Sourav Moitra
One
Twilight always made Juhu Beach look like a painting someone had brushed in haste—the sky neither day nor night, streaked with orange fading into violet. The waves came and went with their tired rhythm, dragging along whispers of the city, mixing them with the smell of roasted corn and sea salt. Amid the children chasing plastic balls and the couples leaning into each other as if the world had shrunk into just two bodies, sixteen-year-old Viraj Mehta sat cross-legged, his toes buried in the sand, staring at the horizon.
He often came here after school, not because he particularly loved the beach, but because it was the one place where nobody seemed to notice him. At home, he was the quiet boy in a family that overflowed with noise—chattering aunts, cousins glued to mobile screens, a mother constantly reminding him of exams. At school, he was “the invisible one,” the boy teachers forgot to call upon, the one who sat at the backbench sketching waves in his notebook when no one was looking. Here, on the beach, his loneliness blended into the crowd’s anonymity.
That evening, the air was cooler than usual, carrying the fragrance of the Arabian Sea mixed with the smoky tang of vendors roasting corn. Viraj dug a stick into the sand absently, tracing uneven shapes. That’s when his fingers brushed against something hard.
At first he thought it was a bottle cap or a forgotten toy, but as he pushed the sand aside, a glimmer caught his eye—smooth white plastic half-buried like treasure. He leaned closer. It was a pair of earphones, tangled and grainy with sand. Following the thin cord, he found a phone, its screen dim but alive, glowing faintly like a heartbeat under glass.
Viraj glanced around. No one seemed to be looking for it. Children were shrieking near the water, a balloon seller shouted over the sound of waves, and couples sat in their private worlds. The phone lay there as if the sea itself had delivered it to him.
Hesitant, he picked it up. The lock screen was blank, no name, no wallpaper, just the faint shimmer of light. He plugged in the earphones, brushing the sand off, and pressed play almost without thinking.
A song spilled into his ears. Not one he recognized from the Bollywood hits his cousins obsessed over, nor the English pop blaring from café speakers. This was quieter, almost haunting, like a voice calling from somewhere between memory and dream. The singer crooned about departures and waves, about standing at the edge of something vast and waiting.
Viraj’s chest tightened. He looked up instinctively—and saw a figure standing far off by the waterline. A young woman in a flowing kurta was practicing slow, graceful movements. Her feet tapped against the wet sand in rhythm, arms bending with delicate precision. And somehow, the song in his ears matched the rhythm of her steps.
He pulled the earphones out, startled. The music stopped. The woman kept moving, unaware. Viraj frowned, his heart thudding. Coincidence? He pushed the buds back in. The music swelled again, and once more her gestures seemed tethered to it—as if she too were listening, though there were no wires in her ears.
He felt a chill despite the humid air. The phone in his hand wasn’t just playing music—it was mapping stories. He didn’t know how he knew this, but something told him the playlist wasn’t random.
A group of college kids ran past him, laughing, snapping selfies against the fading sun. The world went on, oblivious, but Viraj’s world had shifted. For the first time in months, maybe years, his invisibility cracked. Something—someone—had chosen him, or at least placed this secret in his path.
The waves hissed at his feet, as if urging him forward. Viraj tightened his grip on the phone, a strange mix of fear and excitement rising in him. He didn’t know whose playlist this was, or why it had been left here, but one thing was certain. Tonight, Juhu Beach wasn’t just a place to disappear.
It was the beginning of something.
Two
Viraj was still clutching the phone when a shadow fell across him. He pulled the earphones out quickly, almost guilty, like he’d been caught snooping.
“Wow, Sherlock,” a familiar voice drawled above him. “Since when do you solve mysteries with earphones instead of magnifying glasses?”
He looked up and groaned inwardly. Zara Khan.
If Viraj was the invisible one in class, Zara was the opposite—loud, impossible to ignore, with an opinion on everything and a knack for dramatics that made even math teachers hesitate to scold her. She was in the drama club, naturally, and walked through school like the world was her audience. Her laughter carried across corridors, her arguments filled canteens, and her eyes always glimmered with the thrill of a story waiting to be told.
Now those same eyes sparkled as she peered down at him, her dupatta fluttering in the sea breeze.
“Don’t tell me you’re listening to breakup songs on the beach like some tragic Bollywood hero,” she said, plopping down beside him without asking. The sand sprayed onto his carefully dug doodles. “Very filmy. Ten out of ten for melodrama.”
Viraj muttered, “It’s not what you think.”
“Of course it isn’t. It never is.” She leaned over and snatched the phone before he could stop her. The screen flickered faintly, the playlist still open. She raised an eyebrow. “Whose is this? Don’t tell me you finally got a secret admirer?”
He reached to take it back, but she held it just out of reach, grinning. “Relax, Mehta. I’m not going to hack your imaginary girlfriend’s playlist.” She tapped the screen lightly, and the haunting melody resumed, curling into the humid night air. Her grin faded. “Huh. That’s… actually beautiful.”
Viraj hesitated, then explained in a low voice, almost embarrassed by the strangeness of it. How he found the earphones, how the song seemed to sync with the dancer by the water.
Zara listened, her brows lifting higher with each sentence. Then she smirked. “So you’re saying the beach has turned into a Bollywood movie set where random strangers get background music? And you, of all people, are the chosen DJ?”
He flushed. “Forget it. You’ll just make fun.”
But instead of laughing, she tapped her chin theatrically. “Or… maybe it’s fate.” Her voice dropped to a mock-serious whisper. “Maybe we’ve been given a quest. To follow the songs. To uncover the secrets of Juhu Beach.”
Viraj rolled his eyes. “You’re impossible.”
“Correction: I’m curious. And admit it—you are too.” She nudged his shoulder. “Come on, detective. If the first song led to the dancer, maybe the next will lead somewhere else. Let’s test it.”
He hesitated. The sensible thing was to return the phone to the lost-and-found kiosk or hand it to a policeman. But the weight of it in his hand felt different—like it wanted to be followed, not abandoned.
Zara leaned closer, her grin returning. “Don’t you want to know what’s waiting at the end of this playlist? What if it’s a treasure map? Or a ghost story? Or—ooh—what if the owner is some secret genius songwriter?”
“Or,” Viraj countered, “what if it’s just some random phone, and we look like idiots chasing songs around the beach?”
“Then at least it’ll be a good story for my next play.” She stood up, brushing sand off her jeans, then extended a hand. “So? You in or out?”
Viraj looked up at her, the crashing waves behind her like a stage backdrop. He wasn’t used to making bold choices. His life so far had been about blending in, not stepping forward. But tonight already felt different, the air charged with something he couldn’t name.
He slipped the earphones back in, scrolled to the next track, and pressed play. A new melody rose—livelier, with the strum of a guitar echoing through the night.
Viraj took her hand.
“Fine,” he said quietly. “Let’s follow it.”
Zara’s grin widened. “That’s the spirit, Detective Mehta. Let the hunt begin.”
As they walked toward the soundless song, Viraj realized with a start that he wasn’t alone anymore. The dreamer had found his performer, and the beach, suddenly, was alive with possibilities.
Three
The playlist’s next track was unlike the haunting melody from before. It began raw and uneven, a hesitant strum of guitar strings followed by a voice that cracked mid-note, as if the singer had lost courage halfway. There were no polished beats, no orchestra behind it—just an unfinished idea caught between silence and music.
Viraj frowned. “This doesn’t sound like a real song.”
Zara tilted her head, listening. “It sounds… lonely.” Then her eyes lit up. “But hey, if the last song led to that dancer, maybe this one will lead us to whoever sang this.”
“Great,” Viraj muttered. “So now we’re hunting ghosts with broken guitars?”
But Zara was already walking, tugging him along. The notes in their ears carried them past the food stalls where the air was thick with buttered popcorn, roasted peanuts, and spicy pav bhaji. The crowd was denser here—families haggling over rides, kids begging for ice cream. Yet amid the noise, the faint strum of a real guitar floated above the chaos.
Viraj froze. The tune was the same, halting and imperfect.
They followed the sound until they found him: a boy, maybe eighteen, sitting on a low stool beside a cart stacked with paper cones of roasted chickpeas. A cheap guitar rested on his lap, his fingers running lazily across the strings as he hummed under his breath. His mop of curly hair caught the yellow glow of the streetlights, and though his clothes were simple—a faded T-shirt and ripped jeans—he carried himself with a kind of careless confidence.
Zara whispered, “Bingo.”
Viraj stepped closer, clutching the phone. “Um… excuse me. That song you’re playing…”
The boy looked up, his dark eyes narrowing in curiosity. “What about it?”
Viraj hesitated, then held out the phone. “It’s on here. The exact same tune.”
The boy blinked, then laughed, a short, surprised sound. “No way. That’s not possible. I never recorded it.”
“But it’s here,” Zara insisted, thrusting one earbud toward him. “Listen.”
He slipped it in, and his expression changed. His mouth parted slightly as the unfinished chords spilled into his ear. He stared at the ground, as though seeing a ghost. “This… this is mine. I made it up months ago. Just messing around after work.”
“Then how is it on this phone?” Viraj asked.
The boy shook his head, running a hand through his curls. “I don’t know. I never even finished it. I don’t own fancy recording equipment. I… I just play.”
Zara crossed her arms, eyes gleaming. “Looks like you’re part of the mystery now, Mr. Guitar Man.”
He chuckled at her dramatics, but his face still carried unease. “Name’s Neil Fernandes. My family runs this stall. They want me to take over properly, but…” He tapped the guitar strings. “Music’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Still, my dad calls it a waste of time.”
Viraj felt a pang of recognition. The way Neil said it reminded him of how invisible he felt at home, how his sketches of waves were dismissed as doodles, not art.
“So maybe,” Zara said softly, “this playlist is trying to tell you something. Maybe it wants your music to be heard.”
Neil laughed again, but this time there was no mockery in it. “A playlist that steals unfinished songs and hands them back to strangers? That’s crazy.” He looked at Viraj, then at Zara. “But crazy doesn’t mean bad. Maybe I should see where this goes.”
Zara clapped her hands. “Excellent. Welcome to the investigation, Fernandes. We’ve got a detective, a sidekick—”
“I’m not the sidekick,” Viraj muttered.
“—and now a musician. Perfect trio.”
Neil slung the guitar strap over his shoulder and shrugged. “Well, I’m not doing much tonight. Lead the way, playlist detectives.”
As they walked together into the deepening night, the unfinished song lingered in Viraj’s ears. For the first time, he wondered: was the playlist really unfinished… or was it waiting for them to finish it?
Four
The night air on Juhu Beach was softer than usual, carrying a strange stillness that seemed to hush even the restless waves. Viraj slipped the earphones into his ears once again, pressing play with the hesitation of someone who feared the next revelation but couldn’t resist its pull. Zara, beside him, hugged her notebook close, her eyes wide with anticipation. The playlist hummed to life, and this time, it wasn’t a rough tune or a humming voice—it was the measured, rhythmic cadence of a tabla, followed by the tinkling of ghungroos. A Kathak beat, deliberate and precise, filled their ears.
They looked at each other in silence. “A dancer?” Zara guessed softly.
The trail drew them away from the chaos of beach vendors and neon-lit rides, guiding them down a quieter lane, lined with gulmohar trees shedding their crimson flowers. At the end stood a small cultural hall, its courtyard washed in pale moonlight. From within floated the same rhythm they’d just heard—the tabla, the bells, and a woman’s firm yet fluid movements.
Through the open windows, they saw her.
Meera Deshpande moved like moonlight itself, her ghungroos striking with every step, her arms carving stories into the night. She wasn’t young like Viraj or Zara, nor old enough to be their teacher—perhaps in her late twenties. But her face carried a seriousness that didn’t belong to the carefree. It was the face of someone weighed down by choices invisible to the audience of her dance.
Zara gasped quietly, jotting down every detail in her notebook. Viraj, however, stood frozen. The sheer intensity of Meera’s eyes, even when she was lost in movement, seemed to pierce through him.
When the music paused, Meera noticed them by the window. Instead of scolding or shooing them away, she smiled faintly. “If you’re going to spy,” she said, “at least come inside.”
Embarrassed, they entered the hall. Viraj hesitated before blurting out, “We… we heard your dance. It was on the playlist.”
The words made no sense even to him, but Meera’s smile faltered. She lowered her gaze. “So it reached you too.”
Zara leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Meera untied her ghungroos slowly, as though each knot weighed heavier than the last. “I recorded that piece years ago. I was still in college, torn between an MBA and Kathak. Everyone expected me to take the stable path. Dance was always called a ‘hobby’—never enough to build a life on. So I buried it. That unfinished recording… it was one of the last times I allowed myself to believe otherwise.”
Her voice cracked, though she masked it with a laugh. “I guess the playlist doesn’t just carry songs. It carries… fragments of who we used to be.”
Viraj felt an ache in his chest. He thought of his father, who’d abandoned his own youthful dreams for a job that never brought him joy. The look in Meera’s eyes was the same one he’d caught in his father’s on nights when bills piled higher than smiles.
“Do you regret it?” Viraj asked quietly.
Meera didn’t answer immediately. She touched the floor, bowing in respect, then stood tall. “Every day. But regret isn’t the same as defeat. I still dance, when no one’s watching. That’s enough for now.”
The three stood in silence, the night air heavy with truths too fragile to break. For Viraj, it was the first time he realized that adults fought silent battles too—not with monsters, but with their own choices. And sometimes, losing didn’t mean giving up, but living with the ghosts of what could have been.
As they left, Zara scribbled in her notebook: Dreams don’t die. They wait in corners, waiting for you to look back at them.
Viraj glanced once more at the hall, the faint echo of ghungroos following him into the night.
The playlist had shown him another soul—and another reflection of what it meant to grow up.
Five
The next time Viraj and Zara pressed play, the music that floated out was unlike anything they had heard so far. It was old, warm, and textured, like a voice wrapped in sepia. Mohammed Rafi’s timeless croon filled the night, spilling through the headphones with such clarity that both of them stopped mid-stride. The song carried with it a strange tug, like a thread pulling them across streets that seemed to shimmer with memory.
They followed the voice through lanes where the city smelled of rain-damp stone and roasting corn. The air grew heavy with smoke as they approached a street corner near Marine Lines, and there he was—Yusuf Sheikh, a man with a small wooden cart, tending to ears of bhutta over glowing embers. His transistor radio, balanced precariously on the edge of the cart, played the very Rafi song drifting from Viraj’s playlist.
“Arrey, you also like Rafi saab?” Yusuf asked with a smile, his voice roughened by years of smoke and salt. His eyes, however, twinkled with warmth.
Viraj and Zara exchanged a look. This was no coincidence.
“We… heard this song, and it brought us here,” Viraj said carefully, unsure how much to reveal.
Yusuf chuckled softly, brushing ash from his palms. “Then perhaps Rafi saab is guiding you. He’s guided me all my life.”
He placed a cob of corn on the grill, turning it with slow precision as the flames licked at the kernels. The smoky fragrance surrounded them. “My wife loved this song,” he continued. “Every evening, after work, I’d meet her here. Same spot, same smell of roasting bhutta. I was just a boy with a cart and dreams too small for the world. She was… everything larger. Bright, stubborn, beautiful.”
Zara leaned in, her eyes soft. “What happened to her?”
Yusuf’s hands paused for a moment, then resumed their steady turning of the corn. “She passed away eight years ago. Fever that came like a thief in the night. Took her before the doctors could even name it.” His voice wavered but never broke. “But every evening, I return here. I sell corn where she first stopped to buy one. I play this radio. It feels like she hasn’t left entirely. The music carries her laugh, the smoke carries her smile. Maybe I’m foolish, but what is love if not foolish?”
The words sank into Viraj like embers into wood. He felt the ache beneath Yusuf’s calm tone, the devotion woven into something as ordinary as roasted corn. Here was a man whose life was stitched to memory and ritual, refusing to let time erase what love had carved.
The song reached its refrain, and Yusuf hummed softly along, his weathered face glowing in the light of the fire. He handed them each a cob of corn, sprinkled with salt and lemon. “No charge,” he said. “Eat. Food tastes better when it carries a story.”
As Viraj bit into the smoky sweetness, the flavor seemed inseparable from Yusuf’s words. Zara, too, ate silently, her eyes shimmering. The playlist was no longer random; it was deliberate, threading them to strangers whose lives carried echoes of longing, choices, and devotion.
Walking away later, Viraj couldn’t shake Yusuf’s image—the quiet man against the backdrop of the sea, holding on to love through flame and song. It stirred something unspoken within him, a reminder that life was not just about moving forward but also about honoring the fragments one carried.
The playlist was teaching them something. Each note was not only sound—it was memory, it was history, it was love preserved. And with each song, they were uncovering not just others’ stories but perhaps the truth of their own.
Six
The night had grown thicker, and the hum of the sea seemed to drown even the whispers of the wind. Just as Ayesha adjusted the volume on the little speaker, a voice rose—soft, mournful, dipped in longing. It was a Bollywood ballad, one of those songs that carried the ache of a love that could never quite find its home. The tune spread across Juhu Beach like a mist, pulling their eyes toward the darker stretch near the rocks where the surf sprayed silver under the moon.
“Why this one now?” Viraj muttered, tightening his jaw. He felt the playlist wasn’t just playing songs anymore—it was summoning.
Following the tune, they walked closer to the shadows. And there, almost hidden against the rustling palms, stood a figure. The wind tugged at the folds of her ivory dress. For a moment, it looked like a ghost, her veil clinging to her hair as if she’d been frozen in time. But as she turned, they saw the sharpness of her eyes, rimmed with tears and smudged mascara.
She was a bride.
Her bangles clinked softly, and the heavy embroidery of her lehenga trailed in the sand. She clutched the hem in both hands, as though she had run a long way to reach this point. A glimmer of recognition passed over Ayesha’s face. “Rhea Malhotra,” she whispered. “The heiress from Bandra.”
Rhea’s lips quivered as she met their eyes, her voice thin, almost breaking. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry a man I didn’t love.”
They gathered around her, hesitant but kind, listening to the weight of her confession. She told them of the lavish wedding that had been arranged—palatial halls, strings of marigold, the press already waiting for photographs. And yet, inside her chest was a hollow ache. The man chosen for her was perfect on paper: wealthy, powerful, admired. But he was not the man who made her heart stir. He was not the one who knew her dreams of painting by the sea, or her habit of humming old songs when nervous.
“I thought I could go through with it,” she said, looking at the surf as if to anchor herself. “I thought I could bury my heart for the sake of family pride. But when the music started at the mandap, I realized—I was walking into a life that would never be mine.”
Her veil slipped as she spoke, revealing a face both fragile and defiant. Behind her, the playlist’s song reached its aching crescendo, almost as if it were narrating her confession.
Viraj, usually skeptical, felt a strange shiver crawl down his spine. “It’s like… the playlist knew,” he whispered. His eyes didn’t leave the trembling bride. “It’s alive. It feels us, listens to us.”
Rhea laughed bitterly, brushing away tears. “Alive or not, it’s more honest than half the people I know.”
No one spoke after that. The group stood in silence, the only sounds the lapping of the tide and the dying notes of the ballad. Rhea lowered herself onto the sand, not caring that her bridal dress grew damp at the edges. For the first time in hours, her breathing steadied, as though the ocean had absorbed some of her pain.
Ayesha sat beside her, looping an arm gently around her shoulders. Yusuf Sheikh, the corn vendor from earlier, offered her a roasted bhutta, as if food could soften heartbreak. She smiled faintly, accepting it.
Viraj, meanwhile, watched the little speaker glowing faintly as the song faded into silence. The emptiness that followed was heavier than the tune itself. He knew then that this was no coincidence. Each track wasn’t random—it was memory, pain, longing, stitched into sound.
The bride in the shadows had not only been found by chance. She had been called.
And for the first time, Viraj wasn’t afraid of the truth. He was afraid of how deep it would take them.
Seven
The wind had shifted on Juhu Beach. What was once a melancholic drizzle of notes now burst into a tune that felt paradoxical—bright and rhythmic, yet carrying the sting of nostalgia. The speakers on Viraj’s phone pulsed with the beats of an upbeat duet, a song about lovers at a crossroads, torn between desire and doubt. It was almost impossible not to sway to it, yet every bar carried an undercurrent of pain.
“This song… it doesn’t feel like it’s just playing. It feels like it’s calling,” Priya whispered, brushing the hair from her eyes as she scanned the beach. The evening glow had dimmed to a rusty orange, the tide creeping closer with every wave, as if the sea itself leaned in to listen.
Drawn forward, they spotted two figures near the edge of a crumbling jetty that jutted out into the Arabian Sea. A man and a woman—young, vibrant, and visibly exhausted from words thrown like stones—stood facing each other. He had his fists clenched at his sides; she had her arms crossed tightly, holding herself together as if afraid she would shatter.
“Do you hear it?” Tanya asked Kabir, her voice trembling. “This is our song. How the hell is it playing here?”
Kabir exhaled sharply, turning away, his gaze lost to the horizon. “Because this beach wants to mock us. To remind me of every promise I couldn’t keep.”
Their voices rose and fell, woven into the melody, until Viraj and Priya felt less like intruders and more like witnesses to a deeply personal theatre.
The argument unfolded like the verses of the track. Tanya accused him of choosing ambition over love, of chasing dreams while she stood still, waiting. Kabir, in turn, accused her of clipping his wings, of resenting his need to carve a path in the world. Every word bled regret, but beneath the heat lay the unmistakable throb of devotion.
As the chorus of the ballad soared, Tanya’s voice broke: “If love was enough, we wouldn’t be standing here ready to tear each other apart.”
Kabir reached for her hand instinctively, then stopped midway, his palm hanging in the air, trembling. “Don’t say that. Love is enough. It has to be. Or else—what was the point?”
The music dipped then, softening, almost as if the playlist itself mourned for them. The beach around them hushed, the wind stalled, and Viraj felt a pang in his chest so sharp it startled him. Watching Kabir and Tanya was like holding a mirror to his own life, though he didn’t fully understand why yet.
Priya, beside him, looked shaken. “They’re stuck. Neither wants to let go, but neither knows how to stay.”
The song shifted into its bridge, a section filled with yearning and half-remembered dreams. In that moment, Tanya collapsed into Kabir’s arms, their embrace fragile and desperate. For a heartbeat, they were whole again. But as the final notes of the track rang out, they broke apart, retreating from each other with heavy steps, as though the music had reminded them of a love they could not yet salvage.
When the song ended, silence returned—thick, suffocating. The couple disappeared into the shadows of the beach, leaving Viraj and Priya staring at the spot they had occupied.
Viraj swallowed hard, his throat dry. “This playlist… it isn’t random. It’s alive. It knows us, knows them. It’s tied to something more than just songs.”
For the first time, his voice carried not skepticism, but fear—fear of what it might reveal about him.
As they walked back toward the shoreline, Priya murmured, “Maybe the playlist isn’t just about music. Maybe it’s about memories—ours, theirs, everyone who’s ever stood on this beach searching for something they’ve lost.”
Viraj didn’t respond, but the question gnawed at him: Would his life ever find a song worth remembering? Or would he too end up like Kabir and Tanya—forever on the edge, trapped in the echo of what could have been?
The waves roared louder, as if mocking his silence. The beach had more stories to play. And Viraj wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them.
Eight
The night deepened, but Juhu refused to sleep. As Viraj, Sameer, and Ayesha drifted away from the main stretch of the beach, the city seemed to unfold its after-hours self, alive with a strange duality—both chaotic and tender. The playlist in Viraj’s pocket kept nudging forward, like an invisible compass, and every track painted a new shade of Mumbai’s midnight soul.
The first pull was toward a cluster of food stalls glowing beneath dangling bulbs. Smoke rose from skewered kebabs, mingling with the buttery scent of pav bhaji, and the hum of frying oil met the staccato of steel ladles hitting pans. As the next song spilled into Viraj’s ears—a Hindi ballad that spoke of hunger and comfort—he noticed how each customer seemed to have a private ritual here: a taxi driver inhaling chai in one gulp, a couple sharing a plate of bhel, a group of theatre students still laughing in stage makeup. Sameer grabbed two vada pavs and handed one to Viraj, saying, “This is our Mumbai communion.” Viraj bit into the spicy filling, realizing how the playlist wasn’t just about people’s secrets anymore—it was about the ordinary, unspoken heartbeat of the city itself.
They moved on, the track shifting into something more upbeat, layered with percussion and electronic echoes. It pulled them toward a half-lit alley where a rickety Ferris wheel creaked against the sky. A dozen children shouted from its seats, their laughter spilling over the rusted machinery. Ayesha, eyes bright, dragged Viraj closer. “Look at them,” she whispered. “They’re not afraid the thing might break. That’s Mumbai. You don’t wait for safety; you just ride.” The wheel turned slowly, and Viraj felt a twinge of envy—of that raw trust, of surrender to the moment. The song synced with the rhythm of the wheel, and for a fleeting second, he imagined the entire city rotating with it, dizzy but relentless.
As midnight approached, the streets grew darker, quieter, yet somehow denser with life. A faint ghazal wafted from a tiny tea stall tucked into an alley. The playlist mirrored it perfectly, dropping into a mournful, velvet-smooth tune. They paused, drawn in by the lone man behind the counter who was singing softly while pouring chai. His voice carried a nostalgia that belonged to another era—something between prayer and confession. Viraj felt his chest tighten. The man noticed them and smiled, as though inviting them into his song. For a moment, Viraj wondered if this was what the playlist had been trying to teach him all along: that every corner of Mumbai carried a story, and every story carried a song.
The final track of the night surged with a tempo that matched the city’s late-hour traffic—the honks, the motorbike revs, the clatter of hoardings being lowered. They followed it back toward the main road, where neon signs flickered, half-alive, above shuttered shops. Viraj watched people still bargaining for vegetables, still rushing for last buses, still arguing, still laughing. The city didn’t end; it only shifted gears. Ayesha looked at Viraj and said, “It’s like the playlist isn’t just about us. It’s Mumbai’s own mixtape.”
Viraj stood still for a moment, overwhelmed. He realized that through the songs, he was beginning to sense the city not as a backdrop but as a living, breathing companion. The playlist had revealed hidden layers—where chaos met tenderness, where hunger met music, where exhaustion met resilience. Mumbai, in its midnight heart, wasn’t only about survival. It was about rhythm, about stories colliding in alleys, about connections forming under neon and smoke.
And somewhere in that realization, Viraj felt a quiet shift within himself—as though the city had chosen to sing to him too.
Nine
The shuffle stops. Then, without warning, a final track begins to play—a low, almost fragile melody that doesn’t belong to any chart, any radio, any familiar collection. It is as though the earphones themselves exhale one last breath. The trio—Viraj, Ananya, and Imran—exchange glances. No one speaks. The music feels personal, guiding rather than entertaining, like an invisible hand tugging them in a very specific direction.
They walk quietly, as though instinct itself is now the map. Past the glowing food stalls, past the last auto-rickshaws waiting for late-night passengers, down a slope toward the water. The tide is unusually calm, and the horizon is a thick smear of black where the sea merges with the sky. The track swells as they approach an old wooden bench, cracked and salt-eaten, standing half-forgotten near the shore. It looks like it has been waiting for years.
Ananya is the first to notice the object lying on it—a notebook, thick with use, the edges curled from humidity. She hesitates, then picks it up. The cover is plain, black, unmarked except for faint scratches. When she opens it, the pages inside are dense with ink. Handwritten titles of songs, entire playlists, scribbled notes in the margins: “First fight, 2007,” “Train ride with her—best day,” “This one is for when it all ended.”
The three of them lean closer, stunned into silence. The handwriting is hurried but careful enough to be legible. Every playlist seems tied to an emotion, a memory, a fragment of someone’s life. There are no names, only initials—tiny, cryptic signatures at the end of some entries. V.K. … S.P. … R.D. … They read like fragments of strangers, pieces of a puzzle scattered across time.
Viraj feels his throat tighten. So this wasn’t random at all. Someone—some unknown soul—had been archiving lives through music. Playlists as diary entries, songs as confessions. Perhaps the earphones were never merely electronic, but an invitation into this secret archive. He wonders how many lives this person touched without ever meeting them face-to-face. How many people unknowingly shared their inner world through the common language of melody.
Imran flips to the last page. There, in slightly neater handwriting, is a short note:
“Every city hums. Every soul leaves behind a rhythm. This is my way of listening before I fade out. If you are holding this, you too are part of the song now. Don’t stop listening.”
No name, just two initials scrawled beneath.
The three stare at the letters, searching for recognition, but they remain mysterious. A chill runs through Viraj—not of fear, but of awe. Whoever this person was, they had been quietly mapping the unseen heartbeat of Mumbai for years. Not for fame, not for recognition, but simply to prove that lives, however ordinary, carry music worth remembering.
The song in their ears fades into silence. For a moment, the city feels still. The noises of traffic and sea return slowly, like the orchestra after a pause.
Ananya closes the notebook and presses it to her chest, as if protecting it. Imran, uncharacteristically solemn, mutters, “Feels like we just stumbled into someone’s ghost.”
Viraj doesn’t answer. His eyes remain fixed on the horizon. For the first time in years, he feels a thread pulling him—not backward into regret, but forward, into possibility. Perhaps his life isn’t empty after all. Perhaps, like the stranger who left this trail of songs, he too can build something that endures—not in grand gestures, but in small, resonant notes.
The trio sits quietly on the bench, the notebook resting between them. Mumbai sprawls behind, infinite and indifferent. Yet here, in this tiny pocket by the sea, they sense its midnight heart still beating.
And in that heartbeat, they find themselves—listeners in a citywide song, unsure of the ending, but no longer afraid to hear it.
Ten
The horizon slowly began to lighten, a pale shade of gold brushing against the still-dark sky. The waves of Juhu Beach softened their rhythm as though the sea itself was tired after whispering secrets all night. Viraj, Zara, and Neil sat together, their silhouettes framed against the glow of the approaching dawn. The notebook lay open between them, pages fluttering in the salty breeze, its handwritten playlists capturing moments they would never truly understand yet felt deeply connected to.
Viraj traced a finger over the initials signed at the end of the final page. They were cryptic, almost like a code, but he didn’t try to solve them. For the first time in months, he didn’t feel the urge to chase every mystery or control every outcome. “Maybe it doesn’t matter who it was,” he said softly, his voice almost lost under the hush of the tide. “What matters is what it gave us.”
Zara leaned back on her hands, her hair damp from the spray of the sea. “It feels like… someone stitched our lives together with music,” she murmured. “As if they knew what we needed before we did.” Her eyes reflected the rising light, tired but strangely alive, as if a part of her had been mended.
Neil, who had been quiet for most of the night, let out a low chuckle. “And to think, I almost didn’t stop when Viraj called me,” he said, shaking his head. “If I hadn’t, I’d have spent another night alone, scrolling through meaningless feeds. Instead… this.” He gestured at the earphones lying in the sand, small and unassuming, yet heavy with meaning.
The three of them shared a silence that wasn’t awkward but full—woven with unsaid words, gratitude, and the kind of bond that didn’t need definitions. Each of them had come to the beach carrying different burdens: Viraj with his grief, Zara with her loneliness, Neil with his restlessness. But now, as the sea lapped gently at their feet, those weights seemed lighter, if not gone entirely.
The first sliver of the sun appeared, painting the water in shades of orange and rose. Viraj picked up the earphones, holding them carefully, as though they were fragile relics. He looked at Zara and Neil, and for a fleeting moment, they all knew what he was about to do. Without speaking, the other two nodded.
Viraj walked toward the water’s edge. The sand was cool beneath his feet, damp from the night tide. He dug a small hollow with his hands, just where the waves kissed the shore, and placed the earphones gently inside. For a moment, he hesitated—his heart thudding with a strange mix of sadness and gratitude. Then he whispered, “Thank you,” so quietly that only the sea could hear.
The next wave rolled in, filling the hollow, washing over the earphones, and pulling sand back with it. The object sank deeper, hidden once more, as though returning to where it belonged. The sea accepted the gift without question.
When Viraj turned back, Zara and Neil were watching, their faces solemn but peaceful. They didn’t need to say anything; the gesture had spoken for all of them.
As the three teenagers walked away from the shore, the beach was slowly waking up. Vendors set up carts, joggers began their morning routines, and the ordinary hum of life returned. But for Viraj, Zara, and Neil, the night they had shared was far from ordinary. It was a memory carved into the rhythm of the waves, a secret carried by the sea.
Long after the footprints they left on the sand faded, the bond remained—unspoken, invisible, but enduring. Somewhere in the depths of the ocean, the stranger’s playlist would continue to rest, waiting for the next listener. And as the day fully bloomed, the three of them walked toward the city, each carrying not just music, but the echo of a night that had changed them forever.
End
