Living Diagonally In My Parallel World!

  The late September sun cast a golden haze over Pune, softening the edges of the city’s relentless pace. In Kalyani Nagar, where old bungalows now stood shoulder to shoulder with glass towers, the headquarters of VistaraLogic rose like a polished monolith—five floors of ambition, data, and quiet power. Inside, the fourth floor buzzed with subdued urgency. The walls were a blend of exposed concrete and matte teal, dotted with abstract art and motivational quotes in Marathi , English and Sanskrit . Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the Mula-Mutha river, and the scent of roasted coffee from the pantry mingled with the faint hum of air purifiers. Anand Oswal’s desk was tucked into the southeast corner, where the light hit just right in the mornings. He preferred it that way—sunlight helped him think. At forty-three , Anand , strict vegetarian, was a family man but a stickler for work. A man of precision , h is shirts were always solid colors—deep navy, slate grey, forest gree...

 Girish Karmarkar lived in a modest two-bedroom flat in Kothrud, above a shuttered tailoring shop and a noisy mithai store. The building was old, its walls stained with memories of past monsoons and the quiet erosion of time. His flat was sparsely furnished—an iron-framed bed, a wooden desk, a rusting ceiling fan that creaked softly like his voice. The only decoration was a framed photo of his late wife, Vaijayanti, smiling in a yellow saree, her eyes full of mischief he had long forgotten how to respond to.  They had been married for eight years. Vaijayanti had been a schoolteacher, full of warmth and laughter. The inability to have children did not rob away the joy from them. She died of a sudden brain aneurysm one morning while brushing her hair. Girish had found her slumped on the floor, the comb still in her hand. After her death, he never remarried. He told people he was too busy, but the truth was simpler: he had no room left inside him for new grief.  At 43, Giris...

Pune, September 2025. The city had grown louder—flyovers slicing through old neighbourhoods, cafés blooming like wildflowers, and the hum of scooters and conversations filling every crevice. But in a quiet lane off Prabhat Road, in a second-floor apartment with peeling blue shutters, lived Kshama Datar, a 62-year-old retired literature professor who had once taught at Fergusson College. She was a spinster. Her home smelled of sandalwood and old paper. Books lined every wall, their spines faded, their pages annotated with thoughts she never shared. A brass lamp flickered in the corner, and a framed black-and-white photograph of a man with kind eyes sat on her writing desk. His name was Raajan Joshi. He had died twenty years ago. But Kshama still spoke to him—sometimes aloud, sometimes in her mind. What she never did was write about him. She had spent her life teaching poetry, dissecting metaphors, and guiding students through the maze of language. But when it came to Raajan, wor...

It had been raining consistently for the past few days. And Pune in 2025 had degenerated from a warm and cosy town to a city of problems. Monsoon had softened the city’s edges. Rain clung to the bougainvillea vines spilling over compound walls, and the air smelled faintly of wet stone and old books.   In a quiet corner of Model Colony, a small café with fogged-up windows waited for its usual crowd of students and freelancers. But today, it hosted something rarer—a reunion.  Aarav Gokhale arrived five minutes early. He always did. Punctuality, he believed, was a form of respect. He chose a table by the window, ordered a black coffee, and stared out at the drizzle. His fingers tapped the rim of the cup, not from impatience but from anticipation laced with dread.   He and Radhika Deshpande were an quite a pair during college. He  hadn’t seen Radhika in thirteen years. They had met during their postgraduate days at Pune University —he in Urban Sociology, she in Poli...