Avni Kapoor
One
The school bell echoed through the marbled corridors of Ridgeway High, its chime too polished, too clinical—like the rest of the campus. Shaurya Mehta stepped out of the black BMW, his school blazer immaculately pressed, his expression unreadable. His driver wished him luck, but Shaurya barely nodded, already scanning the building as if preparing for battle. He walked through the glass doors, passing walls lined with motivational quotes and student achievement photos that featured kids just like him—groomed, rich, expected to shine. On the opposite end, a girl sprinted across the gate in scuffed sneakers and a loose ponytail, nearly colliding with the security guard. Zoya Qureshi, her breath short, mumbled an apology and dashed in, clutching a worn schoolbag and silently cursing the local train delays. Her presence didn’t go unnoticed; a few students sneered under their breath. She’d long stopped caring. Across the assembly field, Neel Malhotra posed dramatically against a pillar, his shirt slightly tucked, sleeves rolled in a deliberate designer mess. His gelled curls bounced as he adjusted his oversized tote bag, embroidered by his mom. Students stared; Neel didn’t flinch. In the last row of the orientation hall, Kavya Deshpande sat alone, fiddling with her earphones, drowning the crowd in music no one else could hear.
Their first encounter was anything but magical. Assigned to the same group for a week-long orientation challenge, their initial conversation was stiff and transactional. Zoya rolled her eyes at Shaurya’s overly formal tone; Shaurya thought Zoya too abrasive. Neel cracked jokes to cut the tension, most of which landed awkwardly. Kavya said little but watched everything. During a lunch break, a gust of wind blew open someone’s sketchbook on the grass. Pages fluttered, revealing a detailed sketch of the school buildings, with tiny paper boats drawn along the lake margin. Neel rushed to grab it, cheeks flushed. “It’s just something I do,” he muttered. Zoya, curious, sat beside him. “They’re good,” she admitted, running her finger over a page. Kavya, still silent, offered a small nod. Shaurya leaned over and, for the first time, smiled—not the polite, trained one, but something real. That moment didn’t erase their differences, but it cracked something open.
Later that afternoon, as the sun dipped over Powai Lake and the school grounds emptied, the four lingered awkwardly near the basketball court. No one wanted to be the first to leave. The conversation shifted from projects to music, then to fears, then stopped. Kavya looked toward the lake. “It’s pretty,” she said. Zoya raised an eyebrow. “Ever folded a paper boat?” Neel, smiling for the first time without irony, pulled out a sheet from his sketchbook. “Let’s make one.” They walked down to the water’s edge- barely speaking—and floated the first clumsy, lopsided boat into the lake. It rocked gently, catching a sliver of light. They watched it in silence, four strangers who didn’t belong together, yet somehow, in that moment, they did.
Two
Their assigned group project wasn’t supposed to matter. “Design a community initiative,” the teacher had said, as if four teens from four different worlds would magically collaborate. They met at the school’s Learning Resource Centre—an air-conditioned glass box of a room that smelled of new books and too much polish. Shaurya arrived with a laptop and a color-coded spreadsheet, already outlining ideas like “eco-awareness drives” and “social impact workshops.” Zoya, unimpressed, tapped her pen on the table. “Sounds like something your dad’s firm would sponsor,” she said. Neel raised his eyebrows and whispered, “Savage,” pretending to sip tea. Kavya, buried behind her fringe of hair and large headphones, scribbled ideas in a corner of her notebook, offering nothing aloud. They weren’t a team. They were four corners of a mismatched puzzle forced into proximity. The tension simmered beneath fake smiles and forced civility, barely held together by Neel’s one-liners and Kavya’s polite silence.
On Thursday, things fell apart. Zoya missed the morning meet-up because her mother had to be rushed to the clinic after a night shift. Shaurya, already annoyed at her lateness, complained aloud. When Zoya finally arrived, she flung her notebook onto the table and snapped, “Not all of us wake up in silk sheets, okay?” Kavya flinched at the sudden outburst. Neel tried to mediate, joking that maybe they should launch a campaign on “how not to murder your teammates.” No one laughed. The teacher, sensing the group’s growing friction, instructed them to stay back after class and “sort yourselves out.” That evening, the school experienced a rare power outage. With no Wi-Fi, no distractions, and only dull orange emergency lights glowing across the library, the four sat in reluctant silence. The city buzzed faintly outside. Minutes stretched like hours. Then, unexpectedly, Kavya whispered, “I hate the dark. But it’s the only time I feel noticed.” No one knew what to say. After a pause, Neel murmured, “I hate looking in mirrors.” Zoya stared at the floor. “I hate people assuming I’m here for charity.” Shaurya, who rarely confessed anything, took a breath. “I hate failing… even once. It’s like I don’t exist if I’m not perfect.” In that hour, something shifted—not in grand gestures, but in quiet truth. The silence that followed was no longer uncomfortable. It was shared.
When the lights came back on, they didn’t rush to pack up. Instead, they gathered around Neel’s sketchbook again—this time, not to tease, but to look. Kavya added a few musical notes in the margins. Shaurya wrote a quote underneath. Zoya flipped to a blank page and said, “Let’s start over.” They began drafting new ideas—not what the school expected, but something raw and real: a weekend lake clean-up project involving underprivileged kids and students together. They named it “Ripple.” When they left the building that night, the campus felt less intimidating, the glass walls less cold. And though they didn’t say it aloud, they all knew: they weren’t just working on a school project anymore. They were building something much bigger—something fragile, uncertain, and strangely beautiful.
Three
Saturday mornings in Mumbai were usually loud with honking cars, clanging utensils, and the distant echo of Bollywood songs from open windows. But Powai Lake had its own rhythm—a quieter, humbler beat where time slowed down. The group met by the lake’s edge that morning without a message or plan. It was Neel who had sent a single “Come if you can” text in the group chat the night before, after yet another sleepless night battling self-doubt. Surprisingly, all four showed up. Zoya came in a navy-blue kurta, slightly faded at the edges. Shaurya arrived in track pants and a cap, as if hiding from the world. Kavya walked alone, earphones in, but removed them when she saw the others. Neel sat cross-legged on the grass already, scribbling something into his sketchpad. The air was heavy with Mumbai’s monsoon stickiness, but the lake shimmered like a mirror for everything left unsaid.
They didn’t speak at first. It wasn’t awkward—it was just new. Zoya pulled a tattered notebook from her bag, tore out a page, and began folding a boat with slow, practiced fingers. “Used to do this as a kid,” she said, almost absentmindedly. “Used to think if I let it float far enough, it’d carry my wish somewhere that mattered.” Neel looked up. “What did you wish for?” Zoya shrugged. “To get out, I guess.” Shaurya silently tore a page from his planner, surprising everyone. His folds were careful, mechanical, precise. Kavya smiled and did the same. Four boats took shape in their hands—some crisp, some soft at the edges, like the dreams they held. Without discussing it, they each wrote something inside their boats, folded the flaps closed again, and stood at the edge of the water.
Shaurya was the first to release his. His boat danced for a moment, wobbled, and then steadied. Kavya followed, then Neel, then Zoya. For a while, they just watched them drift. There was no speech, no pact, no dramatic vow—just the soft sound of water lapping against stone and the wind whispering secrets none of them could quite hear. But something shifted. The world beyond the lake—the world of grades, expectations, judgments, and silences—felt a little less sharp. Neel broke the silence with a grin. “We should do this every Saturday. You know, like a weird therapy cult but cheaper.” They laughed—really laughed—for the first time together. Kavya nodded. “A ritual. But no selfies, no Insta. Just us.” Zoya looked up at the grey sky, her eyes brighter. “No filters, then. Real stuff only.” Shaurya didn’t say anything, but when he glanced at the lake one last time before leaving, his eyes lingered on his boat—just a white dot now on silver water. A part of him wished it would never stop floating.
Four
The following week was a test of everything they had quietly built. Their “Ripple” project gained attention—first from their class, then from the school faculty. Posters were put up. Photos were taken. Parents began asking questions. And with that came the fraying of corners, both literal and emotional. Zoya found herself at the center of unwelcome attention when someone whispered that the only reason she’d thought of working with underprivileged kids was because she “came from there.” The words weren’t spoken to her face, but she heard them. They echoed. That afternoon, she found herself sitting on the school terrace, staring at the clouds. Neel found her and didn’t ask anything. He simply sat beside her and began folding a paper boat from a crumpled math worksheet. She smiled weakly and took it, writing, “I belong everywhere. And nowhere.” She didn’t throw it in the lake—she kept it in her bag, hidden between textbooks and unfinished poems.
At home, Shaurya was fighting his own storm. His father had reviewed their Ripple proposal and dismissed it with a scoff. “Good for an essay. Not a real plan,” he said while sipping his espresso. Shaurya had never felt smaller. His weekends were now split between tutoring for advanced calculus and sneaking out to meet the others by the lake. He didn’t know which version of himself was more real—the sharp, obedient achiever or the quiet boy who wrote his truth on cheap notebook paper and let it float away. Kavya, meanwhile, was nursing the sting of betrayal. She had auditioned for a solo spot in the school music program, and just when she thought she had it, someone claimed she’d copied her lyrics from a blog. It wasn’t true, but the faculty believed it. She didn’t fight back—she never did. That Saturday, her paper boat read: “Maybe I’m only heard when I’m silent.” She watched it drift further than the others, as if even the lake understood what she couldn’t say aloud.
Neel, ever the entertainer, had stopped making jokes. He’d been cornered in the hallway by three boys who told him he dressed like “a confused cartoon” and needed “fixing.” One shoved his sketchpad to the floor, pages scattering like broken glass. He didn’t cry. He just picked them up slowly and walked away. When he met the others that evening, he didn’t smile. He didn’t talk. But when Zoya handed him an extra sheet of paper, he folded it slowly, deliberately. His boat said: “I’m more than what you see.” The group didn’t need to discuss what was happening. They saw it in each other’s eyes. Each week, the boats grew heavier—not in weight, but in meaning. They were no longer just childhood tokens. They were confessions, stitched from the torn corners of their lives. And yet, strangely, despite everything breaking around them, the ritual held. In the softness of Saturday evenings by the lake, they stayed afloat—just barely—but together.
Five
It began with a song. A soft, hesitant humming from Kavya as she sat beneath the banyan tree near the lake, notebook on her lap, lost in a melody only she could hear. Shaurya, who had arrived early that Saturday, didn’t interrupt. He stood nearby, arms crossed, watching her with a curiosity he hadn’t yet voiced. When she finally noticed him, she froze, embarrassed. But he just smiled, genuinely. “You sound like how the lake looks,” he said. She laughed nervously, shaking her head. “I sound broken.” Shaurya sat beside her. “We’re all broken. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” The words surprised even him. Silence followed—gentle, weightless. Their hands didn’t touch, but something in that pause made both of them aware of the fragile shift between friendship and something quietly blooming beneath it. Later, when the others arrived, Kavya folded her paper boat slower than usual. That day, it said: “I want someone to hear me even when I say nothing.”
Elsewhere, a different bond was forming. Zoya and Neel had started spending time together after school, working on poster designs for the Ripple campaign. What started as sarcastic banter turned into long conversations about family, fear, and the ache of not fitting in. Neel showed her a comic he’d been secretly drawing—about a superhero who wore glitter and spoke in metaphors. Zoya loved it. “You should publish this,” she said. “You should stop thinking you don’t matter.” One evening, while taping posters near the canteen, their hands brushed. It meant nothing. Or maybe it meant too much. They didn’t talk about it, but Zoya caught herself smiling at texts she never used to reply to. Neel began dressing more boldly, his eyeliner a little sharper. But beneath the laughter was tension—tiny, unspoken things building like storm clouds. During one of their Saturday rituals, Zoya noticed Kavya watching Shaurya a little too long. She didn’t say anything, but her boat read: “Don’t make me feel invisible.” And that week, Neel’s boat had no writing—just a single tear stain smudging the center.
The turning point came during a group presentation in class. Kavya was meant to sing a short verse as an introduction, something soft and powerful. But just before her cue, she froze. Her hands trembled. She looked at Shaurya, who nodded silently. But it was Neel who stepped forward, holding her hand gently and whispering, “Breathe.” She sang—shaky, but true. The class clapped. But afterward, the group dissolved into silence. Shaurya noticed how Zoya looked away every time he spoke to Kavya. Neel caught Zoya scrolling past his messages without replying. Kavya felt their warmth thinning like the sun behind monsoon clouds. That Saturday, they met by the lake, but the laughter was dim. When it was time to float their paper boats, no one moved. They sat on the grass, words stuck in throats, glances sharp and unsure. For the first time, the ritual paused. The lake lay still. No dreams were released. The wind blew, restless, and in it were whispers—of jealousy, longing, confusion. They were no longer just four misfits finding each other. They were something messier, more human, and painfully real.
Six
The storm didn’t arrive all at once. It came in fragments—emails, silences, and slammed doors. Zoya was the first to feel it hit. The school board announced a reassessment of scholarship students, blaming “funding reallocations.” Rumors spread that her name was on the potential cut list. No explanation, no warning—just whispered pity and half-hearted sympathies from classmates who never cared to know her. When she confronted the counselor, the answer was vague: “It’s under review.” That night, her mother wept quietly in the kitchen while rolling chapatis, her hands trembling with exhaustion. Zoya sat in her room, staring at the small glass jar where she kept folded paper boat dreams, now slightly yellowed at the edges. Her Saturday texts to the group went unanswered. She didn’t go to the lake that week. She didn’t want to be seen breaking.
Shaurya, meanwhile, found himself trapped in a storm of a different kind. His father, unimpressed with the “Ripple” project gaining online traction, delivered his verdict over dinner like a corporate report: “You’re wasting time. Applications for boarding prep schools in Singapore have opened. I’ve shortlisted three.” No discussion. No pause. Shaurya felt the air leave his chest. He wanted to scream, but he said nothing. He didn’t tell the others. He didn’t even message them. At school, he stayed late in the computer lab, pretending to work while watching old videos of poetry slam nights in Bangalore. For the first time, he began doubting if staying would mean rebellion—or failure. His paper boat that week remained unfolded, a blank sheet inside his locker.
Neel’s world grew quiet too, but in a crueler way. His comic sketches were discovered by a senior who plastered them across the locker hallway with mocking captions. “Neel Malhotra Saves the World in Sequins!” They laughed, took videos, and tagged him on social media. The school didn’t intervene. His parents found out and scolded him—not for being bullied, but for “bringing it on himself.” Neel stopped sketching. He stopped smiling. His clothes grew duller, safer. The sparkle disappeared. He walked the corridors like a ghost, replying to no one. Even Zoya’s messages went unread. At home, he tore out the pages from his comic book and flushed them down the toilet one by one. The next Saturday, he stood at the lake’s edge but left without dropping a boat.
And Kavya—gentle, quiet Kavya—sat in a waiting room at Nanavati Hospital, her music files untouched on her phone. Her grandmother had collapsed from a stroke, and her parents were flying back from Zurich in a rush they hadn’t shown in years. She stopped coming to school that week. Her room stayed dark. Her guitar gathered dust. One day, she opened her drawer and saw the paper boat she had once written: “To matter to someone enough that they’ll stay.” The irony hit too hard. She folded it closed again, but this time, she didn’t cry. She just stared at the ceiling and whispered, “No one stays.”
Powai Lake, once their sanctuary, now stood still and lonely. The banyan tree rustled without laughter beneath it. No paper boats floated. No four shadows lingered by the water. The ritual had ended—not with anger, but with absence. And the silence was louder than any storm.
Seven
It was nearly midnight when Shaurya returned to the lake for the first time in weeks. The city was quiet in a way only Mumbai rarely allows—just the occasional auto rattling in the distance, the rustle of trees near IIT Powai’s edge, and the water, glimmering silver under the half-moon. He hadn’t planned to come. He had been pacing his room after yet another argument with his father about Singapore, about choices, about not being “soft.” But then, he opened his old Ripple folder, tucked behind his textbooks, and a sheet of paper fell out—neatly folded, pale pink, faintly water-stained. He opened it: “I miss us.” The handwriting was Zoya’s. She must’ve dropped it in his notebook the last time they’d met. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even addressed to anyone. Just a quiet ache folded into a boat-shaped memory. Shaurya stared at it for a long time before slipping on his hoodie and leaving without a word.
He didn’t expect anyone to be there. So when he saw a silhouette by the lake, sitting barefoot on the stone ledge with her hair blowing gently in the breeze, he stopped in his tracks. It was Kavya. Her guitar was beside her, silent but present. She didn’t turn around when he approached. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said simply. He sat beside her. They didn’t speak for a while. Then came a third sound—footsteps running across the grass. Neel, breathing hard, in a loose shirt and slippers, holding a torn sketchbook under one arm. “I saw the story Zoya posted,” he said. “She posted a picture of the lake from last year. No caption. Just… the lake.” They all knew what it meant. Within twenty minutes, Zoya arrived too, her hair still damp from the evening shower she had apparently taken just to feel awake again. “I almost didn’t come,” she whispered, hugging her arms close. “But then I thought… if even one of you was there…” She didn’t finish.
They sat in silence, not like strangers starting over, but like fragments trying to find the shape of what they once were. Neel broke it first. “You guys remember that dumb rule we made? ‘No filters. Real stuff only’?” He laughed dryly. “I miss being real.” Kavya nodded. “I miss being heard.” Zoya looked down. “I miss being… enough.” Shaurya exhaled shakily. “I miss not being afraid of who I am.” Slowly, without needing to say it aloud, they reached into their bags, pockets, notebooks. Paper—creased, plain, printed, lined—appeared in four pairs of hands. They folded in silence. This time slower, more careful. They didn’t write wishes. Not confessions either. They wrote truths—small, raw, aching ones. “I’m scared, but I’m trying.” “Please don’t disappear again.” “I want to matter.” “Let me stay.”
The boats floated quietly into the lake. No ceremony. No photos. Just four teens sitting under the stars, letting the water carry what they could no longer hold alone. A cool breeze swept across the grass, rustling Neel’s sketchbook and Kavya’s hair. Zoya reached out first—an instinct, not a decision—and grabbed Neel’s hand. He didn’t flinch. Kavya leaned against Shaurya’s shoulder, and he let his head rest gently on hers. In the darkness, they didn’t promise to be perfect. They didn’t pretend the pain was gone. But the ritual had returned. Fragile, maybe. But alive.
And that was enough for now.
Eight
The final week of the term arrived like the fading notes of a half-remembered song—soft, unfinished, but full of something that lingered in the chest. Ridgeway High buzzed with year-end excitement, award rehearsals, and goodbyes that felt temporary but weren’t. The Ripple project, once a scribbled idea on library paper, had blossomed into a real weekend initiative, recognized by local NGOs and even covered in a community newsletter. Zoya stood before a crowd of students and parents, reading one of her poems aloud—“We fold dreams, not to forget them, but to float them toward the sun.” There were no tears in her voice now, only clarity. Her scholarship had been reinstated after a teacher privately advocated for her, but she no longer measured her worth by approval. After the applause, she glanced into the crowd and found her mother standing quietly at the back, pride brimming in her eyes.
Neel won “Best Visual Design” at the school fest for his collaborative mural painted across the senior hallway—a kaleidoscope of color, movement, and unspoken rebellion. At the bottom corner of the wall, in bright cursive, he’d signed it: “Designed by someone who didn’t want to be invisible anymore.” His parents didn’t say much, but his mother quietly placed one of his early sketches in a frame on their living room wall. That was enough. Kavya, encouraged by her music teacher and the soft push of her friends, sang at the school’s farewell event—an original melody about silence, longing, and the people who stay. Her grandmother had stabilized, and her parents had started spending more time in Mumbai, attending her rehearsals with a guilt they never voiced. She still didn’t speak loudly, but when she did, everyone listened.
Shaurya didn’t leave for Singapore. He told his father at dinner, voice shaking but steady, that he would be applying to local liberal arts programs instead—creative writing and social development. The conversation ended in silence, but the next morning, his father left a single book on his desk: “Letters to a Young Poet.” No comment. No approval. Just that. It was more than Shaurya had expected. He smiled as he picked it up, the weight of defiance softened by the quiet acceptance that maybe—just maybe—his father was trying, too.
On their last Saturday before the summer break, the four met one final time at Powai Lake. The sky was soft with evening light, the water holding the golden blush of a city briefly at peace. They didn’t bring old paper. They brought fresh sheets—uncreased, blank, full of space. “No writing?” Zoya asked, teasing. “No,” Shaurya replied. “We’ve already said everything.” They folded their boats carefully, laughing when Neel made his slightly crooked. Kavya’s boat had a tiny musical note etched into the flap. Zoya drew a lightning bolt on hers. They stood at the edge and released them—four simple shapes floating away, not with the weight of sorrow, but with the lightness of letting go.
They stayed until the boats disappeared into the dusk, silhouettes fading into the silver-blue calm. There were no grand gestures, no final declarations. But in the stillness, something felt complete. Not perfect. Not permanent. Just—complete. Before they parted, Neel turned back one last time and said, “You know, I think we saved each other.” Kavya nodded, clutching her guitar. Zoya reached out to squeeze his hand, and Shaurya, for once, didn’t need words.
And the lake—silent witness to it all—held their goodbye like it had held their dreams: gently, without judgment, letting them drift toward whatever came next.
___
