Chapter 7: Letters to Nowhere Part 1
786 Words
It started with a blank page and a broken pen.
Aarav sat by the dim window of the community center’s small library, staring out at the rust-colored skyline. His notebook lay open in front of him, a thin streak of ink dragged across the page where his pen had gasped its last breath.
The silence around him was comforting—barely interrupted by the hum of ceiling fans or the occasional honk from the street below. This was his new ritual. Every evening, after organizing worker reports and editing testimonies, he returned to this spot, alone.
And every evening, he wrote letters.
Letters he would never send.
Dear Ma,
It’s been four months. I hope the rains have been kinder this time. I still dream of the courtyard where Meera and I used to chase each other during storms. I fixed a bicycle. I wrote a story. I stood up to a man twice my size. I think you’d be proud. Or maybe you’d just scold me for not eating enough.
There’s a woman here who reminds me of you. Not in her face—but in her fire. She teaches under a tin roof with chalk so broken, she has to press it between her fingers like a matchstick. But she still lights the room.
I miss your hands. The way they smelled of turmeric and soap.
—Your Aarav.
He folded the paper and tucked it into the back of the notebook, beside the others. Dozens of letters. All unsent.
There was no address. No mail service that could reach what was left of his village. And yet, he wrote.
Because writing them made the distance less cruel.
Because silence wasn’t the same as forgetting.
One night, Shyam found him with a stack of folded papers in his lap.
“You write to your family?"
Aarav nodded. “Every day.”
“Do they write back?”
Aarav smiled faintly. “They don’t know I’m writing.”
Shyam said nothing for a moment. Then he pulled a crumpled envelope from his own shirt pocket. It was greasy, worn at the edges.
“I do the same,” he said. “To my daughter. She lives with her mother now. Left me two years ago. I write as if I’m still part of her world.”
Aarav looked at him with quiet understanding. “Maybe that’s how we stay part of it.”
The next day, Ramesh brought news.
“A local NGO is offering to help reconnect displaced workers with their villages,” he said. “Letters, phone calls, even transport if possible.”
Aarav’s heart skipped.
“Can they reach Baragaon?”
Ramesh hesitated. “It’s… off-grid. But maybe someone nearby could be contacted. A shopkeeper, a post office, even a relative in town.”
Aarav didn't waste a second. That night, he wrote a new letter—longer, more detailed, filled with careful instructions and memories only Meera and Ma would recognize.
He handed it to the NGO team the next morning.
They took it with a nod, saying, “We’ll try.”
That word—try—was a thread Aarav could hold onto.
In the days that followed, he kept busy. The worker collective was growing. Their fourth pamphlet was nearly done. Priya had started organizing sewing women into a side union.
The community center had doubled its night classes. Even the police had stopped harassing them—for now.
But Aarav waited.
Every morning, he checked the dusty postbox by the main gate.
Empty.
Every night, he told himself not to expect anything.
But he hoped anyway.
A week later, it came.
A plain white envelope, bent at the corners.
No stamp. No return address.
Just one word on the front:
“Aarav.”
His hands trembled as he opened it.
Aarav beta,
We are alive.
The village is broken, but we’re still here. The house is gone, but Meera and I live with your uncle’s family now. I sew for the neighbors. Meera teaches the smaller children. She speaks your name every day.
A man from the next town read us your letter. He said you are writing books. That you help people. That you fight for what’s right.
I knew you would. I always knew.
Come home if you can. Even for a day. We miss your voice in the house. Even your arguments.
Take care of your heart. And eat more, you stubborn boy.
—Ma
Aarav read it once.
Then again.
Then again.
Tears fell freely onto the inked words, but he didn’t wipe them away.
They were proof.
Proof that somewhere, beyond the storms and smoke and broken roads, he was still someone’s son.
- Writer
