Aanya Dasgupta
Part 1: The First Drizzle
It wasn’t raining yet, not exactly. The sky was still in negotiation, heavy with clouds that hadn’t quite made up their mind. Nia sat by the window of a narrow Hauz Khas café, her fingers curled around a mug of lukewarm coffee, staring absently at her laptop screen. The jazz playing overhead was faint, the kind that seemed to belong in another decade, but it fit the dim light and cracked wooden tables. Her document was open but untouched. She was supposed to be working on a cover design for a new historical romance novel—a brief she’d accepted mostly because the deadline had scared her into submission—but her thoughts were elsewhere, scattered like the dried leaves stuck in the railing outside the window. She glanced at the sky again, then back at her screen. That was when the bell above the café door rang. She didn’t look up at first. The bell chimed every fifteen minutes with someone either escaping the damp or searching for overpriced caffeine. But something made her glance. Maybe it was the way the air shifted, subtly, as though someone had entered with a bit of a storm folded in his coat pocket. He was tall, dressed in black, hair slightly wet from the teasing drizzle, and his eyes scanned the café with a practiced indifference. He walked up to the counter and ordered a cappuccino, no sugar, in a voice deep enough to command the jazz to pause. Nia found herself watching him, which annoyed her. She hated being distracted by strangers. He didn’t look like someone you’d call good-looking immediately. Not conventionally. But there was something about the way he held himself—as though he were somewhere else entirely. As though he never quite belonged in the room but tolerated it because he had no choice. He turned, looked around, and for lack of options or by choice—she couldn’t tell—sat down across from her at the long, community-style table. The café had only four tables, and the other two were taken by a girl with pink headphones and a couple clearly on their fifth date. She looked up briefly, gave him a polite half-smile, then returned to her screen. He sipped his coffee, eyes on a dog outside chasing its tail. “You work here?” he asked, finally. She blinked, surprised. “No. Why?” “You look like you belong here,” he said, a little shrug following, as though he wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or just an observation. “I come here to work,” she replied. “The jazz helps me think.” “Or distracts you,” he said, smiling slightly. “Maybe both.” “Aarav,” he said, offering his hand over the table. “Nia,” she replied, shaking it. His grip was warm, firm, not the kind that tried to impress. He didn’t ask what she did, but his eyes flicked to her laptop screen. She quickly minimized the window. “Book cover design,” she said anyway, before he could ask. “Freelance. Mostly romance. Some thrillers. The occasional memoir.” “You design people’s stories before anyone even reads them,” he said. “Interesting.” “You sound like you’re judging.” “Not at all. I think it’s fascinating how you have to guess what a story feels like from just a few lines.” “I don’t guess,” she said. “I listen to the way the author talks about it. That tells you everything.” He raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Fair.” The conversation drifted. They talked about the rain—how Delhi rains were never gentle, always dramatic. They talked about jazz, about how Ella Fitzgerald’s voice made heartbreak sound elegant. He told her he worked in architectural restoration. “I fix old things,” he said. “Walls, domes, windows. Mostly heritage stuff.” “Do you ever wish you could fix people too?” she asked, without thinking. His smile faded a bit, then returned like a shadow had just passed across it. “No,” he said. “People break differently.” They spoke for over an hour. Time thinned itself out, the kind of rare afternoon when hours dissolve unnoticed. By the time she packed up, it had begun to drizzle in earnest. The rain tapped on the glass gently, as if reminding them it had been invited into the conversation. Aarav stood up as she did. “Walk?” he asked. It wasn’t really a question. She hesitated. She didn’t do this—didn’t say yes to men she’d met an hour ago. But there was something disarming about the calm he carried, like a stranger who didn’t need to impress you to be noticed. So she nodded. They stepped into the misty street, walking side by side in silence. The rain wasn’t heavy, just present. It blurred the edges of the world, made everything quieter. They walked past shuttered bookstores and flickering streetlamps, their shoes splashing through shallow puddles. “You live around here?” he asked. “Ten minutes away. You?” “Nowhere specific. I move around a lot.” “That sounds… unrooted.” “It is. But roots can become cages too.” She looked at him then. Really looked. His jaw was defined, but his eyes were soft. He wasn’t hiding anything, but he wasn’t offering explanations either. She liked that. They reached the corner where she needed to turn. “Thanks for the coffee company,” she said. “And the walk.” He nodded. “I’ll probably be back at the café Thursday.” “So will I,” she said before she could stop herself. He smiled. The real kind, not the café small talk kind. Then he leaned in, not close enough to touch, but close enough to promise something. “Nia,” he said, as though tasting the name again. “You design stories. I’ll try not to ruin mine.” And then he walked away, his figure slowly dissolving into the misty street. Nia stood there, heart oddly still and loud at once, the rain settling gently in her hair, as if the city had just opened its first chapter.
Part 2: Rains, and Other Interruptions
By Thursday, the rain had upgraded from whispers to full-blown declarations. It began around noon, a lazy sort of downpour that didn’t feel rushed to end. Nia reached the café with the bottoms of her jeans soaked and her bag clutched tightly under her jacket. She shook off the water at the door like a cat and walked in, already scanning the room. He was there. Aarav sat at the same community table, back to the window, elbows resting on either side of a paperback novel with a red spine and dog-eared pages. A pen was tucked behind his ear, giving him the look of someone permanently halfway through a thought. When he noticed her, he smiled like the rain had done exactly what it was supposed to. “Murakami?” she asked, reading the cover as she sat down across from him. “Of course,” he said. “Pretentious enough to be interesting.” “Do you underline?” “Only the things that feel like truths I forgot I knew.” She nodded. “That’s exactly why I design covers. To make people remember something they didn’t know they were searching for.” He studied her for a moment, then closed the book and slid it aside. “So what’s your story, Nia? What do I need to know to not ruin it?” She laughed. “That I overthink everything. That I hate coriander. That I used to dance before I learned I wasn’t good enough to survive on it.” “Kathak?” “My mother was a dancer. I was just her echo.” “Echoes are sometimes louder,” he said, then looked away like he hadn’t meant to say something so pointed. The rain fell harder outside, splashing against the glass like it wanted in. Inside, the café felt sealed off from the world. Warm lights, steaming cups, bookshelves full of forgotten recommendations. “You always this cryptic?” she asked. “Only when it rains,” he said. “Something about the weather makes honesty sound more poetic.” “Or dramatic.” “That too.” He paused. “What about you? Are you always this guarded?” “Only when someone asks about my story before page ten,” she replied, mirroring his earlier tone. They smiled at each other like co-conspirators. He sipped his cappuccino and set it down with both hands. “I grew up in Lucknow. My grandfather was an architect, built courtyards that sang when it rained. I think I’ve been chasing that sound my whole life.” “And your parents?” “Gone,” he said simply. “My mother when I was ten. My father not long after. I was raised mostly by cities.” The weight of that sentence hung between them like humidity. Nia didn’t press. She just nodded and changed the subject. “What do you think makes a house worth saving?” “The echoes,” he said. “The things the walls remember even when the people forget.” “I think that’s beautiful.” “It’s lonely, actually.” And there it was again—that strange flicker in him, like a lightbulb trying to decide if it wanted to glow or shatter. She looked down at her own cup, now cold. “Do you believe in second chances?” she asked. “Not always,” he replied. “But I believe in first ones that aren’t ruined.” Silence followed, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind that made room. They talked for hours, about cities and sounds, about the books they never finished, the mistakes they made twice anyway, and the smells that took them home. By evening, the café began to fill with the post-office crowd. People with wet umbrellas, hurried orders, eyes on phones. Nia closed her laptop, not having done a single stroke of work. Aarav walked her to the door. The rain had let up just enough for puddles to become reflective. “Let me walk you?” he asked. “It’s not far,” she said. “Still.” So she let him. They walked side by side down narrow lanes, avoiding potholes and auto-rickshaws, occasionally brushing shoulders. She realized how easily his presence fit beside her, like a line she hadn’t known was missing from her favorite book. They reached the turn where she usually parted. “So,” he said, “same café next Tuesday?” “Tuesdays are boring,” she said. “Exactly. That’s why we need to fix them.” “You’re making this a pattern?” “Only if you want it to be.” She hesitated, then nodded. “Fine. But don’t expect me to always show up soaked and poetic.” “Deal,” he said. Then he did something strange—he stepped back, gave her a small bow like an old-fashioned gentleman, and said, “Until the next chapter, Ms. Book Designer.” She laughed, shook her head, and walked away. That night, in bed, her fingers hovered over her phone screen, tempted to search him up. Aarav, architectural restoration, Lucknow. But she didn’t. There was something beautiful about not knowing everything at once. The next day, she sketched three book cover drafts in one sitting. Her editor called and said, “Whatever mood you’re in, stay in it.” She smiled to herself. Somewhere, a memory of wet streets and jazz settled into her spine like comfort. On Sunday, it rained again. She didn’t go to the café. She let herself miss him instead. She played old Hindi songs on vinyl and danced barefoot in her tiny room, her body remembering steps her mind had forgotten. She thought of Aarav’s fingers tracing the rim of his coffee cup, his eyes watching rain like it was a performance meant just for him. She let herself feel it. The dangerous hope of a beginning. The terrifying softness of something real. Then she made tea, underlined a line in a book about coincidences, and wrote in her journal: “Some stories begin like drizzles. But even drizzles leave puddles you can fall into if you’re not careful.” And she wasn’t being careful anymore.
Part 3: A Little Sunlight
By the time the next Tuesday rolled around, the skies had cleared. Nia stepped out of her apartment into a rare Delhi afternoon that wasn’t either melting or flooding. The kind of weather that dared her to wear something not entirely practical. She chose a soft blue kurta, her hair open, lips tinted with a shade that felt like quiet rebellion. She didn’t overthink it, except she did. Every step toward the café was a silent argument between sense and something far older, something closer to instinct. Aarav was already there when she walked in, at the same table, this time with no book in front of him—just a single piece of tracing paper and a pencil. He was sketching a window. Not just a window—a jharokha, the kind that belonged to palaces and stories with reluctant queens. His lines were clean, thoughtful, tender in their intention. “You’re early,” she said, sliding into the chair across from him. “You’re beautiful,” he said without pause, not even glancing up, as though the sentence had simply found its way from thought to air without his permission. She froze for a fraction of a second, then laughed in a way that tried to conceal how it landed somewhere deep in her chest. “Smooth,” she said. “Unintentionally,” he admitted, finally looking up, eyes meeting hers with something far too sincere to be flirtation. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.” “But you did.” “I did.” She glanced at his drawing. “Do you always sketch windows?” “Only the ones I want to understand.” “And do you understand me, yet?” “I’m not sketching you.” “Aren’t you?” The banter danced between them like warm air between closed palms. It was easy, this rhythm they’d found. Built not on declarations, but on glances held a second longer than necessary. They ordered their usual drinks. She pulled out her laptop but didn’t open it. He put away his tracing paper but left it face-up, like a confession he wanted her to read. “Tell me something you’ve never said aloud,” she said suddenly, not sure why. Aarav’s fingers stilled on his cup. He took a long breath. “I once loved someone who made silence feel holy,” he said. “When it ended, I didn’t speak for almost a year. I stopped calling friends. I started fixing buildings no one lived in. I think I preferred ghosts.” “What happened?” “I happened. I wasn’t ready to be loved gently. So I left.” She didn’t ask if he regretted it. She didn’t need to. His voice carried the weight of every unspoken sorry. “Your turn,” he said softly. She hesitated, then offered, “I was engaged once. Briefly. He was a dentist. Kind, predictable, safe. My parents adored him.” “But you didn’t.” “I wanted to. I really tried. But the idea of growing old with someone who didn’t see the storm inside me—terrified me. I broke it off. My parents still call it my ‘rebellious phase.’” “How long ago?” “Two years.” “Do you regret it?” “Only when it rains.” He smiled. “Then I’m glad for the rain.” They sat in silence for a while, watching a dog outside chase its tail, then lie down in defeat. A child squealed somewhere in the distance. A song Nia couldn’t place played faintly in the background. Everything was ordinary, but it didn’t feel that way. “You ever think about moving?” she asked suddenly. “Out of Delhi?” “Sometimes. Cities tire me. But memories follow you. I’ve learned that the hard way.” “You could come to my studio someday,” she said, unsure why she was offering. “It’s messy. But it has good light. And plants that mostly survive.” “I’d like that,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see where colors are born.” “And I’d like to see where old things are made new.” “Deal,” he said, raising his coffee cup like a toast. Outside, the sunlight dipped slightly, shadows growing longer. The air turned a little crisper, as if autumn had remembered its cue. Nia realized she didn’t want to leave just yet. “Walk again?” he asked, as if reading her mind. “Always,” she said. They wandered through unfamiliar lanes, discovering a shortcut that smelled like fried samosas and old pages. He told her about a haveli in Udaipur he once restored, how the walls had peeled like skin, revealing layers of history no one had documented. She told him about a cover she’d made for a poet who spoke only in metaphors, how she had to design something that looked like breath and heartbreak stitched together. They talked about loss and hunger, about cities that never felt like home, about dreams they didn’t say out loud. And somewhere in between, he reached for her hand. He didn’t ask. She didn’t flinch. Their fingers interlocked like a door finally clicking shut after years of being slightly ajar. They walked past a temple, a sleeping stray, and a row of closed shops painted in pastels. At one corner, an old woman selling marigolds looked at them and smiled knowingly, as though she’d sold flowers to thousands of stories like theirs. They reached her lane too soon. Neither wanted to say goodbye. “Want to come up?” she asked, then quickly added, “Just for tea. Nothing more.” He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Nia, I like you. Not just the idea of you. I don’t want this to be something that burns fast and leaves ash.” “Me neither,” she said. “That’s why we’re drinking tea.” He smiled, nodded, and followed her. The apartment was small, filled with soft light and the smell of basil. Her paintings leaned against the walls, unframed but proud. Her desk was cluttered with color swatches, half-used pens, and a sticky note that read: Make art. Not excuses. Aarav walked around slowly, taking it all in. “This place is very you,” he said. “Messy?” “No. Honest.” She made tea while he picked up one of her old sketchbooks. She didn’t stop him. When she handed him a cup, he set the sketchbook down and said, “You’re not just designing stories. You’re writing one, too.” She looked at him, the steam from the cup rising between them like a quiet promise. “Only if you stay long enough to read it.” He didn’t reply. He just took a sip, eyes steady on hers, and in that moment, she knew: sunlight was a kind of rain too, just warmer.
Part 4: Thunder Without Warning
The weather turned erratic in August. Not the romantic drizzle of early monsoon, but a restless kind of rain—impulsive, uninvited, loud. The kind that soaked you even under shelter. Nia had grown used to the rhythm of seeing Aarav every Tuesday. Sometimes Thursday too, when work allowed. They never said it aloud, but both knew they were orbiting each other on purpose. The café had become their shared space, their quiet little hour in the city’s noise. Then the storm came. On a Thursday afternoon, it rained without mercy. Nia rushed into the café, soaked to her shoulders, her umbrella inside out, hair plastered to her face. She scanned the room immediately. No Aarav. She checked her phone even though she didn’t have his number. Habit. Stupid habit. She waited. Ordered coffee. Sat at their table. Watched the door every time the bell rang. But he never came. The next Tuesday, same thing. Empty chair. She tried to focus on her work, but the screen blurred from the inside. Her designs looked hollow. Her hands felt restless. The rain outside mocked her with its unending rhythm. On Thursday, she asked the barista, hesitating like she was asking something inappropriate. “Has that guy—the one who usually sits here—been around?” The barista, a girl with a pierced eyebrow and mild pity in her voice, nodded and handed her something. “He left this for you.” A folded napkin. Her name in faint pencil on the corner. Nia’s stomach dropped. She opened it. The handwriting was unmistakable. Don’t wait for the rain. Sometimes it doesn’t come back. That was it. No explanation. No apology. No contact. Just a single sentence wrapped in silence. Her fingers clenched around the napkin until it crumpled. She walked out of the café, the doorbell chime feeling cruel this time. That night, she searched for him online. Aarav, architectural restoration, Lucknow. She tried every possible combination. Instagram. LinkedIn. Facebook. Nothing. It was like he’d never existed. Or worse—like he’d erased himself. Nia called every number from the client database she remembered him mentioning. She even emailed an old architectural magazine that had interviewed a restorer named Aarav some months ago. No reply. A few days later, she wandered into a bookshop, hands moving without intention. She picked up a book of old haveli sketches, leafed through it absentmindedly, and stopped. One of the pages had a pencil sketch of a jharokha. Her heart leapt. It was his. She knew that linework. That attention to edges. She bought the book. Slept with it on her nightstand. But she didn’t cry. Not at first. The tears came weeks later, when she was trying to explain to her roommate why she was skipping a deadline. “I just… can’t make things beautiful right now,” she’d said, voice cracking. “Every line feels like a lie.” Her roommate hugged her, confused but kind, and left chamomile tea by her bedside. Nia didn’t drink it. She stayed up rereading the napkin, wondering what it was supposed to mean. Had he planned to vanish all along? Was she just another rainy day in his timeline? Had she imagined the way he looked at her like she was a poem unfolding? It hurt in quiet ways. Not the dramatic heartbreak kind. Not the shouting or throwing-things kind. It was the ache of an unfinished song. A sentence interrupted. A story left in a draft folder. She told no one. Not her roommate, not her mother, not even her therapist. She started dancing again. Not for anyone. Just in her room. Barefoot, silent, letting her body remember grace. It helped. Not enough, but some. Work trickled in. She said yes to projects she didn’t love because she needed the distraction. Her editor noticed. “Your colors are different now,” she said on a call. “What changed?” “Weather,” Nia said. “It’s just the season.” But that wasn’t true. It wasn’t just weather. It was memory. Memory of wet footsteps, of half-finished coffees, of the way his hand had lingered on her wrist just a second longer than it needed to. One evening, in early September, she walked past the café and didn’t go in. She looked through the glass and saw a couple sitting at their table. Their laughter sounded too loud, their faces too young. It stung. She walked to the lake instead, sat on a bench, and closed her eyes. The breeze was kinder here. The smell of earth and water steadied her. She whispered to herself, “You’re allowed to miss him. But you’re not allowed to stay broken.” The next day, she picked up her stylus and began designing again. A cover for a debut novel about letting go. She poured everything she couldn’t say into it. When she sent it to the author, they replied in all caps: “YOU JUST DESIGNED MY HEART.” Nia smiled. For the first time in weeks, she let herself feel a flicker of pride. Still, at night, when it rained—because it still did sometimes—she looked at her phone instinctively. Waiting for a message that never came. She even drafted one herself, once. Just three words: Where did you— She deleted it before she could finish. She was trying. Healing, slowly. Rebuilding trust in the shape of her own solitude. But part of her still stood in that café doorway, heart trembling, eyes fixed on a chair that had once held someone who made the world quieter just by sitting still. Aarav was gone. That was the truth. And she had no idea if he’d ever come back. But rain was due again on Tuesday. And maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t done hoping.
Part 5: Aftermath of Monsoon
By the time September settled into the city’s bones, the rain had stopped making promises. The skies turned a pale blue more often than not, and the air carried a brittle crispness, hinting at Delhi’s brief flirtation with autumn. The umbrellas were packed away, and so were some hopes Nia hadn’t realized she was still carrying. She no longer checked the café every Tuesday. That ritual had been broken. Like a favorite song that now reminded her of silence. She still went there sometimes, but not on a schedule. Not with her heart in her hands. The barista no longer asked questions, and Nia no longer looked toward the door. She began to fill her days with deliberate clutter. Work, classes, commissioned paintings, a client who wanted a whole poetry collection designed like a love letter to a city that didn’t love her back. She said yes to it, not because of the poetry, but because she understood the ache. The ache of waiting for something that won’t return. She pulled out her mother’s ghungroos from the old wooden box. They still smelled of turmeric and time. She tied them around her ankles and danced on weekends, not for art, but for release. She moved her body like a question mark, her breath aligning with the beats, letting sweat and rhythm cleanse corners that sorrow had curled into. And still, Aarav lingered. In the way her fingers sometimes curled around coffee cups, expecting warmth. In the way she glanced at old buildings, imagining how he would describe their bones. In the sudden stillness she felt whenever she passed scaffolding. She hadn’t told anyone about him. Not fully. It wasn’t just heartbreak. It was more complicated than that. How do you explain someone who walked in like weather and left without a warning system? One morning, while watering her plants, she found a dead leaf with tiny holes that looked like constellations. She pressed it into her sketchbook and wrote underneath: Even in decay, there are patterns worth noticing. She didn’t know why she kept collecting fragments of him in the mundane. She just did. One evening in mid-September, her phone rang. An unknown number. For a second, her heart sprinted. But it was a client. A quiet, polite woman from Jaipur who had been referred to her by an old publisher. “We’re restoring a haveli outside Udaipur,” she said. “It belonged to my husband’s grandfather. He wrote a memoir before he passed. We’d like a cover that blends architecture and memory. Would you be willing?” Nia’s voice faltered only briefly. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” “We can send you references,” the woman continued, “but if you’re open to it, we’d prefer you come see the haveli yourself. It’s not far from the lake. Just being there might give you what the words can’t.” Nia agreed, almost in a trance. The dates were fixed. Her tickets booked. The night before her flight, she found herself sketching. Without meaning to, she had drawn a jharokha. Not any jharokha. His. The same one Aarav had been sketching the first time they’d spoken properly. She stared at it, pencil trembling in her fingers. A part of her wanted to tear the page out, crumple it, start over. But she didn’t. She let it stay, a breadcrumb in the forest of her grief. When she landed in Udaipur, the sun was high and unapologetic. The city shimmered like a dream you weren’t sure you’d earned. Her taxi driver spoke about rain gods and palace ghosts, and Nia nodded politely, her eyes scanning the horizon for something she couldn’t name. The haveli stood quietly behind a rusted gate, its façade still proud despite the peeling paint. It looked like a woman waiting for an apology that never arrived. Inside, the air smelled of age and rosewater. A wide courtyard lay in the center, its stone cracked like an old smile. Vines crawled up the arches, and faded murals lined the corridors. The woman who had called her was named Nirmala. Elegant, soft-spoken, wearing a green cotton saree and silver bangles that chimed like whispers. “This place was his obsession,” Nirmala said, leading her through the halls. “My husband’s grandfather built it brick by brick. Aarav was here too. He came for a week to sketch and record. Said he wanted to ‘listen to the silence.’” Nia stopped walking. “Aarav?” “Yes,” Nirmala replied, glancing at her with faint curiosity. “You know him?” “We… met. In Delhi. He never mentioned this.” Nirmala smiled gently, the way older women do when they see storms in young faces. “He doesn’t mention a lot. He left suddenly. Said some things are better left unrestored.” That night, Nia walked alone through the haveli’s courtyard under moonlight. The marble floor was cool beneath her feet, and the air was thick with longing. She sat on the old stone bench by the neem tree, traced her fingers over initials carved decades ago. She wondered which ones were his. She whispered into the quiet, “You didn’t have to disappear.” The silence didn’t answer. But somewhere in the shadows, she thought she heard footsteps that didn’t quite belong to the present. In her room, she opened her sketchbook and added a new line beneath the jharokha: Some ruins don’t need fixing. Just someone to remember them. The next morning, she started the cover design. The memoir’s title was Between Courtyards and Ghosts. And it felt strangely appropriate.
Part 6: When Old Walls Speak
Udaipur rose slowly in the morning, like a lover reluctant to leave a shared bed. Nia stepped onto the terrace of the haveli just after sunrise, clutching a steaming cup of tea that smelled of cardamom and dust. Below her, the lake glimmered faintly under the waking sky, and the city stretched with the elegant laziness of someplace that knew it had nothing to prove. The air felt different here—less hurried, more forgiving. It held stories, suspended like dust motes in sunlight. Nia had spent the previous day sketching and photographing every curve and crack of the haveli’s inner courtyard. Her fingers ached pleasantly, and her head buzzed with ideas. But her heart—her heart hadn’t quieted. It kept folding back into the brief conversation with Nirmala, replaying the mention of Aarav like a forgotten lyric suddenly heard again. He had been here. Two weeks ago. Wandering these same halls, sketching the same broken railings, running his hands along the same fading murals. She tried to picture him standing in the corner room with its chipped pillars, pencil behind his ear, eyes narrowed in study. Had he thought of her then? Had his hands remembered the shape of her fingers, the weight of their silences, the sound of her laughter wrapped around jazz? “He left suddenly,” Nirmala had said. Some things are better left unrestored. But Nia didn’t believe that. Not anymore. Some things didn’t want fixing. But they still deserved to be seen. She met Nirmala again after breakfast, this time in the small drawing room that still held old sepia portraits and a grandfather clock that ticked slower than time. “Would you like to see something?” Nirmala asked, leading her to a cupboard behind a curtain. Inside were rolls of tracing paper, sketchbooks, notes in pencil so faint they looked like breath. “He left these,” she said. “Said someone else might find a better use for them.” Nia reached out hesitantly, unrolling one sheet. A courtyard view, drawn in quiet lines, labeled with careful notes. Another showed a staircase, broken at the edge, with an annotation: Leads nowhere but insists on being climbed. She didn’t speak for a long time. “You’re welcome to take copies,” Nirmala offered. “He’d want someone to finish what he started.” But Nia wasn’t here to finish his work. She was here to face it. That afternoon, she sat under the neem tree in the courtyard again and opened her sketchbook. She drew the jharokha from memory, then added new things—a glimpse of the lake through it, a pair of feet just visible behind the arch, and shadows that almost resembled a man. The cover she eventually designed wasn’t literal. It didn’t show the haveli’s grandeur. Instead, it captured its essence: the way walls sighed when no one was watching, the invisible weight of inheritance, the ghost of a name left unsaid. When she showed it to Nirmala, the older woman held it gently in her lap, like a secret long buried. “He would’ve liked this,” she said quietly. “He always said memories were more about feeling than fact.” Nia smiled, but her eyes stung. She left Udaipur the next day. On the flight back, she sat by the window and stared at the clouds, wondering what part of herself she’d left behind in those corridors, and what part of Aarav she might have unknowingly carried home. A week later, a postcard arrived at her apartment. No envelope. No return address. Just a single line in his handwriting: Found a roof that still sings in the rain. Wish you were here. She dropped the card the moment she read it, as if it had burned her. Her breath caught somewhere between shock and something dangerously close to relief. It had been weeks. Weeks of nothing. And now, this. No explanation. No context. Just his voice on a piece of cardboard. She picked it up again, reread the line, and turned it over. Blank. Of course. She didn’t tell anyone. She simply placed the postcard in the drawer beside her bed, under her sketchbook, beneath the dead leaf with holes shaped like stars. Two weeks passed. Another postcard. This time: Built a bench under a neem tree. It misses arguments and laughter. She laughed when she read it. Laughed, then immediately teared up. Because this was him. Not apologies, not declarations—just breadcrumbs. Clues dropped into the world like quiet confessions. She didn’t know where he was, or if these meant he was coming back, or if they were simply his way of saying, I still think of you when it rains. And maybe that was enough. Or maybe it wasn’t. She didn’t reply. Didn’t go looking. But she started leaving the café window seat empty again, just in case. She returned to designing with more heart now. Her work grew bolder, warmer. She found herself choosing golds and rust reds, painting shadows that looked like they had stories of their own. Clients noticed. One said, “Your covers feel lived-in. Like they remember something.” Nia smiled. “Maybe they do.” She visited the dance studio she had stopped going to after college. Just to see. The floors still smelled of oil and old music. She stood in the center, barefoot, staring at the mirrored wall, and lifted her arms slowly. Her body responded like it had been waiting. One movement. One breath. One beat at a time. That night, she sat by her window with the two postcards spread before her and whispered to the dark, “Send another. Or send yourself.” The city replied with silence. But somewhere, the air shifted. Somewhere, old walls remembered.
Part 7: Postcards and Rainwater
October arrived like an old song—familiar, almost sweet, but layered with a sadness that took time to name. Delhi’s skies turned softer, golden at the edges, as if the sun had learned to be gentle again. Nia had begun walking in the evenings. No destination. Just movement. Her feet traced lanes filled with autumn leaves and honking auto-rickshaws, her mind wandering toward thoughts she couldn’t always admit aloud. Work continued steadily. She designed a cover for a children’s book about a crow who wanted to paint clouds. Another for a Tamil novel translated into English about a widowed chef who finds companionship in spices. But every time she finished a design, she paused—wondering, fleetingly, if Aarav would have understood the layers she’d tucked between the lines. Then, one Friday, the third postcard arrived. It was wedged halfway into her mailbox, barely protected from the faint drizzle that had returned after weeks of dry skies. The edges were soft, blurred slightly by moisture. Her name was written in a way that looked both rushed and deliberate. The message simply said: Some houses don’t have doors. Only waiting windows. She read it once. Twice. A third time. Then held it against her chest and closed her eyes. The first two postcards had left her confused, angry even. Why now? Why like this? Why not just come back or call or explain? But this one felt different. It didn’t carry expectation. It didn’t pretend to be anything more than what it was: a fragment. A window. And maybe she was done demanding doors. That evening, she didn’t go home straight after errands. She went to the café. It was nearly empty. The rain had scared off the casual crowd. She ordered her usual, sat at their table, and pulled out her notebook. She didn’t write to him. But she began a letter anyway. A letter she wouldn’t send. Dear you, she wrote, I don’t know if you’re trying to stitch something back or just leaving breadcrumbs to ease your guilt. But I’m not angry anymore. I’m still bruised, but it’s a quiet kind of bruise—the kind you forget until you touch it by accident. I hope you’re still sketching windows. I hope you’re still making silence speak. And I hope, wherever you are, you’re not alone in the rain. She tore the page out and folded it into a paper boat. She left it on the table and walked away. When she got home, the city was glistening. Not flooded, not weeping. Just glistening. The kind of rain that cleaned instead of destroyed. That night, she fell asleep with her windows open. No music, no fan. Just the sound of water meeting earth, like lovers long parted. A week passed. Then two. No postcard. Nia didn’t expect one. She had started to make peace with his silence. But silence had never meant absence with Aarav—it meant something was still unfolding. Then, on a Tuesday that felt oddly warm for late October, something shifted. She returned home to find a small envelope slipped under her door. Hand-delivered. No stamp. Her name written in his exact script. Inside was a letter—not typed, not poetic, just a single page of inked thoughts. The paper was slightly creased, like it had traveled in someone’s jacket pocket for too long. Nia, it began, I don’t know if you’ll read this or rip it apart, but I had to try. I’ve rewritten this letter six times, and it still doesn’t say what I want it to. Maybe some truths don’t know how to dress up. So here it is, plain and wrong in all the right ways. I left because I was scared. Of how much I felt. Of how fast it grew. I’ve always been a man who walks out before something beautiful can be broken. It’s not noble—it’s cowardly. But fear dresses up as logic when you grow up believing nothing good lasts. You weren’t a season for me. You weren’t a drizzle or a chapter. You were the silence between the pages. The part of the book I reread in my head even after I closed it. And I know I hurt you. I know I vanished. But I never stopped thinking about the way you looked at things—as if everything deserved a second glance. I’ve been in Jaipur, restoring an abandoned temple library. Quiet place. Fewer people. More echoes. But every time it rained, I missed you like air. If you ever want to talk, I’ll be at the café next Tuesday. Same table. Same time. If you don’t come, I’ll understand. But I’ll wait anyway. —Aarav She read it twice, fingers trembling. Then again, slower, tracing the sentences like they were cracks in a wall she thought had long dried. Her heart didn’t leap. It pulsed. Strong. Steady. Conflicted. She placed the letter on her desk and stared at it until the light outside faded to lavender. She didn’t know what she wanted. She wasn’t the same woman who had waited for him in July. She had grown edges. Learned the scent of her own solitude. But part of her still remembered the weight of his silence and how, somehow, it had always made space for her voice. She didn’t decide that night. She let sleep take her gently, the letter under her pillow like a question she wasn’t ready to answer. But when Tuesday arrived, she woke before her alarm. She wore a simple white kurta, the one he once said made her look like “a memory someone didn’t want to forget.” She walked to the café slowly, watching how the city shimmered under morning haze. The bell above the café door rang as she pushed it open. And there he was.
Part 8: A Letter in a Teacup
Aarav looked up the moment the bell above the café door rang. His eyes met hers with the kind of quiet vulnerability that made time slow down. He didn’t stand, didn’t smile right away, just watched as she walked toward him, her face unreadable, her steps deliberate. The chair across from him was exactly where it had always been—simple, wooden, a little wobbly—but now it felt heavier, loaded with every word unspoken since July. Nia sat down slowly. He exhaled, almost inaudibly. “You came,” he said. “You asked.” “I didn’t think you would,” he admitted. “That makes two of us.” A small silence settled between them, not awkward, but dense. Their coffees arrived—hers the usual cappuccino with cinnamon, his black, no sugar. Some things hadn’t changed. “I got your letter,” she said finally, wrapping both hands around her cup as though anchoring herself. “I read it three times. Once with anger. Once with hope. And once with everything I didn’t say when you left.” “That sounds fair,” he said. “It’s more than I deserved.” “Don’t decide that for me,” she replied, more sharply than she intended. Aarav winced but nodded. “Okay.” “You left without a word. Without letting me ask why. Without giving me the chance to choose how I wanted to be hurt.” Her voice didn’t rise, but each word landed with precision. “You just… vanished. And then sent me poetry like it could undo the silence.” “It wasn’t meant to undo anything,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to talk. But I couldn’t not speak to you. So I sent pieces. Fragments. I hoped you’d understand that even in my absence, I was trying to stay honest.” “Honest?” she repeated, incredulous. “Aarav, honesty doesn’t live on postcards.” He looked down, his fingers tapping the rim of his coffee cup. “I know,” he said softly. “But you were the first thing in years that made me feel like I could be known. And that terrified me. I didn’t want to ruin it by being me.” “You ruined it by not being here.” Another pause. A longer one. Nia wasn’t crying. She was too tired for that. Her voice was calm, but there was a storm behind her eyes that Aarav could see clearly. He reached into his satchel and pulled out something—a teacup. Not new. Slightly chipped at the rim. Glazed in a shade of moss green with a delicate gold line running around the edge. “I made this,” he said. “In Jaipur. A pottery class someone dragged me to. First thing I’ve made with my hands that wasn’t a building. Thought it might break in transit, but it didn’t.” “Why are you giving it to me?” “Because I couldn’t bring you back all the things I never said. But I could bring this. It holds silence well. And it’s a little broken, like me.” Nia stared at the cup. She didn’t reach for it. Not yet. “You want to come back into my life like nothing happened?” “No,” he said. “I want to come back with everything that happened between us. I want to ask if I can earn back the space I once held. If I can learn to stay. Really stay.” She looked at him then, really looked. He was thinner, maybe. A little more lined around the eyes. But his gaze hadn’t changed. Still steady. Still searching. Still soft in the way that made her chest ache. “What if I’ve changed?” she asked. “What if I’m not the same woman you walked away from?” “Then I’ll learn who you are now,” he said. “Even if it’s from the beginning.” She sipped her coffee, watching him over the rim. “What if I don’t trust you yet?” “Then I’ll earn it. Not through postcards. Through presence. Every day. No more leaving without goodbye. No more vanishing.” “Words are easy.” “So I’ll wait. You don’t have to say yes. Or anything, really. I just wanted to meet you with my feet planted this time.” She nodded slowly. “I’m not promising anything. I’m not ready for declarations and poetry.” “Then we start with tea.” She smiled faintly, despite herself. “You’re lucky I like metaphors.” “No,” he said. “I’m lucky you showed up.” He slid the cup across the table gently. She picked it up, examined the flaw on the rim, ran her thumb over the gold line like a fault line turned precious. “It’s not perfect,” he said. “Neither are we,” she replied. They sat there quietly for a long while, sipping coffee, not rushing toward resolution. The jazz playing in the background was soft, familiar, as if the café itself remembered them. “So,” he said after a pause, “Tuesdays still boring?” She laughed, low and brief. “Still boring. But maybe that’s exactly what I need. Something quiet. Something consistent.” “I can be both,” he said. “But also occasionally annoying, overly introspective, and prone to sending postcards with no explanation.” “I’ll allow that. But only if you never disappear again without giving me a proper exit line.” “Deal.” She leaned back in her chair, her fingers curled around the chipped teacup. It was strange how something cracked could still hold warmth. Still carry meaning. Still invite forgiveness. She didn’t know what came next. But for the first time in weeks, she wasn’t afraid of the unfolding. Outside, the rain began again. Not a storm. Not a drizzle. Just steady, sure drops tapping against the window like an old rhythm returning. She looked at Aarav and said, “Let’s not call this a new beginning. Let’s call it a continued sentence.” “As long as there are commas and not full stops,” he replied. And they sat there, side by side, two broken cups holding something real. No more metaphors. Just rain and presence. And maybe, this time, that would be enough.
Part 9: Return of the Rain
It didn’t pour that Tuesday. The sky held itself back, as if testing them. Nia and Aarav sat side by side in their usual spot, the chipped teacup placed between them like a shared understanding. They didn’t speak much, and they didn’t need to. There was something sacred about silence when it wasn’t being used as a weapon. That afternoon became their quiet promise, not of forever, but of effort. Not everything returned with fanfare. Some things came back like a breath—you only noticed when they steadied your heartbeat. Over the next few weeks, they met in gentle intervals. Sometimes at the café, sometimes in the small garden near Nia’s house, once at an open-air craft fair where Aarav pointed out ancient pottery techniques with the enthusiasm of a child, and Nia bought him a hand-bound notebook that smelled of ink and beginnings. They didn’t label what they were. They didn’t call it love again. It was something softer, slower. Like a seed trying again, this time with better soil. Nia invited him to her studio one late afternoon when the city was caught between sun and shadow. Aarav stepped inside carefully, as though he might disturb the colors hanging in the air. Her paintings leaned against the walls, unfinished covers peeked from drawers, and an old speaker hummed with instrumental sitar music. He walked around slowly, fingers respectfully tucked into his pockets, eyes scanning everything with silent reverence. “You live inside color,” he said finally. “And you live inside lines,” she replied. “Between what’s broken and what holds.” He turned to her, that familiar look in his eyes—the one that wasn’t about impressing or convincing, just noticing. “You’ve changed,” he said. “You’ve become quieter. Stronger too.” “You’re just seeing me without the fog.” “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I had to leave to know how much of me wanted to stay.” She didn’t reply. Instead, she picked up a brush and dipped it into a soft lavender tone. “Will you help?” “With what?” “I’m painting a window. I think it needs a little ruin.” He smiled and took the other brush she offered. For the next hour, they painted in tandem. Not speaking. Not directing. Just letting their hands find rhythm on the canvas. By the end of it, the window had cracks, light pouring through uneven panes, and vines curling through the bottom ledge. It looked like it belonged to a home that had been forgotten, then remembered with affection. That night, they ate aloo parathas on her balcony, wrapped in one shared shawl, listening to the city hum below. “My mother would like you,” Nia said suddenly. “She always said, if you’re going to choose someone, choose the one who can be silent with you without making you feel alone.” “Will I get to meet her?” “Eventually.” “Will you meet mine?” “Eventually.” “We’re bad at planning,” he said. “We’re better at unfolding,” she replied. They didn’t spend every day together. That was important to her. She needed space. And Aarav, to his credit, understood that. Some evenings he sent her voice notes describing buildings he’d walked past. One note just said, Found a staircase with no destination. Thought of you. Other days, she’d text him random lines from books she was designing. Once, she sent a quote that said, ‘I love you’ is not a sentence. It’s a question. He replied: Then yes. They weren’t in a relationship by definition, but they were in something real. Something growing. And on the first proper rain of November—unseasonal, uninvited, sudden—they stood under a crumbling overpass with paper bags full of vegetables and laughter spilling between them. The rain came fast and wild, as if making up for lost time. Aarav pulled her close without asking, shielding her with his coat, both of them already wet. “Do you remember our first walk?” he asked over the sound of thunder. “I remember thinking you had a voice like old poetry,” she said. “And you said something about clouds performing.” “They still do,” he smiled. “Only now, they have an audience.” She looked up at him, hair soaked, cheeks flushed. “Are we going to be okay?” “We won’t always be perfect,” he replied. “But I’ll always show up. Even when it rains.” She leaned into him, resting her forehead against his chest. “Just don’t send postcards if you leave again,” she whispered. “Send yourself.” He wrapped his arms around her, tighter this time, anchoring her to that moment. “No more postcards,” he said. “Only presence.” When the rain slowed, they walked back hand in hand, dripping, grinning like idiots, shoes squeaking with each step. That night, Nia painted. Not a book cover. Not a commission. Just something for herself. A canvas with rain trickling down glass, and two blurred figures holding each other like they had remembered their way home. She didn’t title it. Some things didn’t need names. Only moments.
Part 10: Somewhere Between Raindrops
It was mid-December when Nia realized the city had begun to forget the rain. The skies had turned stubbornly blue, and winter crept in with cold fingers, fogging windows and dulling colors. But inside her apartment, life had taken on a different rhythm. Mornings began with two mismatched mugs of chai and soft playlists that played on repeat. Evenings ended with silent sketching, shared stories from the day, and the occasional bickering about which blanket belonged to whom. Aarav had not moved in, but he stayed over often, always carrying his satchel full of unfinished notes and half-sketches, always leaving space for her breath to take the lead. One Saturday, as she cleaned her shelf, Nia found the first napkin he had left behind—the one from the café that read: Don’t wait for the rain. Sometimes it doesn’t come back. She held it in her hand for a long time. That sentence no longer hurt. It had turned into a reminder of how far they had come. She tucked it into her journal, right behind the first postcard. They had not talked much about the gap months. Not directly. Not in the way people demand explanations. Sometimes he would refer to “those weeks” and she would nod, knowing he meant the time he’d walked away from the story before reading it through. Once, during a lazy Sunday afternoon, as she lay with her head in his lap while he absentmindedly traced patterns on her arm, she asked, “Why postcards?” He looked at her, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Because they force you to say something real in very little space. And because I didn’t know how to be near you without unraveling.” “You could’ve unraveled. I wouldn’t have judged you.” “I didn’t know that then.” “Do you know it now?” “Every day,” he said, kissing the top of her head. They traveled together once—just a short weekend trip to Mussoorie. They walked through the mist, sat in a bookstore café for hours, and read their favorite lines to each other. He picked a line from a Ruskin Bond story. She read a passage from a translated Bengali novel that made him cry. “You feel everything deeply,” she told him, brushing a tear off his cheek. “You make everything worth feeling,” he replied. They returned from the trip changed—not dramatically, but in the small, irreversible way that happens when someone learns how you like your eggs or sees you cry at a children’s movie. Winter grew colder. The kind of cold that brought shawls and thick socks and conversations under duvets. One evening, as they sat with hot soup and no lights on, Aarav turned to her suddenly. “Can I ask you something terrifying?” She raised an eyebrow. “Is it about death, commitment, or hypothetical children?” “None of those,” he said, laughing. “Then go ahead.” “Do you still love me? Or is this comfort?” Her spoon froze halfway to her mouth. The question wasn’t dramatic. It was honest. And Nia knew by now that Aarav’s honesty never came wrapped in grandeur. It came like fog—slow, quiet, everywhere. She set the spoon down. “I don’t think it’s one or the other,” she said. “I love you in the quietest way possible. The kind of love that doesn’t beg to be noticed. The kind that doesn’t panic when there’s silence. The kind that sits in cafés long after the coffee’s gone cold.” He didn’t reply right away. He reached out, placed his hand gently over hers, and nodded. “That’s more than I ever thought I’d get.” “It’s exactly what you deserve.” They didn’t say I love you often. But they said it in other ways. In reminders to carry an umbrella. In playlists shared. In hands held under tables. In forehead kisses before deadlines. The city continued to change. The café repainted its walls and swapped out jazz for acoustic folk. The barista with the eyebrow piercing left and was replaced by a boy who made terrible cappuccinos but smiled like he meant it. Still, their table remained. And they still met there on Tuesdays. One such Tuesday, after months of quiet steadiness, Aarav reached into his satchel and pulled out something wrapped in old newspaper. Nia eyed it suspiciously. “If this is another teacup, I swear I’ll—” “Open it,” he said. She unwrapped it slowly. It was a small wooden frame. Inside, pressed behind glass, was the original napkin with the line: Don’t wait for the rain. Sometimes it doesn’t come back. But underneath it, in his handwriting, was a new line. But sometimes, it does. Nia laughed, a full, unguarded sound that made a nearby couple glance over. “You’re such a sap.” “You love it.” “I do.” “Want to walk?” he asked. “Always,” she said. They stepped out into the street. It wasn’t raining, but the air felt like it might. Clouds lingered, unsure. They walked anyway. Past bookstores and fruit vendors and a dog sleeping under a rickshaw. Past memories that no longer hurt. They didn’t hold hands this time. They didn’t need to. Their shoulders brushed, and that was enough. “Do you think we’ll last?” she asked suddenly, watching the clouds. “We already did,” he said. “Everything after this is just bonus chapters.” She smiled. Somewhere in the distance, the first drop of rain finally landed on the tip of a parked scooter’s handle. Then another. Then ten. But they didn’t run for cover. They kept walking. Somewhere between raindrops, they had found each other again. Not in a beginning. Not in an ending. Just in the middle. Just enough. Just right.
