Without The World

At forty-eight, Samir had become reasonably good at disappointing everybody without actually meaning to. His father thought he spent too much time reading. His wife thought he spent too much time mixing with the wrong type of people. His friends mostly remembered him when they needed him. His son thought he worried too much about what everyone else thought. 

And Samir himself had begun to suspect that he spent his entire life trying to explain himself to people who had already made up their minds.

He lived in an old apartment in south Kolkata with his wife, Rina, their twenty-two-year-old son , and his parents, who occupied the two rooms at the far end of the flat. It was not a large home, but it had accumulated the clutter of three generations: his father’s files, his mother’s steel containers, his son’s books, Rina’s carefully folded linen, and Samir’s books, which had colonised every available surface.

The business had been his father’s, a modest but respectable family enterprise that Samir had taken over gradually. He had never particularly wanted to run it, but life had a way of handing him responsibilities before it handed him choices. He went to the office every morning, dealt with suppliers, customers, accounts and employees, came home, attended to his parents, spoke to his wife, asked his son about work, and then, usually after eleven, when the house had finally gone quiet, he became somebody else. A reader. A listener. A watcher. And, increasingly, a writer.

His real life began after everyone else’s had ended for the day. He read poetry the way some men drank. He watched old films obsessively. He listened to Kishore Kumar, R.D. Burman, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and songs whose meanings had changed because he had changed. He kept notebooks everywhere.

One evening Rina found him writing at the dining table at two in the morning. “You’ll ruin your health.”

“I’ll sleep.”

“You always say that.”

He smiled. “You married a liar.”

“I married a man who promised he’d take me to Darjeeling.”

“I’ll still take you.”

“When?”

He had no answer. She smiled sadly and went back to bed. That was the beginning of the problem, though neither of them knew it then.

The publisher came almost by accident. A friend had sent some of Samir’s poems to a small but respected publishing house without telling him. Three weeks later, Samir received an email asking whether he had enough material for a collection. He read it five times before calling Rina.

“Someone wants to publish my poems.”

There was a pause. “That’s wonderful.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Another pause. “Does it pay?”

He laughed. “Probably not.”

“Then why are you shouting?”

“I’m not shouting.”

“You are.”

He was.

The book came out the following year. Nothing dramatic happened. There was no sudden fame, no television appearance, no transformation of his life. But something quietly extraordinary happened: people read him. Strangers wrote to him. Someone quoted one of his poems at a literary gathering in Delhi. Another person told him that a particular poem had reminded her of her father. A young man from Bangalore sent him a message saying that his writing had helped him through a difficult week.

Samir saved that message. He saved all of them.

For the first time in his life, something he had created existed independently of him. He began writing more. And then came the short films.

A young director approached him for a ten-minute film. Then another. Then another. Samir discovered that writing for cinema was different from writing poetry. A poem could live inside a silence. A screenplay had to eventually become somebody else’s reality. He loved it.

The films travelled through festivals and YouTube. One crossed a million views. People congratulated him. Or rather, they congratulated everyone. The director was interviewed. The actor was interviewed. The cinematographer was praised for the “visual language.” The editor was mentioned. The music composer was tagged. Samir’s name appeared somewhere near the bottom. Sometimes it didn’t appear at all.

At one screening, the director thanked everyone from the stage. “Of course,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “Samir helped us with the writing.”

Helped.

Samir smiled. He clapped. Later that night the director hugged him. “Brother, you know how these things are.”

“Of course.”

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“No.”

And he didn’t. Not exactly. What hurt was not that somebody else received applause. He was genuinely happy for them. What hurt was discovering that his happiness for them had no corresponding space for him. He had written the thing, but somehow he was only the person who had helped.

Rina noticed the change before anyone else.

“You don’t seem happy.”

“I am.”

“You’ve started coming home angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You are.”

He put down his phone. “Why does everyone assume I’m angry?”

“Because you are.”

She sat opposite him. “These people you’re working with… I don’t like some of them.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Rina.”

“They call you when they need something. They disappear when you need something.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“Samir, I watch it.”

He said nothing.

“You are always giving. Your time. Your writing. Introductions. Contacts. Advice. Money sometimes. You keep telling me it’s part of the larger picture.”

“It is.”

“What larger picture?”

“The film. The work. The people. Their careers.”

“And yours?”

He looked at her.

She wasn’t angry anymore. That made it worse.

“What about your career?”

Samir smiled faintly. “I have a career.”

“You have a business.”

“Same thing.”

“No. It isn’t.”

He looked towards the bedroom where his parents were sleeping. “Everything can’t be about me.”

“I never said it should be.”

“Then?”

“I want you to remember that you matter too.”

He didn’t answer because somewhere inside him he knew she was right.

His father had a different complaint. “You are wasting time.”

Samir looked up from a book. “I’m working.”

“Reading isn’t work.”

“I run your business.”

“My business?”

The old man immediately regretted the words, but neither withdrew them.

“You know what I mean.”

Samir closed the book.

His father was eighty. He had spent his life building something practical, measurable and enduring. Customers came. Money came. Bills were paid. Employees were supported. That was success. A poem could not be weighed. A film could not be counted merely by applause.

His father occasionally asked, “How many copies did the book sell?” Samir would give him a number. His father would calculate the equivalent profit. Then he would shake his head.

His mother was gentler but more complicated. She adored her son. She also worried constantly. “Don’t upset your father. Don’t fight with Rina. Don’t stay up so late. Don’t spend so much time with those people. Don’t give people too much. Don’t trust everybody. Don’t take everything to heart.”

Samir sometimes wanted to tell her that he was forty-eight. Instead he said, “Okay, Ma.”

The irony was that he had become exactly the sort of man everyone depended upon while nobody quite understood. He paid bills without being asked. He took his father to appointments. He bought his mother’s medicines. He helped friends find jobs. He read manuscripts for free. He recommended struggling actors. He introduced directors to producers. He lent money when he shouldn’t have. He answered calls at midnight. He rarely said no.

And increasingly, people mistook kindness for availability.

The final crack came over something small. A film he had written had done exceptionally well. At the celebration, someone congratulated him.

“Brilliant story, Samir. Though honestly, the director really elevated it.”

Samir smiled. “That’s what directors are supposed to do.”

Another person laughed. “Don’t be modest. Without your story there’d be nothing.”

The tone was affectionate. Almost charitable. As though someone were handing him a consolation prize.

That night, Rina found him sitting alone in the balcony.

“Bad evening?”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

He looked out at Kolkata. A distant train moved through the darkness. Somewhere below, a dog barked. A pressure cooker whistled in another apartment.

“I think I’m done.”

“With what?”

“Writing.”

She sat beside him.

“Because of what happened tonight?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

He thought for a moment.

“Because I’ve finally understood something.”

“What?”

“I thought I was entering a world. Actually, I was visiting.”

She waited.

“The world will continue without me.”

Rina didn’t say anything.

“And that’s not tragic,” he continued. “It’s just true.”

The next morning he went to the office. He worked. He answered emails. He settled a dispute between two employees. He had lunch with his father. He bought his mother the sweets she liked. In the evening he came home and helped Rina with something she had been asking him about for weeks.

At ten, his son came into the room.

“Papa, you’re not writing?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Just don’t feel like it.”

He looked at him. “That’s sad.”

“No.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s peaceful.”

That night he took all his notebooks out. He did not tear them up. He did not burn them. He simply put them away.

The next morning he removed himself from three WhatsApp groups. He stopped answering calls from people who only remembered him when they needed a writer. He declined two film offers. He thanked them politely.

There were no confrontations. No grand announcements. No social-media farewell.

Nobody noticed.

That was perhaps the most important thing he discovered.

Nobody noticed.

The films continued. The festivals continued. The publisher continued publishing other writers. The people who had once called him constantly found other people to call.

And Kolkata remained Kolkata. Trams moved. Rain fell. Bookshops opened. Old songs played from tea stalls. Films were made. People fell in love. People stopped loving each other. Life carried on with its usual indifference.

Months later, Samir was sitting alone in the old reading chair beside the window. His family was asleep. He had a book open on his lap. Beside it lay a blank notebook.

He picked up the pen. For a while he simply held it. Then he began to write. Not a poem for the publisher. Not a screenplay. Not something that might be performed, reviewed, shared or praised. Just four lines about the rain outside his window.

He stopped, read them and smiled. And closed the notebook.

For the first time in years, he didn’t wonder whether anybody would like them. He didn’t wonder whether they were good. He didn’t wonder whether someone would publish them.

They belonged to nobody. They were his.

In the bedroom, Rina stirred.

“Samir?”

“Yes?”

“Come to bed.”

“In a minute.”

She turned over.

He looked around the quiet house: his father’s room, his mother’s room, his son’s closed door, the books, the old records, the photographs, the life he had spent decades building without ever quite noticing that he was building it.

He understood then that giving up writing for the world did not mean giving up writing. It meant taking it back. He would still read. Still watch films. Still listen to music. Still scribble in the margins of newspapers. Still occasionally write a poem when something inside him refused to remain silent.

But he would no longer stand outside somebody else’s door waiting to be invited in.

Let the world be happy with itself without him.

And perhaps, for the first time, he could be happy with himself without the world.

Samir closed the notebook.

The city outside continued to make its enormous, indifferent noise.

Inside, there was silence. And, unexpectedly, peace.

Copyright (c) Pratik Majumdar, 2026. Any article, story, write-up cannot be reproduced in its entirety or in part, without permission. URL links can be used