Tara Mitra
Part 1: The Clock with No Tick
Dev Basu lived in a city that never stopped moving, but he himself hadn’t left his watch shop in three days.
Tucked between a pharmacy and a dry cleaner in Mumbai’s quieter Byculla lane, Timekeeper’s Son was a fading reminder of another era. It smelled of polish and dust, ticked with the rhythm of dozens of clocks mounted like soldiers on the walls, each out of sync with the other. Dev, 35, preferred it that way.
He was polishing the hands of an old grandfather clock when the bell above the door jingled—a sound as rare as monsoon in March. He wiped his hands and looked up.
“Dev beta,” came a voice that hadn’t aged, though its owner certainly had. It was Chacha Hafeez, his father’s old friend and the last customer who brought more conversation than cash.
“Chacha! You’re alive,” Dev grinned, offering the stool near the counter.
“Barely,” Hafeez wheezed, placing a cloth-wrapped object on the table. “But this… this is stranger than me surviving three heart attacks.”
Dev peeled away the fabric slowly. Nestled inside was a brass mantel clock—small, elegant, worn by decades but unmistakably European in make. The glass was cracked, and the hands frozen at 6:33.
“Antique French,” Dev murmured, examining the base. “No maker’s mark. That’s odd. Where did you get this?”
“Clearing out an estate in Byculla Hill. The owner’s grandson died, and the house was abandoned. Thought you might like to fix it—if only to give yourself a challenge.”
Dev opened the back panel and frowned. No gears. No mainspring. It was hollow, except for a paper-thin inscription etched inside the metal casing.
“To save what you love, lose what you know.”
He read it aloud, half-chuckling. “Dramatic.”
Hafeez just smiled. “Felt like it belonged to someone who lives in memory.”
Dev didn’t ask what that meant. He never did. The past was best left unopened, like old trunks that smell of regret. He thanked Hafeez, made him tea, and by late evening, the shop fell back into its usual silence.
That night, with the shop shuttered and city noise reduced to a distant hum, Dev sat with the clock under a dim lamp. He didn’t expect it to work—it had no mechanism. But his hands moved instinctively, like his father’s once had. He wound the brass key into an invisible spring, out of habit more than hope.
Nothing.
He sighed and placed it on the shelf, next to an unclaimed cuckoo clock. Then, he turned off the lights and went to sleep on the cot behind the counter, the brass clock quietly watching from the shadows.
He woke up to the smell of rain.
Which made no sense. Yesterday had been dry. Summer hadn’t broken yet. Dev sat up, confused. The calendar still said April 17th.
Odd.
He checked his phone. Same date. Same unread messages. But something in the air felt… softer. Like déjà vu crawling under his skin.
He opened the shop. Same man jogged past. Same newspaper boy threw the paper with the same annoying thud. When Dev flipped it open, his breath hitched.
The headline was exactly what it had been yesterday. Word for word.
He blinked.
A delivery man entered at 9:05 a.m.—the exact minute the same man had come yesterday. Delivered the same wrong parcel to the same neighbor. Again.
The world was repeating itself.
Dev felt a chill creep into his bones. He ran to the brass clock. Still frozen at 6:33. Still silent. Still whole. The inscription still mocked him from the back.
“To save what you love, lose what you know.”
He sat down slowly. Tried to recall everything from the past day. Every detail. It was yesterday.
He hadn’t gone anywhere yesterday except to the corner tea stall. So today, or rather again, he decided to break pattern.
He left the shop.
At 11:43 a.m., he found himself walking past a narrow street he’d never noticed, near a bookstore that hadn’t existed in years.
And there it was—a small café called Blue Notes, tucked between two crumbling walls, alive with the soft chords of piano music.
He followed the sound inside. Dim yellow lights, rain-drizzled windows, a smell of coffee and sheet music.
At the far end, on a small stage, a woman played the piano.
She had a messy bun, loose grey kurta, and a red scarf falling carelessly over her shoulder. Her fingers danced like they knew secrets. She smiled faintly as she played, eyes closed, head swaying with the melody. It was a tune Dev didn’t recognize, but something in it tugged at his heart like a half-remembered lullaby.
When she finished, she looked straight at him—as if she knew he’d been listening.
“First time here?” she asked, walking down from the stage with effortless ease.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’re staring like someone rewound your life.”
Dev chuckled, unsure whether to laugh or run. “Something like that.”
“I’m Maya,” she said, extending a hand.
“Dev.”
They shook hands.
For a moment, he felt the tick of something—not a clock, not a heart, but something deeper. Ancient. As if the day had meaning.
They talked for a while. About music, time, cities that forget their corners. She joked about time machines. He didn’t respond. He couldn’t.
By 7 p.m., he walked her to her car.
“It was nice to meet you, Dev,” she said, waving.
“Likewise.”
He watched as she drove off.
And twenty minutes later, standing at the traffic light, he saw the crash.
A screech. A flash. A scream.
Maya’s car crumpled under a delivery van.
People rushed. Phones out. Horns blaring.
Dev stood frozen. Rain began to fall again.
And somewhere inside Timekeeper’s Son, the brass clock began to tick.
Part 2: The Woman with a Tomorrow
Dev didn’t sleep that night.
Not because of the rain lashing against the glass or the dull ache behind his eyes. He stayed up because every time he closed his lids, he saw Maya’s face before the windshield shattered. The softness of her laugh. The curve of her scarf as it floated with her steps. The way she’d said, “It was nice to meet you, Dev,” like she meant it.
By morning, the city resumed its usual indifference—auto horns, school bells, chaiwallas hollering—but Dev’s world hadn’t moved at all. It had stopped at 6:33.
When he finally stepped out of the backroom, the brass clock on the shelf had begun ticking.
Softly. Inconsistently. But ticking.
He stared at it like it might speak.
And maybe it did, in its own quiet way. Because Dev already knew what he had to do.
He didn’t wait for logic or proof. He wound the clock again—three careful turns—and closed his eyes.
And when he opened them, it was April 17th again.
No rain. No crash. No Maya’s death.
He rushed outside.
The newspaper thudded. The jogger passed. The delivery guy stumbled at 9:05.
Time was folding, and he was inside it.
He showered, changed clothes, and practically ran to the alley near Blue Notes.
11:42 a.m.
He waited outside the café, heart pounding. He didn’t know what he’d say—only that he had to see her alive.
The piano began.
He walked in.
And there she was again, playing that same haunting melody, wearing the same scarf, eyes closed. Alive.
He almost cried.
When she finished, she looked at him—not quite recognizing, but pausing, puzzled. “You again?”
“You remember me?” he asked, startled.
“No,” she laughed. “But you’re staring. Again.”
Dev sat down. “Sorry. I’m just… having a strange week.”
“Then let’s not make it stranger. I’m Maya.”
“Dev.”
They shook hands.
Again.
This time, he made sure to walk her to her car fifteen minutes early. Told her to avoid the bypass road. Said there was a jam. She shrugged and agreed.
He watched her drive off. Safe. Alive.
But that night, when he wound the clock—he was pulled back again.
Same day.
Again.
By the third time, Dev knew it wasn’t a game.
Saving her wasn’t enough. Time kept snapping back like a rubber band stretched too far. A punishment for disobedience. A loop without a way out.
But he still went back.
And again.
And again.
Each April 17th, he’d find Maya. Hear her play. Talk to her about music, coffee, childhood memories. Learn new things—she hated loud clocks, loved old Hindi songs, dreamed of visiting Vienna.
Each night, he’d try a new trick. Call the police anonymously. Block the road. Send fake alerts to Google Maps. Once, he even slashed a tire on her car.
She still died. Sometimes later. Sometimes in a different way. But always before midnight.
On the fifth reset, he brought her flowers.
“Yellow lilies?” she smiled. “We just met.”
“I had a dream about you,” he blurted. “We were walking in the rain. You played piano in an empty station.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“I guess I just… wanted to say I’m glad you exist.”
She didn’t question it. Just looked at him long.
“You’re a strange man, Dev,” she said softly. “But I like strange things.”
Dev stopped trying to explain. She wouldn’t remember. Every night the universe wiped the slate. Maya’s tomorrow never arrived. But Dev’s memory stayed intact, like a curse carved in stone.
His life was becoming a secret diary no one could read.
He learned her birthday (October 4), her favorite drink (cold coffee, no sugar), her deepest fear (dying before her music was heard), her first heartbreak (a pianist who loved applause more than people).
Dev wrote it all down. Names, phrases, chords she hummed while distracted. Every moment a string of precious pearls. But pearls dissolve in saltwater—and Dev was sinking fast.
By the eighth day, Dev stopped trying to save her.
He just wanted to know her.
They walked along Marine Drive. Bought kulfi from a street vendor. Talked about why everyone thinks musicians are sad.
“Because we live inside things people only visit,” she whispered.
He asked her, “If you had only one day left, what would you do?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Play a song I’ve never dared to finish. And eat chocolate cake without guilt.”
They laughed.
She played that unfinished song for him at the café later—just him in the audience.
He cried.
By the tenth loop, Dev was exhausted.
The city looked different now. Artificial. Like a stage set built to hold one performance. The streets repeated. Faces blurred. Even clocks in other shops began matching his broken one.
Only Maya stayed vivid.
But he noticed something: the brass clock ticked faster every time he returned. As if keeping score. He could feel something shifting. A cost being measured.
And that night, when he tried to write down her melody—he couldn’t.
His hand shook. His memory… flickered. Like a bulb in monsoon.
He tried recalling his sister’s number. Forgot it.
Tried remembering his schoolteacher’s name. Blank.
Time was taking something back.
The next morning, Maya looked at him differently.
“Have we met before?” she asked softly.
“No,” he lied.
“You’re always too kind for someone I just met.”
“I think I was just waiting to meet you.”
Her smile was almost sad. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not meant to reach tomorrow. Like something always interrupts.”
He gripped her hand. “You will reach it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But what if today is enough?”
Dev looked away.
Because he already knew the truth.
Part 3: The 24-Hour Love Story
Dev stopped counting the days after the twelfth loop. Time had flattened into a long, endless now.
Each day started the same—April 17th, cool breeze from the ceiling fan, the faint aroma of brass polish, and the ticking of the enchanted clock. And each day ended the same—Maya gone. Time reset. Him alone.
At first, it had been about saving her. Then, about knowing her. Now?
Now, it was about loving her. Even if just for a day.
He stopped trying to interfere with fate.
Instead, Dev built each day with care, like a sandcastle he knew the tide would claim. He woke early, dressed neatly, picked a new book to carry in his satchel—one she hadn’t seen yet. He’d show up at Blue Notes before she even began her warm-up. She would look up, quizzical. Sometimes amused. Once even irritated.
“You again?” she said that day.
“I’m a slow learner,” he said. “But I’m trying.”
“Trying what?”
“To make this day worth remembering.”
She smiled at that, but only faintly. “For me, or for you?”
He couldn’t answer. The truth was too strange to speak.
He started doing things Maya had always dreamed of doing “one day.”
They sat on the pavement near Horniman Circle reading poetry out loud, her scarf billowing in the April heat. They sneaked into the back of an old cinema hall and watched Guide on grainy film. Once, he even convinced her to record her unfinished melody in a quiet studio he’d rented for an hour.
Every night, he stored the audio files in a USB drive. But by morning, they were gone.
Time erased everything—except Dev’s heart.
One evening, while walking past a roadside temple with flickering lamps, Maya said, “I had a weird dream last night.”
“Oh?”
“I dreamt of this exact street. The exact lamp. And you.”
Dev froze.
“You said, ‘Some people live a hundred days in one.’”
“That’s a nice line.”
“I think I’ve heard it before,” she frowned.
Dev wanted to say: You’ve said it before, too. Eleven times now. But instead, he asked, “Do you believe in déjà vu?”
Maya looked up at the orange sky. “Maybe. Or maybe memories travel backward too.”
He squeezed her hand.
In that moment, Dev realized he didn’t want to change time anymore.
He wanted to live it.
On what must have been the fifteenth loop, they danced.
It wasn’t planned. There was no music. But on a shaded stretch of Marine Drive, under dim streetlamps and monsoon-heavy clouds, Dev asked, “Will you dance with me?”
“Right here?”
“Why not?”
Maya laughed, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said, “Okay. But only if you don’t step on my toes again.”
Again. The word echoed. Did her soul remember?
He took her in his arms. Her feet moved with his, clumsy at first, then smoother, more playful. Their laughter bounced off the sea breeze. Her forehead touched his.
“You’re not like other people, Dev.”
“How so?”
“You live like each hour matters.”
“Maybe I’m just afraid to waste them.”
“I think,” she whispered, “you’re falling in love with me.”
He couldn’t lie. Not anymore.
“I already did.”
That night, she didn’t drive away alone.
She stayed at the shop. They drank tea from chipped cups and lay on the cot behind the counter. Rain tapped on the window panes. The brass clock glowed faintly in the corner.
Maya traced the lines on Dev’s palm.
“You have an old soul,” she murmured. “Or a tired one.”
“Both, maybe.”
“Tell me a secret.”
Dev hesitated.
“If you had only one day left,” she added, “what would you do?”
“I’d spend it with you.”
“You already are.”
They didn’t kiss that night. It was softer than that. Their silence held more truth than any vow.
And yet, by morning, the clock clicked forward—and reset.
April 17th. Again.
The street outside, as usual. The newspaper thud. The delivery boy’s mistake. The same starting line to a story Dev couldn’t rewrite.
But something in him had shifted.
Dev walked to the mirror. His reflection stared back—hollow-eyed, grayer than he remembered. He checked his journal. Some pages were smudged, others blank. Entire entries—gone.
He reached for the name of his first crush. Nothing.
The name of his dog as a child. Gone.
He clutched his chest, heart thudding. The clock wasn’t just resetting time—it was claiming his memories.
When he reached Blue Notes that day, Maya looked at him strangely.
“You always come at this hour,” she said.
“I like to hear you play.”
“I feel like I know your face,” she murmured, pressing a key. “But I don’t know your name.”
“You’ve said that before.”
She tilted her head. “Have I?”
He sat down. Quiet. Wounded. In awe.
Perhaps her soul remembered.
Later, over coffee, Maya stared into her cup.
“Dev?”
“Yes?”
“I have a feeling I won’t reach tomorrow.”
He looked up sharply.
She smiled. Not sadly. Just gently.
“But it’s okay. Today is beautiful.”
He wanted to scream. It’s not okay. You deserve more than one beautiful day. You deserve hundreds. But he just nodded.
“I’m glad I met you,” she said.
“I wish I met you sooner.”
“No. This was the perfect time.”
She kissed him then—just once, on the cheek. A kiss full of grace. Like a bookmark placed between two fading pages.
That night, as she walked to her car, Dev didn’t stop her.
He watched her go.
No calls. No fake alerts. No distractions.
He let her live her day without manipulation.
He stood in the shadow of the shop as the clock struck 6:33 and the rain started falling again.
Part 4: Time is a Spiral
Dev sat on the shop floor, cross-legged, the brass clock ticking beside him like a creature that had learned to breathe.
He stared into its glass face, watching the frozen hands. 6:33. Every day, every loop—it ended here. And yet, every night, it ticked. Not as a countdown, not as comfort. As a reminder: You are still trapped.
But something had changed last night. Maya’s kiss. The way she said, “Today is beautiful.” The way she hadn’t asked for forever, only one day.
And he, for once, had given it to her.
He hadn’t tried to rescue her. Hadn’t pulled the strings of fate like a desperate puppeteer. And when the crash came, it was… quieter. There were no horns. No screaming. Just rain. And the ache of acceptance.
Still, when he wound the clock again, he expected nothing.
But the second his fingers turned the key—pain exploded behind his eyes.
He stumbled backward, gasping.
The floor shifted. His vision blurred. And then—just like that—it was morning again.
April 17th.
But not quite the same.
The colors were off.
Outside, the sun was softer. The tea stall was closed, though it had never been before. The newspaper headline was different. Instead of a celebrity wedding, it now read:
“Pianist Maya Rao to Perform Live Tonight at Blue Notes – Exclusive Invite Only.”
Dev’s heart stopped.
She had never performed at night. Never.
He rushed to his journal. Pages that had once been blank now had scribbles in Maya’s handwriting. Her lyrics. Her notes.
This was not a perfect reset.
This was a spiral.
The clock hadn’t gone back. It had curved—twisting time around itself like vines on iron bars.
Dev looked at his reflection. The streaks of grey in his hair were sharper now. There was a faint scar on his wrist he didn’t remember getting. His face looked… older.
As if time was moving only for him.
He walked to Blue Notes just before noon. Maya was at the piano, humming a different tune.
A tune he hadn’t heard before.
She paused when she saw him.
“Hi,” she said, cautious.
“You remember me?”
Her brow furrowed. “I… I think so.”
Dev blinked. “You do?”
“Not clearly,” she said. “But I dreamt of you again. And of clocks. You were standing in a room full of them.”
He nearly cried.
“Maya, you have a show tonight.”
She looked surprised. “How do you know?”
He pointed to the paper.
“That’s strange,” she said. “I didn’t say yes to performing yet. I was still deciding.”
Dev’s voice trembled. “Maybe you already have.”
They walked through the streets of Fort that day. Maya was quieter than usual. Not moody, just distant, as if her mind was tuning a frequency just out of reach.
“Dev, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Have we… done this before?”
He stopped walking.
She went on, slowly, “This route. These words. Even this café—we’ve been here before. Haven’t we?”
He didn’t answer.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said, “but my dreams are so vivid lately. Always ending with a song I haven’t written and a man I barely know.”
Dev whispered, “What if you do know me?”
“I want to.”
They sat under a banyan tree. The same one where, in another loop, she had once hummed Tagore tunes and told him about her grandmother’s radio. That memory felt like someone else’s now, blurry and unreal. But it lived inside him.
That evening, as Maya tuned her piano for the first time in front of a night audience, Dev stood in the shadows at the back of the café.
She looked radiant—no scarf, no grey kurta. Just a red sari and eyes that flicked toward the corner as if sensing someone in her periphery.
She began to play.
And the song…
It was the one she had written with him in the studio in a loop that no longer existed.
A melody stolen from time.
Dev clutched his seat. He wanted to scream. How did she remember? How is this possible?
Maya finished the piece. The crowd applauded.
She stood, bowed, and said into the mic:
“This song is for someone who keeps showing up in my dreams. I don’t know who you are, but… thank you for giving me music again.”
Dev closed his eyes.
The clock inside him cracked open.
After the show, she found him waiting outside.
“I remembered the song in my sleep,” she said breathlessly. “The whole thing. Like someone whispered it into my ear.”
Dev didn’t know how to speak.
So she filled the silence.
“Are we in a dream?”
“No,” he said. “But it’s not quite real either.”
Maya took a step closer. “Will this day end like all the others?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Dev said. “Time isn’t looping anymore—it’s bending.”
“Then let’s stay in the curve.”
They walked until midnight. No crash. No sirens. No rain.
When she touched his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder, he felt warmth flood through his body like sunlight through glass.
And for the first time in weeks, he believed maybe—just maybe—time was listening.
That night, the brass clock did not tick.
It glowed.
A deep golden pulse, as if it had a heart. Or a soul.
Dev reached for it.
But it didn’t wind.
Instead, etched in its back, the inscription had changed.
Now it read:
“When you stop trying to save time, time saves you.”
He placed the clock gently on the shelf, hands trembling.
And when he turned around, Maya was standing there in the doorway.
Still here.
Still real.
Part 5: The First Fracture
The morning came quietly.
For the first time in weeks, Dev woke to the sound of birds, not the cruel echo of 6:33. The city outside seemed less rehearsed. There was no déjà vu in the air. The chaiwala’s shout felt unpredictable, the newspaper headline fresh. The world, once a worn-out loop, had become uncertain again—and beautiful for it.
He looked over his shoulder.
Maya was still asleep on the cot, tangled in his bedsheet, her curls spread like dark ink on the pillow. He watched her breathe. He didn’t dare blink.
Time had changed its mind.
The clock had not reset.
He didn’t go to the shop that day. Instead, Dev made breakfast—burnt toast and lemon tea, the only things he had left. Maya sat on the counter, legs dangling, wearing his oversized shirt.
“You look like a 90s film heroine,” he teased.
She grinned. “You burn food like one too.”
They laughed. It felt new, like their first laugh.
Then silence crept in.
Maya stared at the brass clock on the shelf. “You still haven’t told me what’s so special about that thing.”
Dev stirred his tea. “It’s old. Haunted, maybe.”
She tilted her head. “It glows sometimes.”
“You noticed?”
“In my dream. But I don’t remember much else. Just… clocks, falling pages, and your voice saying ‘stay.’”
Dev placed the cup down. His hands were shaking again.
Later that day, as Maya sat at the piano humming a tune, Dev returned to the backroom. He opened his journal—the one that had once held everything.
Pages were filling up again.
But oddly.
One page had only a word repeated over and over: “Remember.”
Another had scribbles of Maya’s handwriting—only, she hadn’t written in it.
The next page was blank.
He turned it, and what he saw chilled him.
His name was written, over and over, in different handwriting. Different styles. Different pressure.
It was as if he had been remembered by someone else, across timelines.
Or worse—forgotten and rewritten.
He closed the book and went to the mirror.
His face stared back, tired but recognizably his.
Until he blinked.
For a single breath, his reflection lagged—a heartbeat behind.
When he moved his hand, it followed after.
He staggered backward, heart pounding.
He rushed back to the brass clock. Still frozen at 6:33.
Still glowing.
Then it flickered.
The hands moved—just one second forward.
But that second echoed like a crack in glass.
That evening, he told Maya everything.
He didn’t mean to. He had rehearsed lighter versions. Fairy tales. Half-truths.
But when she played the first note of that haunting song—their song—he couldn’t pretend anymore.
“I’ve lived this day more than twenty times,” he said. “You’ve died in most of them.”
She stopped playing.
“I tried to save you. Again and again. Every time, time pulled me back.”
Maya stared at him, unmoving.
“You don’t remember, but you’ve said the same things before. You’ve kissed me before. You’ve played this song in a loop that only I can hear.”
Silence.
“Each day I stayed, time took a piece of me,” he added. “I think… I’m breaking.”
Maya rose. Her eyes searched his, not with disbelief, but with an emotion he hadn’t expected: grief.
“I believe you,” she whispered.
“You do?”
“I don’t know why. But I do. Like I’ve already mourned you and don’t know why.”
She reached for his hand.
“I dreamed you were disappearing.”
That night, she refused to leave.
They lit candles. She recorded a voice memo on his phone—“If this fades, let my voice remain.”
They talked about death—not with fear, but with honesty. She admitted she always felt borrowed from life, as though she didn’t belong in it fully.
“Maybe that’s why I only get one day,” she said.
“No,” Dev said firmly. “This time is ours.”
She leaned into him, and they made love under the dim light of the antique clock.
Time, for a moment, stopped counting.
At 3:12 a.m., Dev woke up.
Alone.
The room felt off.
He called out. No answer.
He ran to the shopfront.
Maya was gone.
The clock on the wall had cracked—its glass splintered from within, though it hadn’t fallen.
And the brass clock? The hands had moved again.
6:34.
Dev’s mouth went dry.
Time had shifted. Forward.
He rushed out into the street.
No car crash. No wreckage. No sign of her.
Just silence.
He returned to the shop and opened the journal.
This time, the pages were blank again.
No scribbles.
No names.
Not even his.
He tried writing Maya.
The ink faded as he wrote, vanishing into the paper.
The next morning, Maya returned.
Alive. Whole.
But different.
She stood in the doorway like she wasn’t sure who he was.
“Sorry… is this the repair shop?” she asked, tilting her head.
“Maya?”
“Yes?”
“It’s me. Dev.”
She blinked. “Do I know you?”
He stepped forward.
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, stepping back. “I—I just came to ask about a clock. I found one like this at my uncle’s place. Same glow.”
Dev stared at her. His heart cracked open.
She didn’t remember. Not the café. Not the song. Not him.
But she was alive.
And time… had taken everything else.
Part 6: The Confession Day
Dev stood frozen at the threshold of his own shop, watching Maya—alive, real, luminous—and yet completely unfamiliar. The way she tilted her head, the way her eyes scanned the dusty clocks on the wall, even the nervous rhythm of her speech—it was all Maya.
But not his Maya.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, mistaking his silence for confusion. “You look like someone I’ve seen before. Maybe online or in a dream, I don’t know. Déjà vu’s been weird lately.”
“Yeah,” Dev said slowly, his voice hoarse. “It’s been weird for me too.”
She smiled politely, shifting the cloth bag on her shoulder. “So… do you repair clocks that glow?”
He blinked. “You saw it glow?”
She nodded. “Only once. At night. Just for a second. Thought it was a trick of the light. But it gave me a chill. I—I don’t even know why I brought it here. Just felt like I needed to.”
Dev stepped aside. “Come in.”
As she passed him, he inhaled the faint scent of her shampoo—jasmine and something citrusy. Time hadn’t erased that, at least.
She placed the wrapped clock on the counter. It looked almost identical to his brass one, though slightly smaller, with the same baroque dial, same inscription engraved faintly around the base.
“To save what you love, lose what you know.”
The words mocked him anew.
“This… this belonged to your uncle?” he asked, running a thumb over the brass.
She nodded. “I don’t know much about him. He died before I was born. Family says he used to be obsessed with time. Had a whole room full of broken clocks.”
Dev looked up sharply. “Where was this room?”
“In Bandra. An old house near the sea. Got torn down after he passed. This one survived because it was hidden in a wooden crate with sheet music and… a photo.”
“A photo?”
Maya dug into her bag and pulled out a crumpled, faded picture.
Dev’s heart stuttered.
It was him—a younger version, seated beside a piano, grinning, eyes shining with something that hadn’t lived in him for years.
Next to him… was her.
Hair longer. Smile brighter. In a yellow dress.
Their hands were linked.
Dev’s legs gave way.
He sat down, breath shallow.
“I thought it was photoshopped,” she whispered. “I mean… I’ve never met you. And I’m not even sure that’s me.”
“It is.”
“You knew my uncle?”
“No,” he said. “But I know you.”
She frowned. “How?”
Dev pressed a hand to his chest, as if to keep himself from shattering.
“Because I’ve met you. So many times. And lost you. Over and over.”
She looked at him, uncertain whether to laugh or run.
Dev didn’t blame her.
He reached for the journal, opened to the last page that still held his own handwriting. A sketch of her hands on a piano. A single lyric she had once murmured at dawn.
“If you break time to love me, let time break us kindly.”
Maya touched the page.
Her fingers trembled.
“I’ve heard this line before,” she whispered.
“I didn’t write it,” Dev said. “You did.”
“I… did?”
He nodded, eyes brimming.
She sat down across from him, the two clocks ticking faintly on either side like dueling heartbeats.
“You’re not insane, are you?” she asked softly.
“I wish I was.”
They stared at each other.
Then, slowly, she said, “Tell me everything.”
And so he did.
From the first loop to the last. From the desperate attempts to save her to the day he stopped trying. The stolen hours. The dances. The laughter. The final night when she stayed, when time seemed to bend and spiral instead of snapping back.
He spoke until his throat hurt.
Maya sat still, her face pale but calm. When he finished, there was silence.
Then she stood and walked over to the brass clock.
“Your version… it stopped ticking?”
“It froze at 6:33. But after the night you survived, it moved. One second forward. Then another. And then…”
He trailed off.
She placed her hand over the glass.
“I believe you.”
He looked up, stunned.
“I don’t know why,” she said. “But I do. Every part of me wants to scream this is madness. But something deeper says it’s true. I’ve felt it. Waking up with tears. Melodies I don’t remember composing. And dreams of you. So many dreams.”
Tears fell from her eyes, soft and soundless.
Dev stood, unsure whether to move closer.
Then she stepped into his arms.
And everything fell into place again.
That evening, she stayed.
They played piano together, her hands guiding his. They didn’t speak of what would happen next, or whether time would allow them more.
They simply were.
And as night crept in, the clocks in the shop began ticking in unison for the first time.
At 6:33, the brass clock let out a gentle chime.
Maya looked at Dev. “Did it do that before?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
Outside, it didn’t rain.
Inside, her voice recorded once more on his phone. A song half-written.
Then a kiss.
Then silence.
And then, the world paused.
Dev opened his eyes the next morning to light pouring in through the broken shutters.
The brass clock read 6:34.
A full minute forward.
He sat up.
“Maya?”
No reply.
He ran to the front room.
She was gone.
He searched the streets. The café. Her apartment—if that version of her still lived there.
He found nothing.
When he returned to the shop, the clock was ticking louder than usual.
And on the counter, beside the faded photograph, was a new page in his journal.
Her handwriting.
One line:
“If time forgets me, remember both of us.”
Part 7: The One Perfect Day
Dev didn’t move for hours.
He sat by the clock, her last words etched into the journal like a goodbye folded into silence. “If time forgets me, remember both of us.” Her handwriting was unmistakable—slanted, looped, delicate like the way she pressed piano keys.
The brass clock ticked on.
6:35.
Time was no longer resetting. No longer looping. It was moving forward—but not without consequence. Maya was gone again. Not dead. Not erased. Just… missing.
As if she had slipped through the fold, leaving Dev stranded between what was and what might’ve been.
Days passed.
The clocks in the shop ticked normally again. The city hummed outside. Customers returned—strangers with watches and deadlines. Dev went through motions: winding springs, replacing batteries, fixing chains.
But inside him, nothing moved.
The brass clock ticked on.
6:36.
Then 6:37.
One second a day.
Dev began writing to Maya. Every evening. In case time decided to carry his words to wherever she had gone.
“Today, I saw someone who looked like you on the train. But she didn’t tilt her head when she smiled. Yours did.”
“I played our song. The piano felt colder without your warmth beside me.”
“The world keeps moving. But I’m standing in the parentheses you left behind.”
Then, one morning, the chime rang.
Not the brass clock’s chime.
The shop bell.
He looked up—and there she was.
Soaked in rain, scarf clinging to her shoulders, cheeks flushed, eyes wide.
“Maya,” he whispered.
“I found it,” she gasped. “I found the page.”
She pulled out a wrinkled notebook—old, water-stained. From between its pages, she extracted a photograph: a picture of the two of them, smiling under a banyan tree. The same tree from their longest loop.
“I thought I was hallucinating. But then I found this notebook in my uncle’s crate. It had your name. Your address. This photo. I don’t know how it’s possible. But something in me said come back.”
She stepped closer.
“I remember… fragments. Feelings. Like déjà vu that hurts.”
Dev reached out, trembling.
“You came back.”
“I don’t think I ever truly left.”
That day, they decided not to ask questions.
They left the shop locked, boarded a bus without knowing the route, and ended up near the coast—where old Bombay still lived in broken bricks and fisherfolk smiles.
They ate samosas on the beach.
Shared secrets in whispers.
Spoke of nothing urgent.
Time, for once, wasn’t chasing them.
Maya collected shells. Dev took photos.
They watched kids fly paper kites against the golden sky.
As sunset fell, Dev said, “Let’s pretend we have forever.”
Maya looked at him. “We do. Even if it’s only one day.”
Back in the city, they visited the bookstore Maya had once mentioned in a loop now lost. It still smelled of ink and cinnamon. She picked out a poetry book and wrote in the margin:
For D, the boy who broke time open to find love.
Then, hand in hand, they wandered through a night market, string lights blinking above them like stars trying to remember their names.
At midnight, they lay on the roof of the shop, the world buzzing softly beneath them.
“Dev,” Maya said, “do you think we’re trapped again?”
“No,” he replied. “I think time is offering a truce.”
“I’m afraid it’s a dream.”
“Then let’s not wake up.”
She turned to him. “What happens if I vanish again?”
“You won’t,” he whispered. “But if you do—I’ll find you. Even if I have to walk through a thousand days.”
She kissed him.
The brass clock chimed from inside the shop.
6:38.
In the early hours, she played their song one more time—barefoot, smiling, the melody more complete than ever before. Dev recorded it, heart beating in sync with the rhythm.
“This time,” he said, “I won’t forget anything.”
She smiled. “Then we’ve already won.”
And that morning, when Dev woke, she was still there.
Still Maya.
Still his.
The clock ticked on.
6:39.
Part 8: Memory Collapse
Dev had never believed in permanence. Everything—clocks, people, days—broke eventually. But now, with Maya’s head resting on his shoulder and the sunlight warming her skin, he dared to imagine something enduring.
The brass clock on the shelf ticked louder each morning.
6:39.
6:40.
6:41.
Time, it seemed, was moving forward again—minute by minute. A gift. Or maybe a warning.
The song they recorded that night went viral.
Dev uploaded it quietly—no names, no captions—just titled it “Borrowed Time.” Within days, listeners from across the world were quoting lines from Maya’s lyrics:
“If you can’t promise a lifetime, promise me a day that bends.”
She blushed when she heard her voice on someone’s Instagram reel.
“You didn’t tell me you posted it.”
“I didn’t think it would matter.”
“It matters,” she said, gripping his hand. “Because this feels real now.”
Dev smiled, but inside, something tensed.
Because he knew better than anyone that real didn’t mean forever.
On the seventh night, Maya noticed it first.
“Dev,” she said quietly, “what’s your mother’s name?”
He blinked. The answer should have been immediate. Obvious.
Instead, he paused. Then said slowly, “I… I don’t remember.”
Maya frowned.
“You told me once. She used to sing to you while fixing watches.”
He rubbed his temple. “I know that. But the name… it’s gone.”
She reached for his hand. “It’s okay. You’re just tired.”
But Dev wasn’t tired. He was forgetting.
The next morning, more cracks appeared.
He misplaced his shop keys—twice. Called his customer by the wrong name. Tried to wind a digital watch.
When Maya brought him tea, he stared at the cup like he’d never seen it before.
“Dev?”
“I… What’s this?”
“It’s just tea.”
He looked at her, panic in his eyes. “I didn’t recognize it.”
That night, he wrote everything down.
His name. Her name. The day they met. The color of her scarf. The taste of their first kiss.
He labeled things in the shop with sticky notes—counter, toolbox, chai cup, piano bench.
He began narrating his life aloud.
As if trying to hold on to the present through sheer will.
Maya didn’t sleep that night.
She sat beside him, recording his voice as he described the day he first heard her play.
“You said the melody felt like a memory I hadn’t lived yet,” she whispered.
“I still feel that way.”
“Dev…”
“What if I vanish instead of you?”
She shook her head. “No. Don’t say that.”
“I can feel it. Something pulling me backward. Like I’m unraveling.”
He touched his chest.
“I’m scared, Maya.”
She kissed his knuckles. “Then let me be your anchor.”
The brass clock struck 6:42.
Then, just before sunrise, it stopped ticking.
Dead silence.
Dev reached for it.
And the second his fingers brushed the brass—his knees gave out.
He collapsed on the floor, hands trembling, mouth mumbling fragments.
“Chhatim tree… yellow dress… tea with too much milk…”
Maya screamed his name, cradling his head, trying to keep him awake.
“Dev! Look at me!”
His eyes were wide, unfocused.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
It lasted four minutes.
Then he blinked.
And everything returned.
Maya sobbed in relief.
But Dev looked hollowed out.
“I couldn’t find your name,” he murmured.
“It’s okay now. I’m here.”
“But what if next time it’s longer?”
She couldn’t answer that.
They tried to pretend the day was normal. They walked to their favorite café. Shared a plate of idli. Listened to the city hum.
But Dev carried a notebook now, writing down everything. Each detail. Each word spoken.
He kissed her and wrote:
Today, Maya tasted of rain and cinnamon.
He smelled her hair and wrote:
Left side jasmine. Right side wind.
He held her hand and wrote:
If I forget this, I’ll still feel the echo in my skin.
That night, Maya said, “We need help. A doctor. A scientist. Someone.”
He shook his head. “They’ll lock me up. Say I’m delusional.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Maybe. But even if none of this is real, I still want to live it with you.”
She leaned her head against his chest.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.
“You won’t.”
He didn’t say: You already have. A dozen times.
He didn’t say: This might be our last day.
He just held her tighter.
And listened to the ticking return.
6:43.
In the middle of the night, Maya woke up alone.
She found Dev sitting at the piano, playing their song slowly. One finger at a time.
“Do you remember it?” she asked gently.
He looked up, lost.
“I… I think it’s mine. But I don’t know how it ends.”
Maya sat beside him. Placed her fingers on the keys. And played the final line.
As she did, tears ran down his cheeks.
He whispered her name again.
Maya.
Maya.
Maya.
Like a lifeline.
Part 9: The Day Without Her
Dev woke to a silence so complete, it felt like sound had given up.
He sat up slowly, blinking at the pale morning light pooling through the shutters. The brass clock on the shelf was still. Not just frozen—silent. Its hands had stopped ticking altogether.
6:44.
The longest he’d ever gone.
He smiled faintly and turned toward the cot to greet her, to trace her shoulder, to whisper good morning against her collarbone.
But the bed was empty.
Still warm.
Still shaped like her.
But she was gone.
He didn’t panic at first.
He called her name gently, walked into the shopfront expecting to find her fiddling with the piano or scribbling song lyrics in his notebook.
Nothing.
The stool was untouched. Her scarf wasn’t on the hook. Her sandals weren’t by the door.
Only silence.
Not even the city outside felt real.
He opened the journal.
The pages were blank.
Not even the entries he’d written in ink the night before remained. No confessions, no metaphors, no memory maps.
Just white.
He turned to the last page, heart pounding.
One sentence remained, written in Maya’s handwriting:
“I hope you wake up to the sound of our song, not the sound of my absence.”
Dev closed his eyes.
Breathed in her ghost.
Then he screamed.
The shop couldn’t hold him.
He ran through the streets like a man possessed, retracing every step they’d ever taken—Blue Notes Café, the old bookshop, Marine Drive, the banyan tree.
No one had seen her.
He checked her old address. A family lived there now—a couple who’d never heard of a Maya Rao.
He showed her photograph to shopkeepers.
Nothing.
He searched every local hospital, café, recording studio.
Nothing.
It was as if Maya had never existed.
By nightfall, he returned home. Or what used to be home.
The clocks on the walls had all stopped.
Even the cuckoo was silent.
He picked up the brass clock with shaking hands. “Bring her back.”
No response.
He turned the key desperately. “Please.”
No click. No glow. No time-bend.
Just the ticking absence of a woman he loved in every version of the world.
Days passed.
The world moved forward.
He didn’t.
He ate out of habit. Slept because his body demanded it. He no longer remembered his birthday, or his sister’s face, or what he had studied in college. His memories were now made of Maya—or nothing at all.
Then, one fogged-up morning, something shifted.
He opened his shop and found a parcel on the doorstep.
No return address.
Wrapped in brown paper.
Inside: a cassette tape. A page of music. And a photograph.
The photo was of the piano. Just the empty bench. A flower pressed on the keys.
The tape was labeled: “Tomorrow is a Myth.”
He didn’t have a cassette player. He hadn’t owned one in years. But he remembered a shop in Chor Bazaar that sold vintage tech.
He left immediately.
Three hours later, Dev sat alone in the backroom, cassette spinning.
Crackling static. Then her voice.
“If you’re hearing this, then time did what it always does—it took.”
“But maybe, just this once, it also left something.”
Then came the music. The full version of their song.
Piano. Rain sounds. Her humming.
And finally:
“Dev… I don’t know where I’ve gone. Or where you are now. But if you ever feel me missing, remember: I didn’t leave. I just ran out of time.”
Dev wept. Not the loud, desperate kind.
The quiet, crumbling kind.
Like pages falling from a book he could no longer read.
He went back to the brass clock.
It had begun ticking again.
6:45.
Just one minute shy of the hour.
He didn’t try to reset it this time.
He just sat beside it.
Listening.
And writing.
That evening, a boy came into the shop with a broken wristwatch.
“Can you fix this?” he asked shyly.
Dev nodded. “Of course.”
He opened the watch.
Inside was a piece of torn paper, folded into a tiny square.
It read:
“Time isn’t cruel. It’s just forgetful. So remember me.”
Maya’s words.
Her handwriting.
Dev smiled for the first time in days.
Not because he believed she was coming back.
But because he knew, now, that she never truly left.
He began writing a book.
Borrowed Time.
A love story with no promises.
Just one perfect day, stretched into a thousand.
A melody caught between minutes.
He dedicated it to the woman who taught him how to live inside an hour.
On the final page, he wrote:
“Maya, if time took you, let this story bring you back. If memory fails, let words remember for me.
Until I see you again—on the edge of time, or in the space between seconds—I am yours. Always.”
Part 10: The Letter After Time
A year passed.
The city changed its face the way cities do—subtly, without apology. Trees bloomed, seasons turned, shops reopened with new names, and people rushed past one another with calendar-bound urgency. But inside Timekeeper’s Son, the air remained still, laced with dust, memories, and the scent of old brass.
Dev sat at his workbench most days, mending strangers’ minutes while living in borrowed hours. He barely spoke. But he wrote. Always wrote.
The book—Borrowed Time—was published quietly. Small press. No launch party. No PR. Just pages filled with their love, their loops, their fragments.
And it found its way into the world, as stories sometimes do when the world is ready for them.
Letters arrived.
From readers who had lost someone.
From strangers who had lived a single unforgettable day.
From people who said they now looked at clocks differently.
Dev kept every one of them in a shoebox labeled: Proof that time listens.
One rainy evening, while sorting through an old drawer of rusted watch bands, he found something unexpected.
Tucked between yellowing receipts and a broken compass was a tiny, sealed envelope.
His name was written on it in familiar slanted handwriting.
Dev.
His hands trembled as he opened it.
Inside was a letter.
You’ve crossed the hour now, haven’t you? 6:45. Maybe 6:46. I don’t know how long the clock will let you stay. But if you’re reading this, then it means time gave us something back. It let us remember.
I don’t know where I went. I don’t even know if I was meant to stay. Maybe I was just a whisper caught in the wrong century, or a note in your unfinished song.
But I do know this—love doesn’t vanish. Not really. It folds itself into people, into stories, into music left playing on an empty piano bench.
You saved me, Dev. Not from death. But from forgetting myself. You loved me across lifetimes. You gave meaning to seconds.
And if time ever lets me return… I’ll be the girl who walks into your shop with a song you’ve already heard.
Until then, live. Live like it still matters. Because it does.
—Maya
Dev pressed the paper to his heart.
The brass clock on the shelf ticked once.
6:46.
And then—chimed.
A new chime. Not like the ones before. Not mechanical.
Musical.
Faint notes echoed in the room. A piano’s breath. A chord only two hearts could recognize.
Dev stood slowly, eyes wide.
The clock face had changed. Behind the glass was no longer brass—but paper.
A single page.
He opened the back panel and removed it gently.
It was sheet music.
Maya’s final composition.
“The Letter After Time”
That night, he played it on the old upright piano in the corner of the shop. Fingers unsure at first, then certain. The melody rose like dawn—quiet, glowing, inevitable.
He played it not for the city, not for the world, not even for Maya.
He played it for time.
For every lost second. Every unsent word. Every version of love that lived between ticks.
And when he finished, there was no applause.
Only the softest breeze.
And the feeling that someone had been listening.
The next morning, a young woman walked into the shop.
Backlit by sun, hair in a loose braid, eyes curious and searching.
She looked around, slowly. Then saw the brass clock.
Her lips parted.
“Did you compose this?” she asked, holding up her phone, Maya’s melody echoing faintly from it.
Dev blinked. “No. But I lived it.”
She smiled. “I’ve been hearing it in my dreams for weeks. It brought me here.”
Dev said nothing.
She walked to the piano. Sat. Played the first notes without hesitation.
Same rhythm. Same pulse. Same spirit.
Dev watched her hands, watched the way she closed her eyes—just like Maya did. Not imitation. Not coincidence.
Something deeper.
The girl looked up.
“I don’t know why,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve met you before.”
Dev smiled, softly, almost painfully.
“Maybe we’re just catching up,” he said.
She tilted her head, curious. “Do you believe in fate?”
He nodded.
“I believe in borrowed time.”
And outside, the city ticked on.
But inside, time folded its hands, stepped back, and let love begin again.
END
