In this world

The metro screeched into Viman Nagar station, its compartments spilling commuters like faceless ant’s from an ant hill. Among them was Raghav Pandit, a bachelor who had just crossed fifty, whose presence was as unremarkable as the rust on the railings. He wore a faded blue shirt, carried a leather satchel that had seen better decades, and walked with the kind of practiced indifference that only years of solitude could perfect.

Raghav worked as a head clerk in a government office at Viman Nagar. His job was to file papers, stamp approvals, and nod at superiors. He had no friends at work, only colleagues who greeted him with the obligatory “Good morning, sir,” and ignored him by lunch. His evenings were spent in a one-bedroom flat in Kothrud, where the ceiling fan sometimes worked and creaked softly like his voice.

He ate alone. Walked alone. Slept alone. And yet, city seemed to roar around him—its horns, its hawkers, its high-rises. The city was a living organism, pulsing with ambition and noise. But Raghav? He was a ghost in its bloodstream.

Raghav hadn’t always been this way. Academically excellent, in his twenties, he had dreams of becoming a writer. He scribbled poems on the backs of bus tickets, short stories in the margins of newspapers. He had once loved a woman named Sanjita Mukherjee, a painter with wild curls and a laugh that made the monsoon feel like spring. But it was destined to be a one-sided love story.

They had met at a poetry reading event. She had told him, “You know, you write like you’ve seen the inside of silence.” He had replied, “And you paint like you’ve heard it speak.”

They were inseparable for three years. But dreams, unlike Pune’s growing skyline, often get swallowed by practicality. Sanjita left for Paris on a scholarship. Raghav stayed behind, choosing stability over passion. Being the only child, and with his father bed ridden, he had realised that he had to work to pay for the expenses ...he never wrote again.

It was a Sunday evening when he saw her. Not Sanjita. But someone who reminded him of her.

He was walking along the benches in Sarasbaug, the sun preparing to set behind the Ganpati temple, the sky bruised with twilight. The temple’s bells lingering in the air as twilight bled into the sky. His steps felt heavy — each footfall a reminder of days spent filing papers he no longer cared about.

He noticed a young woman sitting alone on a bench, sketching in a notebook. Her hair was tied in a messy bun, and she wore a loose kurta stained on the sleeves and casual jeans.

He paused, unsure why. Something about her posture—the way she leaned into the page, oblivious to the world—pulled him in.

Sensing a presence, she looked up. Their eyes met. Her gaze was calm and deep, as if she’d already measured the weight in his shoulders.

“Beautiful evening,” he said, surprised at his own voice.

She smiled faintly. “It’s always beautiful here. The sun doesn’t care who’s watching. Most people see dusk as an ending,” she said, tracing the horizon in her notebook. “I see it as proof that colour survives the darkness.”

Though he didn’t understand, he nodded, unsure whether to stay or walk away.

“You sketch?” tentatively he asked pointing to the notebook that she held.

She turned the notebook toward him. A charcoal drawing of the setting sun, the silhouette of the temple, and a rear view of solitary figure standing looking at the temple.

“That’s you,” she said.

He blinked. “Me?”

“Half an hour ago I noticed you walking. You looked... detached. Like you belonged and didn’t, all at once.”

He chuckled softly. “That’s quite accurate.”

“I’m Sanvi,” she said.

“Raghav.”

There was a momentary pause.

“Can I sit here for a while?” Raghav asked.

“Off course”, she replied.

They sat together for a while, watching the setting sun.

“I come here to breathe,” Sanvi said. “The city suffocates me sometimes.”

“Yes, it’s pretty crowded now. Are you from here?”

“No. I moved here last year. I’m a freelance illustrator. Mostly children’s books.”

He smiled. “That explains the ink stains on the sleeves.”

She laughed. “And your story? What do you do?”

“I file papers. Approvals. Bureaucracy.”

“Sounds thrilling.”

He smiled. “It pays the bills.”

They spoke for a while and Sanvi looked at him, her gaze lingering. “You speak like someone who used to dream.”

Raghav turned towards the nearly set sun once again and the sky vivid with different hues. “I did. Once.”

“Tell me.”

He hesitated. Here was a stranger half his age speaking to him and trying to make him speak. Then, as if the skies had unlocked something, he spoke.

“I wanted to write. Stories, poems. I believed words could change people. That they could heal.”

“And now?”

He paused, took a deep breath, then said, “Now I believe silence is safer.”

He remembered the afternoons he chased sunsets as a boy, notebook in hand.

“I… I stopped noticing. My days blended until I forgot there were any colours at all.” He continued.

She smiled, lifting her eyes to him. “Routine does not have to be a tomb. It’s a gallery. You simply stopped looking at the paintings.”

He bristled softly, the memory of gray cubicles rising up. “My office walls are white. Blank. I fill them, but the walls never change.”

Her voice grew gentle, insistent yet steady. “White holds every hue you refuse to paint. What if you choose one? Just one memory— a joy, a heartbreak, a wonder—and let it bloom?”

He pictured his unfinished poems, words trapped behind fear. His pulse quickened. “I wanted to write lines that healed people. But now the blank page scares me more than any letter.”

She closed her notebook and leaned forward looking at the horizon. “Healing isn’t perfect. It is jagged, honest. A single word can be a lantern in someone’s night.”

He swallowed. Her words felt like sparks in old tinder. He felt the writer in him resonating and coming alive. “I’ve carried broken promises like stones in my pocket. Each one a reminder that I failed.”

She touched the sketch in her lap—the setting sun leaking into temple spires. “Your failures are places in your map. Without them, you’d never know how far you’ve come.”

His breath hitched. He recalled the papers he’d filed last week, stamping away dreams. “Then why does every stamp feel like erasing myself?”

Her gaze softened with something like compassion. “Because you believed your value comes from output, not presence. But presence is the root of every story.”

He turned his head towards her, caught between disbelief and yearning. “Presence feels... unsafe. It demands everything.”

“True,” she agreed quietly. “Presence asks for courage. But courage is not absence of fear—it’s fear seen and named. When you name your fear, it shrinks.”

He closed his eyes, fingers tracing the rough grain of the bench. He felt that shrink—just a fraction. “Fear tells me to stay silent.”

“Silence is not protection,” she said, voice low and steady. “It’s a wall you build to keep out joy and sorrow alike. Tear it down, brick by brick.”

He remembered the laughter of Sanjita, the poems he never finished. His throat tightened. “And if I find only emptiness behind the wall?”

She stood up, “Emptiness is fertile soil,” she whispered. “It’s where seeds— your words— take root.”

He rose. They watched the last blush of sunset. “Hope feels distant,” he confessed, voice cracking.

She traced a line in the air as if writing a letter only the sky could read. “Hope is an unwritten poem. The universe waits for your first word. Will you begin?”

He pressed his palm against her sketch—his silhouette framed by stars. In that moment, he felt something shift: a tremor of possibility.

He nodded, barely able to speak. “Yes, there's no harm in trying.”

She turned towards him and smiled, eyes bright. “Then write, even if your hand shakes. Every tremble is proof you’re alive.”

She tore a page from her notebook and handed it to him. It was the sketch of him standing alone gazing at the temple and the setting sun behind it.

“Keep it,” she said. “To remember that someone saw you.”

They parted with a quiet goodbye.

That night, He stared at the sketch for hours. It wasn’t just a drawing—it was a mirror. He saw the loneliness etched into his posture, the weight of years in his shoulders.

He thought of Sanjita. Of the poems he never finished. Of the stories buried beneath office files.

He wondered: Is "meaning" something we chase, or something we remember?

By the time he slept, he had a certain calmness inside. The next day, when he woke up, he found the morning unusually bright and fresh. He walked to work with a strange lightness. He greeted the chaiwala with a smile. He even wrote a few lines on a napkin during lunch:

In a city that forgets faces,
A glance can resurrect a soul

Raghav returned to Sarasbaug every evening, hoping to see Sanvi again. But she never appeared. Days turned into weeks. The sketch remained pinned to his wall, a quiet reminder of that fleeting connection.

While he still ate alone, still filed papers, something had shifted. He had begun writing again—short pieces, reflections, fragments of thought. He didn’t share them with anyone. But they existed. And so did he.

Months later, on a rainy afternoon, Raghav sat by his window, watching the city blur behind droplets. He thought of Sanvi. Of Sanjita. Of all the people who had touched his life and vanished.

He realized that meaning isn’t always found in grand gestures or lifelong companionship. Sometimes, it’s hidden in a single conversation. A glance. A sketch.

In this crowded world—he was still alone. But not invisible.

There was no resolution, yet he felt that lingering sense of yearning. Sanvi’s sketch reminded him that there was someone existing in his space who had his back. And that, somehow, was enough.

In a world so full, he walked alone,
Yet never felt like he was unknown.
No answers came, no final call,
But hope still whispered through it all.

A silent bond, a gentle track
Someone near who had his back.
No grand parade, no shining bluff,
Just quiet love—and that was enough.