Exchange of Fates - #ATOZCHALLENGE – E (2026)

 

“I wish I could get all the attention Anita was getting. She is of the perfect frame, articulate and professionally extremely successful.” Sunita said rather wistfully, while replicating the building before her as a charcoal sketch on paper. “Art gives me so much solace when my mind is plagued with such thoughts.”

She spoke with herself. There was nobody else to listen.

Anita and Sunita were twins in the Khosla household. Both so similar yet so different. While Anita was academically sound and popular in school, Sunita had been a recluse. Her parents thought she was the underconfident one and best left alone. They felt it wiser to invest in Anita instead.

Both girls had round faces that occasionally sported a dimple, were tanned in complexion, wore their dark tresses in a braid. Anita preferred a single long one. Sunita had to have two, because that was the school norm. Anita being a bright student, the teachers would easily overlook this minor breach of dress code.

Anita was always introduced as the responsible and affluent child. Sunita, on the other hand, was guilt tripped about being silent for the longest time. “Be like Anita. She has even planned a bright future ahead for herself. Listen to her and you shall do well for yourself.” The obvious message was that Sunita wasn’t good enough like her identical twins. What started with parents comparing became the talk of family gatherings as well as in the friend circles. It was a vibe that the community picked up. Anita was better than Sunita for everyone.

In the years to come, the excessive attention turned to arrogance and a kind of overconfidence that was actually a bottleneck for Sunita. Anita began to think she could never be challenged and whatever she would decide would prevail. Life had brought her luck and success, and the external validation brewed more ego in her. In her mind, the image of superiority was as unbreakable as the tempered glass of their family car’s windshield.

Her diatribes for Sunita never ended. “You lied; I don’t lie at all.” “You’re despicable. You just won’t get it right.” “You’re always the problematic one.” Somewhere, Sunita was even stonewalled into believing this was real. After all, even her parents rooted for Anita during her accusations.

A few moments in solitude, Sunita found a pencil case with a collection of nine pencils intact. The wood was soggy from the recent downpour, but a few turns inside the pencil sharpener and it could be used on the spare paper that was sitting quietly in her desk, slightly wrinkled at the edges and buckling under pressure. Wasn’t her life the same? Buckling under the pressure of comparison and never being asked what she was feeling.

She began to sketch herself, draw herself to be like Anita, wear similar clothes, stand upright with the same confidence and wear that personable aura. She sketched out the most minute details, like the size of her dimple, the curl of her sidelock, the cocky grin of overconfidence and even the recently occurred acne offshoot she desperately tried to hide behind the foundation.

Holding up the completed sketch, when she looked long and hard, she realised one thing. It wasn’t her parents. It wasn’t the extended family. It wasn’t the friends. It was her. It was she who didn’t accept herself. The image she was holding wasn’t of her. It was Anita. So where was Sunita? And if she didn’t know, she had to go find her and realise what she had to bring to the table. Without thinking much, Sunita enrolled for an art school from her cell phone. Her classes would start soon. Each day, she would leave a little after 10 AM. No questions were asked, but the worst assumptions were made. She’ll probably hang out with some equally useless slackers. However, this time, Sunita was certain she was headed in the right direction. All the diatribes fell upon deaf years. This continued for the next four years.

A full-fledged art graduate by now, Sunita wanted to showcase something incredible for her final year project. To do this, she needed to look into her heart and find something that would resonate with her inner belief. The more authentic it would be, the more evocative it would be. She sketched out a person standing on a high pedestal being lauded by a huge crowd of people. Right below the pedestal was an upside-down image of the same person looking tired, bent, and unhappy. Her sketch showed that what looks good isn’t always good. The honesty of it, led her to win the first prize among a series of paintings that were mostly done to eke out a better grade from the evaluators and get prize placements.

The larger world was so, too. It mostly thrived on how one sold themselves. While most of her peers got into exclusive media houses, she bagged the job of an art teacher in a school. Since what she taught was close to her heart, she decided to take pride in her work and do it anyways. What started slow, gradually led to awards in interschool tournaments to  starting her own art school. The art school grew organically till it became a sough after institution with several branches in the country.

A few days later, her student walked up to greet her. “Good evening, Mam. I saw someone who looked exactly like you last evening and decided to draw her sketch.” Sunita eyes narrowed in curiosity. It had been a while since she had interacted with her family. Could this have been Anita her student had seen? Or no?

But one look at the image confirmed. It showed a thirty-something woman looking rather sad and lonely. Although she looked impeccable and well-heeled, a certain sadness in her eyes was unmissable.

“People said she was once a successful television actress. But had ego problems that led to people snapping ties with her and generally labelling her as problematic. She was talented, but too full of herself. Her ego made her vulnerable, and she was often cheated. Today’ she just tries to keep up an image of what was once a glorious past, but is heavily in debt and out of work.”

A part of what she just heard made Sunita go numb. She certainly knew what rejection felt like. She hoped to reach out to Anita. Googling Anita Kholsa didn’t give her much intel. The internet too had forgotten her.

She did encounter Anita who was too scornful to acknowledge her sister, just like in the olden days. Her high-handedness wouldn’t let her bond with her long-lost sibling. Dismayed, Sunita walked away, still nurturing some hope for Anita to reach out to her.

When she got home, she looked out of her window at the car parked in the neighbourhood. A drug addict had smashed the windshield with nothing more than a roadside rock. The glass lay scattered in several pieces that were too small to be collated again. Fate had swapped the sisters’ roles. When she’d found her place under the sun, her identical twin was lost in the darkness of her own delusion.

As she walked ahead aimlessly towards the dining area of her modest home that didn’t quite size up to her successes, she began thinking to herself. This may not be a lavish, dreamlike palace, but it feels like home. I may still take the metro to work even if I can afford an SUV. But if I looked beneath the pedestal, would I see Anita’s sketch that my student drew?

She drew in a deep breath and shut her eyes for a few passing seconds and went about her life that was free of poor judgement.