What We Left Behind

The sun hung over Vaikuntha Cremation grounds, making it very hot as people walked on the concrete paths and lawns. It was Sunday noon, and the air was heavy with incense and silence. Old friends of many decades, Vikas, Manoj, and Pranav stood side by side, watching the final rites of their friend Jatin. The priest chanted verses from the Garud Puran, his voice rising and falling like the monsoon wind that had left the city drenched the night before. The three men, all in their early fifties, had faces that bore the weariness of age and the quiet ache of memory. 

As the flames settled and the crowd began to thin, Manoj looked at his watch and said, “Guys, half of Sunday’s gone. And none of us has anywhere to be. Have you guys had lunch?”

Pranav shook his head and looked at Vikas.

Vikas agreed. “No. And Kavita’s not expecting me. Saala, she doesn’t even ask anymore.”

Pranav shrugged. “Joshita’s probably out photographing idiotic banyan trees or abandoned houses. I’m invisible on weekends. She’ll not miss me.”

Manoj smirked. “Then let’s go to Bhor. There’s that dhaba near Khed Shivapur. Cold beer, quiet hills and something spicy to eat. We’ll be back by eight.”

Vikas grinned. “Beer sounds better than grief.”

Pranav added, “Yeah! Silence tastes better with hops.”

After the cremation, they drove out of the city in Vikas’s aging Toyota Innova, heading southwest toward Bhor. The highway shimmered under the October sun, and the hills beyond Sinhagad stood like old sentinels.

They stopped at the quiet dhaba just past Khed Shivapur, where the smell of garlic tadka and wood smoke mingled with the scent of drying earth. The dhaba had charpais laid out under a tin roof, and a transistor loudly played old 70’s songs. They asked the waiter to reduce the sound level and ordered beer and tandoori chicken, and sat in silence for a while, each man lost in his own thoughts.

At 52, Vikas Deshmukh, often thought of his life as a book with torn pages—some missing, some unreadable. He once ran a successful printing press in Narayan Peth. His company, Shabdayan, had printed textbooks for the Maharashtra board and election pamphlets for local parties. But the digital wave had drowned his business, and debts mounted. Kavita, his wife of twenty-five years, had left him six months ago, tired of his evasions and late-night disappearances. She taught English at a school in Kothrud and lived with their daughter in a modest flat near Paud Road. Vikas wore a gold chain that peeked out from his kurta, a relic of better days.

Dr.Manoj Kulkarni, 54, was a general physician with a clinic in Sadashiv Peth. He had once been known for his gentle bedside manner, but over the years, his empathy had dried up like the cracked walls of his waiting room. He prescribed antibiotics with mechanical precision and rarely looked patients in the eye. His wife Lisha, a classical dancer from Goa, had left him last year, citing emotional neglect. She now performed with a troupe in Panaji and taught Bharatanatyam to children. Manoj wore rimless glasses and a wristwatch that hadn’t worked in months. He often felt like a man trapped in a hospital corridor—endless, sterile, echoing.

Pranav Joshi, 51, was a writer had a prolific career. However, he hadn’t published in over five years. His last novel, Panchgani Nights, had received modest acclaim, but since then, he had struggled with writer’s block. He lived in a rented bungalow in Bavdhan with Joshita, a freelance photographer twenty years his junior. Their relationship was quiet, almost spectral—she moved like a shadow through his days, and he barely noticed. Pranav wore a Nehru jacket over his kurta and carried a leather-bound notebook that remained mostly blank. He often imagined himself as a tree in a forgotten orchard—rooted, silent, waiting for fruit that never came. 

As the beer arrived, Vikas broke the silence. “Jatin was the only one among us who still believed in beginnings.”

Manoj took a long sip. “He was naïve. Always talking about starting a farm in Mulshi or opening a bookstore in Deccan.”

Pranav looked out at the highway. “Naïve, yes. But he had hope. That’s more than I can say for myself.”

Vikas chuckled bitterly. “Boss, hope doesn’t pay EMIs.”

Manoj leaned back. “Nor does it fix a broken marriage.”

Pranav turned to them. “Do you think we ever really tried? Or did we just drift into these lives like leaves on the Mutha river?”

Vikas lit a cigarette. “I sincerely tried. Kavita says I never listened. Maybe she’s right. But I was drowning in bills and deadlines. I was living just month to month. Listening felt like luxury. She was used to a fixed amount coming to her at the end of every month. For me it was adapting to new technology and yet be profitable was a daily struggle.”

Manoj nodded. “Lisha used to dance in the living room. I’d be reading medical journals, pretending not to hear the ghungroos. She said I made her feel invisible. For her dancing was a hobby. For me being up to date in my profession was my survival.”

Pranav sighed. “Joshita takes photos of strangers. She says I’m harder to capture than them.”

Manoj finished his beer. “Do you think we’ll end up like Jatin? Alone, with no one to light the pyre?”

Vikas stared into his glass. “Sometimes I wonder what it was all for. The business, the house, the car. If I couldn’t even keep my family together, what did I build?”

Manoj added, “I spent years healing strangers, but couldn’t heal the one person who danced for me. What kind of doctor does that make me?”

Pranav looked at the hills. “I wrote stories about love and longing, but couldn’t write one for myself. If I die tomorrow, will anyone even remember my words?”

Vikas said, “Maybe we chased things—money, respect, routine. But we forgot to chase meaning.”

Manoj nodded. “And now we’re left with echoes. Of laughter, of footsteps, of people who walked away.”

Pranav whispered, “Maybe we wasted our lives trying to be men others expected us to be.”

The waiter brought a second round of beer. They asked for bhakri with zunka. A truck rumbled past, kicking up dust and fragments. The men sat quietly, watching the hills turn golden in the early evening light.

Vikas spoke again. “I saw Kavita last week. At the supermarket. She looked… peaceful.”

Manoj raised an eyebrow. “Did she see you?”

“Yes, she did. She smiled. But it was the kind of smile you give to a neighbour, not a husband.”

Pranav scribbled something in his notebook. “We’re all ghosts in someone’s story.”

Manoj looked at him. “And what about your story? Still blank pages?”

Pranav closed the notebook. “I wrote a line yesterday. ‘The funeral was quieter than the marriage.’”

Vikas laughed. “That’s dark. But true.”

Manoj finished his beer. “Chalo yaar. Let’s drive back. I have patients tomorrow.”

As the conversation continued on the futility of life, they were thinking of what they had achieved in life to be so lonely at this point in life. They paid the bill and walked to the car. The dhaba owner waved them off. The transistor continued with the 70’s songs, this time renewed on louder volume, as they pulled onto the highway.

On the way back, they passed some sugarcane fields. Vikas slowed the car and rolled down the window. The scent of wet earth filled the cabin.

“Kavita and I used to come here often,” he said. “We’d stop at the temple and eat mangoes under the banyan tree.”

Manoj looked out. “Lisha loved mangoes. She’d eat them with salt and chili.”

Pranav smiled faintly. “Joshita hates mangoes. Says they’re too sweet.”

They drove in silence for a while. The city lights began to flicker in the distance.

Vikas spoke softly. “Do you think we could start over? Not with them. But with ourselves.”

Manoj thought for a moment. “Starting over is for the young. We can only continue.”

Pranav nodded. “But how we continue—that’s still ours to choose.”

Maybe it was the beer or the candid conversation, the three friends got thinking into what they had achieved and how they would move ahead. 

Vikas decided he would stop chasing Kavita’s approval and instead rebuild his printing press—not for profit, but to publish poetry and memoirs of forgotten voices in Pune. Maybe even help Pranav with his book.

Manoj thought that it was time to renovate his clinic and paint the walls. He had noticed how the new generation doctors greeted each patient with eye contact and warmth, even if it felt awkward at first. He resolved that it was time to make that change.

Pranav, for the first time in years, felt the stir of a story forming—not about love or longing, but about three men on a highway to Bhor, drinking beer and confronting their ghosts.

They reached Pune just as the unseasonal rain began. But the streets seemed to glisten under the streetlamps, and the city seemed to breathe again.

Vikas dropped Pranav at his bungalow, then Manoj at his clinic. As he drove home alone, he passed the supermarket where he’d seen Kavita. He parked for a moment, watching the lights inside.

He didn’t go in.

Instead, he drove to the riverbank near Omkareshwar temple. The Mutha flowed quietly, carrying leaves downstream like memories .

Vikas stepped out, lit a cigarette, and watched the water and dried leaves floating on it.

He didn’t feel hopeful. But he didn’t feel lost either. And for now, that was enough.

We sat with beer and burning skies,
Three shadows stitched with old goodbyes
Our lives once loud, now barely heard,
Like half-spoken thoughts or a forgotten word

We built, we broke, we let love slip,
Held dreams too loose, let silence grip
Now all we ask, beneath this sun
Is how to live with what’s undone