Tupelo Honey

The song slipped into her before she recognised it.

It was just a line at first—low, honey-warm, almost careless—floating out of the dim, half-forgotten café as Radhika walked past. She stopped mid-step, her breath catching in a way that felt both unfamiliar and deeply known. The world around her—the narrow street, the passing scooters, the hum of a city she didn’t belong to—seemed to recede.

“She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey…”

The words wrapped around her like something she had once worn close to her skin.

For a moment, she didn’t move. Then, almost without deciding to, she turned and walked in.

The café looked like it had been waiting for someone who might never come. Faded walls, wooden chairs polished smooth by time, a faint smell of old coffee and something floral—jasmine, she realised, though she didn’t know why that mattered yet.

A young man sat on a stool with a guitar, his voice untrained but tender, carrying the song like it meant something to him.

Radhika chose a corner table.

“Espresso,” she said softly when the waiter came.

She hadn’t said that word in twenty-eight years.

Not since Arjun. 

Arjun, the man she married and for being with him she decided to forget the Jatin chapter of her life completely. 

Before the apartment with its clean lines and efficient routines. Before she had learned to prefer tea because it was easier, lighter, more acceptable somehow.

Before she had packed away a version of herself that drank bitter coffee and laughed too loudly and believed in ‘forever’.

The first sip burned her tongue slightly.

And just like that, she was no longer in this city.

They were sitting on the low wall outside his college hostel, sharing a single cup of espresso because they couldn’t afford two.

“You always take the last sip,” she had complained, nudging him.

Jatin grinned, unrepentant. “That’s because the last sip is where all the magic is.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” he insisted, leaning closer, lowering his voice as though revealing a secret. “Everything important stays till the end.”

She rolled her eyes, but when he handed her the cup that evening, he didn’t drink at all. He just watched her.

“See?” he said softly when she looked up. “Magic.”

The guitar string hummed back in the present.

Radhika blinked. The café returned, dim and quiet, the song now nearing its end.

She hadn’t thought of him in years. Not like this. Not with this ache that felt startlingly alive. She told herself she had forgotten. But memory, it seemed, was a patient waiter – not gone forever. 

Another fragment surfaced, unbidden.

Rain hammering against the windows of a tiny rented room. Her hair damp, his shirt clinging to her because she had borrowed it when her own got soaked.

“You’ll fall sick,” he had said, trying to sound stern, but his hands lingered at her wrists longer than necessary.

“And you won’t?” she teased.

“I have you to take care of me.”

She laughed then, that unguarded, luminous laugh that belonged to a girl who had never yet been broken.

He pulled her closer, almost shyly, and yet his eyes priced through hers like first light slipping past a curtain, quiet, warm and almost impossible to look away from. 

“Stay,” he whispered.

“I am,” she replied, and for that moment, it was true in every way that mattered.

The song ended.

Applause scattered lightly across the café. The young singer smiled, bowed his head, and began packing his guitar.

Radhika stood before she could think better of it.

“Excuse me,” she said when she reached him.

He looked up.

“Where did you learn that song?” she asked. “It’s… not very common.”

For a second, he just stared at her. Not with surprise—but recognition. As though confirming something he had long believed. Then he smiled. Not broadly, but gently. Almost with relief.

“Baba told me you’d come one day,” he said.

The words didn’t make sense.

“I’m sorry?”

“He said you would hear it,” the young man continued, as though explaining something simple. “And you’d come inside.”

A strange chill ran through her.

“Who is your Baba?”

“Come,” he said, picking up his guitar. “He’ll be very happy to see you. He’s been waiting.”

Waiting.

The word pressed against something fragile inside her.

“I… I don’t think—”

“Radhika?”

She turned.

Arjun stood at the entrance, scanning the room, then softening when he saw her. “There you are. I was looking—”

“I need to go somewhere,” she said, the urgency in her voice surprising even herself.

“With him?” Arjun asked, puzzled.

“Yes.”

There was a pause. A thousand questions hovered, but Arjun only nodded slowly. “Call me when you’re done.”

She didn’t know if she would.

The ride was quiet.

The city blurred past, but inside her, everything sharpened.

Jatin’s laughter. Jatin’s hands. Jatin’s voice saying her name like it was something he had discovered.

And then—the ending she had trained herself not to revisit.

The silence. The distance. The letter that never came. The explanation that never arrived. A love that had once felt inevitable, dissolving into absence. And silence. 

They stopped before a modest house. Even before she stepped out, she smelled it.

Jasmine.

Not faint. Not imagined. But real. 

Her fingers trembled.

One last memory came, softer than the others.

A night filled with those same flowers. Strings of jasmine draped carelessly across a terrace, their fragrance thick in the warm air.

“For you,” Jatin had said, almost sheepish.

“You did all this?”

He shrugged. “I know you like them.”

She touched the flowers, then him. “I love them.”

“I know,” he replied quietly. Then, after a pause, “I love you.”

The words had settled between them like something sacred. Something unbreakable. That night they kissed for the first time. Soft, lingering, forever. 

Radhika stood at the door now, her heart pounding so loudly it felt as though it might give her away.

Twenty-eight years collapsed into a single breath.

She raised her hand.

Paused.

Then pushed the door open.

The room inside was dim, lit by a single lamp. The scent of jasmine was stronger here, almost overwhelming.

On the bed, a frail figure lay propped against pillows.

Her breath caught.

Not because she didn’t recognise him. But because she did. Even now. Even like this.

Time had thinned him, softened the edges, but it hadn’t erased him.

Jatin.

His eyes opened slowly, as though he had been listening for her footsteps.

And when they found her, they didn’t search, didn’t question.

They simply rested.

As if they had always known she would come back to stand in this doorway.

Radhika took a step forward.

Her throat tightened. A thousand words rushed to her lips—questions, accusations, confessions—but none of them survived the distance between them.

He smiled.

Faint. Fragile. But unmistakably his. And in that smile, she saw everything they had been.

Everything they had lost. Everything they had never stopped carrying.

She moved closer, her fingers brushing against the jasmine lying beside him.

He watched her, his gaze unwavering.

Then, with a voice that was barely more than breath, he said—

“Last sip… is where the magic stays.”

Her eyes filled up. 

The room seemed to hold its breath. 

And somewhere, very softly, as if carried by memory itself— the song began again inside of her. 

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

Love, Returns

The first thing people noticed about Arjun was his hair—salt and pepper far too early for thirty-seven—but it only made his boyish face more disarming. When he smiled, his eyes caught light like glass wind chimes, bright and restless, as if youth had refused to leave him entirely.

Mitali used to tease him about it, long ago, when teasing came easily.

Now, fourteen years into their marriage, teasing had been filed away somewhere between grocery lists, client calls, and the quiet ticking of a clock that seemed louder in the evenings than it had any right to be.

Their life in Kolkata ran like the trams on College Street—steady, predictable, slightly worn, but dependable.

Morning tea at 7:15.

Arjun scanning headlines on his phone, occasionally humming an old jingle from his media agency days.

Mitali tying her hair into a loose bun, already thinking about fabrics, fall stitching, and a client who wanted “something subtle but not boring.”

They spoke, of course. But mostly in practicalities.

“Milk’s over.”

“Meeting at 11.”

“I’ll be late.”

“Don’t wait for dinner.”

Love had not disappeared. It had simply… settled. Like dust on a bookshelf no one thought to clean.

The week Naina arrived, the air changed.

Mitali had been excited in a way Arjun hadn’t seen in years. “She’s been my client for four years,” she had said, rearranging cushions for the third time. “From Bengaluru. You’ll like her—she’s very… alive.”

Alive was an understatement.

Naina walked in with a burst of laughter, a suitcase, and a presence that seemed to tilt the room slightly in her favour. Dusky skin glowing from travel, hair wild in a way that looked accidental but wasn’t, eyes bright with curiosity.

And then— She saw Arjun. And Arjun saw her. Time didn’t stop. It stumbled. A flicker. Recognition. Something unspoken but unmistakable.

Mitali, oblivious, was saying, “Arjun, this is Naina—”

“We’ve met,” Naina said quickly, her smile steady but her fingers tightening around the handle of her bag.

Arjun nodded. “A long time ago.”

That night, the ceiling fan seemed louder than usual.

The first two days passed in careful choreography. Naina was warmth itself with Mitali—complimenting her designs, laughing at her stories, trailing her through the boutique like an admiring shadow. With Arjun, she was… precise. Polite. Measured. Distant in a way that only two people with a past could manage.

And Arjun—soft, easy Arjun—became quiet.

He watched her sometimes when she wasn’t looking. Not hungrily. Not even nostalgically. Just… curiously. As if trying to reconcile the girl he had known with the woman sitting across the dining table discussing Kolkata’s humidity.

Mitali noticed none of it. Or perhaps she noticed everything and chose silence.

On the third night, Arjun broke. Mitali was folding clothes, her movements efficient, when he said her name.

“Mitu…”

She looked up. He hadn’t called her that in a while.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

And then he did. Not dramatically. Not defensively. Just… honestly. About college. About a love that had been bright and consuming and ultimately fragile. About how life had pulled them apart without betrayal, without bitterness—just distance and time.

About Naina.

When he finished, the room felt very still. Mitali didn’t react immediately. She placed a folded kurta on the bed, smoothing it unnecessarily.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she asked finally.

“I didn’t know she was that Naina,” he said softly. “Not until she walked in.”

That was true. And she knew it.

“And now?” she asked.

“I don’t feel what I felt then,” he said, choosing each word with care. “But I would be lying if I said it doesn’t… stir something. Not love. Just… memory.”

Mitali held his gaze. For fourteen years, she had been the stronger one. The one who steadied storms. The one who absorbed, who endured, who anchored.

But this—this was not a storm. This was almost like a mirror.

“Do you want her to stay?” she asked. The question surprised him.

“It’s your house too,” she added quietly. “Your past too.”

Arjun exhaled. “What do you want?”

Mitali looked away, toward the window where the faint glow of streetlights filtered through.

“I want honesty,” she said. “Not comfort. Not convenience.” She turned back to him. “Let her stay.”

Something shifted after that. Not dramatically. Not loudly. But perceptibly. Mitali began to watch. Not with suspicion—but with attention.

She noticed how Arjun still laughed at Naina’s old jokes. How Naina’s eyes softened when he spoke about things that mattered to him. How easily they slipped into conversations that required no effort. And she noticed something else too.

How Arjun still made her tea every morning—without asking. How he still waited for her to take the first bite at dinner. How he still looked for her in a room before settling.

Love, she realized, had not disappeared. It had simply grown quiet. On the fifth evening, it rained. One of those sudden Kolkata downpours that turned streets into mirrors and air into music. The power flickered. Then went out. They lit candles.

Naina suggested music. Arjun found an old speaker. Someone—no one quite remembered who—started playing songs from their college days. And then, somehow, they were laughing. Really laughing. Naina told a ridiculous story about Arjun trying to impress a professor. Arjun groaned. Mitali laughed harder than she had in years.

“Is this true?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

“Exaggerated,” Arjun protested.

“Completely true,” Naina confirmed.

Mitali looked at him, really looked at him. Not as the man who forgot to buy milk. Not as the husband who came home late. But as the boy he had been. And something inside her softened.

Later that night, after Naina had gone to bed, Mitali stood by the window, watching the rain slow into a whisper. Arjun joined her. For a while, they said nothing. Then Mitali spoke.

“You loved her,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And she loved you.”

“Yes.”

Mitali nodded. “And you chose a life without her.”

He looked at her then. “Life happened. But yes.”

She turned to him, her light brown eyes unreadable and full at the same time. “And you chose me,” she said.

There was no accusation in it. Only truth. Arjun stepped closer.

“We chose each other,” he said quietly. “We kept choosing one another. Every day. Even when we didn’t say it.” Something broke open in that moment—not painfully, but like a window finally letting air in.

The next morning, Naina announced she would be leaving a day early.

“My meetings got rescheduled,” she said lightly.

But Mitali knew. So did Arjun. At the door, there was a pause. Naina hugged Mitali tightly. “You have something rare,” she said softly.

Mitali smiled. “So did you. Once.”

Naina turned to Arjun. There were a thousand things they could have said. They said none of them. Instead, she smiled—that same dazzling, slightly wild smile—and said, “Take care of her.”

“I do,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

And then she was gone.

That evening felt… different. Not empty. Just… quieter in a way that wasn’t heavy. Mitali was in the kitchen when Arjun walked in and, without a word, wrapped his arms around her from behind. It startled her.

“You’ll burn the dal,” she said spontaneously.

“I’ll risk it,” he murmured.

She didn’t pull away. After a moment, she leaned back into him. It was a small thing. Almost nothing.

But it wasn’t routine.

Days passed. The timetable returned. The structure. The familiar rhythms. But something had shifted beneath it all. Arjun started coming home a little earlier. Mitali began lingering over dinner instead of clearing plates immediately. They found things to say—not always important, not always meaningful—but real.

One Sunday morning, without planning it, they went out for tea. Not because they had to. Just because they wanted to. Sitting at a small stall, sharing a single clay cup, Mitali looked at him and said, “Your hair is getting more grey.”

He grinned. “You always liked it.”

“I still do,” she said. And this time, there was no dust settling over the moment.

Years later, if someone had asked them when their marriage changed, they might not have agreed on the exact day. But they would both remember the week the past walked into their present—and quietly, gently, gave them back their future.

Because love, they discovered, does not always need grand gestures. Sometimes, it just needs to be noticed again.

And chosen.   

Again.

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

Two of Us

Kolkata always knew how to keep secrets. It hid them in the rustle of old trees on Southern Avenue, in the lingering smell of rain on tram tracks, in the way the Hooghly held reflections just a second longer than it should. And sometimes, it tucked them quietly between two people who made no sense together.

Like Aritra and Meera.

Aritra, 37, was all order. Crisp white shirts, schedules planned to the minute, coffee without sugar, and a life that moved in straight lines. He worked in finance, believed in logic, and trusted numbers more than people.

Meera, 33, on the other hand, was chaos wrapped in soft cotton sarees and silver anklets. She painted for a living—if that could be called a “living.” Her studio in North Kolkata was always a mess of colors, unfinished canvases, and half-burnt incense sticks. She forgot appointments, lost her phone twice a week, and believed that sunsets meant something.

They met, as most improbable stories do, by accident.

Aritra had taken a wrong turn.

His GPS had failed him somewhere near Kumartuli, and in his irritation, he had walked into a narrow lane that smelled faintly of clay and rain. That’s when he saw her—sitting cross-legged on the floor outside a workshop, arguing passionately with an idol-maker about the shade of blue for Krishna’s skin.

“No, no, this is too sad,” she insisted, holding up a brush. “Krishna should look like he knows a secret. Not like he’s waiting for a tax audit.”

Aritra had laughed.

He didn’t mean to. It just slipped out, surprising even himself.

Meera turned, annoyed at first, then curious. “You disagree?”

“I think…,” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “Krishna’s emotional state doesn’t impact the market value of the idol.”

She stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter. The kind that made her eyes crinkle and her shoulders shake.

“That,” she said, “is the saddest thing I’ve heard all day.”

He should have left then. Gone back to his structured world.

But he didn’t.

Their second meeting felt less accidental.

Aritra found himself walking that same lane again, two days later. He told himself it was because he had work nearby. He ignored the fact that his route had conveniently stretched by twenty minutes.

Meera was there, sitting on a low stool, sketching.

“You got lost again?” she asked without looking up.

“I didn’t get lost the first time,” he replied.

“Of course,” she said, smiling faintly. “People always ‘find themselves’ in Kumartuli.”

He sat beside her, uninvited.

That became their thing.

Kolkata slowly became their accomplice.

They walked along Prinsep Ghat in the evenings, where the river shimmered like it was listening in on their conversations. Meera would talk about colours—how the sky was never just blue, how shadows had feelings, how people carried invisible shades within them.

Aritra would counter with probabilities, data, and reality.

“You overthink everything,” she told him once, as they shared a paper cone of jhalmuri.

“And you underthink,” he replied.

“Maybe,” she said, tossing a peanut into her mouth, “but I feel more.”

He didn’t have a response to that.

Instead, he noticed the way the wind kept pushing her hair across her face. Without thinking, he reached out and tucked it behind her ear.

They both went quiet. It was a small moment. Barely anything. And yet, it lingered.

There were many such moments.

Like the time it started raining suddenly near College Street. Meera spun around, arms wide, laughing like the rain belonged to her.

“Come on!” she shouted.

“I don’t do this,” Aritra said, stepping back under a shop shade.

She walked up to him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into the rain.

For a second, he resisted. Then he didn’t.

His shirt clung awkwardly, his hair was a mess, and he was definitely going to fall sick.

But Meera was right there, grinning at him like he had just done something extraordinary.

“See?” she said softly.

And for once, he didn’t calculate the consequences.

Or the night they took a tram for no reason at all.

They sat side by side, the city sliding past them in sleepy lights and familiar chaos. Meera leaned her head on his shoulder halfway through the ride, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Aritra stiffened at first, taken aback by the suddenness of her action. Then, slowly, he relaxed. Although he didn’t move for the rest of the journey. Not even when his arm started to ache.

But love, especially the illogical kind, never comes without its shadows.

Aritra saw the red flags clearly. Meera was unpredictable. She cancelled plans, disappeared into her work for days, and refused to think about the future in any concrete way.

“I don’t want to plan everything,” she said once, when he tried to talk about where they were headed. “It ruins it.”

“Not planning ruins it,” he argued.

“You’re scared,” she said gently.

“I’m practical.”

“You’re scared of things you can’t control.”

“And you,” he said, a little too sharply, “don’t take anything seriously.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than it should have. They didn’t meet for a week after that. Kolkata felt different in those days.

Too loud. Too empty.

It was Durga Puja when they found their way back.

Aritra saw her first. She was standing in front of a pandal in North Kolkata, draped in a simple white saree with a red border, her hair tied loosely, a tiny red bindi on her forehead. She looked… still.

Not chaotic. Not scattered. Just still. He walked up to her.

“You disappeared,” he said.

“So did you,” she replied.

They stood there, surrounded by the sound of dhaak and the hum of a thousand people, yet somehow in a quiet of their own.

“I can’t promise to be logical,” Meera said after a moment. “Or predictable. Or… easy.”

“I know,” Aritra said.

“I might frustrate you.”

“You do.”

She smiled faintly. “Then why are you here?”

He took a breath.

Because this was the part where logic should have stepped in. Where he should have listed all the reasons this wouldn’t work.

Instead, he said, “Because when I’m with you, things… make sense in a way I can’t explain.”

Meera’s eyes softened.

“That’s not very logical,” she said.

“I know.”

For once, he didn’t mind.

The dhaak grew louder. The lights flickered. Somewhere, someone started laughing.

And in that moment, Aritra did something completely out of character.

He reached for her hand. Not cautiously. Not hesitantly. Just… naturally.

Meera looked at their hands, then at him.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I don’t understand this,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to walk away from it either.”

She squeezed his hand gently.

“Good,” she said. “Because I wasn’t going to let you.”

Years later, if you asked them how it worked, they wouldn’t have a proper answer.

They still argued. He still planned too much. She still forgot things.

But he learned to leave space for the unexpected. And she learned to stay.

Sometimes love isn’t neat. Sometimes it doesn’t follow rules or logic or sense. Sometimes it’s just a quiet moment on a tram, a hand held in a crowded pandal, or laughter in the middle of rain.

And sometimes, in a city that knows how to keep secrets, two completely different people find each other…

…and decide that’s reason enough.

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

Things We Said Today

The first time it rained that year, Kolkata didn’t ask permission.

It came down in a soft, silver rush over College Street, blurring bookstalls and tram lines, turning the air into something that smelled like wet paper and old stories. Arijit stood beneath a half-broken blue tarpaulin, holding two earthen cups of chai, waiting.

Rituparna was late. She was always late.

He checked his phone, though he knew there’d be no message. Then, as if summoned by his impatience, she appeared—hair damp, kurti clinging slightly at the shoulders, eyes bright with apology and mischief.

“Traffic,” she said, breathless, though they both knew that was never the full truth.

“Of course,” Arijit replied, handing her the chai. “The city personally conspires to delay you.”

She laughed, that soft, familiar laugh that had long ago stopped feeling like something he heard and started feeling like something he carried. They walked together under his umbrella, shoulders brushing occasionally, neither of them moving away.

It had been like this for years. Friendship, everyone called it.

Something quieter, something deeper, Arijit knew—but he had never found the courage to name it. They met in college. First as classmates, then as study partners, then as everything in between—late-night calls, shared playlists, arguments over films, long walks along the Hooghly where words weren’t always necessary.

There were moments. Too many moments.

Like the evening at Prinsep Ghat when the sky turned gold and Rituparna had leaned her head on his shoulder, just for a second too long.

Or the winter morning at Victoria Memorial when she had tucked her cold hands into his, laughing, “Temporary heater service.”

Or the time she had fallen asleep during a movie at his place, curled up on his couch, trusting him with a kind of quiet that made his chest ache.

Each time, Arijit had felt it—that pull, that certainty. And each time, he had said nothing. Because what if saying something broke everything?

Because what if she didn’t feel the same? Because what if he lost her? So he stayed where it was safe.

Beside her. Not with her.

The new guy arrived on a Tuesday. His name was Sayan.

Rituparna mentioned him casually at first, over a call that stretched past midnight.

“He’s joined our office,” she said. “From Bangalore. Thinks Kolkata traffic is ‘charming.’

Arijit snorted. “Give him a week.”

“He’s nice,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Funny, too.” Something small and uncomfortable shifted in Arijit’s chest. He ignored it.

Weeks passed.

Sayan became a name that appeared more often in their conversations.

“Sayan said this—”  “Sayan thinks that—” “Sayan and I went for coffee—”

Arijit listened, smiled when required, teased when expected. But something had changed.

Not in Rituparna, not really. In him.

He started noticing things he had always taken for granted. The way she didn’t call him first thing in the morning anymore. The way their evening walks became less frequent. The way her laughter sometimes came from the other end of a story that didn’t include him.

One evening, they met at their usual spot near Rabindra Sarobar. The lake shimmered under fading light, couples scattered along the paths, the city humming softly in the distance. Rituparna arrived glowing.

Not just happy. Different.

“You’ll like him,” she said, sitting beside him on the bench.

Arijit’s fingers tightened slightly around the paper cup in his hand.

 “Will I?” 

“Yes,” she said easily. “You both have the same sarcastic energy.”

He forced a smile. “Dangerous combination.”

She nudged him playfully. “Don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not,” he said quickly.

Too quickly.

She looked at him for a moment, something unreadable flickering in her eyes. Then she looked away. “Good,” she said softly.

The night it finally broke, Kolkata was restless. A storm threatened but didn’t arrive. The air was thick, heavy with everything unsaid. Rituparna called him.

“Come out?” she asked.

He didn’t hesitate. They met near the river.

The Hooghly stretched out before them, dark and endless, the Howrah Bridge glowing like something steady and certain. Rituparna stood by the railing, her hair loose, the wind playing with it.

“I think Sayan likes me,” she said.

Arijit’s heart stumbled.

“And?” he asked.

She turned to him. “I don’t know.”

Silence settled between them, louder than anything.

“Do you like him?” he managed.

“I should,” she said. “He’s… everything people say I should want.”

The words landed heavily. “And?” he asked again, quieter this time.

She took a step closer. Close enough that he could see the familiar crease between her brows when she was thinking too much. “And I keep comparing him to someone,” she said.

His breath caught.

“Who?” he asked, though he already knew.

She held his gaze.

“You,” she said.

The city seemed to pause.

The river, the bridge, the distant honk of traffic—everything faded into the space between them. “Then why—” he started, his voice unsteady.

“Because you never said anything,” she interrupted, her voice trembling now. “All these years, Arijit. You never said anything.”

The truth hit harder than any storm. “I was afraid,” he admitted. “Afraid of losing you.”

She laughed softly, though her eyes shone. “And I was afraid I imagined it all.”

They stood there, years of silence unraveling in seconds.

“I thought,” she continued, “if you felt the same, you’d say it. And when you didn’t… I told myself I should move on.”

Arijit took a step closer.

“Don’t,” he said. Just one word. But it carried everything he had never said.

“Don’t move on?”

“Don’t settle for someone just because I was a coward,” he said, his voice steadier now. “Ritu… I’ve loved you for years. I just didn’t know how to risk losing you.”

She looked at him, really looked at him, as if searching for hesitation.

There was none left.

“Idiot,” she whispered, though her lips curved into a smile.

“Certified,” he agreed.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then she reached for his hand. Not playfully. Not casually. She held it like it mattered. Like it always had.

“You took your time,” she said softly.

“I’m here now,” he replied.

The first drop of rain fell between them. Then another. And another. Until Kolkata finally exhaled into a downpour. They didn’t run for cover. They stood there, drenched, laughing, something new and fragile and beautiful settling into place.

Somewhere in the city, life continued as it always did. Trams rattled, chai boiled, people hurried home. But for Arijit and Rituparna, something had shifted forever. Not friendship lost. But love, finally found.

And this time, neither of them looked away.

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

The Sudden Disappearance of Arjun Basu

I. The Man Who Didn’t Fit

On most evenings, Arjun Basu stood by the narrow balcony of his third-floor apartment in Ballygunge, watching the city slip into its neon-lit restlessness. Kolkata never really slept—it simmered. Honking cars, distant tram bells, late-night tea stalls, laughter rising from nowhere and dissolving just as quickly.

At forty-six, Arjun felt like an unfinished sentence in a city obsessed with conclusions.

He was five foot ten, his hair now more salt than pepper, though his face still carried a softness that belonged to a younger man. People often mistook his silence for calm, his kindness for weakness, and his thoughts—too many, too tangled—for irrelevance.

Inside, the television blared.

“…you have to be practical, Arjun,” Madhumita’s voice cut through the room. “You can’t keep giving money away to strangers. We have responsibilities.”

Madhu stood firm, arms crossed. Twenty years of marriage had sharpened her into someone who balanced compassion with calculation. She loved Arjun—she truly did—but she no longer understood him.

“I didn’t give it away,” Arjun said quietly. “I helped someone.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” she replied. “You always help. Even when you shouldn’t.”

From the sofa, their sixteen-year-old son Riddhiman didn’t look up from his phone. “Baba, you’re too emotional. That’s why people take advantage of you.”

Arjun smiled faintly, as if they were discussing someone else.

Maybe they were.

II. The Office and the Outcast

Arjun worked in a mid-level corporate office on Park Street—one of those places where ambition smelled faintly of air freshener and fear.

He wasn’t particularly ambitious. That was his first mistake.

The second was that he noticed things.

The way people laughed louder around power. The way truth bent itself into shapes that fit performance reviews. The way kindness was often treated like a liability.

Fatima sat across from him.

She was sharp, articulate, and carried herself with a confidence that unsettled others. Rumours followed her like a shadow—that she slept with her boss to climb the ladder.Arjun never believed them. Or perhaps, he didn’t care. What he saw was something else entirely—a mind that felt, a person who understood the absurdity of the world they inhabited.

“You’re listening to Pink Floyd again?” she asked one afternoon, noticing the faint leakage from his earphones.

“Wish You Were Here,” Arjun said. “It feels like… an apology to existence.”

Fatima smiled. “That’s a very Arjun way of putting it.”

“Do you ever feel like you’re not meant for this?” he asked.

She leaned back, looking at the fluorescent lights. “All the time. But I stay. Survival is less poetic than escape.” Arjun nodded. He wasn’t sure he agreed.

III. The Hidden Notebooks

At night, when the city dimmed just enough to pretend it was quiet, Arjun wrote. Not on his laptop—never there. Always in an old, worn notebook he kept hidden behind a stack of files. His poetry wasn’t structured. It wandered, much like him.

I am not lost,

I am simply misplaced,

like rain that fell

In the wrong season.

They tell me to grow roots,

but I was born wind,

and wind has no address.

Sometimes, he would hum old songs as he wrote

“There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…”

Led Zeppelin. Stairway to Heaven.

He wondered if anyone truly believed that anymore.

IV. The Rumours

It started quietly.

A glance here. A whisper there. Then one afternoon, it arrived fully formed. “I heard you and Fatima are… close,” a colleague said, with a smirk that carried more accusation than curiosity.

Arjun frowned. “We’re friends.”

“Of course,” the man said. “That’s how it starts.”

By the end of the week, the story had evolved into something else entirely. By the end of the month, it reached home. Madhu stood in the doorway that night, her expression unfamiliar.

“Is it true?” she asked.

Arjun blinked. “Is what true?”

“You and Fatima.”

The silence that followed was heavier than any answer.

“No,” he said finally. “It’s not like that.”

“But there is something,” she pressed.

Arjun hesitated.

That hesitation broke something.

“You see?” Madhu said, her voice trembling—not with anger, but with exhaustion. “I don’t even know you anymore.”

Neither did he.

V. The Breaking Point

Days blurred. The office grew colder. Home felt distant. Conversations became transactions—words exchanged without meaning.

Fatima noticed.

“You’re withdrawing,” she said.

“I think I’m disappearing,” Arjun replied.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

She looked at him carefully. “What are you thinking?”

He smiled faintly. “About how easy it would be to just… not be here.”

Fatima’s expression hardened. “Don’t romanticize escape, Arjun. The world doesn’t change because you leave it.”

“No,” he said softly. “But maybe I do.”

That evening, he walked home instead of taking a cab. The city moved around him—people rushing, arguing, laughing, surviving. No one noticed him.

No one ever did.

VI. The Last Night

That night, Arjun didn’t argue. He didn’t explain. He simply sat by the balcony, listening to an old cassette he had dug out from a drawer.

“Hello darkness, my old friend…”

Simon & Garfunkel.

He opened his notebook one last time:

I tried to belong

to a world that trades hearts

like currency,

but mine was counterfeit—

too soft,

too human.

If you look for me,

don’t search in crowds,

or in names,

or in things that can be owned.

Find me instead

in unfinished songs,

in pauses between words,

in the silence

you were too afraid to hear.

He closed the notebook. At some point in the night, while the city continued its indifferent rhythm—

Arjun Basu left.

No note. No trace. No goodbye.

VII. The Aftermath

Morning came, as it always does. Madhu noticed first. His side of the bed untouched. His phone left behind. His wallet still on the table. Riddhiman thought it was a mistake.

“He must’ve gone out early,” he said.

But Arjun never went out early. By afternoon, the realization settled in like a slow, suffocating fog.

He was gone.

VIII. The Search

They searched. Police reports. Calls to relatives. Visits to hospitals.

Nothing.

Fatima searched differently. She went to the places he liked—the old bookshop near College Street, the quiet bench by Rabindra Sarobar, the tea stall where he once spoke about how “chai tastes better when you’re not in a hurry. She found nothing.

Except a feeling.

That he hadn’t run away. He had simply… stepped out of the frame.

IX. The Notebook

It was Riddhiman who found it. Hidden. Forgotten. Or perhaps, meant to be found. Madhu read it in silence. Page after page of a man she thought she knew—but didn’t. Not a loser. Not naive. Not impractical.

Just… unbearably alone.

She stopped at one line.

“The tragedy is not that people don’t understand me,

but that I no longer expect them to.”

Madhu closed the notebook. For the first time in years, she cried without restraint.

X. The City Moves On

Kolkata did what cities do. It moved on. The trams still rang their bells. The tea stalls still filled with arguments. The offices still buzzed with ambition. Somewhere, someone hummed an old tune.

“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl…”

Fatima stood at the balcony of the office one evening, looking at the same city Arjun once did. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she whispered into the wind.

There was no answer.But I n the hum of the city, in the spaces between noise—  there was something that felt like him.

Not gone. Just… no longer visible.

XI. Epilogue: The Question That Remained

People spoke of Arjun Basu for a while. Then less. Then not at all. But the question lingered—not in words, but in quiet moments. What does a man do when the world demands he become something he isn’t?

Does he adapt?

Does he break?

Or does he simply… disappear?

Nameless Skies

The voice was familiar.

Warm like winter sun on old skin.

It came from a low-lit room in a small, sleepy town called Rewa, where time didn’t move. It sighed.

Aman lived there. Fifty-four. Unmarried. Untroubled by it in public, disturbed by it in the shadows of his heart.

He had grown to accept solitude like an arranged marriage you don’t fight.

His world was a small, curated playlist—old friends, old records, older memories.

He made music. Not to perform. Not to impress.

Just to whisper into his own silence.

He made his living doing voice-overs for educational videos and radio jingles, his baritone voice more travelled than him.

Flying? No.

The sky was too uncertain. Planes too loud. Airports too foreign.

He would rather walk a hundred miles than sit on a seat that might never land.

But love, love has a sound.

Aman once heard it many years ago in Chhindwara, in the spring of 1996.

She was 16. He was 25. 

She wore her school uniform like a rebellion.

He saw her sketching on a public bus window with her finger on the fog.

They spoke. For three months. Every day. In whispers. In glances.

Until whispers turned to letters. Letters to touches. Touches to kisses.

And then her parents found out. And she was gone.

Left the town without a forwarding address.

He kept writing anyway, as if words could reach her like rain finds lost rivers.

Now it was 2025. 

Facebook suggested a friend.

Naina Choudhary.

Widowed.

Lives alone in Chhindwara now.

Hair streaked with silver. Eyes still sketching foggy windows.

She accepted his request.

And a message came:

“Do you still write songs?”

He did.

And so he sent them. Audio clips recorded on his aging home setup.

Each song had a line just for her. Like it had been waiting 25 years.

In return, she sent him pages from an old poetry diary she’d tucked away.

Written in stolen time between marriage and motherhood and mourning.

Words so raw they bled on screen.

Sometimes they laughed.

Sometimes they cried.

But mostly, they waited for the next message.

She said she still believed in fate.

That if life had kept them apart all these years, maybe it was for a reason.

Maybe destiny is not a mistake, but a mirror.

He didn’t believe in fate.

He believed in decisions.

And he made one.

“I’m coming,” he said.

She replied with a single word:

“Don’t.”

He booked the flight.

Bhopal via Delhi.

Took anti-anxiety pills. Held his guitar like a child holds a teddy bear.

Boarded with trembling hands and a beating heart.

Somewhere above the clouds, the aircraft disappeared from radar.

Somewhere in Chhindwara, Naina waited.

In a yellow kurta, with trembling hands.

She had opened the poetry diary.

She had lit an incense stick.

She had kept a cup of tea for him.

The news came the next morning.

Flight G4 1314 had crashed in Madhya Pradesh.

No survivors.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream.

She simply placed the diary back into the cupboard.

And closed it. Her belief in fate sadly reaffirmed.

Love is not always what you hold.

Sometimes it’s what you lose, again and again.

Sometimes it’s a flight that never lands.

A note never played.

A diary unread.

Naina still walks every evening to the tea stall near her lane.

Sometimes she hums.

The tune is familiar.

Aman had once sung it.

To her.

In another lifetime.

In another sky.

The wind whistles through an empty diary.

Pages flutter, but never turn.

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

The Space Between

In a city where the sea whispered secrets to stones and local trains hummed like restless dreams, lived two strangers—bound not by fate, but by a series of delicate, echoing coincidences.

Nikhil woke every morning at exactly 6:47 a.m.—not because his phone buzzed, but because a koel sang outside his window with stubborn punctuality. Across the city, Aditi stirred at the same time. Her alarm had long since stopped working, but a sliver of light always cut through her curtains just right, as though the sun remembered her better than she remembered herself.

They brushed their teeth to the same vintage Bollywood station. Nikhil liked the gravelly melancholy of old songs—how they felt like letters unsent. Aditi didn’t know all the words, but she hummed as if the music had been left in her veins by someone who once loved her in silence.

Nikhil worked in a second-hand bookshop near Matunga, a sleepy little place hidden between a tea stall and a forgotten tailoring shop. Aditi walked past it every morning on her way to a flower stall in Dadar, where she crafted arrangements like small, fragrant stories—gajras, mogra, lilies wrapped in whispers. She never looked inside, never knowing that behind the dusty glass, Nikhil was organizing novels by feeling, not alphabet, and glancing at the door whenever the bells twinkled.

They both loved the rain, but for different reasons.

Nikhil loved how it made the city blur at the edges, how even traffic lights seemed softer, more forgiving. Aditi loved how the rain made strangers share rickshaws and lovers pause in doorways. Neither knew that, on those grey Mumbai afternoons, they sometimes stood across from each other at the same zebra crossing, both holding umbrellas—his a plain navy blue, hers with tiny golden birds painted by hand.

They both had a habit of writing to a nothing, a no one. .

Nikhil scribbled thoughts in the margins of unsold books—things like, “Somewhere, someone must be feeling this same quiet ache.” Aditi wrote on scraps of flower wrapping—tucked inside bouquets as if someone, someday, might find them: “Do you ever feel like you’re just one turn away from meeting someone your heart already knows?”

They moved through the city like parallel verses in a poem, near but never touching. When Nikhil sipped cutting chai on the steps of a library in Fort, watching the sky darken, Aditi was sketching a flower in a quiet café in Bandra, pausing as if she’d forgotten what she was waiting for.

On Sundays, they both went to Shivaji Park.

He with a book, she with a sketchpad. Once, a gust of wind carried her page down the path, fluttering to a halt near Nikhil’s foot. But he didn’t see. His gaze was fixed on a line of poetry that curled around his thoughts like smoke.

So many almosts.

Almost passing each other at the Kala Ghoda Art Festival, where Nikhil left minutes before Aditi arrived.

Almost reaching for the same samosa at an Irani café counter.

Almost brushing shoulders at Churchgate station during rush hour, where hearts beat louder than the trains.

They never met.

Not yet.

But in a city stitched together by noise and yearning, they felt each other. Like twin sitar strings vibrating in symphony, like reflections glimpsed in a window just as the train pulls away.

At night, they dreamed of the same bench near the sea, under the old banyan tree with its fairy lights tangled in the roots. And in those dreams, someone sat beside them. Someone whose silence felt like known.

They both woke with a name they’d never heard still lingering on their lips. A name that felt like a memory from a life unlived.

In a city of sixteen million, their stories were already whispering to each other in the spaces between raindrops and song lyrics. Woven in the same thread, just waiting for the right breeze.

And maybe—just maybe—tomorrow, it will carry them to the same place.

At the same time.

And this time, they’ll look up.

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

The Second Crime

Marine Drive never sleeps, but that night, it fell silent.

A black BMW X7 stood by the promenade, door ajar, rain pouring like judgment from the heavens. The corpse of Vinod Pawar, Aditya Khanna’s driver, slumped in the front seat with a bullet lodged in his temple. Rain blurred the blood but couldn’t wash away the intent.

Detective Arjun Mehra arrived minutes later. Lean and angular, a man hardened by silence he stood still as his eyes flicked across the crime scene. No scuffle. No panic. One shot. Cold execution.

Aditya Khanna—the billionaire, real estate tycoon, party fixture, and unproven white-collar criminal—was gone.

No body. No call. No ransom.

Aditya Khanna’s wife, Anita, wore mourning like a cocktail dress—impeccable but performative. She cried, but her eyes were dry. Her statements were neat. No confusion. No chaos.

Mehra noticed her wedding ring—twisted nervously. It wasn’t grief. It was control cracking at the edges.

Rajat Khanna, Aditya’s younger brother, wore his guilt like an aftershave—too strong, too obvious. There were photos. Hotel receipts. Phone pings. The affair between Anita and Rajat wasn’t just real; it was recent and reckless.

The motive glittered in front of Mehra like broken glass: the wife, the lover, the money.

But it didn’t explain the timing. Or the absence of a ransom.

Then on Day 3, it arrived.

A hand-delivered envelope to their Worli residence. Inside: a voice recording distorted with static and fear.

“Aditya is alive. ₹15 crore. No cops. Instructions will follow.”

The message ended with a codeword known only to Aditya and his chief of security—a detail meant to prove authenticity.

Mehra listened to the tape three times. Something about it felt off. Not the voice—it was clearly masked—but the pacing. The phrasing. The delay. Three days? That wasn’t desperation. It was calculation.

Still, they had to follow protocol. Ransom squad activated. Money marked. Phones tapped.

But Mehra’s gut itched. Something fundamental was wrong.

Surveillance teams caught Anita and Rajat meeting discreetly. A confrontation followed.

Rajat broke first. “We talked about leaving him. Yes. But we didn’t do this. I swear.”

Anita said nothing. Just lit a cigarette and watched Mehra like she was studying a predator.

She never asked once—Is Aditya okay?

Mehra kept circling the crime scene, questioning the domestic staff, probing timelines. Every detail led back to the BMW. To Vinod. But no one cared about him. Just a dead driver in the wrong place.

Yet Vinod kept nagging at Mehra.

Sarla Pawar, Vinod’s wife, lived in a small chawl in Chembur. She was quiet, deferential, and soft-spoken. Mehra visited her twice. The second time, she slipped.

“I just hope they give back that poor man’s boss, after asking so much money.”

Mehra blinked. He hadn’t told her about the ransom. Neither had the press. It hadn’t been leaked.

Only a handful of people knew.

He left, didn’t react. But the noose had begun to tighten.

Sarla had been speaking regularly with a low-level constable named Kiran Shinde. Transfers between accounts. Private meetings. A phone found in Kiran’s home had the original ransom recording, unmasked.

Under interrogation, Kiran tried to bluff, then broke.

Then Sarla cracked.

Aditya Khanna wasn’t the target. He was the distraction.

Vinod had found out about his wife’s affair with Kiran. He threatened to report them both—destroy their lives. So Sarla and Kiran did the only thing they thought would free them:

They killed him.

A clean shot. Fast. But they knew one thing—a dead driver was just another crime. It would lead straight to them.

But if a billionaire was abducted? If the city was ablaze with headlines about Aditya Khanna missing?

No one would care about Vinod Pawar.

So they abducted Aditya. Used Vinod’s insider knowledge to plan the route. Knocked Khanna unconscious and kept him hidden in a safehouse in Navi Mumbai. Kiran knew just enough about police procedure to stay ahead of the early response teams.

And then they waited.

Waited until the media was hooked. Until the city’s pulse was pounding in the wrong direction. Then, dropped the ransom demand—just for the hell of it. Greed, maybe. Or just to tighten the performance.

They almost got away with it.

But Sarla’s one slip—the mention of a ransom no one should’ve known about—ripped it all apart.

Aditya was found weak but alive. Drugged. Traumatized. He remembered nothing beyond the injection.

Anita and Rajat were cleared, their affair reduced to tabloid fodder. Disgraced, but not guilty.

Kiran and Sarla were charged with murder, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and extortion.

Vinod Pawar, whose name no one remembered when the case began, became the reason it was solved.

Detective Mehra sat alone in his office. The rain outside had turned into a fine mist. The city would never stop moving. Another case would come. Another body would bleed on the pavement.

But for now, he lit a cigarette, opened a new file, and whispered to himself:

“The truth always hides behind the obvious. The real story’s where no one’s looking.”

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

Window Seat (…because sometimes the journey is the destination)

The train platform in Delhi was its usual orchestra of chaos—hawkers shouting, tannoys stuttering names of distant cities, the metallic clang of wheels, the stink of hot food and warm metal. Nikhil walked through it like a man out of time, unbothered. A duffel bag hung from one shoulder, its strap slipping slightly with every step. A guitar case peeked out from it, a notebook tucked beside. Headphones circled his neck, silent now, but still somehow part of him. He watched people, not to judge or interact—just to notice.

In the AC coach, cool air met warmth and movement. Niharika stepped in, sleek and composed in a navy-blue pantsuit, wheeling her compact luggage behind her like a well-behaved child. Her eyes scanned the numbered seats with practiced precision. Seat 22W. Window.

But someone was already there.

A man. Scruffy, too relaxed, legs stretched, watching the blur of the world through glass. He had the stillness of someone who’d made peace with delay.

“Excuse me. That’s my seat.”

He glanced at her, pulled off one headphone. Smiled—not the annoying kind, but annoyingly calm.

“Oh. I’m 24W. Yours is 22W, right? Both window seats. Same view. Does it matter?”

“It’s not about the view. It’s about what’s assigned. You’re in the wrong seat.”

“Technically, yes. Philosophically?” He shrugged. “Just two people watching the same world go by.”

She didn’t smile. “I’d like to sit in my seat. Please.”

He stood with mock formality, bowing slightly. “As you command, madam rulebook.”

She sat, jaw tight. He slid over, unbothered.

They rode in silence, side by side. She typed on her laptop, fingers flying. He scribbled in his notebook, humming softly, rhythmically.

She glanced sideways. “Are you going to keep humming?”

“It’s not humming. It’s composing.”

“Of course. Because everyone composes on trains.”

“Best place for it. People, movement, noise… emotion.”

She sighed. “Some of us are trying to work.”

He looked at her, curious. “Some of us are trying to feel.”

She let out an involuntary chuckle, short and dry. He took that as permission.

At lunch, they both received identical trays. Pale paneer, two rotis, lukewarm dal.

“I always wonder who decides these railway menus,” Nikhil said. “Like… did someone taste this paneer and go, ‘Yes. This will unite the nation.’”

She tried not to laugh. Failed a little. “It’s edible. That’s more than I can say for airplane food.”

“You travel a lot?”

“Back and forth. My fiancé lives in Mumbai. We’re setting up a home.”

“Ah. The domestic dream.”

“And you?”

“Break-up. She cheated. Going to end it… properly.”

She paused, looked at him differently. “You don’t sound angry.”

“What’s the point?” he said. “Some endings are releases. You just don’t know it at the time.”

She nodded, quietly. Something flickered across her face—recognition, maybe.

Later, as evening light flooded the compartment, he strummed his travel guitar gently. The notes were familiar.

“Kishore Kumar?” she asked.

He smiled. “You know it?”

“My dad used to sing it in the shower. I used to hate it.”

“And now?”

She listened for a moment, softened. “Now… I miss it.”

“Funny how songs become people, isn’t it?”

The train hummed into night. Most passengers slept. The world outside was black and unknowable. Inside, the gentle rhythm of steel on steel.

“You seem too easygoing for someone who just had their heart broken,” she said.

“I think music absorbs the pain before I have to.”

“So what, you’re not sad?”

“I am. But sometimes sadness needs music, not logic.”

She stared ahead, quiet. “I keep thinking… what if I’m mistaking comfort for love?”

He didn’t look at her when he replied. “Or safety for connection?”

She watched him now, really watched. Through the dark, his calm was no longer frustrating. It was magnetic.

She shut her eyes, but her ears strained for his humming.

By morning, they sat in a silence that had transformed—no longer awkward, but ripe with something unnamed.

“So, what happens now?” she asked.

“You meet him. I say goodbye to her.”

“And this—whatever this was—becomes a story we don’t tell anyone?”

“Unless,” he said, “we choose a different ending.”

She blinked. “What would that look like?”

“We get off this train. Not for the past. Not for the future. Just… because it feels like the truest thing right now.”

She laughed once, nervously. “That’s crazy.”

“And yet…”

The train slowed at a nameless, early-morning station. He stood, swung the bag over his shoulder, guitar in hand.

“There’s always another train to Mumbai,” he said. “There might not be another moment like this.”

Her phone buzzed. A message from her fiancé: “Can’t wait to see you. Big day tomorrow.”

She looked up.

He was waiting by the door, hand outstretched.

“One wrong train. One right window.”

For a second, the world held its breath.

She stood.

They stepped off together onto the quiet platform. The train rolled away behind them, a steel goodbye.

“What now?” she asked, wind in her hair.

“Now?” He smiled. “We walk. See where the road takes us.”

They did. Towards dawn, and away from everything else.

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

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