The House with the Blue Door - II
1274 Words
IV. The Noise Inside Silence
After Sharda left, the house settled into the kind of silence that wasn’t peaceful.
It had weight.
Texture.
A pulse.
Aanya sat with her legs drawn to one side, staring at her sketches. The lines blurred. A thin ache crawled up her spine, slow and familiar.
She pressed her thumb into the edge of the tracing sheet until it left a crescent-shaped dent.
The quiet was too loud today.
Too aware.
Her phone buzzed once.
She didn’t look.
An irrational fear whispered:
What if it’s him?
But that was impossible.
Legally impossible.
Practically impossible.
She had blocked every number, changed two phones, moved cities, built a new life.
But the body didn’t care about legal impossibilities.
Fear lived in the bones, not in logic.
Fear remembered even when the mind pretended not to.
The phone buzzed again.
This time, she forced herself to flip it over.
A message blinked on the screen:
From: Kabir Seth
Re: Site visit? Confirming 4pm for auditorium inspection. Let me know.
Aanya exhaled shakily.
It was remarkable, she thought, how the mind could conjure ghosts even when the world offered harmless facts instead.
She set the phone aside and pushed herself to stand, stretching her back. Her vertebrae cracked; soft, muted, but distinct. She winced.
“Old fractures,” the radiologist had said months ago.
“Likely sustained in childhood,” he had added quietly.
“Not accidental.”
She had nodded, numb.
She had not asked him to elaborate.
She already knew.
Her spine held a history she had never spoken aloud.
Aanya walked to the window and pushed it open slightly. The morning air slipped in; damp, warm, metallic with the smell of monsoon. The champa petals glistened on the ground like fallen moons.
She closed her eyes and inhaled.
But the moment she did, a memory flashed; unwelcome, sharp-edged.
A dark corridor.
A wooden door half open.
A voice; low, angry; calling her name.
Her body was freezing.
Her fingers trembling.
The weight of discipline disguised as affection.
Her eyes snapped open.
She took a step back.
Her breath stuttered.
“No,” she whispered. “Not today.”
She reached for the back of the sofa and gripped it until the world steadied.
She willed her heart to slow.
She forced herself to look around the room; cataloguing objects like lifelines.
The wooden bookshelf.
The framed sketches on the wall.
The soft blue rug.
The chipped ceramic bowl she had bought with Zoya from a street vendor near Khan Market.
The lamp in the corner with its warm, honeyed glow.
She repeated the objects silently in her mind, grounding herself the way her therapist once taught her during the three months she went to therapy consistently, before stopping abruptly when a question cut too close to bone.
Finally, she sat back down.
Her hands shook slightly.
She placed them flat on the floor again.
It was a strange comfort; touching something solid, cold, unchangeable.
Her body, she thought, was not solid.
It was a house with too many rooms she refused to enter.
V. A Knock That Shouldn’t Have Been
The knock came at 8:13 a.m.
Aanya froze.
No one knocked at this hour.
Zoya and Sharda always walked in without knocking.
The poet downstairs never came unannounced.
Kabir wasn’t due until afternoon.
Her neighbours kept to themselves.
Her chest tightened.
Another knock.
Three soft taps.
Measured.
Not aggressive.
But familiar.
Familiar in the worst way.
Her breath caught.
It cannot be him.
It cannot.
Impossible.
He doesn’t know where I live.
No one knows.
Another knock, louder this time.
Aanya’s pulse slammed in her ears.
She took a step toward the door; then stopped abruptly, unable to move forward or back.
Her mind was a fog.
Her body was a trap.
The knocks continued; now politely spaced, as if the person did not want to intrude.
Her throat tightened.
For a second, just one second, she was twelve years old again, standing in a hallway, waiting for anger to walk through a door.
Her hand rose halfway.
Then—
“Aanya?”
A familiar voice.
Not him.
Not the past.
Aanya exhaled hard, knees weakening.
“Aanya, it’s me. Kabir.”
She swallowed.
Her hand trembled as she unlocked the door.
Kabir stood outside holding a notebook and two cups of coffee in a cardboard tray. His hair was tied loosely at the back with a rubber band, and he looked apologetic.
“Sorry! sorry! I'm early,” he said, raising one shoulder. “The client moved my afternoon meeting to morning, so I thought-------well, I was in the area anyway....” He shook his head, embarrassed. “I should have texted. That would have been normal. I don’t know why I didn’t. Sorry.”
Aanya stared at him.
Her heartbeat was still sprinting, but for an entirely different reason now.
“It’s okay,” she said weakly. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
Kabir held out one of the coffees. “Peace offering?”
She hesitated, then took it. His fingers brushed hers lightly—an accidental touch, but her skin reacted as if it were a deliberate, dangerous thing.
Kabir stepped inside carefully, as though entering a sacred space.
“I tried this new place near ITO,” he said. “They claim they make coffee ‘with intention,’ whatever that means. Probably overpriced, but it smells good.”
Aanya managed a small smile.
As Kabir set his notebook on the table, he glanced at the drawings scattered around.
“You’ve been working since…?”
“Early.”
“Long night?”
She hesitated.
“Something like that,” she said.
Kabir didn’t push. That was one thing she liked about him—he asked gently, but he never dug.
He walked toward the window, studying the champa tree. “This place suits you,” he said softly. “It’s quiet, but not lonely.”
Aanya felt a strange heat climb up her neck.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, “quiet and lonely feel the same.”
Kabir turned to her, his expression softening. “Only if you’re carrying too much inside,” he said. “Noise can be internal too.”
The words struck something deep.
She didn’t respond.
She couldn’t.
VI. Fault Lines
Kabir sat on the floor opposite her, crossing his legs. He opened his notebook, flipping to a sketch of acoustic panel designs.
“We’ll talk work, no feelings,” he joked lightly. “Promise. You look like you’ve had enough emotions for the morning.”
Aanya blinked in surprise.
“Do I?” she asked.
He nodded. “Your eyes are tired.”
She looked away.
Kabir studied her for a moment—not in a prying way, but with genuine concern.
“You know,” he said, “you don’t have to be made of stone to be strong.”
Aanya’s stomach twisted.
Kabir looked down at his notebook, unaware—or maybe aware—of the wound he had brushed against.
Aanya swallowed hard and forced her voice steady.
“Let’s discuss the auditorium,” she said.
Kabir nodded, letting the subject drop.
But the words he’d spoken lingered long after he left.
They drifted through the house, fluttering between the drawings and the empty teacups:
You don’t have to be made of stone to be strong.
Aanya sat very still.
For a moment, she pressed both hands to her face.
Then, unexpectedly, she felt the sting of tears.
She wiped them quickly, almost angrily.
Not today.
Not in front of Kabir.
Not in front of anyone.
Not yet.
- Writer
