Meera Sanyal
The Quiet Years
The clock on the wall ticked with an almost deliberate calm, echoing through the sun-drenched living room of Ananya Bose’s Kolkata apartment. It was 7:15 AM—the precise moment her kettle would begin its polite whistle. The smell of Darjeeling tea mingled with the scent of sandalwood from the agarbatti she’d lit during her morning puja. Her home was a carefully curated sanctuary of books, framed memories, and soft silences.
At forty-three, Ananya had grown used to solitude—not the melancholy kind that clings to your skin, but the chosen kind, like a warm shawl on a winter morning. She was a woman of habits, routines, and quiet rebellions. Her day began with poetry and tea, followed by a slow scroll through the news, then emails from publishing clients, and later, the occasional edit on someone else’s manuscript. She worked as a freelance editor for small indie publishers and up-and-coming authors—her way of staying close to literature without the demands of being in the spotlight.
There was once a time when she thought life would be different—more chaotic, perhaps, more full. She’d married young, at twenty-seven, to a charming academic named Rajat who had seemed to promise everything she didn’t know she needed. For a while, it worked. Dinners with jazz in the background, scribbled love notes tucked between books, stolen weekends in Santiniketan. But years passed, and they began speaking in half-sentences, then quarter ones. One day, Ananya realized their silences weren’t peaceful anymore—they were empty. Like a song paused mid-tune, never resumed.
They divorced six years ago. No drama. Just a resignation that looked like relief on both faces.
Her friends often told her, “You’re still young, Anu. You have time to fall in love again.”
She’d always smile politely, brush back her silver-streaked hair, and say, “I’m not looking.”
But sometimes, in the folds of twilight, when the wind played with the chimes on her balcony, she would wonder—what if love came quietly, without knocking, like the monsoon mist on a summer afternoon?
On one such afternoon, as she sat cross-legged with a cup of ginger tea and a manuscript marked in red ink, her phone buzzed with a message from her old college WhatsApp group. Someone had posted a throwback photo—grainy, overexposed—from a college fest twenty years ago. The faces were all younger, freer, and filled with the kind of laughter that didn’t know betrayal or bills.
And there he was.
Arjun Mitra.
His smile was half-hidden, his arm slung casually over someone’s shoulder. He had been one of her closest friends in college—a poetry lover with a math major, a man who brewed ideas like coffee. He used to read Neruda and solve calculus with equal ease. They had shared benches, secrets, and on one half-lit evening during the college trip to Darjeeling, a moment that had nearly become a kiss but didn’t.
Ananya stared at his face for a long time.
She hadn’t thought about him in years—not actively, anyway. But now that the memory surfaced, it did so in color: the way he would tilt his head when quoting poetry, the softness in his voice when he said her name.
Out of curiosity—or perhaps something else—she clicked on his profile.
It simply read:
Arjun Mitra | Writer | Pune & Kolkata | Widowed
Ananya’s fingers paused over her screen. Widowed. The word sat like a pebble in her throat. She didn’t know whether to feel sad or sorry. They hadn’t spoken in decades. Still, the news felt personal. Heavy.
She put the phone away and walked to her balcony.
Outside, Kolkata moved as it always did—slow, chaotic, alive. A street vendor was selling lilies, their fragrance floating upwards. A child was dragging a school bag too big for his shoulders. Life pulsed forward. People moved on. Even hearts, she thought.
She reached for her watering can, gently tending to her basil and tulsi plants. They were thriving. She liked nurturing things. Things that stayed. Her garden wasn’t large—just a few pots, but it was enough. Each one told her that growth didn’t need grand soil. Just attention. Just time.
That night, as rain tapped gently on her window, Ananya pulled out one of her old journals—the leather-bound one with a feather-pressed bookmark. It had survived college, marriage, and everything in between. She flipped through it idly, until her eyes caught a page:
“Arjun thinks love is a slow burn. I think it’s lightning. Maybe that’s why we’re just friends.”
She laughed softly, the kind of laugh that had dust in it.
At 43, she was no longer looking for lightning. She had outgrown the need for storms. What she longed for—though she would never admit it aloud—was warmth. A hand to hold without trembling. A presence that didn’t ask her to shrink or explain.
She closed the journal, hugged it to her chest for a moment, then slid it back into the shelf.
In the quiet years, she had rebuilt herself—word by word, scar by scar, like the novels she edited for a living. And yet, as the night deepened and the wind brought the scent of wet earth, she wondered—
Could there still be a story she hadn’t read? One that was waiting… just beyond the page?
A Familiar Stranger
The bookstore café smelled of cinnamon and stories. Shelves towered like sentinels guarding secret worlds, and mellow jazz played softly from unseen speakers. Ananya sat at her usual table by the window, her fingers wrapped around a cappuccino that had long since gone lukewarm. She had come in for solitude, like always—but the universe had other plans.
She noticed him even before he noticed her.
Tall, broad-shouldered, slightly greyer than memory but unmistakably him—Arjun Mitra stood at the counter, scanning the blackboard menu like someone unfamiliar with comfort zones. His salt-and-pepper beard was neatly trimmed, and his posture had the slight stiffness of someone who’d lived through both responsibility and loss.
Ananya’s heart gave a subtle jolt—not the youthful thump of infatuation, but the cautious flutter of someone recognizing an old favorite tune after years.
She watched as he paid for a filter coffee and turned toward the seating area. His eyes scanned the room—and then froze on her.
For a long moment, they just stared. Time didn’t stop. The jazz didn’t fade. Nothing cinematic happened. And yet, the air between them shifted—like something once folded was quietly being opened again.
“Ananya?” he asked, his voice lower, deeper, but still laced with the calm steadiness she remembered.
She stood up, managing a half-smile. “Arjun Mitra. After all these years.”
He let out a breath of a laugh. “I thought I was hallucinating. You look exactly the same—just… more yourself.”
She chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Please do.”
They sat across from each other, coffees in hand. For a moment, there was just the clink of ceramic and the invisible current of old familiarity finding its way back.
“What brings you to Kolkata?” she asked, stirring her drink even though it didn’t need stirring.
“Dad passed away last month,” he said quietly. “I’ve been wrapping up his estate.”
Her fingers paused mid-stir. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He nodded. “He was ninety. Lived well. Left in his sleep.”
She noticed how his eyes didn’t dodge the grief. They carried it gently, like something accepted and worn.
“And you?” he asked. “Still writing?”
Ananya smiled. “Editing, mostly. Books, essays, some poetry collections. I like polishing other people’s voices more than amplifying my own.”
Arjun tilted his head. “That sounds very much like you.”
“And you? Last I heard, you were teaching math and writing love poems in the margins.”
He laughed. “Still guilty of both. I retired from teaching last year. Now I run an online tutoring program. The poems… well, they’re more about silence than love these days.”
There was something unspoken in that sentence. The word “widowed” surfaced again in Ananya’s mind. But she didn’t ask. Not yet.
Instead, they spoke of college—of fests and professors, of hostel food and midnight chai. Of the time Arjun had stood on a bench reciting Neruda while wearing a paper crown. And how Ananya had once slapped a professor’s desk for calling Sylvia Plath “too emotional.”
Laughter flowed easier now, softening the lines on their faces.
“You haven’t changed,” Arjun said suddenly. “Still fierce, still thoughtful. Still coffee over tea, and still dressing like a walking bookmark.”
Ananya laughed aloud. “And you’re still charming in that dry, insufferable way.”
They paused, and in that pause, something tender crept in.
“I used to think about you,” Arjun said quietly, his eyes on the window. “Often.”
Ananya’s smile faltered, not from discomfort—but surprise.
“I never thought you’d say that.”
He looked at her. “Why not?”
“Because we were always just—” she hesitated “—on the edge of something. But we never stepped in.”
“That’s true,” he admitted. “Back then, we weren’t ready.”
“And now?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just sipped his coffee, then said, “Now… I’m not in a hurry. But I’m here. And I’m listening.”
That sentence sat between them like an unopened letter—an invitation wrapped in quiet hope.
The sky outside had turned a soft evening gold. Shadows moved gently across the pages of the book beside her. Ananya realized she hadn’t thought of time once since he sat down.
He glanced at his watch. “I should go. The lawyer’s coming by at six.”
She nodded. “Of course. It was… really good to see you again, Arjun.”
He stood, hesitated, then asked, “Would you… want to meet again? Maybe for a walk, or another coffee? Just to continue this conversation. No expectations.”
Ananya looked up at him. The man who once wrote poetry in blue ink. Who now carried loss in his eyes but not bitterness. Who still made her feel seen.
“I’d like that,” she said simply.
They exchanged numbers. No drama, no prolonged stares. Just something quietly real unfolding in the creases of a Kolkata evening.
As he walked away, Ananya sat back down, her heart strangely light. She picked up her cup, now cold, and smiled to herself.
Sometimes, it isn’t love at first sight. Sometimes, it’s love at second glance—older, wiser, and infinitely more patient.
Coffee and Unfinished Sentences
The second time they met, it was by design.
Ananya had suggested Parampara, a quiet South Kolkata café nestled between a boutique and an old music store. The place smelled of cardamom and nostalgia, with terracotta tiles on the floor and mismatched wooden chairs. It wasn’t as hip as the modern book cafés, but it had a warmth that felt like home.
She arrived early, as she always did, with a book in hand but her thoughts elsewhere.
Would it be awkward?
Would they stumble into silence?
Or worse—fall into memories too fragile to revisit?
But when Arjun arrived, fifteen minutes late with windblown hair and an apologetic smile, all of that melted away.
“I got caught in traffic,” he said, placing his phone on the table face down. “Kolkata traffic hasn’t changed in twenty years.”
“Some things age like wine,” Ananya replied. “Others just curdle.”
He laughed, easing into the chair across from her. “You always did have a sharp tongue.”
“And you always found it amusing.”
He nodded. “Still do.”
The waiter arrived and took their orders—two cups of strong coffee, black for her, with a dash of milk for him. No sugar. It felt strangely intimate, how easily those details returned.
“So,” Arjun said, after a pause, “how did you end up editing books instead of writing them?”
Ananya looked down at her cup. “I guess I lost my voice for a while. After the divorce, everything felt… too raw to put into words. But I still loved words. So I started working with others who hadn’t lost theirs.”
Arjun studied her face—not prying, but present.
“Rajat,” he said softly.
She nodded. “It ended quietly. No shouting. Just… fading.”
He was silent for a while. “I remember meeting him once, during that reunion dinner. He seemed—”
“Perfect,” Ananya finished for him. “He was. At least on paper. But perfection is exhausting. It leaves no space for being messy or vulnerable.”
He sipped his coffee slowly. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you still afraid to be messy?”
She smiled—bittersweet and honest. “Less than I was five years ago. But I still flinch when someone gets too close.”
Arjun looked out the window, where a street dog lay curled under a rickshaw, tail twitching in sleep. “Maya was like that too. She never raised her voice, but she’d go quiet when she was hurt. It took me years to learn her silences.”
Ananya reached across and touched his hand gently. “I’m sorry, Arjun. I didn’t ask earlier. About her.”
He held her gaze, then nodded. “Cancer. Three years ago. It was quick and unfair and… very final.”
There was no need for more words.
Grief has a language all its own. One the heart always understands.
They sat with it, not trying to fill the space. Just letting it breathe.
“I used to think,” Ananya said after a while, “that love had to be grand. Like in novels. Now I think it’s more about small things. Like this. Sharing coffee. Letting the silence speak.”
Arjun smiled. “Small things are harder to fake.”
She looked at him. “Were you ever in love with me? Back then?”
The question surprised even her, but it had been lingering like an unsaid line in a poem.
Arjun’s reply was quiet but sure.
“Yes. I was. But I thought you weren’t ready. And maybe… I wasn’t either.”
She exhaled, the truth settling in her like warm sunlight. “I used to wait for you to say something. Anything. I thought I imagined it all.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “But timing wasn’t our friend.”
“No,” she agreed. “It rarely is.”
A waiter passed by with a plate of steaming luchis, and for a second they both laughed at the absurd memory of Arjun once trying to fry pooris in a hostel kitchen and setting off the fire alarm.
“You remember that night?” he grinned.
“How could I forget? You dropped the dough ball into boiling oil and ran away as if it were a grenade.”
“I still say it was a tactical retreat,” he said defensively.
They laughed like people do when they’ve earned their laughter—when they’ve paid for it in heartbreak and healing.
Outside, the light had softened to a golden hue. Even the trees looked as if they were listening.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked. “Like old times?”
She hesitated.
But then she smiled. “Yes. I would.”
They walked down Southern Avenue, where gulmohar trees shed their red petals like secrets. The air was cool and held the hint of rain. They didn’t talk much, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that felt like a hand resting lightly on your back—not pushing, just present.
Ananya stopped near the lake.
“Do you remember this spot?” she asked.
He nodded. “You used to come here when you were angry.”
“I still do,” she admitted. “Only now, I bring tea and a notebook.”
He looked at her, the wind catching a strand of her hair. “You’ve changed, Anu. But not in the ways that mattered.”
“And you,” she replied, “are still full of unfinished sentences.”
He smiled. “Maybe now I’m ready to finish them.”
They stood there for a long time, the city humming quietly around them, the lake still and listening.
Letters Never Sent
The sky was a smoky grey the next morning, promising rain but delivering only a sultry stillness. Ananya sat on the floor of her study, surrounded by boxes she hadn’t opened in years. The air smelled faintly of dust, old ink, and eucalyptus—the scent of forgotten things.
She hadn’t planned this. She had merely reached for an old notebook on the shelf and ended up pulling down a box marked in her own handwriting: “Personal – 2001–2010”.
Inside were letters—some sent, most not.
There were cards from friends, yellowed newspaper clippings, old photographs, and tucked at the bottom—a bundle of pages tied with a red ribbon.
Her breath caught.
She remembered this bundle. She had written them during the years after her separation. Letters to herself. To her past. To Arjun.
She untied the ribbon, the knot stiff with time.
The first letter, dated February 12, 2006, began simply:
“Dear Arjun,
You probably won’t ever read this. Maybe I won’t even finish writing it. But today I saw a man at the tram stop who looked just like you. Same slouched posture, same brown leather sling bag. And suddenly, I wanted to tell you that I miss you—not in the way people miss lovers, but in the way you miss a part of yourself you left behind somewhere and forgot to retrieve…”
Ananya blinked. The words were painfully familiar. Raw. Almost too tender to bear.
Back then, writing had been the only safe place to speak.
She read through five more letters, each a snapshot of a different moment. Some were light, full of casual observations, others were drenched in longing—an ache that had no address.
And then she found one that stopped her cold.
“Dear Arjun,
If you ever come back to Kolkata—and by some miracle, if you find me—I hope we can sit across from each other, not as the people we used to be, but as the ones we’ve become. I’ll make us tea. You’ll bring a book. We won’t talk about what we missed. We’ll talk about what we can still have…”
The tears came silently. Not out of sadness, but from the strange realization that the very thing she’d imagined—written into the void—was slowly, gently becoming real.
She folded the letter, holding it against her chest, her heart suddenly full of something unnamed. Hope, maybe. Or acceptance. Or a quiet, second kind of love.
Just then, her phone buzzed.
Arjun: “Want to come with me to College Street today? I’m hunting for old Tagore editions.”
She smiled, fingers dancing on the keyboard.
Ananya: “Only if we stop for telebhaja and badam cha on the way.”
Arjun: “You’ve never changed.”
Ananya: “Neither have you. Not really.”
They met at the metro station, like college kids from another era. Arjun wore a faded blue kurta and carried a jhola bag with books sticking out. Ananya wore a handloom cotton sari and her mother’s silver bangles.
“You look like a character from a Satyajit Ray film,” Arjun teased.
“And you look like someone who teaches philosophy in Santiniketan for free,” she replied.
They laughed.
The walk through College Street was a pilgrimage. The smell of second-hand paper, the rustle of pages, the shouts of vendors—everything felt familiar and new at once.
They stopped at a small stall, where an old man with thick glasses handed Arjun a worn copy of Shesher Kobita.
“I was looking for this exact edition,” Arjun whispered like he’d found treasure. “It has the original cover design.”
Ananya watched as he flipped through the pages with reverence. It felt oddly intimate—watching someone fall in love with words.
They bought cha in clay cups and sat on the low stone ledge near the university gates.
“Do you remember that evening in Darjeeling?” Arjun asked suddenly.
She turned to him. “The one where we almost kissed?”
He looked surprised. “You remember it that clearly?”
“How could I not?”
He smiled. “You were wearing that rust-red sweater. Your hair was messy. You had a cold and kept sneezing into your scarf.”
She laughed. “So romantic.”
“And still,” he said softly, “I wanted to kiss you more than anything else in the world.”
The words hung in the air.
She didn’t look away. “Why didn’t you?”
He sighed. “I thought you deserved something more permanent. And I didn’t trust myself to be that.”
She sipped her tea. “We wasted so much time being cautious.”
“Maybe we needed to become who we are now.”
She thought about that.
Maybe some stories only bloom after the first frost.
That evening, Ananya placed the bundle of letters back in the box, but one she kept out—the one about him coming back, about tea and books and conversations unfinished.
She placed it in a
fresh envelope and wrote on the front:
To Arjun — Not a love letter, but something close.
She didn’t send it. Not yet.
Some letters were better delivered by presence than by post.
Things We Didn’t Say Back Then
It was raining the next time they met—not a drizzle, but the kind of summer downpour that makes the whole world pause and listen.
They were supposed to meet at a heritage museum near the riverside. Arjun had wanted to see a new exhibit on Bengali calligraphy, and Ananya had agreed, teasing him about his love for ancient fonts. But the rain had other plans.
When she stepped off the tram near his place in Ballygunge, soaked despite her umbrella, he was already waiting at the gate.
“You could’ve cancelled,” he said, his hair damp, a towel in hand.
“I could’ve,” she said, “but I didn’t want to.”
He smiled and held the gate open. “Come in before you catch something. You still have that annoying habit of pretending you’re waterproof.”
“I was born in July,” she shrugged, following him up the narrow stairs. “Monsoon makes me feel alive.”
His flat was small but warm. Books lined every wall, and the smell of lemon grass and old paper hung in the air. A guitar rested in the corner. A kettle hissed softly from the kitchen.
Ananya took it all in. It felt oddly like stepping into a memory she’d never made, but always imagined.
“Nice place,” she said, accepting the towel he handed her.
“I cleaned it,” he said. “Twice.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Twice?”
“Once for dust, once for… nerves.”
Ananya smiled. “Are you nervous, Arjun?”
He paused. “More than I expected to be.”
The rain hammered outside like a heartbeat. Inside, the silence was tender.
He brewed her a cup of black tea with a dash of cinnamon—remembering her taste without asking. They sat on opposite ends of a floor mattress covered in a handwoven throw. Between them lay a low table with mismatched mugs and an untouched plate of ginger biscuits.
“Tell me something you never said back then,” she said suddenly.
Arjun looked at her, surprised. “What kind of something?”
“Anything. A thought, a feeling, a fear. A sentence you swallowed.”
He stared into his tea for a long moment. Then said, “I used to keep count of how many times you smiled in a day.”
She blinked. “What?”
“In college,” he continued, not looking up. “I had this notebook where I’d tally it. You smiled a lot, but your real smile—the one with that tiny dimple on the left cheek—that one only showed up when you were genuinely happy. Or furious.”
Ananya laughed, covering her mouth.
“I didn’t know that,” she said, touched.
“I used to write poems about it. I never showed you.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Fear. Pride. Both.”
She nodded. “Your turn.”
He tilted his head. “To ask?”
“To demand,” she corrected.
He smiled. “Okay. Tell me something you never said.”
Ananya grew quiet. Then, softly, she said, “The day you left for Delhi, I almost stopped you at Howrah station. I was there, hidden near the pillar where we used to wait for trams.”
He sat up straighter. “You were there?”
“I had written you a letter. It said I loved you. I chickened out.”
Silence stretched.
“You loved me?” he asked.
“I did. In that quiet, terrified, twenty-something way where you don’t know what to do with your heart.”
He nodded slowly. “I think I would’ve stayed if you’d said something.”
“I know,” she whispered. “And that’s why I didn’t.”
He looked confused.
She met his gaze. “I wasn’t ready to be loved back then, Arjun. Especially not by someone who knew me that well. It would’ve broken me to be seen so completely.”
He leaned back, letting her words settle.
The rain was softer now, a hush instead of a drumbeat.
“You still write poetry?” she asked after a while.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Mostly in the margins of books. Or emails I never send.”
“Would you read me one?”
He hesitated. Then stood, walked over to a bookshelf, and pulled out a thin red notebook. He opened it to a page worn from re-reading.
Clearing his throat, he began:
“I waited for you in every version of the city—
in the scent of petrichor,
in a half-finished poem underlined in blue,
in the seat across from me on tram number seven.
I waited—not to begin again,
but to begin better.”
Ananya didn’t speak.
The moment was full.
“Is it about me?” she asked softly.
He closed the notebook. “It always was.”
She reached out, her fingers brushing his wrist. “I wish we hadn’t waited so long.”
He nodded. “But I’m glad we didn’t lose the chance completely.”
She smiled. “Second first love?”
“Maybe the first real one,” he said.
They sat in silence, two people in their forties with hearts older than their bodies, but lighter than they’d been in years.
The rain had stopped. The city outside was reborn in puddles and reflections.
And inside a small flat, a story restarted—not with fireworks, but with tea, unfinished sentences, and a promise wrapped in simplicity.
A Room of Our Own
It began with a bookshelf.
Not a big one—just a simple, teakwood shelf Arjun had found in an old furniture market in Gariahat. But when he brought it over to Ananya’s flat one Saturday morning, unannounced and grinning like a boy who had discovered buried treasure, she knew something had shifted.
“What’s this?” she asked, arms crossed but smiling.
“It’s for your living room,” he said, brushing sawdust from the sides. “I figured it’s time we had a space where our books can live together.”
Ananya arched an eyebrow. “Our books?”
He shrugged, playful. “Don’t we already share stories, weather, and awkward silences?”
She laughed. “Next thing you’ll say is we need a drawer for your toothbrush here.”
He leaned in. “Do I get one?”
She kissed him then—soft and sure—because words were suddenly insufficient, and time was too precious to spend on hesitation.
That bookshelf marked the beginning of their unofficial, unlabelled togetherness.
They didn’t move in, not exactly. But Arjun began spending more nights at her place than his. They each kept their own flats, their own rhythms. There was no talk of merging finances or making it “official.” It wasn’t about ticking boxes.
It was about belonging.
Some nights they cooked together—simple things like khichuri and begun bhaja. Other nights, they ordered momo soup and watched Satyajit Ray films in black-and-white, wrapped in the same shawl, their feet tangled on the sofa.
They didn’t pretend they were in their twenties. They didn’t chase youth. They let themselves be tired, quiet, silly.
And slowly, something delicate but resilient began to grow between them.
One evening, while rearranging books on the new shelf, Ananya found a tiny clay figure tucked inside Arjun’s copy of Gitanjali. A little horse—handmade, clearly old.
“What’s this?” she asked, holding it up.
Arjun looked sheepish. “That’s from my childhood. My grandmother gave it to me. She said it would always carry me back to the people I loved.”
Ananya stared at the horse, small and worn, with a cracked leg but a noble face. “And you kept it all these years?”
He nodded. “It’s my quiet talisman.”
She placed it on the top shelf. “Well, then it belongs here now.”
One Sunday morning, while Arjun was still sleeping, Ananya sat on her balcony with a notebook.
She had begun writing again.
Not editing.
Writing.
Essays. Poems. Observations. Fragments of feelings she had spent years hiding under the rubble of old disappointments.
It surprised her how easily the words came back. As if they had only been waiting for her to be honest again.
She wrote about aging without apology, about how intimacy didn’t have to mean permanence, and how a man’s laughter could make a room feel like a sanctuary.
When Arjun appeared in the doorway with messy hair and two cups of tea, he watched her for a moment before speaking.
“You look different when you write.”
“How so?”
“Less guarded. More… luminous.”
She smiled. “You sound like a bad poet.”
“I’m trying,” he said, handing her a cup. “I live with one now.”
She took the tea. “Not officially.”
He sat beside her. “Do we need labels anymore?”
She thought for a moment. “No. But maybe we need space.”
He looked alarmed. “Space?”
She laughed. “Not distance. Space to grow. Like that corner of the room for your guitar. Or my stack of drafts. A room of our own, in each other’s lives.”
He relaxed. “I like that.”
“You’ll still get your toothbrush drawer.”
He kissed her cheek. “Then I’ll get you your own pillow at my place.”
“Only if it’s the soft kind,” she teased.
They sat in silence for a while, sipping tea, their hands loosely linked like the pages of a worn diary.
Later that week, Arjun surprised her with a gift.
It was a journal—hand-stitched, with rough khadi paper inside and her name embossed on the cover.
On the first page, he had written:
“For all the letters you’ll now write to yourself without fear.
For all the stories we still get to live.
Yours, in every tense—
Arjun.”
Ananya traced the ink with her fingers.
She didn’t cry.
Not this time.
She just hugged him tightly, her chin tucked into his neck, and whispered, “Thank you for coming back to me. Even if you didn’t know you were on your way.”
They never said forever.
They said now.
And somehow, that felt more true.
In a world obsessed with grand beginnings and dramatic ends, they were content with a quiet middle—a life of books, late-night chai, monsoon walks, and the long, patient grace of second first love.
The Memory Tree
It was Arjun’s idea to visit Shantiniketan.
One Friday afternoon, he called her between meetings, voice breathless with excitement.
“I just found a cottage on the edge of Kopai river,” he said. “Terracotta walls, red oxide floors, bougainvillea crawling all over the front porch. Two bedrooms. One for sleep. One for books.”
Ananya grinned, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she stirred a pot of dal.
“You’re planning to kidnap me?”
“I’m planning to gift us three days of not being in Kolkata. No noise, no deadlines. Just rustling trees and slow breakfasts.”
“And mosquitoes?”
“And fireflies,” he added.
That weekend, they packed light: kurtas, notebooks, poetry, and oranges. No laptops. No expectations.
The train ride itself felt like a threshold—as if the motion shook loose the dust of old habits and made room for wonder.
Ananya rested her head on the window, watching rice fields blur into green waves. Arjun sat beside her with Tagore’s Ghare Baire, but he wasn’t reading. He was watching her reflection in the glass.
“You know,” he said, “this is the first time we’re actually going away together.”
“Not counting the departmental seminar in Darjeeling, where you snored through half of it?”
He chuckled. “I was twenty-two. And madly in love with you.”
“You never said that then.”
“I’m saying it now.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers through his. Quietly. Without fanfare.
Their cottage was exactly as he had described—sun-kissed and sleepy, hidden behind a grove of sal trees. There were bees nesting in the corners of the eaves, a rusted bicycle leaning on the fence, and wind chimes whispering secrets to the breeze.
That first evening, they sat under a neem tree in the backyard. The stars blinked alive above them, and somewhere in the distance, a baul song floated over the red earth like incense.
“This feels like a memory,” Ananya murmured.
“Maybe it is,” Arjun said. “A memory we finally reached.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
The next day, they took long walks through the winding dirt paths, stopping at roadside stalls for kulhar chai and shingaras. Ananya bought a small painting from a tribal artist—a black ink tree with roots shaped like dancing figures.
She called it “The Memory Tree.”
That night, they hung it in the cottage room above the writing table.
“It reminds me of us,” she said.
Arjun tilted his head. “Because we’re tangled?”
“Because we’re rooted. And still learning to dance.”
He kissed her gently. “You write that down. I’ll steal it for a poem later.”
On the second night, rain arrived.
It came unannounced—like an old friend knocking at the door with no luggage but endless stories.
They stayed inside, wrapped in blankets, playing word games by candlelight. Arjun made a stew. Ananya read aloud from an old diary she had once written in her thirties and never opened again until now.
At one point, she paused.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She touched a line in the diary. “I had written: ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be seen fully and loved still.’”
He placed his hand gently over hers.
“Do you still believe that?”
She looked up. “No. Not anymore.”
He nodded. “Good. Because I see you. Even the parts you hide behind jokes. The doubt. The fire. The softness.”
“And do you—?”
“I love you,” he said, steady and unblinking. “In ways I never knew I could.”
They didn’t need promises.
But that night, as the storm hummed and fireflies blinked like punctuation marks between sentences, they made one anyway.
Not a forever.
But a keep choosing.
A daily agreement to show up for each other—not despite their scars, but with them.
The next morning, before leaving Shantiniketan, Ananya stood beneath the neem tree one last time. The red mud clung to her sandals. The wind smelled like rain and memories.
She bent down and picked up a smooth stone, wrote a single word on it with her pen—“begin”—and placed it at the foot of the tree.
Arjun watched her from the porch, understanding without asking.
Because sometimes love doesn’t need declarations.
Sometimes it just needs a root. And a choice.
The Invitation
Winter came softly to Kolkata, trailing the scent of oranges and shawls.
Ananya had just returned from a reading she’d hosted at a small independent bookstore in Hindustan Park. Her essay collection—”The Unsaid Years”—had quietly built a following, especially among women who thought their voices no longer mattered after forty.
That evening, as she stepped into her apartment, Arjun was already there, barefoot in the kitchen, stirring something fragrant.
“You made shorshe ilish?” she asked, surprised.
He turned with a mock bow. “For the newly published authoress.”
“You flatterer.”
He grinned. “I’m also bribing you.”
“For what?”
But he only winked.
Over dinner, they laughed easily—about her odd audience questions, about how he had nearly over-salted the fish, about the neighbor who kept playing Rabindra Sangeet on a loop at 3 a.m.
Then, without drama, he reached into the drawer and pulled out a cream-colored envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Open it.”
Inside was a thick handmade card. The header read:
You’re Invited to the Wedding of Arjun Sen & Ananya Roy
Sunday, February 2nd, 11:00 a.m. | Courtyard under the Banyan Tree, Salt Lake
She blinked.
“It’s… a joke?” she asked, half-smiling.
“No,” he said gently. “It’s an invitation. But not just for the guests. It’s for us too. To say yes. Out loud.”
Ananya stared at the card.
She had never imagined marrying again. She wasn’t sure she believed in it anymore. She had built her life back piece by piece—slowly, painfully, and proudly—without leaning on the promise of someone else.
But this felt different.
Not an escape. Not a rescue.
A choice.
“What if we don’t need a wedding?” she asked finally.
Arjun nodded. “Then we don’t. We already have the love. We have the toothbrush drawer and the bookshelf and the memory tree. I don’t need a ritual to stay. But…”
“But?”
He looked into her eyes. “I’d like to stand beside you in front of the people who matter and say: This is her. The woman I waited for, the woman who chose me, the woman I choose again. And again. And again.”
She reached across the table, took his hand.
“I don’t want a white sari or a priest or long speeches.”
“Then we won’t have those.”
“I want coffee, and poems, and the morning sun.”
“And a Banyan tree?”
She smiled. “And a Banyan tree.”
The ceremony was simple.
Just thirty guests. No stage, no spotlight. Ananya wore a deep green silk sari with no jewellery except her mother’s silver bangles. Arjun wore a handwoven kurta and sandals.
They stood in the courtyard where wildflowers crept along the stone path and the old Banyan swayed gently overhead like a witness.
A friend read Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII.” Another played the flute. A child scattered marigold petals.
And when the moment came, they spoke not vows, but lines they had written for each other.
Arjun’s voice was low but steady:
“You are my poem after the war.
My softness after the storm.
The line I rewrite until it feels like home.”
Ananya’s voice trembled but never broke:
“You are not my first.
But you are my last first.
The one I meet again every morning and still say yes.”
There was no applause.
Just quiet smiles. A few tears. A breeze that seemed to pause just long enough to bless them.
Later, after most guests had left and the laughter had settled into memory, they sat together under the same Banyan tree.
He leaned back against the trunk. She curled beside him, her head on his shoulder.
“I thought it would feel different,” she whispered.
“How does it feel?”
“Like we just planted something. Not a flag. But a seed.”
He kissed her forehead. “We’ve already been growing. This is just us blooming.”
They didn’t talk about what came next.
They didn’t make promises they couldn’t keep.
But they held hands as the sunlight filtered through the green a
bove, and in the stillness of that moment, everything they needed to say had already been said.
Because love, real love, didn’t need to be loud.
It just needed to last long enough to return to itself.
Again.
And again.
And again.
***
