Chapter 5: Between Smoke and Silence Part 2
705 Words
The next few days settled into a rhythm.
Wake up at five.
Stack cloth and fold fabric by six.
Lunch by noon.
Evening work till sunset.
Dinner in silence.
Sleep in a room filled with snoring strangers and forgotten dreams.
The air inside the factory remained heavy. But inside Aarav, something lighter had begun to stir. Every time he passed that poster about night classes, the pull inside him grew stronger.
On the fifth day, after his shift ended, he stayed back while others went straight to dinner.
He stood beneath the poster again.
“Night classes,” he murmured. “Literacy. Skills.”
A thin voice from behind surprised him. “They still hold them, you know. I attend every week.”
Aarav turned. A young man with square glasses and worn slippers stood beside him. His hands were stained with ink.
“I’m Ramesh. Clerk by day, teacher by night,” he said. “You thinking of joining?”
“I didn’t finish school. Never even reached tenth.”
Ramesh smiled. “That makes you like most of the others. We don’t start with textbooks. We start with you—your story, your strengths, and what you want next.”
Aarav hesitated. “But… I’m just a laborer.”
“You’re a learner. That’s what matters.”
Something in that sentence unlocked the gate inside him.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll come.”
That evening, Aarav entered the narrow room behind the community center. It smelled of chalk and kerosene. Posters of letters and numbers were pinned crookedly to the walls.
A whiteboard leaned against a broken chair.
Around him sat a dozen people—some his age, others much older. A mother with sindoor in her hair. A boy who looked no older than thirteen. A man with only three fingers on one hand.
They were all listening to Ramesh as he spoke.
“No matter what brought you here—fire, flood, poverty—you are not your disaster. You are not your job. You are your mind.”
Aarav leaned forward, his heart racing.
For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t just working.
He was learning.
Each night, he returned. Between folding fabrics and lifting crates, he practiced writing letters, learning to calculate wages, understanding how businesses worked. He learned how to read the fine print on his factory slip, how to spot deduction tricks, how to sign his name without shame.
Sometimes, Ramesh gave them prompts.
“Write something about where you come from.”
Aarav paused over the lined paper.
Then slowly, letter by letter, he wrote:
“My village was destroyed by the storm. But my life wasn’t. I’m still building that.”
His fingers trembled slightly. But his words were steady.
Outside class, the factory remained the same—hot, unkind, and noisy. But Aarav’s eyes had changed. He noticed how shipments were labeled. How supervisors tracked productivity. He watched the men in the office, observed their tools—computers, calculators, ledgers.
One day, during lunch, he leaned close to Shyam.
“What does the supervisor make here?”
Shyam raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Three times what we do. But you need numbers. A bit of English. You can’t shout your way into that job.”
Aarav looked down at his tray, the idea growing in his chest like a seed reaching for light.
Maybe not now.
But one day.
On his tenth night of class, Ramesh approached him after the session.
“You learn fast,” he said. “Have you ever considered writing your full story?”
Aarav looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Start with the storm. Then the road. Then here. You’ve survived. But that’s not enough. If you write it—really write it—you’ll understand how far you’ve already come.”
Aarav looked down at the paper.
He thought of the night under the table during the cyclone.
Of Meera’s trembling hands.
Of Mala’s quiet strength.
Of the rusted bicycle frame.
Of the factory walls.
Of the silence inside him—and the words now pushing to escape.
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
- Writer
