I'd sympathy for Ayesha up until the point where she decided to murder Prachi.
I think the point Rima is trying to make is Ayesha's desire for revenge was quite understandable and not selfish, as some are implying.
Let me explain. I've just finished reading this book called Carrie by Stephen King, and as strange as it might seem, I can draw parallals between Carrie and Ayesha. To give you a little back story, Carrie was a teenage girl, bullied and tortured by her classmates endlessly, and abused by her crazy mother, crazy of a different variety. The extent of her suffering was palpable. Till there came a point. A point, where she just couldn't take it and she burst. Murdering a hundred people at one go. It might seem rather cruel of me to still take Carrie's side after this, but I did. If you'd read the book, you'd see the humiliation, the suffering she'd taken all her childhood and teenage years had drove her to this point. I can't explain it, the book can speak for itself.
So it is for Ayesha. While the extent of her problems is less than Carrie, and also the punishment (revenge on Shah Family) is much narrow in scope than Carrie's (murder 100 people). When Alaap made her mental mother marry some other guy. Something in her burst. She'd spent years trying to control her mental mother, watching her dream for this Inder person, shutting her off, hiding her mother because she was almost ashamed. To her, it seemed unfair that Prachi had everything, the love of her parents, a big family, an easy and comfortable life. While she Ayesha, was completely alone and had to live with the scars of facing a terrible rejection (the rejection of Inder of her).
Now, you may say, but she'd been pretty good friends with Prachi and had no proper reason to hate her. But that was only before she found out that her father had just not abandoned her mother, but he was keeping someone else happy. He had rejected her mother and her, Ayesha in favour of Premlata and Prachi. And that was the injustice, the anger that had been building up inside her. As soon as the marrying her mental mother to another mental patient took place by Alaap, that became the impetus. I distinctly remember Ayesha telling Prachi that she was going to take revenge for all the suffering her and her mother had gone through. Something in Ayesha just burst. She couldn't take it anymore. It was not that she had to live a horrible life, Milsi did too, it was the fact that she could have lived a grand life, a grand generous happy life, but was stolen of it.
So from that came her irrational hatred of Prachi, she believed Prachi had everything and she wanted to steal that away just because she'd wanted Prachi to face the same pain she'd faced. She didn't think it was fair, that Prachi had been living so peacefully and leading such a blissful life, while her and her mother had suffered through the dumps. Thus the revenge.
The point I'm trying to make is, Ayesha was a good person and her desire for revenge, in the beginning, did not come out of selfishness, it came out for a need to avenge for all the injustice she and her mother had been caused. That same need, turned her into a monster, like Carrie. The blinding need for revenge overtook her and consumed her, and for that while I want to blame Ayesha alone, I feel her circumstances, the timing, and her childhood played a vital role. But I can only speculate. So my opinions!
CID
