Monsoon Highway

When Nikhil Arora lost his job at the advertising agency in Lower Parel, the monsoon had just started to scream across Bombay like a woman scorned. He didn’t even take the elevator down from the 15th floor. Just left his resignation letter and a half-drunk cutting chai on his desk and walked into the rain with his tie hanging like a noose. By the time he got home to their flat in Bandra, he already knew about Kavya. Her WhatsApps with “a friend,” the late-night calls to “Meera di,” the gym trainer named Rohit who said things like “align your breath with your truth.” His neighbour, the nosy Mrs. Pereira, had whispered it with the gentle violence of a priest offering last rites.

Nikhil packed two shirts, three CDs, a Gulzar paperback, and an old photo of him and Kavya at Hampi, laughing like Gods in the sun. He slid into his father’s old Maruti Esteem, engine hiccupping like an old drunk waking up, and drove out of the city before the traffic or grief could trap him.

The rain chased him down the Western Ghats, across villages where chai stalls steamed like holy fires and old men in lungis sat staring at the road like it owed them an answer. He slept in cheap lodges with plastic flowers and TV remotes that didn’t work, sharing cigarettes with strangers and stories with no endings.

In Ratnagiri, he met Shibu, a fisherman with eyes like salt and a laugh like thunder. They drank cheap whiskey on the dock while waves slapped the jetty like unpaid debts.

“Zindagi toh samundar hai, bhai,” Shibu said. “Kabhi lehron pe, kabhi andar doobte hue.”

Nikhil didn’t reply. He just watched the sea and thought of Kavya’s voice saying “I never meant to hurt you.”

Down in Hampi, the same rocks where he’d once held her hand now languished in silence. But in a tiny temple courtyard, he met Tara—tattooed, dreadlocked, laughing like she was in on the secret joke of the universe. She read tarot cards for tourists and danced barefoot in the rain. They spent two nights and one long magical dawn together, talking about the weight of expectations and the things we inherit from our parents without realising.

“Forgiveness isn’t for them,” Tara said, “it’s for your own goddamn peace.”

By the time he hit Hyderabad, his hair was longer, his stubble a bit more pronounced, his heart a little looser, the city lights reflecting off puddles like broken dreams. And then, in a bookstore in Banjara Hills, he saw her—Naina.

The Naina. The one before Kavya. 

The girl with ink-stained fingers and a voice like a monsoon song. She was thinner now, calmer, dressed in a cotton sari with a toddler clinging to her leg and a husband at the cash register, humming a Kishore Kumar tune. She smiled when she saw him—surprised but not startled, as if the universe had planned this rendezvous just for kicks.

They sat in the café behind the store. Talking over filter coffee and memories.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I’ve been driving,” he replied.

“Still running?”

“Maybe just moving.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t joy—it was memory. It was love, once wild, now caged in family albums and school runs.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

Naina looked away, toward her husband who was now carrying their daughter like a fragile truth.

“Some days more than others,” she said. And that was enough. Maybe too much.

When they parted, she squeezed his hand—not in longing, but in forgiveness. The kind that makes you lighter.

As he drove back toward Bombay, the rain greeted him back at the border. The streets were the same but something inside him wasn’t. Maybe Kavya missed him. Maybe regret lived in her too. Maybe love wasn’t a vow but a choice—made daily, in sunlight and storm.

Near the flyover at Sion, stuck in the warm glow of brake lights and biryani stalls, Nikhil pulled out his phone. The screen lit up her name. Kavya. He stared at it for a long, full breath, then tapped “call.”

The phone rang.

And rang.

And somewhere deep in the heart of the city, a story was still waiting to end—or begin again.

Copyright (c) Pratik Majumdar, 2025. Any article, story, write-up cannot be reproduced in its entirety or in part, without permission. URL links can be used