Ayesha Fernandes
Part 1: The First Drop
The rain came slow, like a lover hesitating at the doorstep. It began with a whisper against the rusted railing of the old apartment on Chapel Road, then picked up its rhythm like tabla fingers on taut skin. Amara stood by the half-open window, brush frozen mid-air, eyes half-lidded in thought. The canvas before her bore the beginning of a woman’s face, unfinished—like everything else in her life these days.
She wasn’t supposed to paint today. She had promised herself a break. But the monsoon had this way of stirring her skin, cracking open old dreams and spilled colours. Her studio—if one could call the narrow room that—smelled of linseed oil, wet socks, and the bun-maska she had bought from Yazdani’s the day before.
The bell jingled downstairs. It was always broken, always squeaky. She ignored it at first. But when the knock followed—a polite three-tap rhythm—she peeled herself away from the window.
At the door stood a man in a navy blue raincoat, hair damp, glasses fogged, holding a book like an offering. “I think I’m at the wrong place,” he said.
“That depends,” she replied, arms crossed, amusement flickering on her lips. “What were you looking for?”
He blinked. “I was looking for the studio of Amara Seth. The painter. I read she lived near Chapel Road, just above Café Albert.”
She raised a brow. “You’ve found her.”
He smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his wet hair. “Sorry, I should have called. I’m Riaan. I—uh—I wrote Paper Boats on Fire. I was wondering if… you’d consider illustrating a limited edition of it.”
She stared at him for a second, then burst into a laugh. “You’re serious?”
“Dead,” he said, standing in the puddle forming at his feet.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know of him. Riaan Arora had one of those names that floated across literary festivals and panel discussions like a familiar fragrance. She had even read a story or two—biting, aching, full of quiet pain. But him here, in front of her, asking her to paint his words—that felt unreal.
“Okay,” she said, after a long pause. “You can come in. But you’ll have to take your shoes off. No muddy footprints on my floor.”
Inside, Riaan looked around with the curiosity of a child and the restraint of a stranger. Paintings leaned against every surface. Canvases hung from nails like tired flags. A kettle whistled faintly in the background. The sound of the rain grew deeper, like the city had leaned into the moment.
“Tea?” she asked, already filling the kettle.
“Always.”
They sat cross-legged on the floor, sharing bun maska and stories. He spoke of how he wrote most of Paper Boats in a corner booth at Kayani & Co, surviving on kheema pav and Irani chai. She told him how colours stopped talking to her when she tried too hard to control them.
“So what makes you say yes to a project like this?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She shrugged. “Something about today feels like it belongs in a story.”
Riaan didn’t say anything, but his smile widened.
That evening, they walked to Jehangir Art Gallery under her red umbrella. The rain had eased to a drizzle, misting the footpath and blurring headlights into watercolours. He asked questions about brushstrokes and layering; she quizzed him about dialogue and silence between lines.
At the gallery, she showed him a piece called Pause Between Monsoons. It was hers, although unsigned. The painting was of an Irani café, empty but for a single woman with a book and a cup. The steam rose from the cup like the spirit of a forgotten story.
“You paint like you write,” he said quietly. “Or maybe I write like you paint.”
She didn’t answer. The silence was too perfect.
Later, he walked her back. Rain began again. This time, harder. They ducked under a chai stall’s plastic sheet, dripping, laughing, sharing a cutting chai that scalded the tongue but warmed the bones.
When they said goodbye at her gate, there was no promise. No dramatic line. Just a look. And in that look, the beginning of something neither could name yet.
And the city kept raining.
Part 2: The Story Beneath the Stea
The next morning, Amara’s window was beaded with rain again, as though the monsoon had stayed overnight like an affectionate intruder. Her brushes were still dipped in ochre, the tea cup from last night sat forgotten on the sill, and her phone buzzed on the floor beside her mattress, lighting up with a name she didn’t recognize immediately: Riaan Arora.
“Hope the rain didn’t wash away your colours. Would love to drop by later today—if I’m not intruding?”
She stared at the message, half-smiling. It had been years since someone spoke to her without the lens of admiration or expectation. Most men either wanted to collect her or be painted by her. But Riaan—he just wanted to share tea and ideas. That was rarer than an unsmudged charcoal line.
“Come by after four. I’ll make Irani chai, but you bring the cake,” she replied.
By five, the rain had returned with a vengeance, rolling off the slanted roofs and gathering like secrets in potholes. He arrived, damp again, holding a bright blue box from Merwan’s. “Mawa cake,” he grinned, dripping slightly on her doormat. “I heard it’s your weakness.”
She laughed and stepped aside. “You’re doing your research.”
“I’m a writer,” he said, removing his shoes. “Curiosity is part of the curse.”
They settled into the now-familiar routine—paint-smudged mugs, shared silence, the occasional burst of laughter. Amara showed him some of her older works: muted portraits of lonely women, monsoon-slick balconies, cats curled up in half-written journals.
“This one,” Riaan said, pointing to a small painting hidden behind her bookshelf. “Why’s it tucked away?”
Amara pulled it out reluctantly. It was a portrait of a man, profile view, his expression unreadable, a rain-smeared glass pane between the viewer and him.
“That was Kabir,” she said softly. “He was my mentor. And more than that, at some point. It ended before it started properly. But I painted him the night he left for Paris. He never saw it.”
Riaan didn’t ask more. He simply nodded and let the silence do the comforting. After a while, he asked if she wanted to see something he was working on.
He pulled out a damp, dog-eared notebook and flipped to a page.
“The city rained that day like it had remembered an old heartbreak. She stood there in her yellow kurta, hair damp, eyes laughing, and I—I forgot how words worked.”
She looked at him. “Is this about me?”
He blinked, unsure. “Maybe. Maybe it’s about every moment like yesterday.”
Amara didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached for her sketchbook and began to draw. Riaan sat still, letting her lines trace him—not just his features, but the way his collar drooped, how his fingers rested unevenly on his knee, the tilt of his head when he read his words out loud.
“You look at people like pages,” he said. “And I think you paint what they don’t want to see.”
She smiled but didn’t look up. “That’s the only way it matters.”
Later, they walked again—this time through narrow lanes toward Leopold Café, rain slanting like whispered secrets around them. The world had softened into puddles and possibilities. Inside, the café was warm, crowded, but still retained that old-world charm. Red vinyl seats, ageing waiters in white, and fans spinning slow above tired conversations.
They ordered brun maska and keema, and talked about everything—film posters, how Parsi cafes smell like cinnamon and history, why Bandra felt like it remembered things that never happened. Riaan told her about his childhood in Matunga, his mother’s obsession with Gulzar’s lyrics, how he used to sneak into the cinema with an old handkerchief and dreams of writing for the screen.
Amara shared her story in fragments—how she painted her first mural on the back wall of a convent school, how her father left before she could remember him, and how the first time she saw the sea she didn’t cry—she sketched it.
They stayed long after their plates were cleared, neither willing to name the thing growing between them.
When they stepped out again, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. They paused at a small art supply store near Colaba Causeway, where Amara picked up a new set of watercolors.
“I always buy paints when I don’t know what I’m feeling,” she said.
“And what are you feeling now?”
She met his eyes, and for a moment, the city dimmed around them.
“Something unfinished.”
He nodded. “That’s where all good stories begin.”
On the ride back, squeezed under the same umbrella, their hands brushed once, and again. But neither pulled away.
That night, as Amara cleaned her brushes and stared at her canvas, she found herself reaching for a new one. This time, the subject was clear: a man with glasses, holding a notebook, lost in rainlight.
And outside, the city kept raining, like it, too, was falling slowly into something unnamed.
Part 3: Smudged Words and Damp Canvases
The days blurred after that. Mumbai’s monsoon was in full symphony—sometimes crashing against the rooftops like a tabla solo, sometimes humming low against the windowpanes, as if singing an old Mehdi Hassan ghazal. And within that downpour, something tender unfolded between Amara and Riaan—not quite love, not quite friendship. It was an art of its own.
Each afternoon, he would arrive with a book tucked under his arm or a crumbly pastry in a brown paper bag, always dripping, always smiling. She’d let him in without question, barefoot and half-covered in paint. It had become their unspoken agreement. He brought the words. She brought the colours. And the rain brought them everything else.
On one such afternoon, the electricity gave up entirely. The ceiling fan sighed once and died. The bulb flickered and surrendered. “Perfect,” Amara muttered, reaching for her emergency lamp, which, of course, was dead too.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” Riaan said. “We need to stop pretending this is just collaboration.”
She looked at him over her cup of chai, steam curling around her cheeks. “Pretending what?”
“That we’re not becoming something we don’t have a name for.”
Her lips curved. “Why do men always need a name for everything?”
“Because names are anchors,” he said softly. “Without them, we drift.”
The room dimmed further. Outside, the city had folded into itself—traffic stalled, lovers in rickshaws leaning closer, the sea licking Marine Drive like it missed someone.
Amara leaned back, her voice quieter now. “You know what I like about painting during a blackout?”
He waited.
“There’s no shadow but the one you make yourself.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he stood up, walked over to her canvas, and placed a hand on the frame. “Paint me like that,” he said. “No light. Just how you imagine me in the dark.”
She froze. “That’s not how this works.”
“But it could be.”
She hesitated, then stood. Her hands moved without thinking, fingers smudged in charcoal and memory. She didn’t look directly at him; she let the lines guide her—soft curves of a cheek, the uncertain edge of a shoulder, the pause between two breaths.
The portrait that emerged was not him—not in a way a camera would see. It was Riaan the way she felt him: open yet guarded, eyes heavy with unwritten chapters, mouth slightly parted like he was always about to ask a question.
He came closer, peering at it. “You’ve made me look… sad.”
She shrugged. “That’s your real expression when you’re not performing for the world.”
“Is that what I do?”
“You write so people feel less alone,” she said. “But I think you forget how to be with yourself.”
He looked away, lips twitching into a half-smile. “You’re frighteningly accurate, you know that?”
“I try.”
They stayed like that—close but not touching—as the rain slowed to a quiet whisper. Somewhere outside, the faint honk of a BEST bus and the cry of a fruit vendor echoed into the dusk.
“Have you ever painted in public?” he asked suddenly.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Street corners, old church walls, a bus stand once. Why?”
“Come with me tomorrow. Kala Ghoda. There’s this poetry reading in a gallery. You can sketch while I read.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You want to make me part of your performance?”
“I want you there. Not as a prop. As the presence that sharpens mine.”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she dipped her brush into water and let the colours drip freely on a new sheet. Blue bleeding into violet, edges unclear, heart in the centre.
“I’ll come,” she said. “But no introductions. No labels.”
“Deal.”
The next evening, the gallery was full of the usual suspects—café poets, struggling screenwriters, dancers who also taught Zumba, women with silver nose rings and men with beards that required maintenance.
Amara sat cross-legged on the floor with her sketchpad, half-hidden by an easel someone had abandoned. Riaan stood under a dim spotlight, reading from a new piece titled The City That Forgot to Forget.
His voice was calm, slow, wrapping around the words like old silk:
“She walks like the city rains—unapologetically, and without warning. And when she stops, you wonder if you imagined it all.”
People clapped politely. Some nodded like they understood. But Amara, who was still sketching with quick, impatient strokes, felt something clutch her chest.
He was writing her again. Or some imagined version of her. A myth.
She hated being turned into metaphors.
Afterward, he found her near the back of the room, the sketch still drying in her lap. It wasn’t a portrait this time—it was a swirl of figures, tangled together, faceless but breathing.
“Yours?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t remember posing for this,” he teased.
“You didn’t. This is what the city looked like while you were reading.”
He studied it for a while, then said, “Can I keep it?”
“Only if you give me a story in return.”
They walked home that night beneath a vast, starless sky. The rain had paused, but the air still carried its scent—earthy, electric. Amara tucked her sketchpad under her arm and looked sideways at him.
“Riaan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you ever write me into a story, make sure she’s not waiting for someone.”
He turned, surprised. “Why?”
“Because she won’t be. Not anymore.”
And with that, she walked a little faster, not looking back.
Behind her, Riaan smiled to himself and whispered into the mist, “Noted.”
Part 4: A Gallery of Almosts
Two days passed before they saw each other again.
Not because of distance, but because life—like the monsoon—loved throwing sudden detours. Amara spent one day locked in a frenzy of commissions: a mural for a boutique in Lower Parel, a last-minute canvas for an engagement party in Juhu, and a client who wanted her to paint his Labrador in “a post-modern style.” She came home smelling of acrylic and traffic, too tired to dream.
Riaan, meanwhile, had retreated into the cocoon of his Bandra apartment, trying to finish the last chapter of a novella he no longer believed in. His desk was cluttered with drafts, his ashtray full of broken pencils, and his fridge empty except for two slices of stale pizza and half a lemon.
Still, when he saw her name flash on his screen at 11:48 PM, he answered before the first ring ended.
“You still awake?” her voice crackled through the rain-filled air.
“Barely,” he said, voice hoarse with sleep and caffeine. “Miss me?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she replied. “Are you free tomorrow?”
“For?”
“There’s a show at Prithvi. One of my friends is displaying her installation. You’ll hate it. It’s exactly the kind of pretentious performance art you love to mock.”
“So naturally, you thought of me.”
“Exactly. Pick me up at four?”
“Done.”
The next day, the city was caught in one of those mid-monsoon lulls—where the sky turned a bruised grey but held back its tears. The streets shimmered with leftover puddles, and the air was thick with the smell of wet leaves and damp books.
Amara wore a simple black kurta, silver jhumkas swinging like punctuation marks, and a faint trace of kajal. Riaan, when he arrived, blinked like he had never seen her before.
“You clean up alright,” he said.
“And you still look like a writer who forgot to pay his rent,” she shot back, smirking.
They took a cab through narrow lanes, watching the city pass like scenes from an unfinished film. Outside, rickshaws splashed schoolchildren, a dog slept under a vendor’s cart, and a couple stood arguing under a broken umbrella—romance and chaos, side by side.
At Prithvi, the gallery space smelled of incense and varnish. A loop of flute music played faintly through hidden speakers. Amara’s friend, a wild-haired sculptor named Zeenat, welcomed them with the distracted warmth of someone too nervous to speak.
The exhibit was titled Thresholds and Other Doors That Never Opened. It featured mirrors painted over with silhouettes, doorframes suspended mid-air, and one peculiar installation where a woman whispered secrets into a bottle and handed it to visitors.
Riaan raised an eyebrow. “Is this performance art or therapy?”
“Sometimes both,” Amara murmured.
They wandered silently, stopping in front of a piece that resembled a doorway carved from rusted iron, splattered with red threads.
“What do you see?” she asked him.
“A bleeding exit,” he said. “You?”
“A memory that refuses to close.”
They didn’t speak for a while after that.
Later, they found a corner table at the Prithvi café, under a canopy of vines and fairy lights. She ordered Irish coffee, he stuck to cutting chai. The breeze was gentle now, ruffling napkins and carrying snippets of conversation from other tables—an aspiring actor reciting dialogue, a director yelling into his phone, two women arguing about the best place for parsi dhansak.
“You know,” Riaan said, stirring his tea, “I’ve been thinking about the story you asked me for.”
“Oh?” she said, smiling over her cup.
“I wrote one.”
“About me?”
“About us. Or what we could be. Want to hear it?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
He reached into his sling bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, its edges crumpled, ink slightly smudged.
He read softly.
“She was a monsoon painting—blurry at the edges, soaked in colour, impossible to frame. He was a paragraph with too many commas, always pausing, never ending. They met at a time when both were out of words and out of rain. But sometimes, a silence and a storm are enough to build something unnamed.”
Amara said nothing. Her fingers traced the rim of her coffee cup, slowly.
“That’s not a story,” she said eventually.
“No?”
“That’s a confession.”
He smiled. “Maybe it’s both.”
The rain began again, softly at first, then louder—sheets falling through the trees, tapping the tin roofs like impatient fingers. They didn’t rush to leave. Instead, they watched it together, side by side, not touching, but close enough to hear each other breathe.
“Do you think the rain ever gets tired?” she asked suddenly.
“Of falling?”
“Of being everyone’s metaphor.”
He chuckled. “Maybe. But it keeps coming back.”
“Like we do?”
He looked at her then—really looked. Eyes dark, steady. “Like we do.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder and whispered, “Don’t write me as a tragedy, Riaan.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“But don’t make it a happy ending either.”
He laughed. “Then what should I call it?”
She thought for a moment.
“Call it… a gallery of almosts.”
He held her hand then, gently, like he was afraid of smudging the moment.
And outside, the rain kept painting Mumbai, stroke by stroke, memory by memory.
Part 5: Pages Left Open in the Rain
By the fifth meeting, something had shifted. It was no longer just the comfort of tea and paint or the shared laughter at the absurdity of artists in South Bombay. Something older, deeper had begun curling like smoke in the corners of their silences.
That morning, the sky was undecided. Grey smudged into blue, clouds uncertain whether to break or not. Amara sat by her window, legs folded, sketching the wet trees below in charcoal. Her hands moved out of habit, but her mind floated elsewhere—toward yesterday’s warmth, the curve of Riaan’s shoulder beneath her cheek, the way his voice trembled on that last line.
Call it… a gallery of almosts.
She hated how accurate that sounded.
The doorbell rang once. Twice. Then a knock.
She opened it, expecting the postman or the dabbawala. But it was Riaan, slightly out of breath, holding a soaking folder over his head like a shield.
“You’re early,” she said, surprised.
He grinned. “I didn’t want to wait till afternoon.”
“For?”
He held up the folder. “I brought the first draft of the story. Thought you might want to read it.”
She stepped aside, teasing, “You’re assuming I have time to waste on literary romance?”
“You waste time on me every day.”
She made a face. “Flattery from a writer is always suspect.”
Inside, they settled on the floor again, this time with cinnamon toast and black coffee. Amara flipped through the pages, scanning, skimming, occasionally pausing.
“You’ve changed the names,” she said.
“Of course. That’s the rule, isn’t it?”
“But you kept the rain. And the café. And the portrait.”
He looked sheepish. “Some truths refuse to be edited.”
She continued reading in silence, her eyes moving like waves over his words. Then she stopped.
“This line,” she said, pointing. “‘He watched her with the ache of a man who knew she belonged to the storm, not to the shore.’ That’s not fair.”
“Why?”
“Because it assumes she doesn’t choose.”
“Doesn’t she?”
Amara set the papers down. “You want her to be wild and mysterious and unreachable. But maybe she just wants to be held without being misunderstood.”
Riaan nodded, slowly. “I’ll rewrite that part.”
She stood up and walked to the window, letting the breeze tug at her dupatta. Below, the street was slick and shining. A boy ran barefoot across the puddles, chasing a yellow kite.
“You know what scares me, Riaan?”
He joined her. “What?”
“That I’m beginning to paint you.”
He smiled, teasing. “Is that scary?”
“It is. Because once I paint someone, they don’t leave me.”
He leaned against the wall beside her. “Then don’t finish the painting.”
“What?”
“Keep it open. Like this. Like us.”
Her eyes searched his, and something passed between them—wordless, weighty, the kind of pause that stories never quite explain.
Later that day, they went to an old Irani café in Fort, tucked between a stationary store and a shuttered tailoring shop. It had wooden benches, cracked tiles, and walls yellowed by time. The waiter didn’t bother with a menu. They ordered the usual—brun maska, omelette, and two cutting chais.
“Did you come here as a child?” she asked.
Riaan nodded. “My dad used to bring me here after book fairs. I think this is where I fell in love with silence.”
She raised a brow. “In a place where you can hear five conversations at once?”
“Exactly. The kind of silence where no one asks you questions. Where you can just be.”
She looked around. There was a couple arguing softly in Gujarati, a man sketching in a corner, a teenager scribbling poetry on a napkin. Life happening in slow, unfiltered frames.
“I think I like that too,” she said.
He looked at her and said, “Let’s do a show together.”
She froze. “What?”
“Your paintings. My stories. A joint exhibition. Rain and words. Lines and lines.”
Amara stared at him like he’d just offered to fly her to Saturn.
“I’ve never done a show with someone else.”
“Then let this be the first.”
She hesitated, then asked, “Are you sure it’s not just a romantic idea?”
“Everything good starts as one.”
They paid and walked toward Kala Ghoda, where puddles mirrored the sky. A street musician played an old Kishore tune. The air was thick with damp leaves and old hopes.
Amara stopped in front of a bookstore, staring at a poster of an upcoming poetry event. “Do you think we’re rushing it?”
“Rushing what?”
“This. Us. The art. The lines between them.”
He took her hand. Not forcefully. Just a gentle touch that asked permission.
“I think we’re doing exactly what the rain does.”
She turned to him, amused. “Which is?”
“Falling. Without asking why.”
And for the first time, Amara didn’t pull away.
She leaned in, just enough for her forehead to rest against his. The city blurred around them, horns and footsteps and drizzle fading like the page of a story turned too slowly.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered. “The show.”
He smiled. “And the painting?”
“Still unfinished.”
“Good,” he said. “So am I.”
And as the evening light dimmed over Mumbai, they walked hand in hand through the half-flooded streets—two characters from a story that didn’t know its ending yet, but had begun to believe it deserved one.
Part 6: The Gallery We Built in the Rain
The gallery smelled of fresh paint and anxious ambition.
It had taken them three weeks to curate. Three weeks of choosing, unchoosing, arguing over wall space, frames, font size on placards, and whether the title should be in italics. Amara had painted twelve canvases—each echoing moments of rain, memory, and Riaan’s words. Riaan had written twelve short pieces—some poetic, some prosaic, all drenched in her imagery.
They called the show When the City Stopped Drying Off.
It was set in a small space behind a wine shop in Kala Ghoda, run by a friend of a friend who owed Riaan a favour. The walls were whitewashed but cracked at the corners, and the ceiling leaked slightly near the back. They placed a bucket under it and called it “interactive installation.”
The opening night came with steady rain, of course.
By 6 p.m., the room was filling up—some curious, some invited, some simply taking shelter from the weather. A poet from Riaan’s college days arrived in leather chappals and asked too many questions. A couple of Amara’s old clients wandered in, blinking at the paintings as if they were trying to recognise themselves in them. A journalist from Time Out Mumbai scribbled in a notebook while sipping free wine.
Amara stood near the entrance, nervous fingers clutching a tiny red notebook.
“You hate crowds,” Riaan whispered, appearing beside her.
“I hate pretending I know what they’re thinking.”
“You don’t have to. You painted the truth. Let them find theirs.”
She nodded slowly.
Then someone asked her to explain The Blue Between Two Trains—a canvas of two blurred figures standing apart on a rain-slicked platform. “Is this a breakup piece?” the woman asked.
“No,” Amara said. “It’s about timing. Sometimes we’re just on different trains, even if we’re headed the same way.”
Riaan overheard and smiled.
Later, he stood in front of one of his own pieces, reading aloud for a small circle of strangers:
“She didn’t knock when she arrived. The monsoon never does. She came in wet, wild, and half-laughing, carrying sketches of a sky that remembered me before I learned to remember myself.”
Someone clapped. Someone sighed.
Amara didn’t move. She was standing in front of the painting titled Still Life with Thunder, her favourite of the series. It was a table by a window, a half-drunk cup of chai, a red umbrella dripping on the floor, and a notebook open to a single line: “Sometimes, even silence sounds like someone knocking.”
“I painted this the day after we met,” she murmured when Riaan walked up.
He nodded. “I remember your umbrella.”
“You didn’t have one.”
“You were annoyed.”
“I was… intrigued.”
The gallery lights flickered once. A small girl tugged her mother toward the installation with whisper jars. Someone spilled wine near the back, and a security guard appeared from nowhere to mop it up with dramatic flair.
Outside, the rain had thickened, hammering against the awning. Riaan touched Amara’s elbow. “Let’s go up to the roof.”
“What?”
“Trust me.”
The gallery had a tiny metal staircase at the back. They climbed it, careful, laughing. The roof was slippery, scattered with broken flower pots and two plastic chairs someone had abandoned. The city stretched out in glistening chaos—cars honking, people running for cover, neon signs flickering like breath.
They stood at the edge, silent.
“This show… this night… it’s the first thing I’ve done that doesn’t feel lonely,” Amara said.
He looked at her. “And yet you’ve always painted alone.”
“Painting is conversation,” she said. “But only when someone listens.”
“I’m listening.”
She turned to him, the rain soft on her face, her eyes wide with something between hope and caution.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said. “Not like this. Letting someone in while I’m still making sense of the lines.”
Riaan moved closer. “Me neither. I always write from memory. From safety. But you… you’re a present tense I can’t ignore.”
She laughed softly. “That sounds dangerously romantic.”
“It is.”
She didn’t pull away this time.
Under the leaking sky, with the city below glowing like a page lit by candlelight, Amara reached for him. Not like a question, but like a conclusion. Their lips met—not urgent, not dramatic. Just certain.
The kiss was wet, rain-salted, and trembling.
And it made everything else in the gallery below irrelevant.
When they finally returned inside, no one noticed they had been gone. The room was buzzing with strangers discovering what they had built—together. Some stood in front of the portraits and tried to guess which moment was real. Some read his stories and argued over who “she” really was.
But only Amara and Riaan knew.
That night, when the last guest had left and the gallery was dark except for one flickering bulb, they sat on the floor eating leftover pastries and listening to Kishore Kumar from a phone speaker.
“We should do this again,” he said, mouth full.
“The gallery?”
“No,” he said. “This.”
She smiled. “Then let’s not end it.”
He looked at her.
“I wasn’t planning to,” he said.
And outside, the city rained like it wanted to be part of their story—again.
Part 7: Cracks in the Canvas
The morning after the show, Mumbai looked washed clean, as if the city had just stepped out of a long bath and hadn’t towel-dried yet. The sky was unusually clear for July, and Amara found it unnerving. She stood on her balcony with a half-eaten toast in one hand and the newspaper folded under her arm, staring at the open sky like it had betrayed the monsoon.
Riaan hadn’t stayed the night. He had kissed her forehead gently before leaving the gallery and whispered, “I’ll come over tomorrow with filter coffee and apologies for eating the last pastry.”
She had laughed, then. But now, standing alone, she felt something unexpected—a pause, like a thread in her chest that had been pulled too tight.
She looked at the canvas propped against the easel. It was the one she hadn’t shown at the exhibit. The one she had painted in a single sitting, without sketching first, without thinking. It was him. Not the romantic version. Not the poet with tousled hair and metaphors. Just Riaan: asleep on her mattress, arms flung across her pillow, face softened by something he would never show the world.
She wasn’t ready to share that yet. Maybe never.
Her phone buzzed at noon.
Riaan: “Hey, can we raincheck coffee? Something came up. Will call.”
She stared at the screen longer than necessary.
No full stop at the end. That’s how she knew something was off. Riaan always used full stops, like a man trying to be taken seriously.
She didn’t reply.
Instead, she spent the day cleaning. Not the kind of cleaning that keeps dust away, but the kind that keeps feelings at bay. She scrubbed her brushes, sorted canvases, reorganised her paint tubes by mood instead of colour. Anger went left. Nostalgia to the right. Desire somewhere in the middle.
By evening, it was raining again. That stubborn Mumbai kind of rain—slow, melancholic, impossible to ignore.
Still no call.
By 7 p.m., she picked up the phone herself and dialed.
It rang four times.
“Hey,” Riaan answered, slightly breathless.
“Everything okay?”
There was a pause. Then: “Yeah, yeah. Just a lot going on. Family stuff.”
She waited for more. He didn’t offer it.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
“Not really,” he said. “Not now.”
She blinked. “Alright.”
Another pause.
“Amara,” he said, “I’m not… great with people depending on me.”
“I’m not asking for that.”
“But you will,” he said quietly. “Eventually. Everyone does.”
She took a breath. “So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I need some space. Just a little. To think. To finish the writing I’ve been avoiding. To not mess this up before it becomes something we both regret.”
The rain thundered harder against the balcony railings.
Amara spoke carefully. “If you need space, take it. But don’t paint me as the woman who was waiting outside your locked door.”
“I’m not,” he said quickly.
“Then don’t disappear like I’m not part of the story you started.”
He was silent.
“I’ll see you when you’re ready,” she said. Then she hung up.
The week passed slowly. No messages. No calls. The gallery closed down after a week of warm reviews and curious footfall. One blog titled their work: “A Love Letter to Mumbai in Twelve Frames.”
Amara didn’t reply to the email from a Delhi curator who wanted to “replicate the magic.” She didn’t want magic to become business. Not this time.
On Thursday, she walked into Yazdani Café alone, ordered two brun maskas and ate both. She didn’t sketch. She didn’t read. She just sat there, surrounded by the ticking wall clock and the smell of cinnamon, and remembered how it felt to watch someone fall in love with her quietly across a Formica table.
On Saturday, she picked up her sketchbook and began something new.
Not a portrait. Not a rainy cityscape. It was a series of hands—hers, his, others. Hands holding, reaching, parting. A study in what it meant to touch and then let go.
Sunday afternoon, just as the rain had paused and the sky had cracked open with a thin ribbon of sunlight, Riaan appeared at her door.
He looked tired, like he’d been running from himself.
“Hey,” he said.
She didn’t speak. Just stepped aside.
Inside, he stood awkwardly, the same man who had once read her stories beside a leaking ceiling.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said.
“No,” she replied calmly. “You owe me honesty. That’s all.”
He nodded. “My father had a mild stroke. I went to Matunga. I didn’t tell you because… I didn’t know how. I hate hospitals. I hate being seen there. It makes me feel like I’m made of cardboard.”
Amara didn’t move. Her eyes stayed on his face.
“I didn’t want you to see me when I’m not poetic,” he added. “When I’m just scared.”
She crossed her arms. “So you disappeared instead.”
“I thought I was protecting the version of me you like.”
She exhaled. “I don’t need a version. I needed a person.”
Riaan lowered his eyes. “I know.”
There was silence, stretched thin and trembling.
Then, quietly, he said, “I missed you.”
She softened. Just a little. “You missed my tea.”
He smiled, sheepish. “And your terrible taste in music.”
She walked to the kitchen, put the kettle on.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then she said, without turning around, “You can stay, if you understand something.”
“What?”
“I’m not here to fill the silences in your story. I’m here with my own.”
He nodded.
“And sometimes,” she added, “I’ll need you to read between my lines.”
He stepped forward, rested his hand lightly on her back.
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
And as the kettle whistled and the rain returned, steady and familiar, they stood together—two people learning, again, how to stay.
Part 8: What the Rain Leaves Behind
There’s something strangely loyal about the Mumbai monsoon. It always returns—late, early, angry, apologetic—but never absent. And in that sense, it was not so different from Riaan.
For a few weeks after he returned, things found a rhythm again—not perfect, but real. Riaan showed up every other morning with groceries or poetry, depending on the mood. Sometimes both. Amara cooked when she felt like it and painted only what she couldn’t say aloud. They sat in companionable quiet, sometimes reading, sometimes listening to old Ghazals on vinyl, letting the scratchy record echo the weather outside.
They didn’t talk about labels anymore. Or what they were to each other. It felt unnecessary. They were… present. And that was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
It began one Thursday evening. The city was mid-storm, the windows rattling with each gust of wind. Amara had been working on a large canvas for hours, soaked in blue hues, her brush dancing between sea and sky. Riaan, perched on the edge of the mattress, was reading something out loud—his latest essay about nostalgia and train stations. He paused to sip coffee, then said, too casually:
“So, I’ve been offered a residency. In Prague. Six weeks.”
Amara stopped mid-stroke. The brush hovered, trembling at the edge of the canvas.
“Oh.”
“I’d leave mid-August. It’s… sudden, I know.”
She turned, slowly. “Are you going?”
He looked guilty. “I haven’t decided.”
Her lips thinned. “Then why did you tell me like you already had?”
He blinked. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Six weeks is a long time.”
“It’s not forever.”
“No,” she said. “But we only just began.”
He got up, walked over, lowered his voice. “That’s why I’m telling you. I want to talk about it. I want to find a way.”
She looked away, wiping her brush on a rag. “You’ve already imagined it, haven’t you? Cafés, libraries, misty walks… and you, writing about how love is distance measured in longing.”
“Amara—”
“Don’t turn me into a paragraph, Riaan.”
He sighed, rubbing his face. “I thought you’d understand.”
“That’s the problem,” she said sharply. “You thought I’d understand without having to feel anything.”
The storm outside roared.
Riaan took a step back. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She didn’t answer. Her fingers returned to the canvas, but the strokes were harsher now, unsteady.
He stood there a while longer, then quietly picked up his notebook and left.
Two days passed. No call. No message. This time, she didn’t reach out either.
She let the space stretch between them like monsoon humidity—dense, inescapable, and always pressing against the skin.
She told herself it was okay. That he needed time. That she needed to let him choose without guilt.
But when she walked past Jehangir Art Gallery on Saturday and saw a couple staring at a canvas titled The Smell of Goodbyes, her breath caught.
It was hers. One she had painted years ago, long before Riaan, long before any idea of being seen. It was a woman standing at a window, holding a raincoat. But the window was open, and the rain was falling on her hands.
She suddenly hated it.
On Sunday evening, she walked into Café Ideal alone. It was raining just enough to stain the windows with streaks. She ordered her usual. The waiter smiled—he remembered her. She wondered if he remembered Riaan too.
Her sketchbook sat unopened beside her. The pages felt heavy.
Then, she heard his voice.
“I didn’t go.”
She turned. He stood there, damp, uncertain.
She didn’t speak.
“I went to the airport,” he said. “Had my bag. Everything. But at the gate, I realised… I’d already written everything I needed to write. About Prague. About distance. About absence.”
She swallowed. “And what about presence?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
She looked at him then, properly. His eyes weren’t pleading. They were tired, honest.
“I’m not asking you to stay,” she said. “But I won’t follow someone who’s still trying to figure out if he wants to arrive.”
“I know.”
“I don’t need promises,” she added. “But I need to stop being the pause in someone else’s sentence.”
He came closer, slowly, like approaching a wild animal unsure if it will bolt or bite.
“I didn’t stay for you, Amara,” he said gently. “I stayed for us.”
She exhaled.
And just like that, something broke inside her. Not like a wound. Like a dam.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
He smiled. “That makes two of us.”
They sat together. Ordered one brun maska. Shared it like always.
She finally opened her sketchbook, handed him a charcoal pencil. “Draw something.”
He blinked. “Me?”
“Yes. Doesn’t matter what.”
He frowned, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he focused. It was horrible. A lump with stick limbs and two confused eyes.
Amara laughed until her ribs hurt.
He looked pleased. “There. A masterpiece.”
“I’m framing it,” she said.
Outside, the rain slowed again. The city seemed to breathe. The traffic moved gently. A dog yawned beside a sleeping rickshaw driver. And inside, between tea stains and unfinished sketches, something beautiful stayed.
Not a gallery. Not a poem. Just them.
Part 9: A Room Called Afterwards
The rains kept their rhythm in the weeks that followed—not quite relentless, not quite forgiving. They slipped through clothes and memories alike, touching everything they had built with wet fingers. Amara and Riaan had slipped, too—into something quieter now, like the hush after a storm, when leaves are still dripping and no one wants to speak too loud.
They didn’t name what they were anymore. Some days it felt like love. Some days, like waiting. But most days, it was just… them. Breakfasts on the floor. Midnight chai. Paintbrushes left in the sink. Books borrowed but not returned. The intimacy of leftovers reheated and eaten together in silence.
One evening, Riaan stood in front of a painting Amara had hung near her door. It wasn’t part of their exhibit. It was newer, rawer. Two figures sat side by side on a bench, backs turned to the viewer, heads tilted toward each other, their outlines blurred by what looked like rain.
“This one doesn’t have a title,” he said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because it’s still happening.”
He looked at her then, and smiled that soft, half-lopsided smile that meant he understood.
But the moment was broken by his phone buzzing on the kitchen counter.
He glanced at it, then hesitated.
Amara, already sensing the shift, asked, “Who is it?”
Riaan picked up the phone and silenced it. “Publisher. They want to meet next week. Delhi.”
“You’re going?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
She gave a small laugh. “You say that a lot.”
He looked guilty. “I just don’t want this—us—to be something I pack away every time the world calls.”
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It never is,” she said, gently.
He moved closer. “Would you come with me?”
She blinked. “To Delhi?”
“Why not?”
She thought for a second. “Because I’ve never been part of someone’s suitcase life. I don’t want to be scenery in your travelogue.”
He nodded slowly. “And if I stay?”
She met his eyes. “Don’t stay for me. Stay if the story you’re writing includes me beyond the acknowledgements.”
He took her hand. “Then let’s write it together.”
And for a while, they didn’t speak. Just stood there, rain splattering the window behind them, fingers laced like paragraphs folding into one another.
Later that week, they found themselves in a cab to Carter Road, Amara clutching a folder of fresh sketches, Riaan carrying a paperback proof of his upcoming book. The city outside was its usual blur of honks, reflections, streetlights smearing across puddles like watercolours gone rogue.
“We should take a trip,” Riaan said suddenly.
“To where?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere with no bookstores or galleries. Just time.”
She grinned. “Sounds terrifying.”
“Exactly.”
They reached the promenade just before sunset. The sea was high, restless. The sky streaked with pink and ash.
They sat on the stone ledge, watching waves crash.
Riaan reached into his bag and pulled out the book. It was titled Afterwards.
She ran her fingers across the cover. “You never told me you finished it.”
“I didn’t. You helped me.”
She opened it. On the dedication page, it read:
For A, who reminded me that silence is not absence.
She looked at him, eyes bright but dry. “That’s a very writerly way of saying you love someone.”
“I know,” he said, leaning his shoulder against hers. “But you understood it, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
And the waves kept crashing.
The next morning, Amara painted again.
This time, she didn’t stop to sketch. Didn’t pause to think. It was instinct, breath, memory. She painted their backs on Carter Road, her hand and his shoulder, the outline of the sea behind them, and a single word on the bench:
Afterwards.
When Riaan saw it that evening, he didn’t say anything. He just placed his latest story draft on the table, beside her paintbrush.
It was a short piece.
“In the city of unspoken things, she was the only sentence I never edited. The monsoon didn’t stop when we kissed. But I stopped running. And that was enough.”
She read it twice.
“Do you think,” she asked slowly, “that some people are written into us permanently? That even if they leave, their voice never does?”
Riaan nodded. “And sometimes, they don’t leave. They just… change chapters.”
She looked around the room—their room, now. Shared mugs, scattered books, a canvas drying by the door.
“Then let’s not write the ending yet,” she said. “Let’s stay in the middle. Where everything is still possible.”
He pulled her into an embrace. “Let’s live in the part where the rain hasn’t stopped, but we’ve found shelter.”
Outside, the clouds rolled in again. Predictable. Soft. Honest.
They didn’t rush to close the windows.
Some storms, after all, are meant to be watched together.
Part 10: Where the Water Waits
The first time they fought, really fought, the rain wasn’t falling. It was the kind of still afternoon that left the air swollen and heavy, like a pause stretched too long. Amara had been working on a commissioned piece—a sterile corporate mural she hated but couldn’t refuse. Riaan had been sulking quietly, not at her, but at a rejection email he hadn’t expected from a prestigious journal.
She was mixing paints when he said, almost absently, “You’ve stopped painting for yourself.”
She turned, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean…” He rubbed his forehead. “You’re always working on something for someone else. Where’s the Amara who used to sketch street cats and chai kettles?”
She froze, brush mid-air. “Is that really what you think?”
“I just—miss that version of you.”
“And what version am I now, Riaan?” she asked, tone sharp.
He looked up. “Tired. Pulled in ten directions. I feel like I’m sharing you with everyone except you.”
Amara put the brush down. “You’re upset about your rejection, so you’re projecting it onto my work. Don’t do that.”
He stood. “I’m just saying what I see.”
“No,” she said coldly. “You’re saying what makes you uncomfortable.”
There was a long pause. The fan whirred overhead. A horn blared in the street below.
Then, Riaan said, “Sometimes it feels like you only let me into the parts of you that are already finished. Already polished.”
Amara laughed bitterly. “And you? You give me your edits, never the first draft.”
That stung. He opened his mouth to respond but stopped. His eyes searched hers. Something shifted.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said quietly.
She didn’t stop him.
He didn’t take an umbrella.
He didn’t come back that night. Or the next. His phone was off. No messages.
At first, she tried to stay angry. She told herself he was dramatic, immature, that he wanted her to chase him. But the second morning, she found herself at Yazdani, staring at their old table, now taken by a mother and her daughter sharing bun maska.
She walked for hours. Past Kala Ghoda. Past the bookstore where they’d once argued over whether poetry should rhyme. Past the old theatre where they’d laughed at a terrible film just because the AC was too cold and the seats too red.
By evening, the sky gave in. The rain came down—not the slow, romantic drizzle, but a monsoon downpour that flooded drains and silenced streets. She stood under a half-shut shutter, hair soaked, heart heavier than she wanted to admit.
That’s when her phone buzzed.
Riaan: “There’s a place I want to show you. Come if you want. 7:45 p.m. CST. East gate.”
She didn’t reply. She just ran.
He was waiting, hands in his pockets, soaked to the bone, looking like he hadn’t slept.
She approached, unsure.
He just said, “Come on.”
They boarded a local train. She didn’t ask where. He didn’t explain. The compartments were almost empty. Just the sound of wheels and water and the occasional vendor yelling half-heartedly about vada pav.
After twenty minutes, they got off at a forgotten station with a half-broken nameplate and no announcements. They walked through narrow lanes, over a muddy path, until they reached a small patch of open space—a hidden lake, surrounded by trees, silent except for the steady patter of rain.
Amara stared, speechless.
“This was my father’s place,” Riaan said softly. “He used to bring me here when I was little. He said the water here listened.”
They sat on a large stone. The rain softened, turning into a mist that clung to their clothes.
“I wasn’t angry at you,” he said. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of what we’re becoming. Of how close you’ve gotten. Of how much of me you’ve already painted.”
She looked at him. “Then why leave?”
“Because I didn’t know how to stay without losing parts of myself. But I realised something, sitting here yesterday.”
She waited.
“I’d rather lose parts of me than live without the parts you bring out.”
Amara looked at the lake. It shimmered in the dim light, ripples dancing like secrets.
“I’m not always easy,” she said. “I shut down. I escape into work. I make silence a shield.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll never ask you to stay.”
“I’m staying anyway.”
She turned to him. “Then we have to promise something.”
“What?”
“That we won’t run. Even when it gets hard. Even when we want to disappear into metaphors or commissions or train rides to anywhere.”
Riaan smiled. “Deal.”
They sat in silence, letting the lake listen.
Then she said, almost shyly, “Will you come back tonight?”
He nodded.
“And maybe…” she added, “read me something before we sleep?”
“I’ll read you everything,” he said, pulling her close.
And for the first time in days, she let herself lean into the comfort. Not the fantasy, but the real thing—the shoulder that didn’t need to carry poetry to feel soft.
They walked back under one umbrella, the city rising around them like a story still being written.
Part 11: The Last Frame Before the Rain Ends
Monsoon lingered longer that year, like a guest too fond of the house to leave. Puddles stayed where they shouldn’t. Walls grew a little damper. Streets glistened with a worn, washed charm. And in a small apartment on Chapel Road, two people who once met under umbrellas and metaphors were learning how to be ordinary together.
There were no dramatic declarations now. No midnight texts. No unresolved tension curled up under the coffee table. Just laundry on a shared line. Shared toothpaste. Dinners made from what was left in the fridge. Love—quiet, tired, honest.
On the wall above Amara’s bed hung a new painting. Not part of any exhibit. Not for sale. It showed two hands painting on the same canvas—one holding a brush, the other scribbling in charcoal. The canvas beneath them was unfinished.
Riaan had named it In Progress. Amara hadn’t argued.
It was a Tuesday when the call came.
He was brushing his teeth. She was editing a scanned version of one of her paintings for a print shop. His phone buzzed once, then again.
She glanced at the screen. “It’s Tara.”
He spat into the sink, wiped his mouth. “Old editor. Haven’t heard from her in a year.”
“You’re going to take the call?”
“Should I not?”
She didn’t answer. Just handed it to him.
He stepped into the balcony. She tried not to listen. She heard anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, he walked back in, his face unreadable.
“She’s opening a writer’s residency in Lisbon,” he said.
Amara blinked. “Portugal?”
“Six months. Fully funded. Ocean view. A desk by the window. No internet, no distractions.”
She put down the stylus. “And?”
“She wants me to come.”
“Do you want to go?”
He looked at her, eyes softer than she wanted them to be. “Yes.”
There it was. The truth.
“And us?” she asked, her voice calm.
“I don’t know yet.”
That hurt more than it should’ve.
She stood, walked to the sink, began rinsing out brushes that weren’t dirty. “You can’t keep leaving every time something beautiful scares you.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You are. Of staying. Of choosing. Of loving someone when it’s no longer wrapped in poetry.”
He reached for her. “Amara…”
She pulled away. “If you want to go, go. I won’t stop you. But I won’t wait like a painting on pause.”
He flinched. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” she said, “what’s not fair is being treated like the comma in your story—useful, graceful, but always followed by more.”
He didn’t speak.
The rain outside had stopped. The world was holding its breath.
“I leave in two weeks,” he said finally.
She nodded. “Then write something worth leaving me for.”
He looked at her. “What if I can’t?”
“Then maybe you should stay.”
But she didn’t ask him to.
In the days that followed, everything changed and nothing did.
They still had chai every morning. Still argued over whether Jagjit or Mehdi Hassan was better. Still took turns cleaning the balcony. But every silence now was a goodbye rehearsed too many times.
He began packing slowly. First books. Then scarves. Then his notebooks—carefully labeled, neatly stacked.
She pretended not to notice. She painted in bursts. Unfinished things. Abstract storms. Rooms with one chair. Windows without curtains.
On the night before his flight, they lay on the mattress, side by side, staring at the damp ceiling.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she whispered.
“I used to collect broken pens,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I thought maybe one day I’d learn how to fix them.”
She smiled, bittersweet. “You never did, did you?”
“No,” he said. “But I kept them anyway.”
She turned to him. “Will you keep me too?”
He looked at her, eyes shining. “Always.”
She kissed him, slow and long, not like an ending, but like a bookmark.
At the airport, he turned one last time.
She stood just outside security, hair loose, eyes tired, wearing the same kurta she’d worn the first day they met. The red umbrella was folded in her hand, even though it wasn’t raining.
He walked back, hugged her tightly.
“Write to me,” she whispered.
“I’ll write everything,” he replied.
Then he was gone.
Weeks passed.
The monsoon left.
The sky turned a stubborn blue.
Amara didn’t wait. She painted. She walked. She began teaching part-time at an art centre for children. She made her own coffee. Sometimes strong. Sometimes too sweet. She didn’t keep his side of the bed empty. She didn’t turn down curators or commissions.
She didn’t cry.
But every now and then, she’d open his last letter.
It wasn’t long.
Just three sentences:
“Some storms take things away. But some bring you home.”
“You are both.”
“I will see you in the season where neither of us is running.”
She folded it carefully.
Taped it to the back of her easel.
Then picked up her brush, dipped it in the deepest blue, and began again.
The End
