She hated the colour brown. It was something she couldn't escape. Right from the taupe curtains in her PG to the chestnut cabins in her office, it seemed to close in on her.

Anita's childhood was mired in instability. She learnt to repress her emotions and not to displease her mother.

Her mother was born and raised in a poor, underprivileged family. She was divorced, but managed to get by in life with steely resolve.

The only reason she married her first husband was for his surname. She could get work easily, no questions asked, no discrimination, no opportunities denied.

The abuse her mother endured every night was not as frightening as being underprivileged. Left out there in the cold, as a single mother, with a child to raise.

Her mother picked up the courage to get out of that marriage. She was 37 and had made enough money as a seamstress to live independently. It took all her ingenuity to hide the money from her husband. She would make trips alone to the bank under the pretext of grocery shopping.

Though her ticket to freedom was the tobacco-stained teeth, annoyingly jovial Krish, a bank clerk. He fell madly in love with her, not for her beauty but her money. Her mother thought little of him. She considered him mild, ineffectual and mostly stupid. But he would do to preserve the institution of marriage.

One day, at the crack of dawn, her mother, took one month old Anita and sneaked out with Krish, They registered their marriage and left for another city.

Krish was a waster, never worked a day in his life. He had inherited a hotel from his father, but it had fallen into bad times, and he had no real interest in reviving it.

Anita's mother ran a boutique that made decent profit, so her stepfather was quite satisfied. He was served by his wife and two daughters at home, and wasted time chatting with his friends in seedy pubs.

Krish was not particularly interested in Anita. She was just another addition to the family, someone he took pity on.

"Didn't he ever want to see me?" an 11-year-old Anita asked her mother about her biological father, "No," came the reply. "Could we meet him?" no response.

This was typical of their family. Indifference, no responses, dismissals.

It was only when Anita was working in a dull job in the admin department of a media house did she get to know Anisha was her stepsister. Anisha cried into her handkerchief as she said this. Anita didn't feel a thing. She now understood why she was superior to Anisha.

It is not like she had a particularly bad relationship with her sister, but she hid her contempt for her.

Anita stared into her computer screen while her colleagues chatted and munched on peanuts. She looked from the corner of her eye at her boss opening a file, bringing out an appraisal form. Her heart skipped a beat. She stayed on in this mind-numbingly boring job because she was promised an increment in a few months.

Just as she felt a stir of anticipation, out came a form. "This is to update your records to move you from probation to confirmation in the company." She took it gingerly and scanned her eyes over it. There it stood out in black letters: father's full name. She heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment, she thanked whatever god there was that her upbringing was less important than who she was born to.