The Ghosts We Carry

 On a cool January evening in Pune, the city exhaled a gentle hush. The air carried the scent of roasted peanuts and eucalyptus, and the sky above Model Colony was a soft indigo, stitched with the first stars. An old bungalow, once belonging to a freedom fighter, now hosted a literary soiree — poets, professors, musicians, and wanderers gathered under fairy lights and faded portraits to celebrate the written word. 

Arjun Deshmukh, 38, stood near a bookshelf lined with dusty Marathi anthologies and translated Russian novels. His lean frame was wrapped in a navy Nehru jacket, and his eyes — brown, thoughtful, slightly sunken — moved across the room like a man searching for a sentence he’d once read but couldn’t recall. A literature professor at Ferguson College, Arjun was known for his lectures on Eliot and Ambedkar, but tonight he felt like a footnote in someone else’s poem. 

His wife, Abha, 35, moved through the crowd with quiet grace. Her silver saree shimmered like moonlight on the Mula river, and her long black hair, streaked with premature grey, was tied in a loose braid. She smiled politely, but her eyes held a weight — something unsaid, something old.

“Arjun,” she said softly, handing him a cup of tea. “You should speak. They’re asking about your new essay.” 

He took the cup, fingers brushing hers. “Let them talk. I’m more interested in listening tonight.” 

She nodded, but her gaze lingered on the far end of the room, where a man with a harmonium was playing a soft raag — Bhairavi, slow and aching. He was in his early forties, salt-and-pepper hair, a quiet intensity in his posture. Something about him — the curve of his jaw, the way he closed his eyes while playing — made Abha’s breath catch. 

Arjun noticed. “Do you know him?” He asked. 

Abha hesitated. “I thought I did.” 

Later, as the evening thinned and guests began to leave, Abha stood alone on the verandah, watching the Gulmohar trees sway in the breeze. Arjun approached, his footsteps slow. 

“You were quiet tonight,” he said. 

She turned her head to look at him. “So were you,” she replied softly. 

He glanced back toward the harmonium player, now packing up his instrument. “You said, you thought you knew him.” 

Abha’s voice was low. “He looked like someone I once loved.” 

Arjun looked at her, he waited, but she said no more. They went home in silence, the city’s neon glow painting their shadows on the pavement. 

Their apartment in Kothrud was modest — bookshelves lined with poetry, a balcony with dying tulsi, and a bedroom that smelled faintly of sandalwood and old paper. 

Abha changed into a cotton kurta and sat by the window, her fingers tracing the condensation on the glass. 

Arjun sat on the edge of the bed, watching her. “You loved him.” 

She didn’t flinch. “Yes.” 

“How long ago?” 

“Before I met you. Before I knew what love could cost.” 

He felt a strange hollowness — was it jealousy, or something deeper?. A sense of being on the periphery of someone’s core memory. It was as if he had married the present, while the past still held the key to her soul.

And in that moment, he thought could love could be shared, but never fully possessed? 

“Did he leave you?” 

“No,” she said. “He died.” 

Arjun’s breath caught. “Oh! I didn’t know.” 

“No one does. It was years ago. A bike accident near Lonavala. He was on his way to meet me.” 

The room fell into a hush, broken only by the distant honk of a rickshaw. Abha’s voice was steady, but her eyes shimmered - with tears, but with the ache of remembering something too sacred to speak aloud. It was the kind of silence that wrapped itself around the heart like an old shawl — familiar, frayed, and warm with sorrow. 

“I waited at the station for hours. I thought he’d changed his mind. I didn’t know he’d never arrive.” 

Arjun looked at her — really looked. The curve of her cheek, the quiet strength in her posture, the way she held grief like a sacred thread. He realized he had never asked about her past, never wondered what shaped the silences between them. 

“I’m sorry,” he said forcing himself to utter those words. 

She smiled faintly. “Don’t be. You gave me a life. But some ghosts never leave.” 

Internally she thought, “The ghosts don’t knock, they don’t speak — they just sit quietly in the corners of memory, waiting for a song or a scent to stir them. And when they rise, it’s not to haunt, but to remind us of who we were before grief taught us silence.” 

That night, Arjun lay beside her, unable to sleep. The ceiling fan spun slowly, casting shadows like turning thoughts.

She loved someone else. Not just before me — but deeper than me. Her silence was not emptiness, it was memory. And I was the man who came after the music stopped.

Was I just a refuge? A second draft of a life she once imagined with him?

How do you compete with someone frozen in perfection, untouched by time, unspoiled by disappointment? 

But slowly, his thoughts began to shift. 

Love should not be a contest. It is a shelter. And if I have been her shelter, even after the storm, then I have not been unloved.

We are all mosaics of memory — stitched together by longing, loss, and grace. To love someone is to accept the ghosts they carry.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. It is choosing to walk beside someone, even when you know the road began before you. 

The next morning, Arjun appeared to be at peace, but his male ego couldn’t shake the image of the harmonium player. After college he walked to the café near Deccan Gymkhana, where the event organizer worked, and asked casually about the musician. 

“Oh, that’s Sameer Joshi,” the organizer said. “He’s from Nashik. Teaches music at a school there. First time in Pune.” 

Arjun blinked. “Not Raghav?” 

“No, no. Raghav passed away years ago. If I remember correctly, I think he was part of Abha’s friend circle, or was he?” 

Arjun nodded slowly, the pieces falling into place. Sameer wasn’t Raghav. But he had opened a door — not with intention, but with resemblance. A face, a gesture, a note in Bhairavi — and Abha’s buried grief had risen like monsoon mist. 

That evening, Arjun returned home to find Abha on the balcony, watching the sky turn copper. 

“I asked about the musician,” he said gently. “He’s not Raghav.” 

Abha didn’t turn. “I know.” 

Arjun paused then asked, “Then why did you say—” 

“I didn’t see him with my eyes,” she said. “I saw him with my longing.”

She thought to herself, “Longing has its own vision — it reshapes faces, resurrects voices, and plays tricks with time. In that music, in that moment, he was alive again — not in flesh, but in the fragile theatre of memory.” 

Arjun sat beside her. The city below pulsed with life — scooters weaving through traffic, temple bells ringing, lovers walking hand in hand. But above it all, a quiet truth hovered. 

“In stories steeped in memory,” Abha said, “the line between real and imagined blurs. Sometimes the heart sees what the eyes cannot.” 

Arjun reached for her hand. It was cold, but steady.

“Were you afraid to tell me?” 

She nodded. “But not because I didn’t trust you. But because I didn’t want to disturb the life we built.” 

He thought of how we live in layers — the present wrapped around the past, the visible cloaking the invisible. Abha’s love for Raghav wasn’t a betrayal. It was a truth, buried but breathing. And perhaps, he thought, we are all haunted — not by ghosts, but by the echoes of who we once were, and who we might have been. 

They sat in silence, the city unfolding below them like a poem — imperfect, unfinished, but still beautiful. 

And somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a harmonium played again. Not Raghav’s. Not Sameer’s. Just memory, humming its quiet tune. 

She saw him not with waking eyes,
But through the ache that never dies.

A note in Bhairavi stirred the past,
Where love was real, but couldn’t last.

 He held her hand, yet felt the space—
A ghost still dancing in her grace.

 But time had softened what once burned,
And in his arms, her heart returned.