ASHES OF THE MONSOON 💝

The first rain of Mumbai had always been a song — chaotic, heavy, endless. For most people, it was relief after the heat. For Aarav Mehta, it was the sound of the city bleeding. He stood on the crowded platform of Dadar station, his shirt soaked through, his sketchbook clutched tight under his arm. Around him, the crowd surged — umbrellas bumping, vendors shouting, trains screaming into the station. But all he could see was the blank page staring back at him. He hadn’t drawn in months. Once, Aarav had been the kind of artist who could see poetry in rusted billboards and forgotten alleys. But the Mumbai grind had dulled him. Day after day, he sketched advertising mockups at a cheap design firm, watching his dreams rot under flickering fluorescent lights. And then he saw her. She was standing on the opposite platform, holding her phone under a half-broken umbrella, raindrops dripping from her hair like tiny diamonds. The crowd seemed to fade around her — she was calm, still, and heartbreakingly distant. Her name, he would later learn, was Mira Sen — a literature student from Bandra, who wrote about love but claimed never to believe in it. Their eyes met across the tracks, and something wordless passed between them — not attraction, not even recognition, but a strange ache, like déjà vu. The next day, he saw her again. And again. For a week straight, always on the opposite platform, always at the same time. It became a ritual neither of them spoke of. Until one evening, when the trains stopped — flood warning. The loudspeakers blared chaos, people rushed for exits, and in the confusion, Aarav crossed the tracks. He found her sitting on a bench, rain pouring over both of them. “You always stare,” she said, without looking up. “You could at least say something.” “I draw,” he replied. “Talking ruins the moment.” She laughed — soft, low, dangerous. “So you sketch strangers in the rain? That’s… unsettling.” That night, they walked together through the flooded streets — shoes soaked, buses stalled, streetlights dying in the downpour. They talked about everything: her favorite poets, his failed dreams, the loneliness of being almost seen in a city of millions. By the time they reached her lane in Bandra, the rain had softened to a drizzle. She turned to him and said, “You look like someone who wants to disappear.” “And you,” he said, “look like someone who already has.” It was the beginning of something that didn’t feel like love — not yet — but like standing on the edge of a storm and daring it to come closer.