Mehar's POV
The path to work always feels the same, like a prayer whispered into dust. But this morning, the air carries a stillness that brushes against my cheek, and I slow down without meaning to.
It’s February—the kind that still clings to winter, but lets spring peek in gently through cracks in the wind.
Our house opens directly into a narrow street lined with small homes pressed shoulder to shoulder, like they’ve grown up together. Their slanted roofs are stitched with tarps and old bricks to keep out the winter wind. Walls are painted in sky blue, faded pink, and soft mud brown—some neat, some chipped, but all familiar.
The earth beneath my slippers is still damp from the night, soft and cold underfoot. A few footprints from earlier walkers have already sunk slightly into the surface. The rubber of my chappals sticks lightly with each step, lifting soft, wet sounds as I walk.
I pass Chachi Rekha’s house first—her door already open, the smell of chai slipping out like a secret. Next is Raju Painter’s home, where half a tin gate hangs stubbornly, always threatening to fall but never quite giving in. Across from him, Lalita Bua is seated on a low stool, peeling peas into a steel bowl. The empty shells scatter at her feet, green and bright. She doesn’t look up, but I know she’s seen me.
Above all this, the hills stretch behind the rooftops like a quiet witness. The sky is still waking, pale blue with streaks of white. Far off, the Dhauladhar range sits still, half-covered in mist, its peaks powdered with snow that glows gently in the morning light.
The village breathes around me. Smoke rises from chulhas, curling above rooftops. Someone clinks steel utensils. A rooster crows. The wind carries the scent of mustard flowers and wet earth, mixed with the sweetness of jaggery boiling somewhere down the slope.
At the corner, Bhagat Singh’s shop leans into the bend like it’s part of the landscape. The blue paint on the sign has almost all peeled off, but everyone knows the name. Inside, glass jars are lined up like watchful old men—amla candy, orange goli, saunf, and roasted chana.
Bhagat Singh glances at me. We share a nod. Nothing more.
Beyond his shop, the road widens a little and begins to climb. And before the school comes into view, just near the old eucalyptus tree where the road flattens, someone’s already waiting.
Simran, My Simran.
Not today. Every day.
She’s always there—ten, fifteen minutes before school—waiting like it’s no big deal, like it’s not an offering. Like it’s just what she does.
We’d been side by side since Class 1—every lesson, every lunch break, every scraped knee. By the time we reached Class 11, more than halfway through, we were more than just classmates. Four months ago, I left.
She wasn’t just my classmate. She was the only person I trusted. The one I could be quiet around without feeling empty.
We met when I was maybe three or four—too small to even remember properly. Mama had taken me to the local temple fair, and I got lost somewhere between the laddoo stall and the mehendi line. Simran found me crying under a banyan tree, holding my chappal in one hand and a broken biscuit in the other. She marched me straight to her mother, told everyone I was her new sister, and refused to let go of my hand the whole way home.
That was it.
She’s already in her school uniform—a navy salwar-kameez with a sweater tossed half-on, half-off. Her scarf is pinned loose over one shoulder, swinging a little with the wind. Her hair is tied up in a high ponytail, neatly secured with her favorite butterfly clips. She’s slightly shorter than me, but she walks like she’s six feet tall. Her round face always looks like it’s just finished laughing, and when she smiles, the world softens around her.
Simran doesn’t walk. She arrives.
She’s the kind of girl who laughs in quiet rooms, rolls her eyes at gossip, and looks you straight in the face when she doesn’t like you. She talks fast. Moves fast. Lives like she’s daring the world to keep up. She doesn’t care what people say—and if she ever did, she learned how to hide it so well even she forgets sometimes.
But beneath all of that—under the sharp eyeliner, the untamed jokes, and the too-loud voice—there’s something soft. Not weak. Just real.
The kind of girl who doesn’t talk about loyalty. She just is.
“You look like a ghost,” she says instead of hello.
“You look like trouble,” I answer.
She smirks. “Thank you.”
She loops her arm through mine without asking.
We fall into rhythm as we always do, and her voice takes over the road. She tells me about her newest crush—some boy from the neighboring class who she’s convinced looks like a film hero from the side. “Only from the side,” she adds dramatically. “Front view is a disaster.”
I smile. Simran has a new crush every three days. She falls in and out of love faster than seasons change—but the stories never repeat, and she never gets bored of telling them.
And in between her words, a memory rises in my chest.
Second floor. Third bench. The classroom that smelled of chalk and wind.
That’s where I used to sit.
Sunlight would fall across my desk, and the breeze would flip my notebook pages before I could turn them. I tried to study. I tried to become the girl Baba believed I could be.
“Tu meri chhoti pilot banegi.”
You’ll be my little pilot.
He said it with such certainty—like it was already true. Told everyone. Told strangers. He needed it to be real.
And I tried.
But grief drags you down in quiet ways. The words on the page stopped meaning anything. The sky stopped feeling close.
It’s been four months now.
Four months since I stopped going.
I tried, at first. I really did.
After Mama and Baba were gone, I told myself I’d keep going—for them. For everything Baba used to say about flying, and the way Mama used to pin my scarf with her warm, wrinkled fingers. I’d wake up, pack my bag, braid my hair like she taught me, and walk into that classroom like I still belonged there.
But grief doesn’t sit still.
It moves with you. It hums through your body when the teacher is speaking, drowns out the words on the blackboard, turns the pages of your textbook into something that won’t stay in your head no matter how many times you read them.
Every day, it got harder to concentrate.
Harder to pretend I was still that girl.
Somewhere around the second week, I stopped answering questions.
Then I stopped finishing my homework.
And then one day, while the classroom buzzed softly with chalk and whispers, Mrs. Bedi came to my desk.
She didn’t call my name aloud, didn’t ask for my notebook. She just came quietly and knelt beside me, her sari brushing the floor, her voice softer than the hum of the fan above.
“Mehar,” she said, placing a warm hand over mine, “I see how hard you’re trying. I see it every day. But sometimes…” —she hesitated, like she didn’t want to say it— “sometimes, even the bravest hearts need rest.”
I looked at her but said nothing. My eyes stung. My throat held back something I didn’t have words for.
She gave my hand a small squeeze.
“This seat—this desk—it will wait for you. And so will I. Whenever you’re ready to come back.”
She smiled, and her smile was kind. But it felt like something inside me folded in on itself.
Because I knew what she wasn’t saying.
That someone else might need this seat now. That the girl I used to be—the one who answered questions, who raised her hand, who dreamed of flying—wasn’t here anymore.
And she was right.
I just nodded.
There was no one left to go home and explain it to.
So I didn’t.
I simply stopped going.
But Simran?
She never asked why. Never forced me back.
She just… waited.
Every day.
At that same bend. Under that same tree.
Now she bumps her shoulder into mine, pulling me back.
“Are you even listening?”
“Half.”
“Which half?”
“The part about side angles and love at first glance.”
She grins, wide and unstoppable. “I knew you were listening.”
We reach the bend where the path splits—her toward the school gate, me toward the fields.
She pauses, just briefly, adjusting the twin butterfly clips in her hair like they matter.
Their delicate wings shimmer in the morning light—a quiet reminder of her spirit: delicate yet unbreakable.
“Go charm the mud and plants,” she says, smirking.
“You mean work,” I reply.
“Same thing.”
She laughs, throws me one last wink, and walks away—shoulders proud, eyes wild, scarf fluttering behind her like a banner that says I’m still here.
And I keep walking.
The fields begin just past the slope—mustard flowers waking gently in the light. On the other side, leafy cauliflowers line one plot, and tall stalks of wheat sway slow and soft in the breeze. The path between them is rich with dew, and my slippers lift damp earth with every step.
Ahead, the nursery waits.
Behind me, Baba’s voice still lingers.
“Tu meri chhoti pilot banegi.”
I look straight ahead.
And walk on.
