I love Potato

Priyanka Sen’s life was a meticulously choreographed ballet, an intricate performance of success and control. Every morning, she woke before the city stirred, before the sun dared to spill its first light over Kolkata’s horizon. She never needed an alarm. It was as though her body had been programmed—a machine of precision, discipline, and ceaseless forward motion.

She stretched her arms, feeling the firmness of her toned muscles, the result of years of ruthless self-discipline. Her breath was steady, her mind already calculating the day ahead: a leadership summit at the ITC Royal, a video conference with international clients, a school meeting for Ayan, a dinner party at The Oberoi with investors, and somewhere in between, a ninety-minute workout, perfectly timed meals, and an hour of mindfulness meditation—because that’s what successful people did.

She turned toward her husband, Rishi, who was still lost in sleep, his breathing deep and peaceful. He had the luxury of resting. Priyanka had not experienced such a thing in years. Sleep, to her, was an unnecessary indulgence, a weakness.

In the next room, her children lay wrapped in dreams—Ayan, her eight-year-old, a prodigious reader who devoured books faster than she could buy them, and Anika, her two-year-old daughter, whose giggles could shatter the hardest of days.

They were perfect—her family, her life, her empire.

And yet.

There was something. A silent, gnawing emptiness that lurked beneath the perfection, an unnamed hunger that even success could not satisfy.

The Performance of a Lifetime

In the outside world, Priyanka Sen was a force.

At thirty-six, she had built an empire from nothing. SenTech Solutions was no longer a startup; it was a revolution. It provided cutting-edge AI and automation software to corporations, banks, and even government agencies. Investors begged for a seat at her table. Magazines featured her in their “Top 50 Most Influential Women in Business” lists. She gave TED Talks. She was on first-name terms with billionaires.

Her life was a gold-plated dream.

Her home—a breathtaking penthouse in Kolkata’s elite Alipore neighborhood—was a testament to her success. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed a skyline that had watched her rise. The walls were adorned with rare art, handpicked from galleries in Paris, Tokyo, and London. Her closet held couture pieces worth more than most people’s annual salaries.

She had a personal chef, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and yet she still preferred driving herself—her sleek, black BMW an extension of her persona. Powerful, controlled, precise.

She had everything.

And yet.

Something was missing.

The Anatomy of an Emptiness

It wasn’t loneliness. No, she had a devoted husband, two children who adored her, and friends who admired her.

It wasn’t exhaustion—she had long since trained her body to function on four hours of sleep, powered by matcha tea, kale smoothies, and an iron will.

It wasn’t the pressure—she thrived on pressure, on deadlines, on the adrenaline of impossible goals.

No, it was something far more sinister. A slow, creeping numbness.

At night, after the phone calls ended and the emails stopped flooding in, she would sit by the window, staring at the city.

It glittered. It never slept. It was always reaching, consuming, devouring. Just like her.

She had been running her entire life. Running toward something. But what?

She had spent her twenties clawing her way up the corporate world, proving herself in boardrooms filled with men who underestimated her. She had built SenTech from the ground up, rejecting safety nets, refusing to slow down.

And now she was here. At the top. So why did it feel like she was standing at the edge of something vast and meaningless?

The Cost of Being Extraordinary

The world admired her, but it did not see her.

She was a walking headline: “Self-Made Bengali Woman Disrupts the Tech Industry.”

She was a symbol: proof that women could have it all.

She was a trophy at networking events, her presence sought after like an exotic artifact of ambition.

But inside, she felt like a fraud.

She had built a flawless, impenetrable persona, yet she had not felt truly, completely human in years.

When was the last time she had done something that had no purpose?

When was the last time she had laughed—not politely, not in agreement, but truly, carelessly laughed?

When was the last time she had felt free?

She tried to silence the questions.

She tried to drown them in productivity, achievement, perfection.

But deep down, she knew—she was trapped.

Not in failure. In success.

A prison made of gold is still a prison.

And she was its most willing inmate.

The Beginning of the End

The night before it happened, she barely slept.

Rishi had noticed. He always noticed. “Pri, are you okay?” he had asked, pulling her close in the darkness.

She had kissed his forehead. “Of course,” she had whispered. “I have everything.”

And she did.

Didn’t she?

By dawn, she would wake up to a nightmare beyond comprehension.

By dawn, Priyanka Sen—the CEO, the wife, the mother, the woman who had it all—would cease to exist.

Chapter Two: The Hollowing of Priyanka Sen

Priyanka Sen woke up, but something was wrong.

It wasn’t the familiar weight of exhaustion pressing against her chest, the kind she had grown used to over the years. It wasn’t the tight ache behind her eyes, a cruel gift from late-night strategy meetings and an endless pursuit of perfection.

This was something else.

Something deeper.

Something she couldn’t name.

She lay still, waiting for her senses to align, for her mind to shake off the heaviness clinging to it like wet earth.

But the dissonance remained.

She opened her eyes.

Darkness.

Not the comfortable darkness of her bedroom, where the city lights bled through the curtains and cast faint, shifting patterns on the walls. Not the absence of light, but something deeper—something thick and consuming, as if light had never existed at all.

A void.

She tried to move.

Nothing.

A stab of panic. She wasn’t paralyzed—she knew what that felt like. This was different. This was... wrong.

It was as though she had been removed from her own body and placed into something else. Something small.

Something still.

She strained to feel—her fingers, her arms, the familiar curve of her legs against the silk sheets.

But there was nothing.

She was weightless and yet unbearably heavy, as if she had been compressed into something too solid, too dense, too unnatural.

Her mind rebelled.

This was a dream.

It had to be.

Hadn't she been fine just last night? Hadn't she kissed her husband before slipping into sleep, her body warm and soft, alive with the subtle hum of existence? Hadn't she existed?

Then why did she feel like an object?

A thing?

A thing.

The thought sent a shiver of terror rippling through the void of her consciousness.

Her breath should have quickened. Her pulse should have pounded against her ribs, a frantic drum of survival.

But there was no breath.

No heartbeat.

No warmth.

Only thought.

And thought alone.

The Dismantling of a Life

She tried to recall herself, to reconstruct her identity from the pieces left floating in the abyss of her mind.

Priyanka Sen.

CEO.

Entrepreneur.

A woman of success, power, elegance. A woman who had it all.

She could see it now, the shape of her life flashing before her like a disjointed film reel.

The gold-tinted boardrooms. The flashing cameras. The firm handshake of investors who needed her more than she needed them. The scent of imported leather in her office. The way her employees stood up when she walked in—a reflex, an unspoken recognition of her authority.

The diamond cufflinks on her husband's wrist—the ones she had gifted him after he sold his company and vowed to finally slow down.

The sound of her children’s laughter—bright, ringing like wind chimes in the soft air of their perfect home.

She had built this life brick by brick, fought for it, sacrificed for it.

And yet...

Something had always been missing.

An emptiness she could never quite name.

A hollowness that no amount of wealth, success, or love could fill.

And now—

Now there was nothing left.

Not even herself.

The Presence in the Dark

She wasn’t alone.

She could feel it now.

A presence.

Something around her, beside her, above her, below her—enclosing her in a space she couldn’t see.

A rustling sound. A shift.

A deep, muffled thump.

And then—

A voice.

“Ma, how many should I take?”

Her son.

Her beautiful boy.

But the voice was distant, distorted, wrong—as if she were hearing it through thick glass or from the bottom of a well.

She tried to respond, to call out his name.

But she had no voice.

No mouth.

Only silence.

Her son’s voice came again, softer this time, fading as if he were moving away.

Her world tilted.

She felt motion.

A slow, sickening roll, like being lifted, carried.

And for the first time, she realized what true helplessness felt like.

The Shattering of Priyanka Sen

She had spent her life in control.

Now, she was nothing more than a passenger in her own existence, voiceless, unseen, untouched by the world she had once ruled.

An object.

A thing.

A commodity to be weighed, counted, taken.

And as the darkness pulsed around her, swallowing her whole, she finally understood.

She had spent her life becoming something great—only to end up as something so ordinary that no one would ever look at her twice.

Something small.

Something replaceable.

Something that could be peeled, chopped, and thrown into boiling water without a second thought.

And in the depths of that horror, the last, most unbearable thought slid into her mind, soft as silk, sharp as a blade:

This is what I always was.

I just never noticed.

And then—

The knife came down.