When his son died, Kamala Devi had before him a choice: to respect what society expected or to defend the future of his daughter.
Sunita was married only for about six months when she was a widow in 2016. Her husband Shubham, departed for Kyrgyzstan to study medicine, died after a brain stroke.
But in Kamala's house something different happened.
Teacher in a Rajasthan public school, Kamala did not consider Sunita simply the widow of his son. He continued to look at her as a young woman who still had the right to study, work and build a tomorrow.
He encouraged her to continue her studies.
Sunita obtained a master's degree and a B.Ed., he faced competitions and then became a professor of History.
But Kamala did one more step.
About five years after the death of his son, he helped Sunita build a new life and arranged his marriage to Mukesh, a CAG auditor who worked at Bhopal.
For a mother-in-law who had lost a son, this meant accepting that the woman he had married could start a life away from that house.
And that's where this story takes its deepest meaning.
Kamala did not try to preserve Sunita as the mourning imposed on her. He chose instead to accompany her towards a new independence.
First education, then work, finally the possibility of building a new family.
Sometimes loving someone doesn't mean asking that person to stick to the past.
It means helping her to have a future again.