Chapter 8: When Fire Meets Rain Part 1
702 Words
The monsoon returned the way it always did in the city—uninvited, sudden, unapologetic.
Thunder cracked open the skies one night in late June, and within minutes, the dry, dust-choked streets were swallowed in curtains of rain. Drainage lines overflowed, electric poles flickered, and the scent of wet concrete mixed with the city’s collective sigh.
Aarav stood on the roof of the community center, watching it all. Rain dripped from his hair, soaked through his shirt, but he didn’t move.
Something about the storm comforted him now.
Maybe because he had survived worse.
Maybe because the storm had made him who he was.
Downstairs, the power flickered once, then died. Ramesh called up from the stairwell, flashlight in hand.
“You’re going to catch a cold!”
“I’ll write a poem about it,” Aarav shouted back, laughing.
The laughter was rare—but earned.
He had grown leaner, stronger, and more present in the months since the pamphlets had started. His writing wasn’t just a voice now—it was a mirror. Reflecting not just his truth, but the truths of others.
And that reflection had begun to spread.
The next day, soaked pamphlets were found in the workers’ tea stalls.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
Inspired by his.
The words were rough, the layout jagged, the ink smudged.
But the message was loud:
“WE ARE NOT SPARE PARTS. WE ARE PEOPLE.”
Aarav held it in his hands and smiled.
“This is bigger than us now,” he told Ramesh.
Ramesh nodded. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“I wanted to be heard. I didn’t know we’d all start shouting together.”
But louder voices bring sharper ears.
A week later, two policemen showed up at the community center. Plainclothes, but clearly official. They walked around, asked questions. Looked at the Letters to Nowhere box. Flipped through the pamphlets.
“This one’s written against factory practices,” one of them muttered. “Defamatory.”
Ramesh stepped in. “It’s the truth.”
“And who decides that?” the officer snapped.
“No one,” Aarav said calmly from the doorway. “That’s why we write it down.”
The officer turned. “You’re Aarav Sharma?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the one who wrote The Road Beyond the Storm?”
“I lived it.”
The officer scoffed. “Be careful, poet.
Sometimes fire burns the hand holding the match.”
Aarav didn’t reply.
But later that night, he wrote that line down.
Because truth came with warnings, and he wanted to remember every single one.
The next morning, the rains turned to floods.
Water filled the lower floors of several buildings. The factory district shut down.
Homes near the canal were evacuated. The city was in chaos, but unlike the cyclone that once stole everything from him, this time, Aarav wasn't alone.
He led workers to set up a relief station in the community hall. Women brought food. Children passed out blankets. Teenagers formed human chains to help the elderly wade through the water.
The boy he’d once rescued from the warehouse now helped him organize shelter.
“What do we do next?” the boy asked.
“We don’t wait for help,” Aarav said. “We become it.”
By the second day, local newspapers started reporting on their efforts.
“Community Center Led by Ex-Labourer Becomes Flood Relief Hub,” one headline read.
Ramesh brought the paper to Aarav with raised eyebrows. “Ex-labourer?”
Aarav laughed. “I guess they didn’t know what else to call me.”
Ramesh clapped him on the back. “Then let them make up titles. You’ve already made a movement.”
But then, just when the water began to recede, something else caught fire.
One of the major garment warehouses—known for exploiting women laborers—burned down in the middle of the night.
No lives lost. But papers, records, equipment—all destroyed.
The owner blamed “radicals.”
He called it “revenge by the writer gangs.”
The police returned. This time in uniform.
They didn’t ask questions.
They brought a list.
And Aarav’s name was on it.
- Writer
