Anirudh Shenoy
Part 1: The First Page
It was a quiet Sunday evening when she first walked into the Indigo Reads Café on Church Street, the new venue for Bangalore’s freshly launched Silent Book Club. Outside, the sky threatened rain but held itself back, as if not to disturb the pages yet to be turned. Inside, the café smelled of roasted Arabica and old wood, its corners filled with tall green plants and even taller bookshelves. The event board near the counter read “Silent Book Club – 5 PM Onwards,” written in neat, cursive chalk. She glanced around, her tote bag brushing against her leg, heavy with the weight of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. No one spoke. That was the point, after all.
A dozen or so people sat scattered across the café, most of them already engrossed in books. Some had paperbacks, some Kindles, one person held a hardbound copy so old the cover had peeled. She chose a seat near the window, a two-seater with a view of the raintrees swaying gently. A ceramic lamp glowed soft amber beside her. She pulled out her book, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and tried not to look too out of place. Her name was Maya D’Costa, a content writer who had recently moved to Bangalore from Kochi. She missed the sea and the smell of salt, but there was something comforting about this city’s peculiar blend of chaos and calm.
On the other side of the room, someone watched her. Not intentionally, not creepily. He had just noticed her because he hadn’t seen her before. He had been part of the book club since its first meeting three weeks ago, when only four people had turned up and none had stayed past the first hour. But it was growing now. And it pleased him to see new faces. He turned back to his book, a collection of essays by Pico Iyer, but found himself reading the same paragraph over and over. His name was Neil Varma, a 33-year-old graphic novelist who lived two lanes away in a studio flat filled with comic books and empty mugs. He liked people who didn’t try too hard. He liked people who read in silence. So far, the Silent Book Club was his favorite thing about Bangalore.
The rule was simple. Arrive. Greet silently if you must. Order coffee or tea. Read for an hour. No talking. Then, for those who stayed, conversations were welcome. About books, about life, but never forced. At 6 PM, Maya closed her book and looked up. A few others had started packing. The girl with the fantasy novel had already started chatting with the boy in the metal band T-shirt. Maya hesitated, unsure if she should just leave. That’s when Neil stood up and walked toward the counter, where a small basket of bookmarks had been placed. Maya’s gaze followed him.
“You’re new,” he said quietly when he passed her table. It wasn’t a question.
She smiled. “Yeah. First time.”
He nodded, holding up his book slightly as if in salute. “Good pick,” he said, glancing at her Murakami. “That one left me floating for a week.”
“I’m not sure I’ve even caught up to the plot yet,” Maya said with a shy chuckle. “But the language… it’s like dreaming.”
Neil sat down on the other side of her table. No invitation, but no resistance either.
“This place is strange, in a good way,” she added. “It feels like everyone’s on pause.”
He sipped his coffee. “That’s why I like it. No one pretending. Just stories doing their work.”
Outside, the streetlights blinked on. Inside, the conversation grew. Two others joined them, a literature student named Harshitha and an elderly man named Bala who preferred biographies. The four of them talked until the café owner gently reminded them of closing time. When Maya stepped out, Neil followed her to the sidewalk, hands in pockets.
“You live nearby?” he asked.
“Domlur. You?”
“Ulsoor. Walkable, if I feel poetic.”
She laughed again, her voice soft but clear in the night air. “I like this city a bit more now.”
He smiled. “That’s good. You’ll like the club more each week. We’re all different, but the silence connects us.”
Maya looked up at the Bangalore sky, stars hidden behind clouds, the air thick with scent of wet leaves and old rain. She felt lighter. Maybe not home yet, but something close. She waved as she walked away. Neil didn’t follow. He just watched, the way you might watch a good sentence disappear into the next chapter, certain it would return.
Part 2: Coffee and Margins
Maya returned the next Sunday, this time five minutes early. The same warm glow greeted her from inside Indigo Reads Café, and she instinctively chose the same corner seat by the window. She had switched books this week—Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness now peeked out from her bag. The raintrees outside rustled like old friends clearing their throats, and the breeze carried the scent of fresh paper and cinnamon. The room slowly filled. Familiar faces, a few nods exchanged, but the silence held them like an invisible thread.
Neil came in ten minutes later, wearing the same navy jacket he always did, a tote bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. He gave a small wave, not directly at Maya but near enough. She nodded back. He didn’t come sit next to her—this was still the silent hour. Instead, he picked a seat diagonally across and opened a battered hardcover of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He read with intense stillness, eyes sharp but expression relaxed, as if the words were not being read but absorbed directly into the bloodstream.
Maya tried to focus on Roy’s lyrical prose but kept wondering if Neil had read this book too. Probably. He seemed like someone who read everything. At 6 PM sharp, as if a bell had been struck in everyone’s head at once, the rustle of pages ceased. Coffee cups clinked softly. Conversations, low and slow, began to bloom around the café like shy flowers after a long rain. Maya stood and walked toward the counter. Neil was already there.
“I brought bookmarks this time,” he said without turning around, pointing to a neat little stack. “I print them sometimes when I have leftover card stock. Want one?”
She picked one up. A sketch of a city skyline in ink, with the quote “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.” She smiled. “You designed this?”
He finally turned. “Yeah. You like it?”
“It’s beautiful. Feels like it belongs to this city somehow.”
They took their coffees and found an empty table, away from the larger group but still near enough to be included if they wanted. This time, it was easier.
“So,” he began, “what made you pick Roy this week?”
“She makes me feel like I don’t understand India enough. Or maybe that I never will. But I keep trying.”
He nodded. “That’s the right way to read her.”
“What about you? Motorcycle maintenance isn’t exactly café literature.”
Neil chuckled. “It’s a philosophy book in disguise. Helps me sort out my own mess sometimes.”
A silence settled again, not the book club’s sacred silence, but a shared one, comfortable and deep. Outside, the evening had grown darker. A few auto rickshaws honked distantly, and the streetlamps shimmered like forgotten stars. The two of them sat like annotations in the margins of the evening—noticed only if you looked closely.
“You know,” Neil said suddenly, “this whole club idea—it works because nobody’s trying too hard. People just… arrive. And read. And maybe talk. No one’s here to impress.”
Maya nodded. “I think I’ve needed that for a long time.”
He looked at her then, properly. “Bad chapter?”
She paused. “More like a confusing one. You know those pages where you keep reading but nothing sticks?”
“I’ve had a few,” he said softly. “Sometimes you just need a new paragraph.”
She smiled. “Maybe this is it. A new paragraph.”
They didn’t say goodbye when she left, only exchanged glances. He held the café door for her, and she walked out with a bookmark in her hand and a small, warm thrum in her chest she hadn’t felt in years. As she stepped into the soft Bangalore rain that had finally begun, Maya realized she had begun looking forward to Sundays not because of the reading, but because of the silence that came after—the silence filled with the possibility of something new.
Part 3: Dog-Eared Conversations
By the third Sunday, it was no longer a question of if Maya would go. It had become a rhythm, a small ritual she had come to cherish—a tote bag packed with a book the night before, a walk through the buzzing lanes of Church Street, and then the comforting hush of Indigo Reads Café where the world slowed down. That week, she brought along The Book Thief, feeling that its quiet tragedy suited the mood of the city’s monsoon afternoons. The rain had been persistent all week, turning the footpaths mossy and the air thick with petrichor. Inside the café, it felt like entering a cocoon of light and literature.
Neil was already there when she walked in, sitting at a different table this time, but one that still offered a view of the door. He looked up briefly, his eyes catching hers with a flicker of recognition, then returned to his book. Maya offered a small wave before settling down at her usual window seat. She didn’t mind the quiet. In fact, she relished it. The room was filling up with regulars now—Harshitha was back, this time reading a graphic novel, and Bala uncle had brought two books and was carefully deciding which one to start with. Maya found herself smiling at the familiar tableau.
As the hour passed in devoted silence, she caught herself glancing at Neil more often than she meant to. His concentration seemed absolute, his eyes moving steadily across the page, fingers tapping the table ever so slightly in rhythm. She tried to imagine what book he might be reading today, but it was too far to see the title. Her own reading began to blur as she noticed how the light from the hanging bulb threw soft shadows across his face. She shook her head gently, forcing herself back into the world of Liesel and Death.
At 6 PM, the café stirred to life again. Conversations picked up. Coffee orders were refreshed. Neil approached her table this time without hesitation. “That’s a heavy one,” he said, pointing to her book. “But so worth it.”
“I know. Every page is a punch to the heart. But it’s also strangely… beautiful.”
He nodded and sat across from her. “That’s Zusak for you. Makes you hurt, makes you think.”
They sipped their drinks slowly, and for the first time, Maya noticed a small dog-eared notebook sticking out of Neil’s jacket pocket. “You journal?” she asked.
He looked slightly surprised. “Yeah, sometimes. I call it my ‘thought compost.’ I dump everything in and hope something useful grows later.”
She laughed. “That’s a brilliant way to put it. I used to journal too. But I stopped somewhere along the way.”
“Why?”
“I think I started censoring myself. Like I was writing for an imaginary reader.”
Neil nodded. “That’s the hardest part—to be honest on the page. Most people spend their lives editing their truth.”
Maya tilted her head, thoughtful. “Do you write too? I mean, other than sketching bookmarks.”
He hesitated, then said, “I used to write small stories. Nothing serious. Lately I just scribble ideas. Half-finished thoughts.”
“Sounds like a beginning to me,” she said, her voice lighter than she expected. “All stories start like that. With a mess.”
Outside, the rain picked up, a soft tap dance on the awning above. The windows misted slightly. The café seemed to fold inward, drawing everyone closer. At a nearby table, someone had brought a book of Urdu poetry and was quietly reading verses out loud to a friend. The moment felt like a pause in time.
Neil looked at Maya and said, “You know, I’m glad this place exists. Not just the café. This—this odd little club.”
“Me too,” she said. “It feels like… a secret world. Like we all slipped between the pages of the city.”
He grinned. “That’s a line worth stealing.”
She mock-scowled. “You better credit me in your compost notebook.”
He pulled it out and actually wrote it down. Maya watched his handwriting—lean, clean, and tilted slightly forward, like it couldn’t wait to reach the end of the sentence.
They didn’t speak much after that. There was no need. When Maya left that evening, Neil walked her to the gate without a word. The rain had stopped. A gust of wind rustled the leaves above, and a single flower from the sidewalk tree floated down, landing near Maya’s foot.
She looked up. “I think the city approves.”
Neil smiled, hands in pockets. “It has good taste.”
Maya left with her book, a bookmark, and the strange comfort of knowing that some of the best conversations don’t begin with talking—they begin with reading.
Part 4: The Borrowed Sentence
The following Sunday, the city was quieter than usual. A bandh had been declared for a reason Maya hadn’t quite caught—something political, something forgettable. But Indigo Reads Café remained open, like a stubborn bookmark holding its place in the fabric of Bangalore. Maya arrived early again, wearing a soft grey kurta and holding a copy of The Forty Rules of Love. She was already halfway through it and had underlined more sentences than she cared to admit. Her eyes were tired, but her heart felt oddly full.
Neil arrived five minutes later, helmet in hand, hair slightly tousled from the ride. He spotted her immediately and didn’t hesitate this time. Instead of sitting elsewhere, he walked straight to her table and placed his book down—The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Maya raised her eyebrows in appreciation.
“That’s a good one,” she said, her voice low, reverent.
He nodded. “Needed something that could talk back to the silence.”
They both opened their books, and for the next hour, said nothing. The café had fewer people today—maybe seven or eight. The regulars. The ones who came even when the world outside refused to behave. Maya found it easier to focus this time. She sank into Elif Shafak’s layered prose, but her awareness of Neil’s presence never quite left her. They were reading different books, on different pages, but somehow she felt like they were in the same story.
At six, the café didn’t stir so much as it sighed. Conversations were softer today, like everyone was wrapped in a quiet kind of thought. Maya sipped her chai, still lost in the rule that said, “Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you.”
Neil leaned forward. “There’s a line in Gibran,” he said, tapping his book, “that reminded me of you.”
Maya blinked. “Me?”
He flipped through pages, then read, “‘You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.’”
She looked at him, unsure of what to say. “That’s beautiful.”
“You listen like that,” Neil said, not quite meeting her eyes. “Like you’re offering a space. It’s rare.”
The words settled between them like a shared bookmark.
“I think people who read Gibran always end up sounding wiser than they actually are,” she joked, deflecting gently.
He grinned. “True. I’m not nearly that poetic in real life.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You did write down one of my lines in that sacred notebook of yours.”
“Which reminds me—” He pulled it out and handed it to her. “Here. Borrow it for the week. Write something. Anything. I want to read your handwriting.”
Maya hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Neil shrugged. “It’s mostly blank pages and bad drawings. But yeah. I’m sure.”
She took it gently, as if accepting something far more fragile than a notebook. She ran her fingers over the cover, where a tiny sketch of a tree curled its branches inward.
“I haven’t written anything in a long time,” she said, almost to herself.
“Maybe now’s the time.”
They sat together for a while longer. Someone at the next table was reading aloud again, but in Kannada this time, the cadences lilting and warm. Neil looked toward the sound, then back at her.
“I don’t usually like sharing things,” he said.
“I don’t either,” she replied.
“Then maybe that’s why this works.”
Maya didn’t ask what “this” meant. Not yet. Instead, she tucked the notebook into her bag, as if it were a rare library book she’d been entrusted with. When they left the café that evening, they didn’t need an umbrella. The sky was holding itself in restraint, just like them.
Before getting on his bike, Neil said, “I’ll expect your words next Sunday.”
Maya smiled. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
He paused, then added, “You couldn’t, even if you tried.”
As he rode off into the dusk, the streets gleaming under half-lit lamps, Maya stood there for a moment, the notebook still pressing against her side, full of unwritten sentences and borrowed hope.
Part 5: Margins in Motion
Maya didn’t open the notebook that night. It sat on her bedside table like an unopened letter, humming with quiet urgency. She spent the entire week glancing at it, imagining what she might write—then closing her laptop and walking away. By Thursday, she had scribbled something on a torn receipt and then promptly thrown it away. By Friday, she was writing sentences in her phone’s Notes app at 2 a.m. The words came clumsily, but they came. On Saturday night, she finally opened Neil’s notebook.
The first few pages were a mix of sharp pen sketches and cryptic thoughts—quotes half-remembered, doodles of buildings and windows, and one curious sketch of a girl with hair blowing sideways, looking out a rain-speckled window. She paused. It was familiar—not in the details but in the feeling. The way the girl seemed both present and far away. Maya flipped the page and began to write.
She didn’t write about love. Not directly. She wrote about books that leave you changed. About people who never ask for anything but give everything in silence. About places that don’t demand belonging, but still feel like home. Her words curled across the page, steady and slanted, shaped by years of writing letters never sent. By the time she closed the notebook, it was nearly 2 a.m., and she felt lighter than she had in months.
Sunday arrived like a slow heartbeat. The streets were still wet from early morning rain, and the city smelled of damp earth and brewing tea. At Indigo Reads, the same faces had gathered again. A young couple sat near the back, whispering in French. Bala uncle was arguing silently with himself over the ending of a book. Maya arrived a little late, clutching the notebook like a borrowed prayer.
Neil was already there, seated by the bookshelf this time, nose buried in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. He didn’t notice her at first, or pretended not to, but she saw the way his foot stopped tapping when she sat down beside him.
The hour passed. The silence was deeper today, not just around them but between them. When six struck, Maya turned to him and slid the notebook across the table.
“You didn’t have to fill a whole page,” he said, reaching for it gently.
“I didn’t,” she replied. “But I wrote something.”
He didn’t open it immediately. Instead, he placed it beside his cup like it was still absorbing meaning.
“Was it hard?” he asked.
“At first. Then… it became a conversation. Like I was writing to someone who listens.”
He looked at her, something soft blooming behind his eyes. “I think I’ve been writing to you for a while now. I just didn’t know.”
Maya looked down at her tea. The steam curled up like invisible ink. “Sometimes I feel like we’re reading the same book, just from different chapters.”
“That’s a beautiful way to put it,” he said. “But I want to catch up to your page.”
She glanced up, surprised. “You really want to?”
“I do.”
There was no grand moment after that. No dramatic confessions. Just a gentle shift in the air between them, like two bookmarks finally aligning in the same story.
The others around them chatted, ordered brownies, discussed translations and cover art. Maya leaned back, watching Neil scribble something into the corner of a paper napkin.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making a list.”
“Of what?”
He turned the napkin toward her. It read:
Things I Want to Know About Maya
1. Her favorite word.
2. What she dreams about at 3 a.m.
3. If she’s ever fallen in love with a fictional character.
4. What her handwriting says about her.
5. Whether she’d join me at Blossom Book House next Sunday.
She laughed. A bright, bubbling sound that made heads turn. She shook her head. “That’s cheating. You’re not supposed to ask questions here.”
“I’m making an exception,” he said. “We’ve read enough in silence.”
Maya tore off part of her own napkin and wrote:
Answers:
1. Saudade.
2. The sea.
3. More times than I’ll admit.
4. It whispers and hides.
5. Yes.
She handed it back to him without a word.
Outside, the rain had begun again—not a downpour, but the kind that makes you walk slower, linger longer, smell the world more deeply.
Neil looked at her and said, “You ready to rewrite the silence?”
Maya smiled. “Only if we underline the best parts together.”
And that evening, as the café lights dimmed and the chairs were stacked slowly in the corners, a quiet kind of love began to write itself—not loudly, not hurriedly, but like a long sentence that knows exactly where it’s going.
Part 6: The Noise Between Lines
The bookstore wasn’t far from the café. Blossom Book House sat like a gentle rebellion against modern Bangalore—three floors of loosely stacked shelves, narrow passages, and books that breathed. Maya stood outside that following Sunday, waiting beside a wall lined with posters and faded author event announcements. She held a tote bag with two books inside: The Forty Rules of Love, now finished and annotated like a private diary, and a second one she hadn’t shown Neil yet. She hadn’t told him why she picked it. Not yet.
Neil arrived three minutes late, predictably windblown, with a smile that landed somewhere between sheepish and sure. He wore a different jacket this time, but the same look in his eyes—that curious, quiet way of seeing her as if she were a paragraph he couldn’t stop rereading.
“Bookstore date?” he asked.
“More like a walking conversation with paper,” she replied.
They entered, and the scent of must and memories enveloped them instantly. The store buzzed with a soft crowd—readers grazing the aisles, fingers trailing spines, couples murmuring by poetry shelves. Neil led her toward the travel section, where a stack of old Lonely Planets leaned like tired storytellers.
“I used to come here after bad dates,” he said. “Better company.”
“I used to visit bookstores to feel less alone,” Maya replied. “Books don’t stare at your silence. They hold it.”
They wandered through philosophy, then fiction, then a random aisle that seemed to contain nothing but books about birds and obscure Russian cinema. Maya pulled out a thin volume titled Letters to a Young Poet and handed it to Neil.
“You read this?”
He shook his head.
“You should. It feels like someone writing directly to the ache you didn’t know had a name.”
Neil opened it to a random page and read a few lines silently. Then he looked up and said, “It’s terrifying how much I think I needed that sentence.”
“Which one?”
He showed her. It read: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”
She didn’t say anything. Just nodded. Then, without warning, they both moved toward a quieter corner—an accidental alcove between poetry and philosophy where time slowed. She turned to face him, the second book now in her hand.
“I brought you something.”
Neil raised an eyebrow. “A book?”
She handed it to him. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
He blinked. “This is…”
“I read it in college. It broke me and stitched me back. I thought it might do something similar to you.”
He accepted it like a rare inheritance. “You always choose books that feel like letters.”
“Maybe I’m writing to you too. Just not with my own words yet.”
Their fingers brushed as he took the book. Not deliberately, not accidentally. Just enough. The noise of the world faded in that moment—not because the bookstore went quiet, but because something else filled the space between them. A kind of stillness you can only find between two people who understand that the best stories aren’t rushed.
“I want to know more,” Neil said.
Maya tilted her head.
“About the way you think. The way you disappear into books. The way you answer everything with a metaphor.”
“I’m afraid I’m more fiction than fact.”
“That’s fine. I’ve always preferred fiction.”
They sat down on the staircase between the second and third floors. The sound of pages flipping, soft footfalls, an occasional murmur surrounded them like a warm rain.
Maya looked at him, seriously this time. “Do you ever wonder what would happen if this—this reading together, this silence—turned into noise?”
He thought for a moment. “I think… some noise is music. Like the hum of a fan, or someone breathing beside you. Not every silence has to stay silent.”
“What if we ruin the quiet we built?”
“We won’t,” he said. “Because we know what it’s worth.”
She exhaled, slow and uncertain. “Sometimes I think I’m only good at beginnings. I don’t know how to hold a middle. Or arrive at an ending that doesn’t feel like loss.”
He reached for her hand—not forcefully, not dramatically. Just enough to make her look at him.
“Then let’s not think about endings. Let’s stay in the chapter where everything is still possible.”
She didn’t pull away.
Outside, the city’s chaos carried on. Horns honked. Autos weaved. Clouds threatened. But in that small sliver of bookstore light, Neil and Maya sat with books in their laps, noise in their chests, and a page that was only just turning.
Part 7: Between Bookends
The next Sunday arrived like an epilogue they didn’t want to read yet. Maya stood again at her window in Domlur, watching the clouds drift slowly over the city’s skyline. She hadn’t packed a book that morning. Not yet. Something told her today wasn’t just about reading. Something had changed in the spaces between the chapters of her Sundays. The silence between her and Neil was no longer a space of absence—it was a presence, full of weight and warmth, like the last line of a favorite novel you don’t want to forget.
She arrived a few minutes late to Indigo Reads. The café was busier than usual. A new rack of freshly brewed blends had people gathered at the counter, but the usual book club crowd had claimed their usual seats. Neil was not there. She paused at the door, unsettled by his absence, scanning the café like she would a line where a word was missing.
Then she saw it—a note tucked under her usual seat. A brown paper napkin folded neatly, her name written in unmistakable ink.
Maya—
Didn’t want to interrupt your Sunday ritual.
I’m upstairs.
The terrace café.
Thought today deserved a different kind of silence.
– N.
She smiled despite herself. Climbing the narrow wooden staircase that led to the small terrace café above, she was greeted by an unexpected breeze. Bamboo blinds fluttered at the edge. The smell of wet earth and roasted beans lingered in the air. And there he was—Neil—seated at a small table near the railing, two cups of coffee already waiting, and a notebook placed between them like a treaty.
“You’re late,” he said, standing up just slightly.
“You’re dramatic,” she replied, sitting down.
“I prefer the term ‘narrative-driven,’” he grinned.
She reached for the notebook. “Is this for me again?”
He nodded. “Only if you feel like continuing our story.”
She opened it slowly. Inside, he had written just one line:
“Some chapters don’t need conflict. Just quiet companionship.”
She closed the notebook without speaking.
They sipped their coffee in silence, but the silence had changed. It wasn’t the stillness of people reading separately. It was the calm between people who had already begun reading each other. A comfort of shared metaphors. Of understanding pauses. Of accepting ellipses.
After a while, Maya said, “I don’t know if I believe in serendipity. But I believe in this.”
Neil leaned forward, elbows on the table. “In what?”
“In showing up. In silence that feels like belonging. In sentences that don’t end with question marks.”
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a slim paperback, slightly worn but clearly cherished. Norwegian Wood.
“I wanted to give you this,” he said. “It’s not new. But it’s mine. Read it slowly. Or not at all.”
Maya took it gently, fingers brushing the cover.
“I never re-read books,” she whispered. “But maybe this one will be the exception.”
They didn’t talk much after that. The terrace grew dim as the afternoon melted into twilight. A few birds cut across the skyline. Below, Church Street bustled with its usual hum. But up here, between the railing and the rhythm of rainclouds, two people sat framed like bookends—holding up a growing story between them.
When she finally stood to leave, Neil walked with her to the staircase. Before descending, Maya turned.
“You know,” she said, “I used to think love was loud. Big gestures. Words that filled rooms. But maybe it’s just… this.”
He didn’t ask what ‘this’ meant.
Instead, he replied, “Then let’s not say it out loud. Let’s just keep reading.”
And they did.
Part 8: Chapterless Days
The week passed not like a story, but like a poem—fragmented, lingering, leaving traces in unexpected places. Maya found herself reaching for Neil’s gifted Norwegian Wood not to read it, but just to hold it. Like his words had seeped into the spine. The book lived on her writing desk, sometimes on her bed, sometimes carried in her bag like a talisman. She hadn’t opened it yet. Some books ask to be read immediately; others ask to be waited for. This one was waiting.
Wednesday evening brought rain—not the shy drizzle of most Bangalore evenings, but a full-bodied storm that rattled windows and peeled bougainvillaea off terrace railings. Maya sat in her room, barefoot, writing for the first time without restraint. Not in Neil’s notebook. In her own. Pages filled with small observations: how Neil tilted his head when thinking. How his voice sounded like punctuation—never too sharp, never too flat. How reading together had felt like living in parentheses, safe from the loud world outside.
She didn’t send him any of it. Not yet.
Sunday returned, as it always did, with its now-familiar pull. Indigo Reads was quieter that day, not in the usual sacred-book-club way, but as though it were catching its breath. Maya arrived early, climbed directly to the terrace café where Neil waited, this time without any book between them.
“I didn’t bring anything to read today,” he said.
“Neither did I,” she smiled.
They didn’t say more. They just sat. The silence between them wasn’t performative anymore. It wasn’t necessary, but it was welcome. They ordered tea instead of coffee. Shared one brownie. Didn’t check the time. Neil brought out a napkin and started sketching the railing, the clouds, and then her—loosely, quickly, but with unmistakable attention. Maya watched in amusement.
“You sketch everyone you sit with?”
“Only the ones I want to remember.”
She looked away, not to be coy, but to hide the smile threatening to break.
Downstairs, the book club unfolded without them, and that was okay. Not every chapter needed attendance. Some weeks were meant for the margins.
“So,” Neil said, tapping his pen against the edge of the napkin. “We’re here without books. Is that allowed?”
“We’re living a story,” Maya said. “Maybe that counts.”
“A slow story,” he added.
“The best kind.”
He watched her as she spoke—not just listened, but studied the movement of her words. How she emphasized certain syllables, how she used her hands when describing something she cared about. It struck him then, not for the first time, how rare it was to be with someone who didn’t demand an ending.
“Can I ask you something personal?” he said.
Maya nodded.
“Why did you come that first Sunday?”
She exhaled. “I’d just had a fallout with someone. Not dramatic, just… a slow kind of leaving. The kind where you don’t realize you’re lonely until you stop being angry.”
Neil nodded.
“And I needed somewhere that didn’t ask questions,” she continued. “Somewhere I could exist without explaining.”
He didn’t respond right away. When he did, he said, “I think I came for the same reason. Just from the other end of it.”
She reached over and touched the edge of his sketch, the lines of her face in blue ink. “We met somewhere between,” she said.
“Yes,” Neil replied. “Between our chapterless days.”
A breeze picked up, scattering napkins, pulling at their sleeves. But they didn’t move. They just sat in that golden moment of unspoken recognition—the rare kind that doesn’t shout or sparkle, but hums gently in the chest like a forgotten song rediscovered.
Below, the world moved on.
Above, they stayed—unwritten, unfolding, and unafraid.
Part 9: The Folded Note
Sunday came with the quiet weight of expectation. Not heavy, but noticeable—like the warmth left in a seat someone has just vacated. Maya walked to the café slower than usual, her steps deliberate, each one holding the question: would today be like the last, or something new? She had tucked a small folded note into her bag. It wasn’t a letter, not exactly. Just a page torn from her journal, written in blue ink, creased once, folded neatly. It didn’t say too much. It didn’t say too little.
Neil was already there when she arrived, sketching on a coaster with the intensity of someone who didn’t want to be anywhere else. She slipped into the chair opposite him, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The terrace breeze had a December edge now. Bangalore’s winter didn’t bite—it brushed past you like memory.
“Hi,” he said, looking up with a smile that never quite reached both corners of his mouth, which Maya had come to think of as a small, lovely asymmetry.
“Hi,” she replied, placing her bag on the table.
He gestured toward her empty hands. “No book today?”
She shook her head. “You?”
He turned his coaster toward her. A sketch of two empty chairs, side by side, facing an open window. Beyond it, books floated in the air like birds.
“I guess we’re writing instead of reading now,” Maya said softly.
They ordered tea and something warm—apple cinnamon cake. Neil asked about her week. She mentioned a poem she had read on a café wall. He spoke about an old friend who had called unexpectedly. The conversation moved like a slow river—meandering, easy, refusing to rush toward any destination.
When their cups were nearly empty, Maya reached into her bag and slid the folded note across the table.
Neil looked at it, surprised.
“What’s this?”
“Just something I wrote,” she said. “You don’t have to read it now.”
He didn’t. He tucked it into the back pocket of his notebook without unfolding it. As if saving dessert. As if savoring the moment before knowing.
They fell into silence again, watching the terrace slowly fill with sunlight. A pigeon cooed from the railing. A couple nearby argued about whether Tolstoy was overrated. Someone below laughed too loudly. But up here, the world remained hushed.
Finally, Neil said, “You’re braver than me.”
Maya raised an eyebrow.
“You write things down. I just draw around them.”
“Maybe that’s your language.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve been wanting to say something out loud.”
She waited.
“I’m not sure what this is becoming,” he said, voice steady, “but I like where it started. And I like where it’s going. Even if it doesn’t have a plot.”
Maya smiled, the kind that started slow and then opened wide like a petal catching morning light.
“I think some of the best stories never worry about plots,” she replied. “They just keep turning pages.”
He looked at her then—not with curiosity, not even admiration, but with something deeper. Recognition, perhaps. The look of someone who has found a book they weren’t looking for but suddenly couldn’t put down.
They didn’t linger long after. Maya had errands. Neil had a call with his editor. But as she walked down the stairs and turned for one last look, she saw him still at the table, finally unfolding the note. His hands were still. His expression unreadable. She didn’t know what part of her he was reading. But she knew he would read it slowly, the way he read everything that mattered.
That night, Maya found a message on her phone. Just one line.
“Your words felt like home.”
And below that, a photo of the sketch: two chairs, facing the open window—but this time, one chair held a book with her name on the spine.
Part 10: Raincheck Sundays
The next Sunday was rained out. Not the poetic kind of drizzle that turns Church Street golden and nostalgic, but a full-fledged monsoon tantrum. Thunder split the sky like punctuation, and the streets blurred into streams of headlights and reflections. Maya stood by her balcony, cradling a mug of hot water and staring into the soaked city. Indigo Reads had sent out a message: Silent Book Club Cancelled Due to Weather. See you next week, readers.
It was the first Sunday in weeks that Maya didn’t step into the café, didn’t feel the quiet press of its air or the gentle weight of Neil’s glance. But the absence didn’t feel like loss. It felt like a pause. Like the space between paragraphs. A breath.
She considered calling him. Then didn’t.
Neil, across the city, sat in his studio surrounded by papers and cups with coffee stains shaped like commas. The rain was loud against his windows, but inside, the world was still. He had placed Maya’s folded note above his desk, pinned carefully with a magnet that read Read More, Worry Less. He hadn’t written anything new that week. He just kept returning to her words, to the single sentence that kept echoing: “I used to read to disappear. Now, I read to be seen.”
Outside, lightning scribbled across the sky.
Around noon, Maya sent him a photo: a book splayed open beside a half-eaten plum. The caption said: Today’s book club is in bed. You’re welcome to join. Virtually, of course.
Neil replied with a voice note. Not long. Just: “Reading The Little Prince. Forgot how much it hurts in the best way. Stay warm.”
They didn’t talk after that. They didn’t need to.
The rest of the day passed in separate silences. Maya re-read favorite chapters from old books, underlined things she’d somehow missed before. Neil cleaned his studio, fixed an old desk lamp, rearranged his bookshelf until it made sense only to him.
In the evening, Maya pulled out her notebook. She wrote a list:
1. The way Neil listens like he’s holding your words in his hands.
2. The way silence grows between us—not empty, but alive.
3. The fact that we haven’t named this, and maybe we don’t need to.
4. I don’t know what happens next. But I want to keep turning the page.
She closed the notebook and placed it on the windowsill, beside the plum pit and the raindrops streaking the glass. The city was still drenched. But it didn’t feel lonely.
Later that night, Neil sent her a photo—his desk, the coaster sketch of two chairs, now joined by a third: a cat curled on one. Beneath the sketch, he had written:
“Even stories take rainchecks. We’ll resume next Sunday.”
And Maya, curled beneath a blanket with her hair still damp from the balcony breeze, whispered to no one in particular, “We never stopped.”
Part 11: Lost and Underlined
The Sunday after the storm was gentle. Bangalore seemed to have exhaled, its streets washed clean, its skies softened to a kind of forgiving blue. Maya walked to Indigo Reads as if retracing steps in a dream—each familiar turn of Church Street echoing with remembered glances, unfinished sentences, and the quiet anticipation of being seen again. The air smelled of soaked brick and roasted beans, and the café had reopened with warm yellow lights and the faint sound of jazz curling through the door.
Neil was already there, as if he too had spent the past week missing a story still being written. He sat by the bookshelf, his chair tilted just enough to catch a slant of sunlight. A book lay open on the table, face-down, its spine worn. He looked up as she entered, and for a moment, no one moved.
Maya walked over without speaking and sat beside him.
“You came,” he said.
“I always do.”
Their silence was not hesitation now, but a deep knowing. The kind that doesn’t demand performance.
“What are you reading today?” she asked.
He showed her the cover: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
“Of course,” she smiled. “You read with your heart bruised and open.”
He laughed softly. “And you?”
She held up On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. His eyes widened.
“I’m not sure who’s more emotionally unstable between us,” he joked.
They laughed—really laughed—until Harshitha waved from across the café and Bala uncle offered his latest conspiracy theory that Shakespeare was actually a group of accountants. The world stitched itself around them again.
They read for an hour, but this time, Maya kept losing her place. Her eyes wandered to the people around them, to the faint movement of Neil’s hand as he turned each page, to the dog-eared bookmark he had made and given her, now resting quietly inside her novel like a secret she chose to keep.
At six, she closed her book. “I lost the thread five times.”
Neil looked up. “That bad?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That alive.”
He nodded slowly. “Sometimes I read just to be near the words.”
“Me too. Especially the ones I never say out loud.”
There was something different about the light that day. Softer. Almost cinematic. As if the café itself was holding its breath for them.
Neil reached into his bag and pulled out a folded paper—not a sketch this time, but a page torn from his journal.
“I underlined something,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure if I underlined it for me, or for you.”
Maya unfolded it. A line from his book:
“If it’s true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”
Below it, Neil had written:
“I think I’ve found the kind that doesn’t need naming.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide, throat dry with something unspoken.
“I read you,” she said quietly. “More than I’ve ever read anyone.”
They didn’t touch. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t need to.
Instead, Maya took a pen from her bag and underlined the line again. Just once. Slowly. And placed it back on the table between them like a contract neither needed to sign.
When they left the café, they didn’t go their separate ways. They walked together. No destination, no plan. Just two people carrying books, memories, and a growing tenderness between their shoulders.
And behind them, the café light glowed like the last word in a perfect chapter—one you’d never forget, even long after you’d turned the page.
Part 12: The Shelf We Built
It was the last Sunday of the year. Bangalore wore winter like a gentle shawl—cool mornings, lemon sunlight, and the sound of crows breaking the stillness with their ordinary wisdom. Indigo Reads Café was hosting a “year-end open table” event, inviting its readers to bring their favorite book of the year and share a passage aloud. Maya wasn’t sure she’d speak. She was never the kind who liked being looked at while she said things that mattered.
She arrived with a book she hadn’t told Neil about—The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer. It felt right. Not because of its popularity, but because its pages had sat beside her when her own words didn’t show up. She saw Neil before he saw her, leaning against the doorway with his notebook in hand, a small bouquet of marigolds and eucalyptus in the other. When he turned and saw her, his eyes softened like a candle wick catching flame.
“You brought flowers to a book event?” she teased.
“They’re for the bookshelf,” he said simply.
“What bookshelf?”
“You’ll see.”
The reading circle was small. Harshitha read a passage from Circe. Bala uncle, emotional, shared a poem he had written for his late wife. Maya passed her turn gently. Neil didn’t read either. But at the end, as people lingered over cinnamon cookies and coffee, he took her hand and led her to the far corner of the café.
There, on a narrow wooden wall near the spiral staircase, was a new shelf. Handmade. Rough around the edges. But beautiful.
A handwritten label read:
Silent Shelf — Books That Changed Our Year
Only four books sat on it so far. One of them was Norwegian Wood. Another was The Little Prince. Another was Kafka on the Shore. And the last—The Forty Rules of Love.
Maya looked at Neil.
“You built this?”
He nodded. “We did. Every Sunday. One quiet moment at a time.”
She ran her fingers along the spines. “You kept mine.”
“I kept you,” he corrected, voice almost inaudible.
Behind them, someone played an old jazz song on the piano in the corner. A low, uncertain tune. But it found its rhythm.
Neil reached into his notebook and pulled out a folded sheet. “I wrote something. For today. For this shelf. But I want you to keep it.”
Maya unfolded it slowly.
It wasn’t a poem. It wasn’t a letter. It was a single paragraph:
“Some stories don’t end. They become places. You don’t remember how they began, or where they took you, only that they changed the weather inside you. You carry them, the way you carry silence when someone sits beside you and doesn’t try to fix anything. You carry them like warmth.”
She folded it back, carefully. Pressed it to her chest. Then looked up and said, “You’ve ruined me for ordinary.”
He smiled. “Good.”
They stayed until the café dimmed its lights. Until the last book was read, the last cup washed. Then they stepped outside into the blue-tinged Bangalore dusk, walking without hurry.
As they turned the corner of Church Street, Maya asked, “What now?”
Neil didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “Now we read the next chapter.”
“Together?”
“There’s no other way.”
And behind them, the café remained, its doors closed, but its shelf glowing in the memory of two people who had found each other not through declarations or drama—but through books, silence, and the beautiful, unfinished story they had decided to write side by side.
– The End –
