Saanvi A. Menon
The rain started sometime after midnight, stealthy at first, tapping like fingers on the tin awning outside Mira’s fourth-floor window. She didn’t get up to look. Mumbai rain, especially in late June, had a way of arriving without ceremony but leaving a trail. The fan above her bed slowed, hiccuped, and then stopped altogether. Silence followed, thick as wet wool. The power was out. Again.
She lay still, waiting for the noise to return — a whirr, a click, the hallway inverter kicking in — but the darkness held. Beyond her shuttered window, thunder cracked the sky into jagged pieces. In the hallway, someone cursed in Marathi. Downstairs, a metal shutter banged once, then again. Mira pulled her thin cotton sheet over her face like a veil. The darkness was full of memory.
It wasn’t the blackout that unnerved her. It was the silence that came with it — a kind that Mumbai rarely offered. No horns, no late-night taxi revs, no televisions leaking serial dramas through open windows. Only the howl of wind funneling down the chawl corridors. The city had, for once, stopped pretending to be invincible.
Her phone still had charge. 12:08 AM. No messages. Of course not. She’d stopped expecting any. The last message from her mother had been three years ago — a picture of some ash-covered shrine in Badrinath with a caption that read We are finally free. You should be too. Mira hadn’t replied. What could she have said? Thanks for leaving me with an old rent book and half a bag of rice?
She got up, barefoot, and padded into the hall, where the emergency light had long since burned out. She reached the common staircase, one hand trailing the damp wall. The blackout had cloaked everything in layers of shadow. Somewhere above, a window opened and someone called out into the street, but the storm swallowed their voice.
She wasn’t sure why she was going up instead of down.
By the time she reached the terrace door, her shirt was soaked through at the shoulders. The monsoon wind whipped around her like an accusation. Mira pushed the metal latch, and the door groaned open.
The sky was an oil painting of bruises. Purple clouds bruised with electric veins. She stepped onto the terrace and immediately felt the rain — heavy, clinging, determined. The city below was almost unrecognizable without its usual chaos of lights. The Bandra skyline was a silhouette. Even the sea, always humming in the background, had gone eerily still. It felt like the end of the world.
She wasn’t alone.
There were people on the terrace. Four of them, to be exact.
One boy was sitting on an upturned paint bucket, cradling an unplugged speaker like a baby. His curly hair clung to his forehead, and his eyes were shut as though the rain was music. Beside him, a girl in a raincoat that was more holes than fabric lit a cigarette with surprising ease. Leaning against the water tank was a tall guy in a black hoodie, silently watching the storm. And nearest to Mira stood a girl with silver hair streaks, holding a broken umbrella that she didn’t seem to care about using.
Mira froze. She had never seen any of them before.
The silver-haired girl noticed her and smiled. “Power’s out. The roof’s more interesting than the rooms.”
Mira nodded stiffly. Her instinct was to retreat, to pretend she’d taken a wrong turn. But something about the silence, about the speaker boy’s closed eyes and the girl’s slow exhale of smoke, made her stay.
“Come,” the girl with the umbrella said, moving aside. “It’s not raining any less over there.”
Mira stepped closer. The terrace was littered with old chairs, cracked tiles, and someone’s half-finished mural that read we’re still here in faded red paint. The boy with the speaker opened one eye.
“She’s new,” he said.
“I live on the fourth floor,” Mira replied automatically.
“You don’t talk to anyone.”
“I like it that way.”
“Fair.”
The girl with the cigarette took a long drag and introduced herself. “I’m Naina. That’s Rishi with the speaker, Aarav with the hoodie, and our queen of failed umbrellas is Pia.”
Mira nodded at each of them, unsure if they expected a handshake or a story. None of them offered either.
“We do this sometimes,” Pia said. “When the world stops. Come up here. Pretend the city’s asleep. Play games. Share secrets. Watch the clouds think.”
“And if there’s no storm?” Mira asked.
“There’s always a storm,” Aarav said from behind the water tank. His voice was deep, quiet, as though it belonged in a different kind of movie.
The others didn’t react like it was strange. Mira felt suddenly self-conscious, like she’d walked into a script halfway through and didn’t know her lines.
She stayed anyway.
There was a folding chair, broken on one side, and she lowered herself into it carefully. The rain eased for a moment, just enough to hear a siren far off, and then the sky cracked again.
“So,” Rishi said, still holding the speaker like a relic, “what’s your deal, fourth floor?”
Mira hesitated. Her deal? Her story was a closed room with all the lights off. She hadn’t told it in years.
“I’m Mira,” she said finally. “My parents left when I was fourteen. Joined some cult in the mountains. I’ve been alone since.”
No one gasped. No one said oh my god, that’s terrible. Pia offered a small nod. Naina flicked her ash.
“Cool,” Rishi said. “Want to pick a game?”
Mira blinked. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” Pia smiled. “You told your truth. That’s enough.”
And maybe it was the exhaustion, or the fact that the rain had slowed to a whisper, or the way the darkness made everyone a little braver, but Mira felt something shift inside her — just a little.
She took the umbrella from Pia’s hand, twirled it once like a wand, and said, “Let’s play.”
It was Pia who suggested the rules. She crouched beside the water tank, drawing circles on the wet cement with a piece of charcoal she’d pulled from her hoodie pocket. Around her, the others gathered like moths orbiting a strange, flickering idea. The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle now, a rhythm more forgiving, almost like background music.
“One question. One answer. No lying,” Pia said, punctuating the final circle. “If you lie, you leave.”
“No one’s gonna know if someone lies,” Mira said, her voice quieter than intended.
Rishi grinned. “That’s where it gets interesting. Sometimes the truth is louder than words. Sometimes lies smell like smoke.”
“Or desperation,” Naina added, letting her cigarette burn low.
Aarav hadn’t moved much since the previous hour. He stood watching the skyline, the empty black of the city stretching endlessly, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his hoodie. When he spoke, it was with the finality of someone dropping a stone down a well. “Or silence.”
Mira looked at each of them in turn. Something about the setup felt theatrical — a rooftop stage, the city’s lights gone dark, the night holding its breath. She sat on a slightly damp stool someone had dragged over and folded her arms across her knees.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll play.”
Pia clapped once. “We go in circles. No skips. No dodging. One person asks. One person answers. Ready?”
They nodded, mostly.
“Okay,” Pia said, turning to Rishi first. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever stolen?”
Rishi raised an eyebrow, amused. “This should be fun.” He sat up straighter. “In tenth grade, I stole a keyboard from my school’s music room. Slipped it out during the flood evacuation. It wasn’t even expensive, just… I needed it. My parents had stopped buying me anything musical. Thought I’d ‘outgrow’ the phase.”
“Did they find out?” Mira asked.
“No,” Rishi smiled. “But I think my music teacher knew. He let me play the last assembly before I left. That was his answer.”
There was a silence then — the kind that meant everyone was storing something away. Secrets could do that, Mira thought. They didn’t vanish when told. They just passed into new hands.
Rishi turned to Naina. “What’s one thing about yourself you’ve never told anyone?”
Naina looked up, cigarette now a stub between her fingers. Her eyes glinted under the leaking terrace bulb.
“I’m afraid of sleeping in silence,” she said.
“That’s not a secret,” Pia shrugged.
“No, I mean really afraid. Like… panic attack level. I sleep with white noise, fans, traffic, music, anything. Silence makes me feel like I’m underwater.”
“Why?” Aarav asked, voice low.
“Because silence sounds too much like when my brother died,” she replied, almost conversationally, as if the weight of it didn’t crush her anymore.
Mira stared. Not because it was tragic. But because of how calmly she had said it.
Naina turned to Aarav. “Your turn. What’s the one thing you regret never saying?”
Aarav didn’t move for a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and looked not at Naina, but at the rain.
“I never said goodbye,” he murmured. “When my sister left for rehab, I didn’t even look at her. I just… let her go. I thought she’d fail again. Thought I was sparing myself.”
“Did she come back?” Mira asked, before she could stop herself.
“No.”
And that was it. No names. No explanations. Just three syllables that made Mira feel like her own chest was cracked open.
The circle turned again. Aarav to Pia.
“What are you running from?” he asked.
Pia smiled, as though she’d expected the question. She bent her head slightly and shook the water off her umbrella.
“Everything,” she said. “Mostly, my parents’ version of who I should be. The girl who wears salwar suits and smiles at marriage proposals. The girl who doesn’t date girls. The girl who becomes an orthodontist and marries some charted accountant in Singapore.”
“Sounds… precise,” Mira said.
“Oh, they have a spreadsheet,” Pia replied with a smirk.
The wind changed slightly. A gust lifted one of the plastic chairs and dropped it with a clatter against the parapet wall. Mira pulled her knees up closer.
Pia turned to Mira. “Your turn.”
Mira hadn’t thought they’d actually include her in the circle yet. She felt her throat tighten as every pair of eyes turned. They weren’t cruel. Just expectant.
Pia leaned forward. “What’s the one memory you wish you could burn?”
Mira’s first instinct was to say none. That she was fine. That she had it handled. But something about the sky, bruised and battered and endlessly dark, made lying seem like an insult.
“I was twelve,” she said slowly. “My parents had already started ‘meeting people’ from their spiritual group. One night, they came home glowing — literally, like they’d swallowed candles — and they told me I had to choose.”
“Choose what?” Naina asked.
“To come with them or stay back.”
Rishi frowned. “You were twelve.”
Mira nodded. “They said I was old enough to understand. That my soul needed to ‘choose its journey.’ I asked if I could think about it. They left the next day anyway.”
No one spoke for a long moment. The rain picked up again, almost like the sky itself needed a distraction.
“Did they ever come back?” Pia asked.
“No. But I still get birthday emails. Always from a generic account. Once, they sent me a voice note of someone chanting near a waterfall.”
“Sounds like a cult,” Rishi said, too gently to sound like mockery.
“It was,” Mira replied. “And sometimes I wonder if they chose freedom, or just an escape route.”
Pia didn’t press further. She simply nodded once, then looked at the others.
The circle broke naturally after that. No one said let’s stop or enough for tonight. They just let the storm speak for a while. The rooftop became quieter, more settled — like they’d exhaled some part of themselves into the sky and it hadn’t been rejected.
At some point, Pia produced a half-dead Bluetooth speaker from her bag. Rishi plugged in his phone, and soft music drifted across the terrace — old Hindi film songs, the kind Mira remembered from her childhood auto rides. No one danced. They just sat, their limbs strewn across tiles, chairs, and each other’s borrowed warmth.
Mira felt something unfamiliar start to stir in her chest. It wasn’t happiness. Not exactly. But something adjacent. Like the moment before a smile, before a cry, before the sky split open again.
For the first time in years, she didn’t feel like a leftover.
By the time Mira opened her eyes, the rain had paused. Not stopped—just… paused, as if the sky had taken a breath. She was curled on the old folding chair with someone’s sweatshirt draped over her shoulders. Rishi was asleep on the floor beside the paint bucket, using his speaker as a pillow. Naina lay with her arm over her eyes, cigarette burns marking the concrete near her fingers like stars. Aarav sat upright against the water tank, still awake, his gaze fixed on the skyline. Pia had vanished.
For a moment, Mira wasn’t sure if the night before had actually happened. The questions. The answers. The quiet kindness of strangers. But her wet socks, her still-damp hair, and the knot in her chest slowly untying — they all told her yes. It had happened. It was real.
She stood, slowly, stretching her spine until it cracked, and padded across the terrace to the low wall. Mumbai looked washed, as if the storm had peeled off a layer. The streets below were still flooded, empty except for a floating yellow wrapper that sailed past like a small, defiant boat. No autos. No vendors. Just the city, stunned into stillness.
She turned and found Aarav watching her.
“You don’t sleep much?” she asked.
“I sleep when I need to.”
“And now?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t want to miss the moment the city came back to life.”
Mira sat beside him, careful not to let her shoulder touch his. “Do you think it will?”
Aarav tilted his head. “The city always does. It forgets, and begins again.”
Mira wanted to ask what he meant, but instead she said, “Thanks for the chair.”
He didn’t smile, but his voice was gentle. “Thanks for not lying.”
Footsteps echoed from the stairwell. Pia emerged, hair messy, carrying a cracked plastic tray. It held five steaming cups of cutting chai and a pile of Parle-G packets.
“I broke into aunty’s locked kitchen,” she said cheerfully. “Don’t worry, I left a note. And a tenner.”
Mira laughed — an involuntary, surprised thing that startled even herself.
“You’re like a storm in sneakers,” Mira said.
“I take that as a compliment,” Pia grinned.
They all gathered slowly, pulled together by the scent of tea and the promise of another moment. They drank on the terrace floor, backs against the water tank, sipping from mismatched steel tumblers. The tea wasn’t sweet enough, but it was warm. The Parle-Gs were damp from humidity, but they tasted like childhood.
“Does anyone know what day it is?” Rishi asked between bites.
“Saturday,” Mira said, then paused. “Or Sunday. I’m not sure.”
“I think it’s Sunday,” Naina murmured. “My phone said Saturday last night. Unless the apocalypse reset the calendar.”
They sat like that for a while, letting the silence fill them again — not the scary kind, but the shared kind, where no one needed to fill it. The storm had shifted the world just a little, and somehow, that shift had opened something.
Mira hadn’t spoken this much in one night since… she couldn’t remember. Maybe never.
“How long have you all known each other?” she asked suddenly.
Rishi looked at Pia. Pia looked at Naina. Aarav stayed silent.
“Not that long,” Pia said. “We met on the roof, just like you.”
“Blackouts bring people together,” Rishi added.
“It started with one game of truth,” Naina said. “Three months ago. Different group back then. Some came back. Some didn’t. We… kept showing up.”
Mira frowned. “So this isn’t… a friend group?”
“No,” Pia said. “More like a revolving door. People come up here when something breaks. Or when they’re afraid of being alone.”
Mira absorbed that. It made sense, in a strange way. A place above the world, untethered. A room with no walls. A family without blood.
“We should make lunch,” Naina said, stretching. “Before the fridge starts rotting.”
“Your place or mine?” Rishi asked.
“Mine. I have gas. And spices.”
“I have two eggs,” Mira offered.
“You’re officially in,” Pia grinned.
They went downstairs in a slow parade, the five of them trailing wet footprints and shared energy. Mira hadn’t noticed it last night, but the building was old — the kind with high ceilings, wrought-iron railings, and dusty grilles that told stories if you looked close enough.
Naina’s flat smelled like incense and unwashed linen. Books were stacked along the windowsill. A cracked Krishna idol leaned sideways near the sink. There was no power, but the morning light flooded the kitchen like a benediction.
Rishi found an old radio and tried to coax it into life. Pia began chopping onions with practiced ease. Mira peeled potatoes. Aarav leaned against the doorframe, occasionally handing out knives or glancing at the gas flame as if guarding it.
“I feel like this is illegal,” Mira said, grinning.
“What is?”
“This. Making breakfast with four strangers. Sharing chai on a terrace. Being… seen.”
Naina looked up from where she stirred the masala. “It’s not illegal. Just rare.”
They ended up making aloo bhurji with half-spoiled eggs, toast crisped on a pan, and a second round of chai. They ate on the living room floor, using books as plates and napkins as spoons. Mira couldn’t remember the last time food tasted so… earned.
After the meal, Aarav opened the window. The air smelled like wet leaves and rust. A few kids ran barefoot down the street, splashing in the puddles. Someone yelled something about a generator. The world, slowly, was returning.
Rishi asked if anyone wanted to draw. He pulled a stack of old sketchbooks from his bag and handed out charcoal pencils. Pia drew a tower on fire. Naina drew an eye with a cracked iris. Aarav sketched the roof — not how it looked, but how it felt: chaotic, open, full of shadows and stars.
Mira stared at the blank page in front of her. She didn’t know how to draw. But she made a mark anyway — a small girl standing in front of a house made of light. The house had no doors. The girl had no face. Still, the image made her throat ache.
When she showed it to the others, no one asked what it meant. They just looked, nodded, and passed it on.
It was 3:00 p.m. when the fan above Naina’s head creaked once and whirred to life. The power had returned. The fridge buzzed. The radio sputtered a single, fuzzy line from an old Kishore Kumar song.
And just like that, the spell broke.
They didn’t say it, but they all felt it — that return to gravity. The city reclaiming its rhythm. The pause was over.
Mira stood at the doorway, watching the fan spin. Her chest felt hollow and full at the same time. She wasn’t ready for this to end. She wasn’t sure what this even was.
Pia touched her arm lightly. “Come back up tonight.”
“Will you all be there?” Mira asked.
Pia smiled, sad and bright. “Maybe. Maybe not. But the sky always has one more secret.”
The rain returned after sundown — not furious like the night before, but persistent, as if the monsoon had settled into its long rhythm. Mira stood in her room, wrapped in a faded towel, staring at her reflection in the broken mirror above the sink. A thin crack split her face down the middle. For once, it felt appropriate.
Her hair curled in odd directions. Her eyes looked tired, but less hollow. She wore a loose black T-shirt and navy track pants, the kind she used to sleep in but now felt okay being seen in. On impulse, she added the silver anklet she hadn’t worn in years — a gift from her mother, back when birthdays still had cake.
She hesitated at the door.
It would be easier not to go upstairs. The city was back on. Lights blinked on in every apartment. TVs were playing, phones were charging. The world had resumed. Whatever had existed on the terrace the night before could vanish now, brushed aside like a dream after waking.
But something inside her ached for the rooftop — for the strange silence and stranger intimacy. So she slipped out quietly, climbed the stairs two at a time, and stepped back into the soft breath of rain.
They were there. Not all of them — only Pia and Rishi, sitting on opposite ends of the terrace with a plastic tarp stretched above their heads like a makeshift canopy. Under it, a small battery lamp glowed. They were eating chips from a shared packet, their legs tangled around an overturned bucket.
Mira approached slowly. Pia grinned. “You came.”
“I wasn’t sure if it would be… weird.”
“It’s always weird. That’s why it works,” Rishi said, offering the chips.
“Where’s the rest of the rooftop council?” Mira asked, settling down beside them.
“Naina had to go visit her cousin. Aarav said nothing and disappeared this morning. Classic him,” Pia replied.
“Do people always leave without warning?”
Rishi shrugged. “Some come for a single storm. Some stay for a season. There are no contracts here.”
They sat listening to the rain drumming softly on the tarp. It was strangely soothing — the opposite of silence, but not loud either. Just present.
“Tell her,” Pia said suddenly, nudging Rishi.
“Tell me what?”
“About the monsoon ghost stories,” Pia grinned.
Rishi rolled his eyes, but he was already smiling. “It’s this stupid game we made up. We take turns telling ghost stories — but only ones that could be real. Not fantasy. Not horror movie stuff. The kind of ghosts you might actually meet in Mumbai.”
“The rules are simple,” Pia added. “One ghost per person. Three stories. No jokes. And you can’t reuse ghosts.”
Mira raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, ‘reuse ghosts’?”
“You’ll see.”
They sat cross-legged in a tight triangle, the tarp rustling above them. Rishi adjusted the lamp to throw their shadows long across the terrace wall.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “My ghost lives on the 8:17 Virar fast. She gets on at Andheri, always the third compartment. She’s in a red kurti and ripped jeans, carries a giant tote bag. Looks totally normal. Except she never speaks. Just stares at the floor. And if you look at her reflection in the window—she’s not there.”
“Cliché,” Pia muttered, but with affection.
Rishi grinned. “Wait for it. She only appears on days it rains. And only if you’re thinking about someone you’ve lost. If she looks up and meets your eyes, you’ll see the face of the person you’re missing.”
Mira felt a shiver crawl up her neck.
“And what happens then?” she asked.
“You get off at the wrong station,” Rishi said. “Every time.”
They let the silence settle for a moment before Pia picked up the thread.
“My ghost lives on the 14th floor of a high-rise in Malad,” she began. “Except the building only has thirteen floors. The ghost is a girl about our age. She invites people in through dreams. You’ll wake up with an address scribbled on your arm, and you’ll go because you’re curious. That’s how it works.”
Mira blinked. “What happens when you get there?”
“There’s a door. Apartment 1401. The number looks faded, like it doesn’t want to be seen. If you knock, you’ll hear laughter. Girls laughing. Like it’s a party. You’ll feel like you’re missing out. But if you open the door…”
She paused.
“You never leave. Not your body, not your name. You just become the next girl behind the door.”
Mira stared at her. “That’s not a ghost story. That’s a trap.”
Pia smiled, eyes gleaming. “Exactly.”
They turned to Mira.
“I don’t know any,” she said quickly.
“Make one up,” Rishi said. “You’ve lived alone long enough. I’m sure your walls have listened to something.”
She hesitated, then looked out across the dark city.
“There’s a tea stall near the flyover,” she said slowly. “Right where the road curves before the bridge. You’ve probably seen it — tiny shack, yellow sign, always open, even at 3 a.m.”
They nodded.
“The ghost is the man behind the counter. Middle-aged. Always smiles, always gives you one extra biscuit. If you go there after midnight and order without speaking, he’ll give you your chai and ask just one question.”
“What question?” Pia whispered.
“Who did you leave behind?”
She looked at them. “You don’t have to answer. But if you do, the tea will taste like the last memory you have of that person.”
Rishi whistled low. “Okay, that’s beautiful and terrifying.”
“I’d answer,” Pia said. “Even if it burned.”
They leaned back, letting the tarp shake above them. The rain was heavier now, but they didn’t move. Mira felt the weight of the city beneath her, alive with electricity and longing.
She glanced at Rishi and Pia — people who had been strangers only a day ago, now sharing ghost stories and chips like it meant something. Maybe it did. Maybe the most real things happened in moments like these — quiet, unmarked, lost to the world but tattooed into your bones.
Pia handed her the last chip.
“For the girl who brought ghosts to tea,” she said.
Mira laughed. It wasn’t loud. But it stayed with her longer than she expected.
The next morning, Mira woke up before her alarm. Not that she’d set one — it was a habit she hadn’t grown out of. The room was bright with post-rain sunlight, the first real blue she’d seen in three days. The fan whirred like it had never stopped, and a thin trail of incense curled from someone’s open window down the corridor. The city had returned to itself — blaring horns, delivery scooters, mothers yelling from balconies.
But Mira felt different, like the inside of her had shifted slightly to the left, like something had been rearranged during the blackout that couldn’t be put back. The rooftop lived in her now. She didn’t know what that meant, only that her hands itched for it, her eyes searched for the sky.
She checked her phone. A single message.
Pia
Rooftop at 6. Bring something broken.
Mira stared at the message for a full minute. She didn’t ask what it meant. She didn’t need to.
She spent most of the day moving through the world with half her attention elsewhere. At the kirana downstairs, she bought biscuits she didn’t need. At the bus stop, she watched a man water plastic plants on his balcony and smiled at the irony. She thought about the others. Where Aarav had gone. Whether Naina’s cousin was real. Whether Rishi always looked like he was listening to music, even when he wasn’t wearing headphones.
She thought about Pia most.
Pia, who walked like the world belonged to her, but looked at everyone like they were temporary gifts. Pia, who carried broken umbrellas and made ghost stories feel like truths. Pia, who said come back without ever making it a command.
At 5:55, Mira climbed the stairs.
The terrace looked different in daylight — smaller, more ordinary. The cracks in the tiles were visible. The paint bucket had been moved. A crow pecked at a soggy Parle-G packet in the corner. The mural, we’re still here, had begun to flake.
But Pia was already there, sitting cross-legged on the edge wall, her back to the wind, a shoebox beside her.
“You came,” she said without turning.
“You asked,” Mira replied.
She joined her, sitting a few inches away. The wind played with the edge of her T-shirt. For a while, they said nothing. Just let the sun dry whatever the storm hadn’t.
“What did you bring?” Pia asked.
Mira reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a small plastic Ganesh idol. The kind found in taxis, slightly chipped on the crown. She held it out.
“It was my father’s. He left it in the kitchen window the day they left. I’ve moved it around a hundred times. Couldn’t throw it. Couldn’t pray to it either.”
Pia took it gently, like it was fragile. “Broken faith. Powerful offering.”
“What’s in the box?” Mira asked.
Pia opened it slowly. Inside were five objects.
A cracked phone screen. A torn photograph. A lighter with no flame. A string bracelet. A letter, folded so many times it looked like pressed leaf.
“This is the rooftop archive,” Pia said. “We leave things here. Not to forget. Just… so we don’t carry all of it alone.”
Mira stared. “Is this what it’s all been about?”
“No. There’s no ‘it.’ No master plan. But sometimes, when the world breaks, it helps to know where the pieces are.”
She placed Mira’s idol into the box. Closed the lid. “Now you’re part of the archive.”
Mira didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the wind dry the tears.
“I don’t want to go back downstairs,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to.”
“But you’ll all leave eventually.”
Pia looked at her, really looked — and Mira saw it then, the sadness behind the defiance, the way Pia’s bravery was patched together with threads of abandonment too.
“Maybe,” Pia said. “But not tonight.”
They sat like that until the light softened and the world turned gold. At some point, Rishi arrived with a guitar that was missing a string. Naina came later with stolen mangoes and a bag of ice. Even Aarav returned, without explanation, holding a book of poetry he never read aloud.
That night, they didn’t play games. They didn’t ask questions. They just existed. Mira rested her head on Pia’s lap. Rishi hummed old songs. Aarav drew skylines on the floor with chalk. Naina threw ice cubes at passing crows and laughed like she was ten years old.
At 2:17 a.m., the sky split open again — not with rain, but with stars.
The rooftop, Mira realized, was not a place.
It was a possibility.
By Monday morning, the city had fully woken up. Autorickshaws blared their horns. The chaiwalas were back at the corners, their kettles steaming like miniature volcanoes. The paan shop next to Mira’s building had already replaced its broken signboard, and the vegetable vendor downstairs was arguing with a customer about the price of okra. The blackout felt like a fever dream — something only the rooftop knew had happened.
Mira stood on her balcony, watching the street below. Life was relentless. It didn’t care if you had stayed up until 4 a.m. sharing rooftop silences and mangoes with strangers. It didn’t care if something inside you had shifted. The world always demanded you return.
She went inside, made herself a cup of tea, and scrolled through her phone. No notifications. No messages from her parents, not that she expected any. A generic email from the cable company. A spam SMS offering a loan. She stared at the tea until it went cold.
By afternoon, she found herself restless. Every corner of the apartment felt claustrophobic, as if the walls had shrunk. She tried reading an old book she loved, but the words felt flat. She put on music, but every song reminded her of the rooftop — of the half-broken guitar Rishi strummed, of Pia’s off-key humming, of the strange sense that those three days had carved something permanent.
At 6:00 p.m., her phone buzzed. It was a voice note.
Pia
“Rooftop. No questions. Bring yourself.”
Mira didn’t even think. She just went.
The terrace was already alive when she arrived. The sun had set, leaving the sky streaked in pink and purple, like bruises healing. Rishi sat cross-legged with his guitar, plucking out a melody Mira didn’t recognize. Naina was painting something on the wall with a small brush and a jar of cheap blue paint. Aarav leaned against the parapet, reading from the poetry book he’d brought last night. Pia sat at the center of it all, her eyes catching the last of the light.
“You made it,” Pia said, smiling.
“You sound like I had a choice,” Mira said, dropping her bag.
“You didn’t.”
Mira walked closer, watching Naina paint. It was a shape — a rough circle, filled in with streaks of blue that looked like waves.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Mira asked.
“Us,” Naina said. “Or the city. Or maybe just a circle.”
“She’s not very specific,” Rishi teased.
“Better than your sad-boy songs,” Naina shot back.
“Hey, my songs have depth.”
“Yeah, like potholes,” Pia laughed.
Mira sat down beside them, letting their voices wash over her. She didn’t need to say much. Being here felt like enough — like breathing without realizing you’d been holding your breath all day.
Later, when the music softened and the painting dried, they decided to tell almost-truths. It was Pia’s idea, of course. She called it The Stories We Almost Lived.
“Rules are simple,” Pia said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Tell a story from your life, but bend one detail — just one — to make it untrue. We have to guess what’s real and what’s not.”
Rishi went first. “Okay. When I was thirteen, I sang at a school event, and a famous Bollywood director told me I had a voice made for cinema. He gave me his card. I still have it.”
“That sounds too dramatic to be real,” Naina said.
“It’s true,” Mira said suddenly. “I believe it. Look at his face.”
They all stared at Rishi. He grinned, sheepish. “Fine. It’s true. The card’s useless now, though. The guy’s in Canada making commercials.”
“Your turn,” Rishi said, pointing at Mira.
She hesitated. “I… I don’t have stories like that.”
“Then make one up,” Pia said gently.
Mira closed her eyes. “Okay. When I was fourteen, after they left, I ran away to Pune for three days. I slept at a bus station, pretending to wait for someone. I ate vada pav and read a stranger’s newspaper. I almost didn’t come back.”
The silence that followed wasn’t judgmental. It was soft. Real.
“Was that true?” Rishi asked.
Mira shrugged. “Almost.”
As the night deepened, the rooftop shifted into something else — quieter, slower. Naina sat with her head against Rishi’s shoulder, half-asleep. Aarav recited a line from his book: The rain remembers every face it touches. Pia turned to Mira, her silver-streaked hair catching the light.
“You’re different,” Pia said softly.
“How?”
“You’re not just surviving anymore.”
Mira wanted to say something clever, but the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she said, “It’s because of you. All of you.”
Pia smiled, not like she was flattered, but like she understood something Mira hadn’t said aloud.
It was past midnight when the rain started again — not harsh, but steady. They moved under the half-broken tarp, sitting close to avoid getting drenched. Mira felt Pia’s knee brush hers, and her heart stuttered. She wasn’t used to this kind of closeness, this kind of warmth.
Pia glanced at her, eyes unreadable. “Do you trust me?”
Mira blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then close your eyes.”
Mira hesitated, but did as told. The rain sounded louder when you weren’t looking at it. She felt the tarp tremble, the city hum below. And then, very softly, Pia’s hand touched hers — not grabbing, just resting. A simple, quiet connection.
Mira opened her eyes, but Pia was looking away, smiling at nothing.
By the time Mira returned to her room, it was 2:00 a.m. The city had gone quiet again, but not in the same way as during the blackout. It was the quiet of after — after something had begun, after something had cracked open.
She sat on her bed, the smell of rain still clinging to her clothes. She didn’t know what this was — the rooftop, Pia, these moments that felt heavier than they should. All she knew was that she wasn’t ready for them to end.
The rain took a break the next day. The sky, a worn-out blue quilt, sagged with tired clouds that hovered without menace. It was too humid to be comfortable, but Mira didn’t complain. She walked through the lanes of her neighborhood as if she’d never noticed them before — the cracked steps outside Sharma Medical, the way the light caught the green moss between bricks, the boy at the PCO booth whistling an old Kishore Kumar tune.
Her phone buzzed just once all day — another voice note from Pia.
Pia
“Not rooftop tonight. Meet me near the bridge. Come alone.”
There was no location sent, no time, no smiley face. Just those eight words. Mira read them three times and didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. The message vibrated under her skin, like a bell rung somewhere inside her that hadn’t stopped humming.
At 7:40 p.m., Mira left her building and took the long route. Past the shuttered bakery, past the mosque with the fading crescent on its gate, past the single working streetlight that flickered like a failing heartbeat. She walked without thinking, letting her feet remember what her mind didn’t.
Pia was waiting where the flyover curved, her back to the railings, hair unbound, silver streaks gleaming under the half-moon. She wore a white T-shirt with a lightning bolt drawn across it in marker. Her jeans were torn at the knees. She held a single paper cup of cutting chai and offered it without a word.
Mira took it. No questions.
They stood side by side, watching the traffic roll beneath them in slow streaks of light. It was one of those rare Mumbai moments where the chaos looked beautiful. Like the city wasn’t broken — just breathing heavily.
“Do you believe,” Pia said finally, “that people meet for a reason?”
Mira sipped the tea. “I used to.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know. I think people… collide.”
“Like storms?”
“Like accidents,” Mira said.
Pia laughed — not with joy, but with recognition. “You sound like me.”
“I’ve been watching you.”
“I know.”
Pia turned to her. “Want to know something I don’t tell many people?”
Mira didn’t respond, just nodded.
“I never wanted to stay here,” Pia said. “This building. This city. This skin. I was supposed to leave last year. Start over. But I didn’t. I stayed. And now I don’t know if that was strength… or fear.”
Mira’s hand tightened around the paper cup.
“Why didn’t you go?” she asked.
“Because something inside me said I hadn’t met the right people yet.”
“And now?” Mira asked, her voice quieter than she intended.
“I don’t know,” Pia whispered. “Maybe I have.”
They stood in silence, the city howling beneath them, the air thick with all the things they couldn’t say.
Then Pia said, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere that isn’t a rooftop.”
They walked without destination. Past the shuttered mall with its glassy ghost eyes, past a garden closed for repairs, past a wall covered in posters for a movie that had already disappeared from theatres. Mira didn’t ask questions. It felt like a night meant for not asking.
Eventually, they ended up on a broken jetty that jutted out into a small inlet. The sea lapped quietly, indifferent. The stars played hide and seek behind lazy clouds. There was no one else around — just them, and the water, and the city flickering behind them like a tired lover.
They sat at the edge, legs dangling above the black.
“Do you ever wonder,” Pia said, “what version of yourself you’ll be ten years from now?”
“I can’t even see next week,” Mira said.
“Try.”
Mira paused, then closed her eyes.
“I see a small apartment. Lots of books. A kettle that whistles. Music in the background. I don’t know what I do for work, but I wake up and don’t feel heavy. And there’s… someone.”
Pia leaned slightly closer. “Someone?”
Mira nodded. “Not a face. Just… a presence.”
“That’s more than most people allow themselves.”
“What about you?” Mira asked. “What do you see?”
Pia didn’t answer for a long time.
Then she said, “I see movement. Trains, airports, new cities. But no one stays. Not even me. I’m always leaving. Always starting over.”
Mira turned to look at her.
“Do you want to stop?”
Pia’s voice cracked, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how.”
And that was the thing about Pia. She was fire and smoke and wind — and yet, she admitted to not knowing how to be still. Mira reached over, slowly, and touched her hand. Not grabbed, not claimed. Just touched.
And Pia didn’t pull away.
Later, they sat in silence again, feet swinging above the sea, letting the night exist around them. Mira thought about how many versions of herself she had killed to survive the last few years — the hopeful daughter, the straight-A student, the girl who believed love always came home.
And now, here she was. Sitting on a forgotten jetty with a girl who didn’t know how to stay. A girl who had somehow made Mira feel like a home worth walking into.
She didn’t want the moment to end. But she knew it would.
“Pia,” she said softly.
Pia turned, the wind catching her hair.
Mira leaned forward, hesitating just for a second, and kissed her — light, unsure, tender. Like a question and an answer wrapped into one breath.
When they pulled apart, Pia didn’t speak. Her eyes shimmered. She reached up, tucked a strand of Mira’s hair behind her ear, and whispered, “There’s a storm coming.”
Mira smiled. “Then we’ll watch it together.”
The next morning, the clouds returned with purpose. They weren’t drifting anymore — they loomed, thick and grey, as though the sky was gathering its breath. Mira knew the signs. Mumbai had its own weather language. When the crows stopped cawing and the street dogs began to curl tighter into doorsteps, something big was coming.
She stayed in bed longer than usual, the memory of last night still warm against her chest. Her lips remembered Pia’s, soft and determined. Her fingers remembered the shape of Pia’s hand — not delicate, not calloused, but real. Real enough to break her if she wasn’t careful.
The city buzzed faintly outside, slower than normal, like people knew the rain would come and were trying to finish life before it did. Mira finally got up, made tea, and stared at her reflection for a long time.
She didn’t look like someone in love. But maybe that’s because it didn’t feel like love yet — just the start of something that wanted to be.
Her phone buzzed once.
Pia
You okay?
Mira smiled. She typed, Yes. But the sky isn’t.
A few seconds later, Pia replied: Meet me at the archive. 5 p.m.
The rooftop had changed again. The tarp was gone, replaced by a line of laundry hung across the parapet, soaked in blue and maroon cloth. Someone had drawn chalk arrows on the floor, all pointing in different directions. At the far end, Pia sat cross-legged with the archive box open in front of her, the wind tangling her hair around her face.
Mira walked across slowly, not rushing, letting the weight of the air settle on her skin.
Pia didn’t look up. She was holding Mira’s Ganesh idol in one hand, her thumb tracing the chipped crown.
“I was thinking,” Pia said, “maybe it’s time we burned the archive.”
Mira frowned. “What?”
“Not all of it. Just the parts we don’t need anymore.”
“I thought the whole point was to preserve.”
“It was. But preservation isn’t always healing, Mira. Sometimes holding on is just… holding yourself hostage.”
Mira sat down beside her. “Is this about last night?”
“No.” Pia looked at her. “Yes. Maybe.”
She took a deep breath, then added, “I like you.”
“I know,” Mira whispered.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“I didn’t either.”
Pia finally met her eyes. “But I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
Pia reached into the box and pulled out the broken lighter. “This was mine,” she said. “Belonged to a girl I once loved. She left. The lighter stayed. So I kept it. Like a proof that something real happened.”
“And now?”
“Now I want to believe new things can be real too.”
Mira nodded slowly. “Then let’s do it. Let’s let go.”
They gathered the items — the cracked phone screen, the torn photograph, the empty bracelet, the lighter. But they left Mira’s idol in the box.
“Not this one,” Pia said. “This one needs to stay a little longer.”
They made a small pit using an old steel bowl, poured just enough cooking oil, and lit the flame with a match from Rishi’s guitar case. One by one, they fed the past to the fire.
No rituals. No drama. Just quiet endings.
By the time the flames died, the sky had turned bruised. The first raindrops fell like whispers.
And Pia kissed her.
This time it wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t a question. It was an answer to one they hadn’t dared to ask out loud.
Later, when the others arrived, the rooftop filled with a different kind of energy. Rishi came soaked, still laughing from a scooter ride through flooded lanes. Naina brought a bag of half-wet samosas. Aarav had a face drawn on his shirt in blue marker that no one bothered to explain.
They sat in a circle, sheltering under umbrellas and jackets, eating in the rain. Mira sat close to Pia, their shoulders brushing. No one asked questions. No one needed to.
Rishi strummed a tune without chords. Naina hummed. Aarav closed his eyes. And the storm came down harder — not violent, but steady, like a drumbeat they could all breathe to.
At one point, Mira looked around and thought, This is it. This is the moment I’ll remember when everything else fades.
Not the kiss. Not the silence. Not even the burning of the archive.
But this — rain falling on people who stayed, even when they had every reason to leave.
The rain lasted all night.
Not a storm, not a downpour—just a soft, relentless fall that coated the world in a kind of shimmering pause. When Mira woke up, the city was wrapped in fog. Her windows were misted over, and the usual clamor of morning—milkmen, scooters, the aunties arguing about gas cylinders—was muffled, like someone had placed a quilt over the world.
She stayed in bed longer than usual. There was no message from Pia. No rooftop plan. No strange code in a voice note. Just silence.
But it didn’t feel like abandonment. It felt like space.
By noon, Mira made herself tea and stood at her window, watching the drops trace delicate rivers down the glass. The world felt newly washed. Even the peeling paint on the building across the street looked poetic in this light.
Her mind kept looping back to the kiss. Not because of how it felt—though that was still lingering—but because of what it had meant. Pia, who never stayed. Pia, who had built a rooftop empire out of impermanence. Pia, who had kissed her like it was okay to believe in something lasting.
Mira touched her lips absentmindedly. She had never known want could feel so gentle.
It was late afternoon when she finally stepped out. No destination. No umbrella. The drizzle had thinned to mist, and she walked slowly, hands in her pockets, letting the day touch her skin. She passed the chaiwala near the flyover. He didn’t ask her usual order. He just handed her a cup and nodded, as though he knew. As though everyone who’d ever waited for something understood this kind of quiet.
She wandered past a bookstore, its windows fogged over. Past a shuttered beauty parlour with a sign that read Back After Repairs. Past the closed gates of a school she never attended.
Then her phone buzzed.
Pia
Library stairs. Now.
That was it. No explanation. Just place and time.
Mira turned around, heart pacing faster than her steps.
The library was an old colonial relic that had somehow survived the Mumbai skyline—tall, ivy-covered, with dusty arches and more birds than books. The entrance was blocked off by scaffolding, but the stone stairs remained.
Pia was waiting at the top, a red umbrella balanced over her shoulder, her jeans darkened from the wet. She looked up as Mira approached, and for a second, neither said anything.
Then Pia patted the step beside her.
Mira sat.
“I’ve been thinking,” Pia said.
“Always dangerous,” Mira replied.
“I know.”
Pia folded the umbrella and let the mist settle on her shoulders.
“I want to stay.”
Mira froze. “What?”
“I don’t mean here-here. Not this stair, not this city forever. Just… with you. For a while. As long as it matters.”
Mira blinked, heart thudding.
“I don’t need forever,” Pia said. “I don’t believe in it. But I believe in this. And I want to see where it goes.”
Mira laughed—not because it was funny, but because it was overwhelming. “You’re terrible at confessions.”
“I know,” Pia said. “But you make me want to try.”
They sat in silence, shoulders pressed together, the city slowly drying around them. A child ran past with a paper boat, shouting to no one. A pigeon flapped onto the railing and shook the rain from its wings.
“I’m scared too,” Mira said.
Pia nodded. “Good. Let’s be scared together.”
Mira leaned her head on Pia’s shoulder. The world could have ended just then, and it would have been fine.
That night, the rooftop was quiet.
Rishi had gone to visit his cousin in Thane. Naina was apparently nursing a hangover with coconut water and dark sunglasses. Aarav had texted something cryptic: some silences are better unshared.
So it was just them. Pia and Mira. A rooftop. A city trying to be calm.
They lay on their backs, staring up at a sky half-covered in drifting clouds. No rain. No music. Just the buzz of faraway traffic and the occasional bark of a dog echoing from the alleyways.
Mira pointed up. “That cloud looks like a bicycle.”
“That’s clearly a sea horse,” Pia said.
“You’re delusional.”
“You like it.”
Mira smiled.
Pia rolled onto her side. “You know the first time I saw you, you were coming down the stairs with a cracked water bottle and headphones on. You looked like you didn’t want anyone to see you.”
“I didn’t.”
“But I saw you anyway.”
Mira turned to her. “And now?”
“Now I can’t stop.”
There it was again—that weightless thing between them. A promise not spoken. A future not demanded.
Just this.
At 2:00 a.m., when they finally stood up to leave, Mira took Pia’s hand without asking. It wasn’t bold. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet, tired, sure.
As they descended the stairs together, Mira whispered, “I don’t know what this is.”
Pia squeezed her hand. “That’s okay.”
Outside, the sky had cleared.
And for once, Mira didn’t feel like she had to run.
It had been a week since the blackout.
Mumbai had dried, mostly. The sea had stopped clawing at the walls. The streets filled again with people who didn’t look up, who moved like they’d never once been paused by weather, by fear, by each other. The city had returned to its rhythms — honks, chai breaks, queue fights, lovers pressed into shadows.
But for Mira, the sky still held its ache.
She wasn’t drifting anymore. She moved through her days with intent — slow, quiet, careful — like someone learning to live in a body that no longer felt like punishment. She still cooked too much food for one person. She still forgot to charge her phone until it died. She still hated the word “resilience.”
But she laughed more.
Sometimes, with Pia. Sometimes with herself.
The rooftop still existed, though it had changed again. The tarp was folded and gone. The chalk arrows had been rained away. The archive box sat in a corner, half-empty, its lid closed but not locked.
They didn’t gather there every night anymore. Life didn’t allow it. But they returned when it mattered — like tides, not promises.
That Friday evening, Mira went up alone.
She carried two things: a new sketchbook and the Ganesh idol. She’d cleaned the dust off its chipped crown, wrapped it in cotton, and tucked it against her ribs like a secret.
The sky was dusky orange, low and wide. A pair of crows fought over a biscuit wrapper in the distance. Somewhere below, someone was playing an old Lata Mangeshkar song from a speaker that crackled with age.
She sat near the edge wall, opened the sketchbook, and began to draw.
Not well. Not skillfully. But honestly.
She drew the rooftop the way it felt that first night — wild, wet, glowing with unnamed energy. She drew Pia’s face the way it looked just before a laugh. She drew the outline of Rishi holding his speaker like a relic. Naina flicking ash like defiance. Aarav, half in shadow, half sky.
And then she drew herself.
Not as she looked. But as she was.
A girl who had survived being left. A girl who had stayed.
A voice behind her said, “You forgot the umbrella.”
She turned. Pia stood near the stairwell, holding two cutting chais in paper cups, her hair a mess of wind and gold.
“I thought we were done with the rooftop metaphors,” Mira teased, standing to take the chai.
“We’re never done,” Pia said. “The metaphors evolve.”
They sat together, not touching, just close enough to feel the space between them settle into comfort.
“Do you still want to leave?” Mira asked.
Pia sipped her chai. “Sometimes. The feeling doesn’t disappear. But it’s quieter now. Like background music.”
Mira nodded. “I get that.”
“And you?” Pia asked.
“I still feel alone sometimes. Even around people. But now I think… maybe I can be alone with someone.”
“That’s the best kind,” Pia said. “The kind where silence doesn’t mean distance.”
They didn’t need to say what this was. They didn’t need to label it. What mattered was that it kept happening — this return to each other, this gentle choosing.
As the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the tiles, Mira reached into her bag and held out the Ganesh idol.
“I’m ready to let go,” she said.
Pia took it reverently. “Sure?”
Mira nodded.
Together, they walked to the archive box. It was still half-filled with fragments of the rooftop family — a train ticket, a scribbled note, the empty case of a guitar pick. Mira placed the idol gently inside.
“Thank you,” she whispered — to the memory, to her parents, to the years that had bent but not broken her.
Pia closed the lid.
They stood like that, hands at their sides, watching a city that had never stopped, but had at least — briefly — allowed them to catch up.
That night, the sky opened again.
Not with thunder. Not with rain.
But with stars.
More than Mira had ever seen in Mumbai. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Pinpricks of quiet in a sky that had once swallowed her whole.
They sat on the floor, backs against the water tank, legs tangled. Pia leaned her head on Mira’s shoulder, and Mira rested her cheek on Pia’s crown. They said nothing.
They didn’t need to.
Everything that had needed to be spoken had already been said — in laughter, in ghost stories, in mango peels and melted samosas and cracked cups of chai. In shared nights and broken mornings. In questions asked and never answered.
Mira closed her eyes.
She saw the sea. The storm. The girl she used to be.
And the rooftop.
Always the rooftop.
A place where strangers became mirrors. Where the city paused just long enough for people to find each other. Where love arrived not like lightning, but like breath.
She opened her eyes and whispered:
“I’m not afraid anymore.”
Pia squeezed her hand.
Above them, the sky didn’t fall.
It stayed.
