Sneha Chanda
1
Every evening around six-thirty, the city of Bangalore sighed under its own weight—horns honked like dissonant jazz, autos swerved with divine confidence, and a dusty orange sun drooped behind the concrete skyline. Priti, on her midnight-blue scooter, found herself once again halted at the same red light near Indiranagar, officially labelled Signal No. 47. It was a notorious pause point, where the signal stubbornly lingered for a full hundred and twenty seconds, enough for people to check their phones, vendors to sell corn-on-the-cob, and traffic to swell into a stubborn sea. For Priti, it had become a strange sort of ritual. She would adjust her scarf, sip water from her steel bottle, and stare at the world while waiting for the green light that always came a little too late. She hated this pause at first—impatient, like the rest of the world. But over the past month, something had changed. There was a man in a silver Jeep, always parked two lanes away. He never looked frustrated. Instead, he sat calmly, a camera resting on his lap, often lifting it to take quick, quiet shots of random things—the fading blue of a billboard, a grandmother balancing groceries on her head, the shadows of two kids chasing a tire. He intrigued her. In a city that screamed urgency, he radiated stillness. And even stranger, he noticed her too. Their eyes met through dusty windshields and helmet visors, not once but again and again, across several evenings. No one honked, no one waved—just two strangers acknowledging the oddity of routine in the most unlikely place.
It wasn’t romance. Not yet. It was something more curious, like the start of a shared secret, forming in the blur of exhaust fumes and early-evening chaos. Priti didn’t even know his name. She just started calling him “Signal Guy” in her head, and even told her flatmate, Shalini, about him over leftover biryani one night. “He’s either a really calm psycho,” she’d said, chewing thoughtfully, “or the most patient photographer in Bangalore.” Shalini had laughed, but Priti wasn’t joking. There was something about him that made her feel—watched, yes, but not in the creepy way. More like… observed with care. She tested it one evening by tying a yellow ribbon to her scooter mirror. The next day, he lifted his camera, clicked something, and nodded faintly at her. That small gesture sent a strange flutter through her chest. She went home and recorded a voice memo—meant for no one in particular—just her whispering, “He noticed.” She replayed it three times. The next evening, she scribbled a note on a Post-it, folded it into a tiny triangle, and stuck it on her mirror: “What do you see every day that you never photograph?” He read it from a distance, squinting slightly, then smiled. It was a soft, sideways smile—rare, like Bangalore rain in April. He didn’t respond that day, but Priti knew he would. This had become their thing now, their unspoken language made of notes, nods, and 120 seconds of traffic-induced intimacy.
One Thursday, when the city wore a veil of post-rain shimmer and the scent of wet earth clung to the air, he finally responded. Not with a note, but with a sketch—drawn on the back of a receipt, held up against his window for her to see. It was her. Helmet and all. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, her scarf fluttering, her fingers curled tightly on the scooter handles. It wasn’t perfect, but it was recognizably her. Priti stared at the sketch and forgot, for a second, that she was in traffic. The honking behind jolted her back. She didn’t even wave—just stared, stunned and slightly flushed, as the Jeep pulled ahead and disappeared. That night, she couldn’t sleep. Her voiceover deadlines loomed like shadows, her inbox was a mess, and her landlord had threatened to raise rent again. But none of that stuck to her mind. Only the sketch did. In the quiet dark, she whispered aloud, “What kind of person sees art in someone stuck in traffic?” She didn’t know it yet, but this was no longer just a habit. It had become the best part of her day. And the signal—Signal 47—wasn’t a nuisance anymore. It was a pause the universe had gifted her, one minute and fifty seconds at a time.
2
The next day, Priti arrived at Signal 47 three minutes earlier than usual—something she had never consciously done before. She was nervous and annoyed at herself for being nervous. It’s not a date, she muttered under her breath while adjusting her helmet strap, which now felt too tight. Her scooter purred into its familiar lane, and her eyes instinctively searched the traffic. There. The silver Jeep. Parked diagonally two lanes across. The man—Signal Guy, as she still called him mentally—sat calmly as usual, sketchbook resting on the dashboard. When he noticed her, his smile was quicker this time, a soft flicker of recognition that lit up his otherwise still face. She quickly pulled out a new note—this time a neatly folded square she had prepped at work between recording takes. It read: “You have kind eyes. Do they always see people this clearly?” It was cheesy, she knew, but something about him made her drop her guard. With a glance sideways and a tiny act of theatre, she carefully clipped it to her mirror with a paperclip and tilted the bike just enough so he could spot it. He squinted, leaned slightly forward, then tapped the sketchbook twice before scribbling something. A moment later, he held it up through the window: “Only when traffic gives me the time.” Priti grinned so hard she worried the helmet would crack.
That became their new rhythm. Every evening, a note from her. Sometimes playful, sometimes philosophical. Once it was “Do you believe in lucky accidents?”, to which he replied: “You’re looking at one.” Another time, she wrote “What did you want to be at 10?”, and his reply, scrawled across an old billing slip, was just a single word: “Louder.” That one stayed with her. She replayed it in her head multiple times, like she would a particularly good voiceover take—mysterious, filled with echoes of something deeper. It made her wonder. Why was he always silent? Why didn’t he speak? She realized he had never even lowered the glass of his Jeep window. No honks, no words, not even a laugh she could hear. His expressions were quiet, like his whole being was tuned to a different frequency—slower, more observant. That contrast fascinated her. She started preparing better notes—sometimes doodling on the back, sometimes spritzing a hint of perfume on them, sometimes using song lyrics that felt relevant. He, in return, always responded with sketches, minimal phrases, and once, a polaroid of her laughing, which she didn’t even realize he had clicked. It was all harmless and dreamy—until Shalini, her flatmate, finally raised an eyebrow one night and said, “You’re either headed for the most wholesome love story of the decade or a documentary called ‘The Red Light Stalker.’”
But Priti didn’t care. Her life had begun to orbit this silent connection. Work was still messy—clients demanding retakes, her voice occasionally cracking, auditions rejected. Her ex-boyfriend Arnav had texted once out of nowhere, just a casual “Hey, you good?” that she left unanswered. But through all of that, her evenings at Signal 47 remained sacred. She began to feel known, oddly enough, by a man whose name she didn’t even know. That bothered her now. She wanted to know more. One evening, she wrote on a deep blue sticky note: “Tell me your name, mystery man.” She clipped it onto the mirror, but this time, she looked away after placing it—deliberately staring at the traffic instead, heart slightly thudding. When she finally glanced over, he was writing slowly. Then he held it up: “Diptayan. Yours?” She blinked. Diptayan. She whispered it under her breath, tasting the syllables. Not common. Not forgettable. And yet it suited him. She quickly pulled out another note from her bag, wrote in her neatest lettering: “Priti. Like ‘pretty,’ but spelled with a ‘t’ and a tendency to fall for strangers in traffic.” When he read it, he laughed—no sound, just a visible crinkle of the eyes, a slight tilt of the head. Then he did something different—he lowered the Jeep’s glass for the first time. Just a few inches. Enough for the city noise to creep in. Enough to make the connection real. She smiled back, not saying a word either. Their language didn’t need volume.
3
The magic of Signal 47 had been rooted in its predictability—the same faces, same lanes, same unspoken rules. But when Priti spotted him one lazy Sunday afternoon at Blossom Book House on Church Street, it was like seeing a teacher in plain clothes outside school: disorienting yet oddly thrilling. She had wandered in to escape the heat and her own frustration with a cancelled voiceover project, aimlessly flipping through poetry books in the “Indian Authors” section, when she noticed a familiar head tilt across the aisle. There he was—Diptayan—sitting cross-legged on the floor, browsing through a pile of used photography books, looking completely at home among words he probably couldn’t even hear being whispered around him. For a moment, Priti froze, unsure if she should say something or back away and preserve the mystery. But then, he looked up and saw her, and his smile was immediate. No hesitation, no surprise—just that same quiet acknowledgment she had grown used to at the signal. She waved a little awkwardly, and he nodded toward the book in her hand. It was Love and Misadventure by Lang Leav. “Predictable,” he mouthed, grinning. She rolled her eyes and held it up anyway. “Don’t judge my bad taste in heartbreak,” she replied out loud, and he chuckled silently, motioning her to join him on the floor.
The conversation—or what passed for it—was strange and beautiful. He typed quickly on his phone when needed, showed her notes on a small pocket notepad he carried, and responded with expressions more honest than any words she’d heard that week. They walked together after leaving the bookstore, stopping for filter coffee at a tiny stall tucked between two ancient printing shops. The stall owner seemed to know Diptayan and gave him a warm pat on the back as he handed him his usual. “You come here often?” Priti asked. Diptayan simply nodded, typing: “This stretch has good light between 3 and 4 PM. Photographers’ gold.” They strolled further down the lane, where old trees leaned over the road like sleepy watchmen, and walls were filled with crumbling posters for lost plays and upcoming protests. Priti couldn’t believe this was the same man she’d only known through traffic windows and scribbled notes. She learned he freelanced for design studios, worked odd hours, and lived alone in a rooftop flat in Ulsoor with too many plants. He didn’t talk about his family and she didn’t ask. Instead, she told him about her voice work—her love for dramatic readings, how she used to mimic cartoon characters in school, and how her parents still thought she should’ve become a teacher. “Instead,” she added with a self-deprecating smile, “I get paid to pretend to be other people with better lives.” He watched her with something close to admiration and jotted down: “But your voice makes those lives real.”
By the time they reached MG Road, it had begun to drizzle. Not enough to need an umbrella, just the kind of soft, stubborn rain that Bangalore often offered like background music. They ducked into a small art gallery that neither of them had heard of before, letting their fingers trail across the frames. Priti caught herself wondering how much of this Diptayan actually experienced. Not the visuals—he clearly saw more than most—but the ambience, the ambient noise that wrapped around her. Did he miss it? Or had silence become his superpower? She hesitated, then finally asked, “Were you always… like this?” He didn’t flinch. He typed: “Lost hearing in college. Accident. Took a while to stop being angry about it.” She read it, felt a slow ache rise in her chest. “You’re still in love with sound,” she said softly, more to herself than him. He looked at her, really looked, then smiled in that way of his—quiet but disarming. Then he typed: “I remember how it felt. I just use different senses now.” They sat for a long time in that gallery, watching the rain blur the city outside. No honking, no signal, no traffic countdown timer. Just two people, slowly learning how to occupy the same moment without pretending to understand everything. It was a far cry from Signal 47—but it felt like something had turned green anyway.
4
The week after their unexpected Sunday together felt like walking a tightrope of anticipation for Priti. She still met Diptayan at Signal 47, and the notes continued, but now the silence between them felt less like a mystery and more like a shared language. At work, her voice was in demand again—she landed a local campaign for a tea brand, her narration crisp and warm like the brew it advertised. Yet, amidst the rising curve of her professional momentum, her evenings remained wrapped in stillness, defined not by words but by the presence of someone who taught her that attention could be louder than speech. She found herself paying attention to the world in a way she hadn’t before—how rain sounded on windowpanes, how footsteps varied on different pavements, how silence could sometimes feel like a whole conversation. Diptayan had rewired her senses without trying. One evening, she arrived early at the signal and handed him a tiny gift—an origami crane made out of sheet music paper. His eyes softened. He typed: “Can’t hear the music, but I love the shapes it makes in your eyes.” It wasn’t flirtation in the traditional sense, but it made her heart slip into a rhythm she hadn’t felt in years.
A few days later, she invited him to a small open mic night where she was doing a live voiceover reading of a children’s story. “It’s silly and sweet, just like me,” she texted him with a winking emoji. He showed up, slipping into the back of the dim café, blending into the velvet shadows near the bookshelf-lined wall. As she stepped onto the makeshift stage and adjusted the mic, she scanned the crowd until she spotted him—sitting straight, watching her with focused attention, a faint smile on his lips. Her story was about a lost bird finding its way back home by following moonlight, and her voice wrapped around the room like a lullaby, drawing quiet applause at the end. As the lights dimmed and people clapped, she caught his eye. He wasn’t clapping—he never did—but he was watching her with something warmer than applause. After the show, she found him outside the café, hands in his jacket pockets, waiting. “What did you think?” she asked, half-joking. He typed back: “I didn’t hear a word. But the room leaned into you. And that said everything.” She laughed, partly because it was beautiful, partly because it hurt. This thing between them—this unspoken dance—they were in sync, yet drifting in parallel. She suddenly wondered how it would feel to argue with him, to fight, to yell and cry and talk over each other like people did in real relationships. Could they even do that? Or would the silence always decide the rules?
The thought lingered, returning the next day like a whisper she couldn’t unhear. Priti began to realize that despite their growing bond, she knew so little about Diptayan’s past. Why did he work alone? Why did he never speak of music even when surrounded by it? One evening, while sitting on the low boundary wall near the Ulsoor lake, she asked gently, “Did it hurt when it changed?” He looked at her, then away, and finally typed: “Music was my first language. Losing it felt like forgetting how to breathe.” She read it slowly, twice, letting the weight of it settle. He didn’t elaborate. And she didn’t push. Instead, she reached for his hand and just held it. In that quiet lake breeze, with ripples dancing in the water and the city humming faintly behind them, Priti understood something vital: sound was just one form of connection. The real language—the kind that lasted—was presence. Later that night, she recorded a voice memo just for herself. “I think I’m falling for someone whose world I don’t fully understand,” she said softly. “But maybe that’s how real love begins—not with certainty, but with the courage to learn someone’s silence.” She didn’t send it to him. But she didn’t have to. The next day at Signal 47, when he handed her a Polaroid of that moment by the lake, she knew he had heard her all along.
5
When Diptayan finally invited Priti to his studio, she expected minimalist walls, maybe some scattered camera gear and a couple of houseplants trying hard to stay alive. What she didn’t expect was a living, breathing photo gallery. The studio was a sun-drenched room on the third floor of a weather-stained building in Ulsoor, with large windows draped in sheer off-white curtains that danced in the breeze. The walls, however, were what took her breath away. Every inch was covered in photographs—black-and-white stills of street dogs sleeping in cardboard boxes, vibrant images of fruit vendors laughing under tattered umbrellas, shadows of strangers cast on cracked pavements, and eyes—so many eyes. But one entire corner was different. It was all her. Her on the scooter, waiting at Signal 47. Her brushing hair back under her helmet. Her furrowing her brows at a traffic policeman. Her scribbling something on a piece of paper. There were dozens of shots. Priti froze, halfway between surprise and awe. “These are all… from the signal?” she asked, not knowing whether to feel flattered or freaked out. Diptayan, standing beside her with a cup of ginger chai, looked almost shy for the first time. He nodded. Then typed: “I didn’t realize I was documenting hope until I saw your face in all of them.”
It wasn’t romantic in the loud, dramatic way films presented love. It was quieter, more layered. Priti looked at those photos and didn’t see vanity; she saw reflection. She saw herself through someone else’s lens—someone who noticed her when she wasn’t trying to be noticed. It was humbling. There were shots of her laughing at nothing, squinting at the sun, fiddling with her scarf. She hadn’t realized how expressive her face was during those waits at the signal. In some ways, it was the most honest portrait of herself she had ever seen. “I look… unfiltered,” she whispered. Diptayan nodded and added: “You weren’t performing. You were just being.” She sipped the chai slowly, trying to hide the way her hands were trembling slightly. They sat together on the floor, backs against the photo-covered wall, and for the first time, she leaned her head against his shoulder. No music, no background score—just the steady sound of the fan above, the rustle of leaves outside, and the shared rhythm of two people who didn’t need noise to feel understood. She didn’t want to leave. And when she finally did, he handed her an envelope containing a single photo—her, mid-laugh, eyes closed, hair escaping her helmet, a moment that looked like a lyric. On the back, he had written in block letters: “This is what freedom looks like.”
That night, lying in bed, Priti stared at the photo and replayed every moment of the day like a film on loop. She felt bare but also held, like someone had peeled back layers she didn’t even know she wore. She thought of all the filters she used online, the polished voice she crafted for her recordings, the pretend confidence she wore to meetings. And then she thought of how she had looked through his lens—messy, real, human. The next morning, for the first time, she submitted a raw voice reel to a client—a single take, slightly breathy, not perfectly modulated. It got approved instantly. Maybe she didn’t need perfection to be heard. Maybe being seen, truly seen, had taught her how to be more herself even in sound. She sent Diptayan a message: “I think I’m learning to see myself the way you see me. That’s terrifying. And beautiful.” He replied with a single photo—her reflection captured in the glass of his studio window, blurred slightly by the monsoon drizzle. Below it, he had typed: “That’s what I see. Every day.” And just like that, the silence between them grew even deeper—not a void, but a sanctuary where love slowly, tenderly took root.
6
For a few fleeting weeks, everything around Priti began to hum in a quieter frequency. The city didn’t feel as sharp-edged, the deadlines didn’t gnaw at her spirit the way they used to, and even the unpredictable Bangalore rains felt less inconvenient and more like interruptions designed by some secret poet in the sky. Her voiceover work picked up—she was suddenly in demand, especially for scripts requiring that warm, earthy sincerity she had always tried to fine-tune. One morning, her agency called with a big break: a national campaign for a luxury brand, wanting a romantic monologue for a series of digital ads. “We love your tone—it’s natural, but dreamy,” the creative director said. The script, however, threw her off. It was about falling for someone who brings light into your life—a classic, feel-good love narrative. But as Priti read the lines, she felt a gnawing dissonance. They didn’t reflect the love she was living. There was no dramatic music in her story, no declarations, no perfect meet-cute. Her love was built in pauses and paper notes, in silent looks and camera shutters. She still recorded the sample but sent a text to Diptayan later: “Can love sound romantic without saying much?” His reply came with a short video clip—just the fluttering of her scarf in the wind at Signal 47, no words, just movement and breath. Below it, he had typed: “Yes.”
But even as their rhythm held, friction slowly crept in—like static building before a storm. Diptayan had been unusually distracted one week, missing two evenings at the signal without explanation. When they finally met again, he looked different—tired, slightly withdrawn. Over coffee in a crowded bookstore café, he handed her his phone with a message typed out: “An old friend wants to collaborate. Sound and visual installation. I’m not sure.” Priti looked up, puzzled. “But you love visuals. Why the hesitation?” He tapped again: “It involves live music. I don’t know if I’m ready to stand in sound again.” She didn’t know how to respond. She wanted to tell him he could do it, that he was stronger than he believed, but the words felt thin in comparison to the silence he’d lived through. That same evening, during a casual voice rehearsal she invited him to, the two of them finally stumbled. He had asked her—gestured gently—to modulate her tone less sharply in a line reading. Priti, tired and irritable, snapped back: “I’m the one with the ears here, remember?” The words had slipped out too fast. The silence that followed was different this time. Not shared. Not peaceful. Just… vacant. He stood still for a second, nodded slowly, and typed something before walking away. She didn’t read it until hours later. “And I hear more than you think.”
The guilt clung to her for days. She tried calling, but he didn’t respond. No more messages. No more notes at the signal. The Jeep didn’t appear. Even the photos on his social page stopped. She left voice notes—long ones, clumsy with apology, filled with unsaid emotions—but then remembered too late that he wouldn’t hear them. That was the irony, wasn’t it? Her whole life was built on articulation, and yet when it mattered most, her voice couldn’t reach him. The distance widened not because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t know how to argue in silence. It scared her—how easily misunderstanding had slipped between them. Then one Sunday afternoon, a mutual friend, a photojournalist named Ritika, messaged Priti out of the blue: “He’s been holed up in his studio. You should come.” So she did. She knocked, breath shaky, and when he opened the door, his eyes held both hesitation and longing. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I said something cruel. I was frustrated—with work, with myself. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” He didn’t respond at first. Then he reached for a notepad and scribbled: “You broke our silence. But maybe that was needed.” They sat for hours, no noise, just flipping through old photos, old messages, and memories that hadn’t yet hardened into regret. They didn’t say the word love, but it hung there, in every careful look and every pause that followed. Not broken—just recalibrating. Like feedback finally finding clarity in the loop.
7
In the days that followed their quiet reconciliation, the ritual of Signal 47 resumed—slightly changed, but unmistakably theirs. The first evening back, Priti arrived without a note, without a folded crane or scribbled pun, just her presence. Diptayan didn’t sketch. He simply looked at her, then reached for his phone, and typed one word: “Stay.” It wasn’t an order, more like a request to keep choosing this odd, delicate rhythm they’d created. And she did stay—at the signal, in the silence, in the unhurried space where emotions weren’t measured by the number of words exchanged. But something inside her still stirred restlessly. Maybe it was her profession making her itch to define things, to label moments with sound. Or maybe it was the tension of almost losing what felt like the realest connection she’d ever had. So she recorded a long voice memo one night, not to send, but to feel like she was speaking to him again. It was raw, filled with half-laughs and confessions. “I don’t know how to fight with you,” she whispered. “And maybe that scares me. I’ve only ever known love with noise—shouting, crying, over-explaining. But you… you just leave a space and trust me to return. Do you know how rare that is?” She didn’t send it, of course. What would be the point?
Diptayan, on the other hand, had begun composing a letter—not typed, not digital, but written with an old fountain pen on creamy ivory paper. He folded it once, tucked it into an envelope without sealing it, and left it on his desk. For a week, he debated whether to give it to her. In it, he had written about the accident—how the bike skidded one rainy July night near Mysore Road, how the crash hadn’t taken his life but took something quieter, more essential. “The silence after the ringing was terrifying,” he’d written. “But then I began to notice things others didn’t—like people’s faces during pauses, like how grief makes people blink slower.” He’d described how sound still lived inside him—not as noise, but as memory, as muscle. He wrote about Priti too—how her voice reminded him of running water, how her laughter cut through the fog of his everyday quiet like sunlight through curtains. He ended the letter with a single line: “You make silence feel less lonely.” And yet, the letter stayed unsent, gathering dust beside his lens kit. He wasn’t sure if she needed the words. Maybe he wasn’t sure if he did.
One Sunday morning, Ritika invited both of them to a quiet photo walk around Cubbon Park. Neither of them knew the other was coming. When they met near the banyan grove, both paused mid-step, surprise flickering into a gentle smile. They walked side by side without much effort, pausing now and then to capture raindrops on leaves or the curve of a child’s kite against the grey sky. At one point, Priti sat on a stone bench, looking unusually pensive. “Sometimes I think I’m too loud for you,” she said. “Even when I’m quiet, I carry noise with me. My thoughts, my voice, my emotions—they’re all… broadcasted.” Diptayan crouched beside her and typed, “I don’t need silence. I need clarity. You bring both.” She looked at him, tears threatening to rise, and said simply, “Then let me stay.” He nodded. Later that evening, back at home, she finally wrote him a real message—not a note, not a voice recording, but a text: “Come to Signal 47 tomorrow. I have something to say. Without saying it.” At the same time, miles across the city, Diptayan sealed the envelope and placed it in his bag. It was time to exchange everything unsent.
8
The sky over Indiranagar was the shade of early mangoes—muted, pale yellow, with streaks of grey threatening drizzle. It was an ordinary Monday to the rest of the city. But to Priti, it felt like a season finale playing out at 6:38 PM, exactly where it had all begun—at Signal 47. She reached early, heart pacing faster than her scooter engine, carrying nothing but a small pouch slung across her chest and the memory of every note, every nod, every missed word that had brought her here. She hadn’t rehearsed anything. For once, the voiceover artist had no script. When the silver Jeep rolled into view, slowing to its familiar place two lanes away, she smiled. She didn’t wave. She just waited. Diptayan noticed her instantly. There was something different in his eyes—not hesitation, not curiosity. Just peace. He reached across to the glove box, pulled something out, and began folding it methodically. She watched, amused. A paper crane. He was returning the very first thing she had once handed him—now in reverse. When the signal timer blinked to 80 seconds, he carefully stepped out of the Jeep, walked over, and placed the crane on her mirror. Then, wordlessly, he handed her a sealed envelope.
She didn’t open it immediately. Instead, she handed him something too—a tiny box wrapped in brown paper and tied with thread. Inside was a flash drive. On it, a radio drama she had written and narrated herself over the past few weeks, titled The Man Who Listened With His Eyes. No client had heard it. No one knew it existed. It was her voice, for him. She typed on her phone and showed him the message: “This is our story. You’ll understand it even without hearing it.” He held the box gently, nodded, and then reached into his coat pocket for his phone. What he typed next made her throat close: “You were never noise. You were clarity in motion.” Just then, the timer dropped to 5 seconds. Horns blared. The vehicles behind them began to inch forward. But neither of them moved. Diptayan didn’t return to the Jeep. Instead, he gestured toward the passenger seat, eyebrow raised in the gentlest invitation. For a second, Priti hesitated. Then she cut her engine, swung off her scooter, and walked toward him. She didn’t ask where they were going. She just got in.
They didn’t speak for several blocks. There was no need. The silence between them wasn’t a pause anymore—it was a language of its own. As they drove past the now-empty signal, Priti finally opened the envelope. The handwriting was familiar, careful, like the rhythm of his thoughts. She read it slowly, her breath catching at every line. The final sentence echoed in her chest long after the words faded: “You waited at the red light. And I learned to move again.” She turned to him, eyes wet, and placed her hand on his. He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled—not the fleeting, cautious one she had first seen behind glass, but a full, open smile, like someone who had finally crossed an invisible finish line. That night, they didn’t post anything. No selfies, no captions, no cryptic updates. Their story wasn’t meant for timelines. It belonged to signals and silences, to letters and late evenings, to a Jeep and a scooter and two people who had found each other in the most unexpected of gridlocks. And somewhere in the quiet curve of Bangalore’s roads, the light finally turned green—not just on the dashboard, but in their hearts.
Months later, long after Signal 47 became just another stretch of road on their daily drives, the world continued to race ahead, honking its impatience and weaving through life’s lanes. But for Priti and Diptayan, time moved a little differently. They didn’t fall into the typical rhythms of couplehood—no candlelit dates or grand Instagram declarations. Instead, their romance unfolded in smaller, quieter acts. He began to photograph not just moments but meanings—glimpses of shared glances, fingers interlaced while crossing busy streets, the echo of Priti’s laughter captured through the frosted pane of a rain-speckled café. She, in turn, stopped chasing perfection in her recordings. Her voice settled into something more real, more intimate. Clients noticed. “It sounds like you’re not just reading anymore,” one said. “It sounds like you believe it.” What they didn’t know was that Priti had found her listener—not one who could hear her, but one who understood her, fully and without filter. On Sundays, they still returned to Cubbon Park sometimes, not to fix anything broken, but to sit under the banyan tree in companionable silence. She’d read aloud from her journal, knowing he couldn’t hear the words but could always see the truth in her expressions. And sometimes, he’d sketch her while she read, as if her face carried subtexts only he could interpret. Once, she asked him if he missed the music. He took a long time to answer. Then he kissed her temple and typed: “Not really. I found rhythm in you.” That night, she whispered the story of their beginning into her microphone, not for a client, not for a portfolio—just for the record. It was uploaded to a private folder titled “Our Frequency”, with a single caption: “For the one who listened without sound.” They never marked an anniversary, never declared a day as “the beginning.” Because love, for them, didn’t arrive like a sudden green light. It arrived slowly, in cycles, in still frames and signal pauses. And perhaps that’s what made it last—not the rush of the road, but the magic of a moment held… just long enough.
The End
