, to keep a promise to someone who was dead.

Even her love, their marriage, was probably just part of Mrs. Radha’s plan to “complete Aditya’s life.”

Arjun had never truly loved Maya as Arjun. He loved her like a man trapped, searching for the peace that only an outsider could bring. He didn’t dare open his heart because deep down, he was a fake.

Maya’s tears flowed. She wasn’t angry with Arjun, she loved him. But she couldn’t live with an atma (soul) that hadn’t been released. She couldn’t be the wife of a man whose heart had died 18 years ago with his twin brother. Marriage couldn’t be built on a lie so big that it had eaten into her husband’s identity.

Maya hurriedly picked up the flashlight, locked the room, and put the brass key back in its place. The “click” this time was colder and more decisive.

She went back to the bedroom, looking at Arjun’s suitcase that she hadn’t put away yet. In her mind, the images of Arjun (Advait) and Aditya (Aryan) kept intertwining. She couldn’t save him, nor could she bear this obsession.

She opened the wardrobe and took out a small travel bag. She stuffed a few saris and salwar kameezes, her own savings book, and a few photographs into it. She wrote a short note and placed it on her pillow:

“I know. I can’t live in Aditya’s shadow anymore. Be Arjun, Advait.”

She didn’t wait for Arjun to come back. She didn’t wait for Radha to come back. She knew she couldn’t face either of them. Closing the door behind her, Maya walked out into the small alleys of Varanasi, leaving behind the grand but tragic house, and the name Arjun she once loved.

She wanted to leave her husband, not because he cheated, but because he had never been allowed to exist fully.