Chapter 10: The Road Beyond the Storm Part 1
454 Words
The train to Baragaon was slow—like it remembered every turn and tremor of the land. The fields outside blurred into a patchwork of green and brown, dotted with tin roofs, grazing cattle, and satellite dishes nailed to bamboo poles.
Aarav sat by the window, fingers gripping a letter in his lap.
Meera’s letter.
He had read it twenty-three times.
And still, each word landed like the first time.
The people at the station hadn’t recognized him.
No cameras, no crowds.
Just a man with a satchel and a name etched in pamphlets.
He liked it this way.
He wanted to arrive as a son—not a symbol.
Baragaon looked smaller now.
The banyan tree near the temple had fewer leaves. The tea stall where he once sat with his father was replaced by a cement kiosk.
The house where he grew up—half-standing, half-eaten by weather—was still there, silent and waiting.
When he stepped into the narrow lane, a dog barked once, then fell quiet.
As if even the animals remembered.
And then he heard it—
“Bhaiya…?”
He turned.
There she was.
Meera.
Taller. Stronger. Eyes exactly the same.
She dropped the metal jug she was carrying and ran.
When she reached him, she didn’t speak.
She just held him—tight, fierce, trembling.
He closed his eyes.
Home had a heartbeat again.
Ma came out next.
She didn’t run.
Didn’t cry.
She simply stood with folded arms and said, “You took your time.”
Aarav smiled through tears. “I wanted to bring something worth showing.”
“You brought yourself,” she said, walking over. “That’s enough.”
That night, they sat on the broken verandah, eating thepla and listening to the rain.
Not talking.
Just being.
Sometimes, healing didn’t need language.
Meera showed him the school where she taught. The children greeted him with wide eyes. One girl whispered, “You’re the one from the pamphlets, na?”
He nodded. “But I used to chase buffaloes down this street, just like you.”
They laughed.
And with that, he was no longer distant.
He was theirs.
On his third night back, Aarav visited the old well near the mango grove—the one where he had once written his first lines in chalk.
He took out a fresh sheet of paper.
And wrote again.
“I walked through the storm.
Not to escape it—
but to understand why we keep building homes where floods always come.
And maybe, just maybe—
to help build bridges next time.”
He folded the paper.
Placed it in a bottle.
Dropped it in the well.
A story, returned to its roots.
- Writer
