Ravi Venkatesh
Part 1: The Open Mic War Begins
In the buzzing alleys of Bangalore, where biryani is a second religion and tech startups bloom faster than rain-soaked mushrooms, something curious had taken root—stand-up poetry. Not quite comedy, not quite theatre, and certainly not for the faint of vocabulary. By 2025, it had morphed into a strange new beast. Think Netflix drama meets spoken word, with a dash of ego and cappuccino foam.
Two open mic venues had risen to cult status—Café Metaphor in Indiranagar, and Rhyme & Roast in Koramangala. Each claimed poetic supremacy. Their Instagram reels were savage. Their Canva posters were passive-aggressively aggressive. And worst of all, their Friday night shows clashed. You could either sip hibiscus kombucha and cry over breakup haikus at Café Metaphor or get a free double espresso while a beardy poet rapped about capitalism at Rhyme & Roast.
Caught in this cultural conflict was Nakul Krishnan, a 28-year-old data analyst who wore kurtas unironically and believed Google Sheets were a form of art. By day, Nakul performed pivot table magic for a fintech startup called CoinKranti. By night, he transformed into a tortured bard, using words like “crimson,” “void,” and “late-stage capitalism” in his poetry. His performance style was best described as ‘brooding lecturer meets lost squirrel.’
On a humid Thursday morning, Nakul stood in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror, toothbrush dangling mid-air. “Where should I go tomorrow? Metaphor has better acoustics, but Roast gives free filter coffee and that quirky ceramic mug I like.” His roommate, Prashant, groaned from the bedroom. “You need therapy, not rhyming sessions.” Prashant was a backend engineer who once asked Nakul if haikus were Japanese noodles.
Nakul ignored the insult. Poets were used to ridicule. It fueled their craft.
Friday arrived with the solemnity of a presidential election. Nakul picked Café Metaphor. He reached early, notebook in hand, heart palpitating to the beat of internal iambic pentameter. The crowd was the usual mix—engineering dropouts, girls with nose rings and sad eyes, a man wearing a jute bag as a vest, and a German tourist who didn’t understand Hindi but claimed to “feel the rhythm of soul.”
The host, a sprightly woman named Sahana, took the stage. “Welcome to Café Metaphor! Where pain is poetry and your ex is probably in the audience!”
First up was Pooja, better known by her Instagram handle @pooetry_unplugged. She wore a scarf that looked like it cost more than Nakul’s rent. Her poem was titled “Existential Dread with a Side of Chutney”. She rhymed “gastritis” with “midlife crisis” and ended with a dramatic silence that lasted 42 seconds. The audience was spellbound. One man wept openly into his oat milk latte.
Nakul followed. He adjusted his kurta, stepped up to the mic, and opened his leather diary like it was a sacred text. His piece was called “Agile Love in a Waterfall World.” It began strong.
“You were the backlog I never cleared,
the sprint I never finished.
In the Kanban of my heart,
you were always ‘in progress.’”
There was a faint cough from the back. Someone giggled when he used the phrase “synergy of soul.” By the time he reached the final stanza, even Shakespeare the café dog had walked out. A slow, awkward clap followed. Sahana smiled the way one does after a bad date.
Across the city at Rhyme & Roast, a lean, angular man with a half-bun and full ego was blowing minds. Guru, who introduced himself as a “freelance emotional consultant,” delivered a banger titled “My Ex is a Startup.” He began with a whispered line: “We launched with passion. She pivoted. I bootstrapped my pain.” He mic-dropped an actual mic. People lost their minds.
The two performances—Nakul’s and Guru’s—were uploaded to Reels that same night. By Saturday morning, Bangalore was divided. Team Metaphor claimed Nakul was “ahead of his time.” Team Roast called him “a walking TEDx parody.” And in the midst of this rising drama, a new poster surfaced on social media.
“POET BRAWL 2025: Only One Mic. Only One Winner. One City. No Similes Barred.”
The venue: Cubbon Park Amphitheatre. The date: Two Fridays later. The prize: A custom golden microphone, a year’s supply of free coffee, and—most coveted of all—a verified blue tick on their new app “VerseUp.”
Nakul stared at the poster on his screen. “This is it. This is my Slamdunk for the Soul. My Wordsworth meets war cry.” He turned to Prashant, who was frying Maggi with the intensity of a master chef.
Prashant blinked. “You’re not ready, man. You once rhymed ’emotional dependency’ with ‘Delhi residency.’ It’s not a poem. It’s trauma in couplets.”
Nakul ignored the jab. He retreated to his room, switched on his Himalayan salt lamp, and began crafting what he believed would be the poetic equivalent of a nuclear warhead. Somewhere between metaphors of mango pickle and lost affection, his cat Shakespeare walked across the keyboard, adding ‘pppppppppppp’ to the final stanza. Nakul took it as a sign.
In another corner of the city, Guru had already posted a story: “Preparing for war. Let the weak fall to enjambment.”
Battle lines were drawn. The mics had been polished. Bangalore, a city known for its chaotic weather and chiller vibes, was about to witness something truly absurd—a poetic war, waged with irony, rhyme, and Instagram Live.
The pen, it seemed, was ready to be mightier than the mic.
Part 2: Verses and Rehearsals
Nakul hadn’t left his room in thirty-six hours. The world outside blurred into a Bangalorean symphony of honking autos, distant thunder, and the shrill calls of a coconut vendor who seemed to know only two words: “Tender! Fresh!” Inside, however, a war was raging. Not with swords, but with metaphors. Not with blood, but with double espresso and midnight despair.
The Poet Brawl was now the talk of the town. Reddit threads were exploding with predictions, memes comparing Guru to Genghis Khan holding a notepad, and one particularly viral video where someone edited Nakul’s performance to make it look like a Microsoft Excel tutorial. He watched it in horror and then watched it again—just to make sure the spreadsheet joke was about him. It was.
He needed a comeback. No, he needed a masterpiece.
He opened his leather diary, flipped past the half-written breakup ballads, startup parodies, and that one time he accidentally plagiarized a Maroon 5 song. This had to be original, edgy, and real. He titled it in bold caps: “POETIC JUSTICE.” Underneath, he wrote:
“When they said I was just Excel with feelings… I pivoted my pain.”
Prashant barged in with a plate of toast. “You look like a rejected monk,” he said. “Please eat. And get a haircut.”
“I can’t,” Nakul whispered, staring at a candle as if it held the meaning of life. “I need suffering for authenticity.”
“Bro, you cried last week because your Swiggy order had onions.”
“Raw onions are a betrayal.”
Prashant sighed. He was used to these episodes. Once, Nakul spent three hours crying over a poem called The Train Left Without Me when it turned out the metro was just delayed.
Meanwhile, over in Domlur, Guru was live-streaming his rehearsals. In a dramatically lit terrace room filled with incense, fairy lights, and at least four framed posters of himself, he performed to a growing online audience. “This one’s called ‘Algorithms of My Ache.’ Listen.”
“My love was not scalable.
She wanted real-time affection.
I offered push notifications.”
The comments exploded: “I’m crying in binary,” “Spoke directly to my Java heart.”
Guru grinned. “We don’t write poems, we launch revolutions.” His entourage—yes, he had one—clapped. Among them was Ananya, a spoken-word artist who only wore black and once performed an entire poem upside down in an aerial silk harness. She nodded. “Your cadence has improved. But maybe more breath before the line break?” Guru smirked. “The line breaks for me.”
Back in Indiranagar, Nakul attended an underground rehearsal at an abandoned bookshop converted into a rehearsal dungeon called “The Broken Spine.” Dim lights, pretentious vinyl records, and poetry so dense it came with footnotes. Here, he hoped to find guidance. Or at least, less judgment than Instagram.
He nervously read his latest draft aloud:
“Every time you left me unread,
I left myself unread too.
My WhatsApp ticks remained grey,
Like the sky when you walked away.”
A girl with dreadlocks snapped her fingers softly. A boy with a typewriter raised an eyebrow. Someone coughed and muttered, “Too literal.”
“I mean, it’s raw,” said a poet named Mithun who specialized in haikus about potholes. “But where’s the subversion? Where’s the ambiguity of pain?”
“I’m pretty ambiguous about my whole life,” Nakul muttered.
Another girl, wearing a sari with QR codes printed on it, leaned in. “Try performative silence. Stop halfway through. Let the absence speak.”
“You mean like a glitch?”
“Yes, like heartbreak buffering.”
Nakul thanked them and walked out, more confused than ever. On his way home, rain began to pour—Bangalore’s favorite dramatic effect. A drenched Nakul stood under a leaking tin shed near a chai stall. As the world shimmered around him in neon lights and misty reflections, he pulled out his pen and scrawled a new idea:
“You were the comma in my full stop life.
A pause. Never a conclusion.”
This felt right. This had soul. He rushed home like a man possessed.
That night, Café Metaphor hosted a special “Poetry Fight Club” for brawl hopefuls. Only rule—don’t talk about your metaphors until you bleed emotion. Nakul arrived, notebook in one hand, anxiety in the other. Inside, the place buzzed with competitors. Pooja was there, sipping on rose tea, reciting verses into a mirror. “Pain,” she whispered, “but make it pastel.”
The mic was passed around like a relay baton of insecurity. Everyone performed like the world depended on it. A guy named Rahul delivered a poem entirely made of puns about vegetables and ended with “lettuce forgive ourselves.” Pooja countered with a seven-minute piece involving lipstick, feminism, and a talking mirror. By the time Nakul got on stage, he was sweating from places he didn’t know existed.
He read his newest piece, voice shaking but steady enough to ride the rhythm.
“You texted ‘k.’
And I shattered.
Because in that lowercase lie
Was the uppercase end of us.”
The silence was… spiritual. Someone in the front row gasped audibly. The café dog looked up, tail wagging. Even Sahana, the host, stood up slowly and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a contender.”
Nakul blinked. “Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was devastating in a strangely LinkedIn kind of way.”
His phone buzzed. A new post by Guru. A reel showing him standing atop Nandi Hills, arms wide, reciting lines about oxygen and emotional depletion. It had already gone viral. Nakul turned to Shakespeare the cat, who blinked slowly in return. “I don’t have a hill,” he whispered. “But I have hurt. And hyphens.”
The Poet Brawl was seven days away. The poets were sharpening their syllables. Bangalore was choosing sides. And Nakul, now suddenly a minor local celebrity, knew one thing for sure.
He was not going down without a stanza.
Part 3: Promo Reels and Personal Crises
By Monday, Bangalore had lost its collective mind. The Poet Brawl wasn’t just a literary event anymore—it was an urban phenomenon. Flyers were plastered across trees, college canteens, and one strangely committed autorickshaw that had “#TeamGuru” painted on its back. Even Swiggy sent out a notification: “Feeling poetic? Try our new heartbreak combos with extra fries.”
Nakul found himself in a café being handed free coffee simply because the barista recognized him from a Reel titled “Excel Boy Speaks Truth.” It had garnered seventy-two thousand views. Not all the comments were kind, but enough were. Some said his metaphors were “oddly relatable,” and one girl with a profile picture of a cat wrote: “I would date him just to break his heart and inspire more content.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or terrified.
Still, with five days left, he knew he had to move fast. While Guru had a team, a drone for aerial shots, and possibly a sponsorship deal with a therapy app, Nakul had his roommate Prashant, who still thought this was all one long personality crisis.
“I’m telling you, you need branding,” Prashant said, flopping onto the couch with a bag of chips. “Even crypto influencers have better logos. Do you have a tagline?”
“A tagline?” Nakul blinked.
“Yes. Something dramatic. Something like—‘He came. He rhymed. He emotionally destabilized.’”
“Prashant, I write poetry, not advertising jingles.”
“Same thing now, bro.”
Nakul sighed. “Maybe I do need something. A theme. A message.”
“You need a team. Look at Guru. He has a manager, an editor, and a hairstylist who also plays the flute.”
Later that night, Nakul posted a story on Instagram:
“Looking for a videographer, a friend, or a fellow sufferer. DM me if you vibe with heartbreak and awkward eye contact.”
To his surprise, he got three responses. Two were creepy. The third was from Tanvi, a documentary student from Christ College who messaged, “Your sadness has potential. Let’s make it aesthetic.” They met the next day at Cubbon Park. She had a camera, a vision, and way too much eyeliner.
“I want you to walk slowly,” Tanvi instructed. “Through rain, through a crowded metro, through life. I’ll film it all. No smiling. Just raw poetic melancholy.”
“What should I wear?” Nakul asked nervously.
“Something that says ‘emotionally available but unwashed.’”
Over the next two days, she filmed him writing in slow motion, staring at sunsets from building terraces, and feeding pigeons in a way that implied unresolved trauma. She even insisted he hold an old typewriter at one point. “No one uses these anymore,” he muttered.
“Exactly. Like your love life.”
Meanwhile, Guru dropped a bomb—his official promo video, a high-definition, 2-minute cinematic masterpiece titled “Before the Word Breaks.” It featured drone shots of him meditating in Hampi, slow-motion ink splashes on paper, and a backing track of tabla meets synthwave. It ended with a shot of him looking into the camera and saying, “This city bleeds metaphors. I am the knife.”
Tanvi saw the video and exhaled deeply. “He’s good. But he’s performative. You’re—”
“Unstable?”
“No. Honest. There’s a difference. You cry at department store music. That’s marketable.”
They spent the next day editing Nakul’s promo. It was less polished, more raw. He walked through puddles, sat in buses staring out dramatically, and read one of his new poems in voiceover:
“You wanted someone with edge.
I was a circle.
Complete. But never sharp enough to hold you.”
When the video was posted, the response was overwhelming. People shared it. Commented with fire emojis. One user wrote, “This man looks like he’s been dumped by every zodiac sign. I stan.”
Back at home, Nakul collapsed onto the sofa. Shakespeare the cat curled beside him, purring judgmentally. “This is insane,” he mumbled. “I haven’t felt this exposed since I accidentally hit ‘Reply All’ on that office birthday email.”
Prashant walked in holding a packet of moong dal. “Bro, you’re trending. You’re now officially Bangalore’s #SadBoyPoet. There’s merch with your face on it.”
“Merch?”
“Yeah. Someone printed your quote ‘I was a comma in your full stop life’ on a T-shirt. I bought one.”
Nakul’s face froze. “Why?”
“Because it was Buy One Get One and I spilled sambar on my good kurta.”
Meanwhile, the tension with Guru was mounting. Guru, for all his poetic prowess, was not a gracious competitor. On Wednesday, he posted a reel mocking Nakul’s spreadsheet metaphor:
“Some poets use pain. Others use Excel. And some people think Ctrl+Z can undo heartbreak.”
It got laughs. It got likes. But it also got comments defending Nakul. One girl wrote: “At least he’s real. Not every poem needs fog machines and flute solos.”
Still, the jab stung. Nakul opened his diary and wrote angrily:
“You mocked my cells and columns.
But you never saw the formula beneath.”
It was defensive. It was dorky. It was exactly him.
That night, he dreamed he was in the middle of a stage, but instead of reciting poems, he was asked to solve a Sudoku under pressure. He woke up sweating. “Is this normal?” he asked Tanvi over the phone.
“It means your soul is preparing for battle.”
“Or I’ve had too much chai.”
By Thursday, both camps were ready. The city had taken sides. There were hashtags. Memes. Even a Spotify playlist titled “Slam Wars: The Bangalore Edition.” Rumors floated that a local FM channel might broadcast the final event live. Nakul checked his follower count and blinked. He had crossed 10,000.
His phone buzzed. A DM from Guru:
“May the best metaphor win.”
Nakul typed back, paused, deleted it, and simply replied:
“Let’s rhyme.”
The stage was set. The final showdown awaited. And Nakul knew—win or lose—he had already found something far bigger than applause.
He had found his voice.
Part 4: Cafés, Coaches, and Existential Similes
By Friday morning, Bangalore was vibrating with poetic tension. Cubbon Park Amphitheatre had turned into the city’s unofficial Colosseum. Posters with the words “POET BRAWL 2025” in flaming red font were everywhere—from cafe coasters to bus backs, and bizarrely, one tattoo spotted on an engineering fresher’s forearm. Guru’s followers had begun referring to themselves as “Verse Warriors.” Nakul’s growing army was subtler, calling themselves “The Soft Launch Squad.” It was all becoming very real, and very ridiculous.
Nakul, meanwhile, was having a crisis over socks.
“I can’t wear striped socks,” he declared, holding up a navy and maroon pair. “They scream ‘confused mime artist.’”
Prashant rolled his eyes. “Bro, you’re about to perform in front of five hundred people. Your socks are not the poem.”
“But what if they become the poem?” Nakul said, eyes wild. “What if I say, ‘In stripes I sought order, but found only chaos in cotton’?”
“That line physically hurt me,” Prashant replied, chewing toast like a man watching the apocalypse unfold one metaphor at a time.
Tanvi arrived with a camera bag and two cups of chai. “Stop panicking. You look like a damp handkerchief. Drink this. We’re going to do a warm-up run.”
“Warm-up?”
“Yes. Emotional preparation. Breathwork. A trial performance at a café I know. It’s low-key. Just five people and one very judgmental cat named Dobby.”
Nakul agreed reluctantly. They took an Uber to The Caffeine Cauldron, a little-known cafe in Malleshwaram run by retired English teachers who hosted niche open mic sessions titled “Read Between My Whines.” The smell of roasted beans and dusty novels hung in the air. A chalkboard sign read: Today’s special: Metaphor Mocha.
Tanvi pulled out her camera. “Okay. One take. One shot. Imagine this is the final. Breathe. Feel. Don’t force the drama—let it drip like forgotten milk tea.”
Nakul stood under a spotlight made entirely of three mismatched lamps. He took a deep breath and began.
“You left,
like a tab I forgot to close—
open, draining memory.
And I, the cursor,
kept blinking
in a sentence
you never finished.”
Silence followed. The cat meowed once. A bald man in suspenders clapped slowly. Someone in the back muttered “Nice line break.”
“Not bad,” Tanvi whispered. “Still needs more gut. You’re reciting sadness. I want you to bleed it.”
They walked back through the drizzle. Bangalore’s sky had gone into its usual PMS-mode: grey, unpredictable, and unnecessarily dramatic.
“Do I even have the right to be this poetic?” Nakul asked. “Guru has pain. Trauma. He broke up with a TEDx speaker. I just got ghosted by someone who sold mandala bedsheets online.”
Tanvi stopped walking. “You think pain is competitive? That someone’s heartbreak has to come with a QR code of credibility? Don’t you dare disqualify your own hurt because it didn’t come with background music.”
Nakul blinked. Then smiled. “That’s… oddly motivational.”
“I was raised on Rumi and rage,” Tanvi said, sipping her chai.
Back at Café Metaphor that evening, a surprise awaited him. Sahana, the host, had arranged for a secret guest—Professor V. Narayan, retired poet, beard enthusiast, and unofficial godfather of Bangalore’s spoken word circuit. Rumor had it that he once made a room cry with a poem about drying socks.
He looked at Nakul and said, “Come. Let’s talk form.”
Over filter coffee, the old man grilled him. “Why do you rhyme ‘heart’ with ‘start’? That’s been done. Say something that tastes new.”
“I tried ‘heart’ with ‘depart’ but it felt forced.”
“Of course it did. It sounds like a breakup at the airport.”
“Exactly!”
“Good. Then lean into it.”
He continued, “Don’t just write poems. Write towards them. Every word you say must feel like a word you couldn’t avoid. That’s poetry.”
Nakul sat in stunned silence. “Professor, I feel like I’ve just been baptized in syllables.”
Narayan chuckled. “Poetry is like dosa batter. Ferment it. Flip it when hot. Serve it honestly.”
That night, Nakul rewrote his final poem. For the sixth time. But this time, it wasn’t to impress. It was to exhale.
Across the city, Guru livestreamed his final rehearsal in a candle-lit studio. It had dramatic music, five costume changes, and a backup tabla player. He ended the session by staring into the lens and saying, “Poetry isn’t performance. It’s prophecy.” The comments section burst into flames. One girl wrote: “You’re the Rumi of RMZ Ecospace.”
But the public was beginning to shift. A new buzz had started around Nakul’s rawness, his awkward charm, his unapologetically mundane pain. People found him relatable, and in a city of tech sprints and failed Tinder dates, that was revolutionary.
The final poem was now etched in his mind.
“The Things I Couldn’t Forward”
I saved you as “Maybe Love”
and never changed it.
You were a calendar event
I never confirmed,
a text I typed but deleted,
a message stuck in Drafts.
You were what Gmail asked me to ‘Follow up?’
But I never clicked.
I archived.
And sometimes, I search.
But not too often.
Because even memory
has a data cap.
He read it aloud once. It made Shakespeare the cat blink twice. That was enough validation.
The night before the showdown, he lay in bed wide awake, the air filled with the drone of ceiling fan and existential fear. “What if I forget my lines?”
“Then improvise,” Tanvi messaged.
“What if I freeze?”
“Then be still. Stillness is a stanza too.”
“Should I wear the striped socks?”
“Block me.”
He smiled.
Tomorrow, everything would change. Or maybe not. But one thing was clear—whether he won or lost, performed or panicked, Bangalore would remember the boy who brought Excel, heartache, and hope to the same stage.
Part 5: The Brawl Begins
The Cubbon Park Amphitheatre had never seen anything quite like this.
By 5 PM, the sun was lowering itself lazily behind a curtain of clouds as the audience poured in—students, freelancers, influencers, chai vendors, confused tourists, and a few uncles who thought “Poet Brawl” was some kind of new IPL team. There were picnic blankets on the grass, tangled fairy lights strung between trees, and an open stall offering “sorrow-themed cupcakes” with names like Mocha Monsoon and Dark Chocolate Denial.
On stage, a massive neon sign blinked: “POET BRAWL 2025: MIC, MIND, MAYHEM.” The mic sat lonely at the center, polished to a shine, surrounded by two chairs and a spotlight bright enough to cook a samosa.
Backstage, Nakul was staring into the mirror, not at himself, but at the note he’d stuck in the corner: “Feel it. Don’t fix it.” His kurta was freshly ironed. His shoes were uncharacteristically clean. His heart, however, was not. It thudded with the rhythm of twenty-five years of unresolved feelings and one slightly undercooked upma.
Tanvi hovered nearby, camera ready, her eyes sharp. “You good?”
“No.”
“You ready?”
“…Also no.”
“Perfect,” she said, smiling. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”
Guru was in the opposite greenroom, surrounded by his team. He wore a flowing black kurta, rings on five fingers, and the air of a man preparing to launch a cult. His warm-up routine involved deep breathing, Sanskrit chants, and dabbing essential oil behind his ears. He’d insisted his chair be sprayed with lavender mist.
The host of the evening, Sahana, walked onto the stage. The crowd roared. She raised both hands and silence fell like poetry paper on a still desk.
“Ladies and gentlemen, dreamers and doom-scrollers, welcome to the event you didn’t know you needed. Tonight, we witness a battle not of fists, but of feelings. A duel not with daggers, but with doubt. A fight… of feelings with rhymes that slap!”
The audience cheered, whistled, clapped, and held up LED signs. One said: “Guru for President.” Another, more modestly, read: “Nakul is our Excel-sheet Romeo.”
“The rules are simple,” Sahana continued. “Each poet gets two rounds. One solo poem, one response. No props. No interruptions. Just raw, unfiltered verse. May the saddest soul win.”
Backstage, Nakul took a deep breath. “It’s time,” Tanvi said, gently nudging him forward.
“I suddenly feel like throwing up.”
“Throw up later. Cry on stage. That’s the brand.”
Guru was called up first. The applause was thunderous. He floated onto the stage like an ancient mystic, arms raised. He didn’t speak right away. He just stood there, soaking in the energy, letting the silence stretch into something theatrical.
Finally, he whispered into the mic, “This piece is called ‘Oxygen Levels in a City Without You.’”
It was intense. Spoken like gospel, performed like opera. He talked of lost breath, choking love, Delhi smog as a metaphor for heartbreak, and even managed to rhyme “pollution” with “dissolution.” The crowd gasped at every line break. Someone shouted, “Slay!” At the end, he bowed like a stage actor at the Globe Theatre.
Nakul swallowed. His palms were sticky. But when Sahana called his name, something inside him clicked—not confidence, not clarity, but a sort of gentle defiance. He walked up slowly, notebook in hand, no music, no mist, just messy sincerity.
“This poem,” he said, “is called ‘The Things I Couldn’t Forward.’”
And then he began.
“I saved you as ‘Maybe Love’
and never changed it.
You were a calendar event I never confirmed,
a text I typed but deleted,
a message stuck in drafts.
You were what Gmail asked me to ‘Follow up?’
But I never clicked.
I archived.
And sometimes, I search.
But not too often.
Because even memory has a data cap.”
There was no thunderous applause. Not yet. Just a weighted silence that pulsed between bodies. And then, slowly, hands came together. Claps rippled through the amphitheatre. Not the kind that explode—but the kind that seep in, spread gently, respectfully. And in the back row, someone sniffled.
Sahana walked up. “And that, my friends, is how you stab a heart with a Google calendar invite.”
The response round was next.
Guru went again, this time more aggressive. His poem was titled “Love as a Startup Failure.” He talked of pivots, VCs of emotion, heartburn rates, and concluded with: “She ghosted me after I invested my soul. She called it ‘bad timing.’ I called it ‘Series B heartbreak.’” People hooted. One guy threw a crumpled rose on stage. Guru caught it midair like a Bollywood villain and bowed.
Nakul stepped up for his final piece.
He didn’t speak for ten seconds. Then he smiled, nervously, as if realizing something.
“I wrote this one last night. It’s called ‘If You Ever Read This.’”
And he delivered it softly.
“If you ever read this,
know that I didn’t write it for applause.
I wrote it because I was scared
you’d vanish completely
if I stopped remembering you in metaphors.
You were not a poem.
You were a person.
But this is the only way I know how to hold on—
in stanzas, in line breaks,
in words that sound prettier
than the pain they carry.”
The crowd didn’t cheer. They stood. One by one. Quietly. It wasn’t hysteria. It was reverence.
When Nakul stepped off the stage, his legs wobbled. Tanvi grabbed his shoulders. “You did it.”
“I blanked out after the first line.”
“Exactly. You stopped performing. You started being.”
Backstage, Guru gave him a nod. A little stiff. A little too late. But it was something.
Sahana returned to the stage.
“Well, I don’t think we can declare a winner. Because art isn’t war. But if it were, I’d say the city just fell in love with two different kinds of heartbreak.”
The crowd cheered.
As people filtered out into the warm Bangalore night, someone handed Nakul a cup of tea. Someone else asked for a selfie. And someone whispered, “Thanks for making crying fashionable again.”
He smiled. Looked at the moon.
And whispered, “Mic dropped.”
Part 6: Tea, Tweets, and the Truth About Fame
The morning after the Brawl, Bangalore woke up hungover—not from alcohol, but from raw emotion. Cubbon Park Amphitheatre was still littered with abandoned coffee cups and discarded tissues that may or may not have been used during the final poem. The Instagram hashtag #PoetBrawl2025 had over a million views overnight. Even Zomato tweeted: “Serving heartbreak with fries since 2010. Congrats to both poets!”
But for Nakul, it was just a regular Saturday morning. Well, almost.
He sat on the floor of his apartment in an old T-shirt, sipping lukewarm tea, scrolling through a flood of DMs, comments, and notifications. A girl from Chennai had sent a voice note that simply said, “I listened to your poem and hugged my cat for ten minutes. Thank you.” Another comment read, “I didn’t cry, but my Wi-Fi blinked twice and I think that counts.”
Prashant walked out of the bedroom in boxers and a Batman hoodie, yawning. “Dude, you were trending at number four in India last night. You beat a political scandal and two cricketers.”
“I also got accused of fake sadness by some guy named @CryptoChad420.”
Prashant shrugged. “Fame comes with trolls. If you’re making both people cry and rage-tweet, you’re doing something right.”
Nakul wasn’t sure how to feel. Yes, his performance had been… intense. And yes, he’d found something within himself that night—something warm, uncomfortable, and weirdly beautiful. But now that it was over, he felt slightly… hollow. Like the applause had filled a room temporarily, but everyone had left without saying goodbye.
He turned to Shakespeare, who blinked at him from the windowsill.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he confessed. “Should I keep writing? Or will it all just be one sad sequel to my own heartbreak?”
The cat sneezed and resumed licking its paw.
Meanwhile, Tanvi arrived with her laptop, chai, and energy that made it feel like another episode was about to start. “Congratulations,” she said, dropping her bag with a thud. “You’ve been declared the internet’s new Sad Boi Supreme. What’s next?”
“I don’t know. Cry into a camera? Start a podcast where I just read old texts and sigh dramatically?”
She laughed. “Actually, that might work.”
She opened her laptop. “Look, we’ve got emails. One from a podcast network. One from a publishing house asking if you want to write a book of poems. And one very weird one from someone who wants you to appear in a luxury tissue brand ad.”
“Tissue?”
“Yeah. Their campaign is called ‘We Wipe the Real Tears.’”
“I’m terrified.”
“You should be.”
They sat in silence for a while, sipping chai. Rain started again, light and moody, as if the city was still processing all the emotions from the night before.
Then Tanvi said something that startled him. “You know, Guru texted me this morning.”
Nakul looked up sharply. “Oh?”
“He said, ‘Tell Nakul I meant what I said. He found something real. That takes more courage than I’ve ever had.’”
“Wow,” Nakul muttered. “He didn’t DM me though.”
“He’s a performer, not a conversationalist.”
A long pause.
“Did I… win?” he asked suddenly. “Like, not officially. But… did I?”
Tanvi tilted her head. “Does it matter?”
“A little.”
“Then yeah,” she said. “You won. Not the golden mic. But people. Their hearts. Their awkward midnights.”
Later that day, Sahana invited him to Café Metaphor for a small gathering. A post-brawl decompress, she’d said. “Nothing official. Just poets and chai. No mics.”
When he arrived, the café felt warmer, somehow—like it had absorbed the weight of what had happened the previous night. Familiar faces greeted him with nods and soft smiles. Pooja was there, sipping rose tea and sketching a poem on her napkin. Mithun, the haiku guy, clapped him on the back and said, “You rhymed pain with peace. Respect.”
Guru entered late. No entourage. No mist. Just a quiet air of someone who had survived a storm. He walked over, and for the first time, they spoke without a stage between them.
“That poem,” Guru said, shaking Nakul’s hand, “was brutal. Honest. I hated how much I liked it.”
“That performance,” Nakul replied, “was epic. I hated how much I admired it.”
They both smiled. The war, it seemed, had ended.
“You know,” Guru added, “I thought this Brawl was going to be about winning. But then I watched you read and I realized—it’s about belonging. Not applause.”
They sat together, sipping chai, watching the café fill with laughter and awkward hugs and people sharing notes they’d scribbled during the event. It felt like a family. A dysfunctional, overly expressive, deeply caffeinated family—but family nonetheless.
Around dusk, Sahana raised her cup and said, “To verse. To vulnerability. And to voices that crack when they try to say too much.”
Everyone clinked glasses. Nakul felt his chest loosen a little.
That night, he sat by his window, typing.
A new poem. No deadline. No spotlight.
Just words.
“I Didn’t Know How to End This Poem”
So I paused.
And in that pause,
I heard the applause fade.
And then silence.
And in that silence,
I heard myself.
Not the version on stage.
Not the edited reel.
Just me.
Finally
Enough.
He hit save. Closed the laptop. Smiled.
Because even when the mic is off,
the poem continues.
Part 7: Slam Camp and Flashbacks
By midweek, Nakul had achieved something previously thought impossible: his poems had reached the WhatsApp forwards stage. His aunt from Pune had sent him a poorly formatted image with his lines typed over a stock photo of a woman crying in the rain. The caption said “Heartbreak in the IT Era” and the sender had added, “Very deep. Is this boy your son?”
It wasn’t just family recognition that surprised him. A startup founder offered to fly him to Goa for a “Corporate Creativity Camp,” a coworking space in HSR Layout asked him to “bless the meeting room with spoken word energy,” and a random dating app emailed to ask if he’d like to be their “sensitive male voice of the month.” Nakul politely declined that one, still scarred from being ghosted by a candle-making influencer last year.
But the most curious offer came on Thursday afternoon: an invitation to speak at Slam Camp—a two-day residential poetry retreat hosted in the outskirts of Bangalore, where poets from across the country would gather to “unlearn, express, and cry in groups.”
Tanvi burst in holding the printed email. “You’re in. They want you as a guest poet!”
“Why do I feel like this is a poetry version of Bigg Boss?”
“Because it is. But with more emotional honesty and less throwing of plates.”
Slam Camp was being hosted in a repurposed organic farm near Kanakapura. The brochure promised quiet woods, group circles, vegan meals, and optional forest crying sessions. Nakul signed up, mostly out of curiosity. Also, because the words “forest crying” somehow felt like a sequel to his own emotional journey.
They arrived on Saturday. The place was predictably serene: hammocks, pine-scented air, and people walking barefoot quoting Rumi. The welcome board read: “Welcome, Word Warriors. Let’s find our metaphorical roots.”
Each poet was given a tent, a journal, and a schedule:
7 AM – Guided journaling by the lake
9 AM – Vegan breakfast (tofu idli and ginger shots)
11 AM – Group poem-building session
2 PM – Silence hour
4 PM – Performance circle
6 PM – Bonfire confessions
Nakul stood awkwardly near the banana trees, holding his journal and trying to avoid eye contact with a bearded man who was composing a sonnet aloud about ants.
That’s when he spotted Devika, a poet he’d admired on YouTube but never met. Her poems were like knives dipped in honey—sharp, sweet, and always surprising.
“Hi,” he said, instantly regretting how small his voice sounded.
She smiled. “You’re the Excel heartbreak guy.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Your metaphor was weirdly accurate. I once dated a guy who saved me as ‘Possible HR Risk.’”
They laughed. It felt easy.
The group sessions were bizarre but somehow liberating. One involved forming human metaphors by standing in random positions and explaining why your pose symbolized the climate crisis. Another required blindfolds and reciting your first heartbreak poem while hugging a tree. Nakul chose a short poem and an extremely patient mango sapling.
During the bonfire circle, each poet had to share something they’d never performed before. It was intimate, humbling. One girl wept while reading about her father. A boy whispered a poem about his stutter. Someone else simply read a list of unsent texts titled “Drafts I Never Became.”
When Nakul’s turn came, he hesitated. Then pulled out something old—one of his first poems, written back when he still used “crush” unironically.
“This one,” he said, “is called Stuck in the Group Chat.”
You sent a laughing emoji.
I sent three dots.
You replied with “LOL.”
I replied with silence.
The group moved on.
And so did you.
The group clapped. Not wildly, but sincerely.
Later, by the lake, Devika joined him. “Why don’t you perform this kind of stuff more?”
“I thought it wasn’t deep enough.”
She shook her head. “Depth isn’t about vocabulary. It’s about honesty. You can drown in a puddle if you fall just right.”
They sat for hours, talking—about broken friendships, bad slam poems, and what it meant to become a poet in a city that loved drama but feared vulnerability.
“You ever miss the old you?” she asked.
“Every other Tuesday.”
“What’s he like?”
“Less sad. More hopeful. Still bad at laundry.”
She laughed. “Keep him around. Even if just in your drafts.”
By the end of Slam Camp, Nakul had made new friends, collected thirteen poems from others in his journal, and taken part in a spontaneous rap battle about veganism. He didn’t win, but he rhymed “kale chips” with “emotional eclipse,” which earned him a high-five from a passing monk.
On the last day, the organizers asked Nakul and Devika to co-host the closing circle. Together, they curated a set of final readings, gentle laughter, and hugs that lingered longer than necessary. Before leaving, each participant was handed a seedling in a recycled paper cup with a handwritten note: “Plant this. Or at least plant a poem somewhere.”
Back in the cab to the city, Nakul scrolled through his photos—misty mornings, soil-stained notebooks, a blurry selfie with a goat who had eaten half a haiku.
He turned to Tanvi, who had filmed parts of the retreat. “You think I’ve changed?”
“You haven’t changed,” she said. “You’ve just… remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“That you were never doing this for applause.”
He smiled. The road wound through trees and fading sunlight. Somewhere in the backseat, the little seedling rested beside his diary.
And in his mind, a new poem was already forming—not about heartbreak, not about data, not about winning.
Just about being.
Part 8: Notes, Noise, and New Poems
The Monday after Slam Camp, Nakul returned to the city like a man fresh from a detox he didn’t know he needed. Everything felt a little louder—traffic horns were less poetic, coffee shop playlists too mainstream, and his inbox aggressively unromantic. There were twenty-nine unread emails. Two from his manager at CoinKranti about “workflow synergy,” and one from someone offering to turn his poem into NFT art. He sighed and closed the tab.
Shakespeare the cat rubbed against his leg, meowed twice, then ignored him completely. It was nice to be back.
He stared at the little seedling on the windowsill, still unplanted. The note wrapped around it had faded slightly in the sun: “Plant this. Or at least plant a poem somewhere.”
That evening, Tanvi arrived with two cups of cutting chai and a folder full of USB cables. “We need to talk strategy,” she said, kicking off her shoes.
“About?”
“You, sir, are not just a poet anymore. You’re a brand.”
Nakul groaned. “Don’t say that. I’ll get hives.”
“Too late. You already have a fan page. Someone’s edited your photo next to Rupi Kaur’s and added ‘Bangalore’s Sad Son.’”
He blinked. “Is that a compliment or a call for help?”
She ignored him and opened her laptop. “So here’s what we’ve got: one pending book deal, three podcast invites, and a potential collaboration with a Bangalore jazz musician who wants to score your next poem. Also, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, a sari brand wants to name their fall collection after your poems.”
“Saris?”
“Yep. ‘Drapes of Despair’ is the working title.”
He slumped onto the couch. “I just wanted to write poems in peace. Maybe cry quietly in a coffee shop like the good old days.”
Tanvi smirked. “Welcome to relevance. You’re not niche anymore.”
Later that night, Nakul found himself unable to sleep. He sat at his desk, flipping through his diary, rereading old drafts. Some felt juvenile. Others were painful in a strangely intimate way. He’d grown—not just as a writer, but as a person who’d learned how to sit with his discomfort instead of masking it in rhyme.
A message pinged on his phone. It was from Devika.
Hey. Missed the lake today. But I watered the mango sapling. It misses you too.
He smiled. Typed back:
Tell it I’m trying to grow roots too. Might take a while.
The next morning, he found himself back at Café Metaphor, the scene of his first real failure. It looked the same—mismatched chairs, blackboard menus, moody lights. But something inside him had shifted. He no longer felt like he had to prove anything.
Sahana waved from the counter. “Long time, superstar. Ready to reclaim the stage?”
“No mic today. Just coffee. And maybe a pen.”
He sat in the corner booth and watched as the new poets began trickling in. They were younger, nervous, holding spiral-bound notebooks and wearing too many rings. One girl practiced her opening line into her phone camera. Another boy nervously recited a love poem to his straw.
Nakul pulled out a page and began scribbling. Not for performance. Not for reels. Just for himself.
“Cafés Are Time Machines”
The lights haven’t changed.
Neither has the playlist.
But I don’t flinch
when someone orders two cappuccinos anymore.
Halfway through his chai, Pooja—@pooetry_unplugged—walked in and spotted him.
“Well, if it isn’t our tragic laureate,” she said, sitting down uninvited.
“Nice to see you too.”
“Don’t act humble. You’ve inspired a wave of emotionally intelligent men who now write about their exes with pivot tables and guilt.”
“Great. I’ve created a genre.”
“‘Corporate catharsis.’”
They chatted for a while. She told him about her new podcast, Pastels and Pain, and he promised to check it out. As she was leaving, she paused. “By the way, I read your poem in the Slam Camp journal. The one about being unread. That one hurt. In a good way.”
He nodded, unsure what to say. Praise still felt like a jacket a size too big.
The next few days passed in a quiet blur. He spent his mornings journaling, afternoons walking through Ulsoor Lake, evenings replying to emails with an apologetic smile. He said no to half the offers, maybe to a few, and yes to only one—hosting a workshop at a government school in Yelahanka for kids who wanted to learn poetry but didn’t know where to start.
When he told Tanvi, she lit up. “That’s the content I signed up for. Not the saris.”
At the school, surrounded by ten-year-olds who spoke in broken English and fluent wonder, he felt something stir again.
“Can I write a poem about my dog?” one girl asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Can I write in Kannada and then explain it in English?”
“Please do.”
“Can I write about my brother who always eats my chocolate?”
“Especially that.”
One boy quietly slipped him a folded note. It read:
“My father is gone. But when I water the plants, I think he sees. Is that a poem?”
Nakul’s throat tightened. He wrote on the back:
Yes.
And it’s perfect.
On the bus ride home, the city rolled past him like an old friend retelling a familiar story. He didn’t know what came next. Maybe a book. Maybe more poems. Maybe just planting that seedling tomorrow.
But for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t worried.
He’d survived the stage, the silence, the internet. And more importantly, he’d made peace with the voice inside him—the one that didn’t always rhyme, but always meant what it said.
The mic wasn’t just a tool anymore.
It was a mirror.
And finally, he’d stopped looking for applause in it.
Part 9: Mic-Free Mondays and Mango Conversations
It began quietly, like most revolutions do.
Café Metaphor started a new weekly tradition called Mic-Free Mondays. No performances. No applause. Just poets sitting at tables, talking, scribbling, reading each other’s work without the burden of performing. The idea came from Nakul during a half-joking conversation with Sahana over sambar vada and strong coffee.
“Let’s create a space where no one has to impress,” he’d said.
“Like a support group for people addicted to metaphors?”
“Exactly. A place where it’s okay to read a bad poem and not pretend it’s deep.”
Sahana laughed, but by the next Monday, there were twelve people sitting around a long wooden table, passing around notebooks like confessionals.
It felt… human.
That first evening, a woman read a poem about her mother’s garden, where marigolds grew even after the funeral. A boy shyly passed his phone around, unsure about reading aloud, and his notes app poem made three people tear up. Nakul didn’t read anything that day. He just listened. And somehow, it was enough.
Outside, the rain tapped gently on the café windows. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just the usual Bangalore drizzle that made the world smell like soaked ambition and old trees.
Tanvi filmed none of it. She sat beside him, sipping coffee, sketching something in a small notebook. “You know what you’ve done, right?”
“What?”
“You made being awkward and honest kind of… cool.”
“Great,” he muttered. “Now I’m an influencer for emotionally unstable introverts.”
She chuckled. “Not unstable. Just… under-edited.”
The following week, Devika returned from a short retreat in Kerala. She texted:
Back in town. Want to catch up? Also, I brought mango pickle. Don’t ask why. Just say yes.
Nakul replied:
If you bring the pickle, I’ll bring poetry. Deal?
They met at a tiny terrace café in Basavanagudi. The kind that didn’t have a menu and only served filter coffee, idli, and nostalgia.
She looked more relaxed. Hair tied up. No makeup. Just a calmness that comes from being away from hashtags.
“I wrote something weird while watching goats,” she said. “It might be a poem. Or maybe just a weather report with emotions.”
“Read it anyway.”
She did.
It was about rain falling on the backs of animals, about skin remembering things long after the moment passes, about how mangoes ripen even when no one’s looking. Nakul listened like he always did—quietly, reverently. When she finished, he asked only one thing.
“Did you write it for someone?”
“No,” she said, pausing. “But someone might feel like it was.”
They sat in silence. A comfortable one. Then he handed her his notebook.
“This is something I never performed.”
“Manual for a Quiet Heart”
Don’t answer texts immediately.
Don’t confuse noise for intimacy.
Keep one room in your mind locked.
It’s okay.
Not every memory needs to be redecorated.
Devika blinked. “That line. About noise and intimacy. Oof.”
“I wrote it after I got 500 DMs in one night and still felt lonelier than a rejected PayTM cashback code.”
They talked about everything after that—how poems had become products, how sometimes crying in front of strangers felt easier than telling your closest friend that you missed them, how Bangalore’s skyline looked less like a city and more like a confused poem trying to finish itself.
Before they parted, she gave him a tiny glass jar filled with mango pickle.
“For when metaphors aren’t enough,” she said.
“And when poems need side dishes,” he replied.
Later that night, Nakul sat at his desk, watching the lights outside flicker across wet rooftops. He opened his diary and began writing—not for an audience, not for applause, but for that one strange, gentle thing he had almost forgotten: joy.
“After the Applause”
There’s life after the mic drops.
Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just hands washing coffee mugs.
A cat sleeping on your notes.
Rain being predictable again.
And someone remembering
you like your chai slightly burnt.
The next morning, he did something unusual.
He took the seedling from his windowsill, carried it downstairs, and planted it in the tiny patch of soil behind the building. He didn’t write a poem about it. He didn’t take a photo. He just pressed the earth gently and let it sit.
Shakespeare watched the whole event from the balcony with deep feline disapproval.
Back upstairs, Nakul picked up his phone. There were new notifications. A literary magazine wanted a feature. A publishing house wanted to schedule a call. An app wanted to make poetry “gamified” and sought his “creator insights.”
He stared at the screen, then slowly switched off the Wi-Fi.
Instead, he made tea. Pulled out an old book. And sat beside the open window, letting the sounds of the city return—traffic, laughter, footsteps, a passing vendor shouting something indecipherable but somehow comforting.
Tanvi called around noon. “Just checking—did you see that an author in Delhi just used your poem as an epigraph?”
“I did,” Nakul replied. “It felt strange. Nice. But strange.”
“Welcome to legacy, I guess.”
“I still haven’t done laundry.”
“You’ll die a legend in mismatched socks.”
That evening, he went back to Café Metaphor. Not to perform. Not even to attend Mic-Free Monday. Just to sit, write, and maybe help someone newer feel less alone.
There was a girl in the corner, biting her pen, whispering lines to herself.
He smiled, walked over, and asked, “Hey. Want to read something together?”
Because sometimes, the most poetic thing one can do isn’t to perform.
But simply to listen.
Part 10: Echoes, Endings, and the Poetry of Now
It had been exactly one month since the Poet Brawl. A full orbit of days around that one strange, shimmering night where Nakul had stood on stage and turned heartbreak into something people clapped for. The golden mic trophy was still with Guru—proudly displayed on his Instagram grid beside a new slam video titled “Even My Silence Rhymes.” But something else lingered longer than applause: a quiet, growing community that had sprouted in the aftermath.
Mic-Free Mondays had become a fixture. What started as an experiment now saw twenty to thirty people gathering each week—sharing poems, passing notes, discussing stanzas like football plays. Someone even made a zine called “Paused Between Lines,” compiling pieces born during the sessions. Nakul’s own contribution was an unfinished poem he refused to complete.
“I leave this blank
because sometimes,
pauses are more honest than punctuation.”
Outside the café, the world moved on. New viral videos replaced old ones. Attention shifted, as it always did. But Nakul no longer checked metrics. He wrote in the morning, made tea without rushing, and walked long routes to nowhere. Sometimes, he met Devika at the terrace café and they just sat. She wrote poems about weather and siblings. He wrote poems about public transport and delayed feelings. They read without feedback. Just presence.
One afternoon, Tanvi called with a proposition.
“There’s a lit fest in Jaipur,” she said. “They want you. Panel discussion. Topic: ‘The Performance of Pain.’ Very fancy. Travel and stay included.”
Nakul stared at the tea he’d just brewed. “Can I go and not say anything?”
“No. You’re the speaker.”
“Then no.”
She laughed. “You’re impossible. And the most real thing I’ve seen go viral.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He didn’t go. But he sent a postcard to the lit fest organizer. It read:
“Sometimes the quietest people have the loudest stories.
But some stories aren’t meant for microphones.
They’re meant for benches.
And bus stops.
And back pockets.”
The organizer shared it on Instagram. It got 6,000 likes. Nakul didn’t notice.
Instead, he spent the weekend at a government school in Whitefield, running his second poetry workshop. The kids were louder this time, more confident. One girl wrote a poem from the perspective of her tiffin box. Another boy rhymed Wi-Fi with why cry. It was chaotic, wonderful.
He ended the session with an invitation. “Keep writing. Even if it’s just one line. Even if no one reads it. Especially then.”
A week later, he received a bundle of letters from the class. Crayon drawings, messy verses, some poems entirely made of emojis. One boy wrote:
“Sir, when I grow up, I want to be sad but in a way that helps people.”
Nakul pinned that one to his wall.
Back at Café Metaphor, Sahana told him about a new initiative—turning the upstairs attic into a permanent poetry library. “We’re calling it The Unfinished Room,” she said. “For poems still becoming.” She asked if he had anything to donate. He gave her a stack of old diaries and a small glass jar with a dried mango pickle seed inside. She didn’t ask why.
One evening, as Bangalore simmered in its usual post-rain gold, Nakul and Devika took a walk through Lalbagh. The garden was lush, fragrant, busy with families, lovers, lone walkers, and the occasional jogger reciting poetry to their AirPods. They sat under a massive gulmohar tree and passed a notebook back and forth.
“Ever think of quitting poetry?” she asked.
“Every time I open Instagram.”
She laughed. “And yet here you are.”
He nodded. “I guess I don’t write to win anymore. I write because sometimes, the feeling doesn’t fit anywhere else.”
She scribbled something on a napkin and handed it to him.
“Poetry isn’t what I say.
It’s what doesn’t leave
when I stop talking.”
He folded the napkin and slipped it into his wallet. More permanent than any certificate.
The next Mic-Free Monday, a newcomer arrived—a quiet girl with thick glasses and trembling hands. She didn’t speak for the first hour. Then, just before closing, she whispered, “Can I read something?” Everyone turned. She cleared her throat.
“I thought I was the only one
who talked to silence like it was an old friend.
But then I found this place.
And now, I think silence talks back.”
The room held its breath. When she finished, no one clapped. But everyone smiled.
Afterwards, she found Nakul and said, “I came because of your video. The one with the pigeons and the typewriter. I watched it ten times. It made me feel… less ridiculous.”
He shook her hand. “We’re all ridiculous. That’s what makes us worth writing about.”
That night, he walked home slowly, past closed shops, flickering streetlights, and a group of teenagers laughing over a broken umbrella. He passed the place where he’d once performed to an audience of five. He passed the chai stall where he’d first drafted “The Things I Couldn’t Forward.” He passed the little park where he’d planted his seedling.
It was now a small tree.
Not tall. But steady.
He sat on the nearest bench, pulled out his notebook, and began to write. Not for a show. Not for a post. Just for now.
“Final Draft”
This isn’t the poem I thought I’d write.
There’s no heartbreak.
No stage.
Just a city whispering,
‘You’re not alone.’
And a voice inside replying,
‘I know.’
Not everything rhymes.
But everything echoes.
And that’s enough.
As the wind picked up and the night folded itself into soft silence, Nakul closed his notebook and smiled.
The story wasn’t over.
It had simply become his life.
End
