“You’re useless!” he had said to her.

She knew why he suddenly found her useless: She’d seen the ‘other woman’, clinging to her husband’s side throughout the party. “I fly!” she had told Payal.

“A pilot?” Payal had asked innocently and everyone had laughed.

“Pilots aren’t so pretty!” he had told her when they were going to bed, “only you would have asked such a dumb question!”

It had been a matter of days before she knew the air- hostess and her husband where flying high on a fairy tale romance, and the divorce came soon after.

She found her grandfather at a loose end trying to manage a store that was bursting at its seams with material and customers, but not making profits and had asked if she could help. “A girl in a hardware store is useless!” he had said gruffly, and suddenly she could hear the same taunt she had heard in her husband’s voice. ‘Let me!” she had begged and her grandfather had relented.

That was ten years ago. Today the store was worthy competition to the biggest in the city and she was proud to have been instrumental in the change.

“Payal!”

Payal stared up in shock. It was him: A ghost from her past. He had aged badly; less hair, a few strands of gray, his handsome face gaunt. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came to see you!” he said.

“Where’s your pilot?”
“Airhostess!” he said, “we split the next year. I then worked abroad and came down last week to see you!”

“Why?” she asked.

“I miss you!” he said, “in fact I’ve always missed you.”

“I’m useless!” she said.

“I’m sorry!”

“Don’t be,” she said as her face broke into a grin, “Come with me.” She took her former husband through the huge department store. She saw him gasp as he realized how huge the little hardware store had grown. “That’s for upholstery!” she said, “and if we take the lift to the third floor, we’ve got a whole floor for the best cane furniture you’ll see in the city! And it’s all because of you!”

“Me?” he asked, confused.

“You threw me out!” she said, “Saying I was useless! All your taunts, insults, jeers rang in my ears as I decided I would prove you wrong. Look at the store! Am I useless?”

“No!” he said, “you’re brilliant Payal!”

“Who was that?” asked her grandfather as she joined him a little later, “he looked familiar!”

“Some mutt who wanted me back,” she said with a grin.

“I hope you threw him out!” said her grandfather with a twinkle in his eye.

“I did” she said, “But not before thanking him for who I am today..!”

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