It had been raining for days in Kolkata. The kind of grey, endless downpour that seeps into bones, thoughts, and memories. Ayan Roy, a 31-year-old software architect, sat at his window, watching the water bead against the glass. The street below was nearly empty, save for the occasional tram slicing through puddles and the distant echo of chaiwallahs shouting into the fog.
That was when his phone vibrated — again.
“Missed Call – +91 00000 00000”
Time: 1:33 a.m.
It was the sixth time this week. Same number. Same minute. No message. No voicemail. Just the missed call — like a whisper from the past, trying to break through.
He had ignored it the first three times, assuming it was a glitch or a prank. But by the fourth night, it began to get under his skin. He called the number back — nothing. He asked his network provider, who politely told him no such call ever registered. Not in their system. Not in his bill. It was like the number didn’t exist.
And yet, it always came.
At 1:33 a.m.
Without fail.
That night, as the rain hammered harder, Ayan stared at the phone long after the missed call ended. The digital clock on his table showed 1:37, but his wall clock now read 1:36 — as if time had shifted slightly, like the world itself was off balance.
He didn’t sleep. Something felt… unfinished. Wrong.
And familiar.
---
The next night, when the call came again, he answered.
No ringtone. No greeting. Just silence.
Then, after five long seconds, a faint voice emerged through static, like an old radio half-tuned.
> “You left me there… Basanta Cabin. Table four.”
Ayan’s heart stopped.
Basanta Cabin.
A hole-in-the-wall tea shop tucked away in College Street.
He hadn’t been there in seven years.
He knew the voice.
He knew it in his chest.
Anvesha.
---
Seven years ago, Ayan had been in love. Anvesha Sinha was brilliant, impulsive, chaotic — the kind of woman who could quote Tagore and throw stones at politicians in the same afternoon. She was a storm and sunshine all at once.
And she was struggling. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 22, her life was a constant pendulum between euphoric highs and terrifying lows. Ayan tried. For a while, he tried everything: therapy visits, late-night calls, standing outside her PG with parathas when she hadn’t eaten for days.
But love, he had learned, didn’t always mean strength. Some days he felt more like a caretaker than a partner. Eventually, he did the one thing she feared most.
He disappeared.
No explanation. No goodbye.
Blocked her. Deleted their photos.
He moved to Bangalore for work and buried her under career and silence.
---
Now, she was calling.
But… how?
He returned to Basanta Cabin the next day. Nothing had changed. The wooden chairs still wobbled. The ceiling fan still clicked. He walked to table four and sat down.
1:33 p.m.
A waiter approached with a steel kettle.
“She said you’d come one day,” he said, placing a cup of tea in front of Ayan.
“She?”
“Didi. Seven years ago. She gave me this — said to give it to you if you ever came back.”
He handed Ayan a worn envelope, yellow at the edges. No name. Just one word scrawled in the center:
“Why?”
Inside was a letter.
> “I waited for you through every storm.
Every Thursday. Same table.
You never came.
I kept your tea warm until the rain stopped.
Then I stopped too.
I don’t blame you.
But I need you to see.
I need you to know.
North Kolkata Mental Health Institute – Ward 3B.”
There was no date. No signature. Just that address, like a scar.
Ayan left the cabin in a daze and headed straight to the hospital. He hadn’t heard of the institute in years. It was more rumor than reality now — one of those colonial-era buildings they never tore down, just locked up and let rot.
He reached just as the clouds broke open again. The building loomed like a ghost from another time — moss-covered, windows shattered, the paint peeled like sunburned skin.
Inside, he found a lone nurse.
“I need to know about a patient — Anvesha Sinha. Ward 3B.”
The nurse stared at him for a long moment. “Sir… Ward 3B was shut five years ago. Fire accident. It… it was bad. The records were destroyed.”
“No survivors?”
The nurse shook her head. “I was there that night. No one made it out. Not from that ward.”
Ayan’s knees gave way. He sat on the cold bench, the sound of the rain muffled by the weight of truth.
He showed her his phone. “She called me. Last night. This number. This voice. It was her.”
The nurse’s face turned pale.
“That number… that was listed under her name. But it was turned off. We found it in her belongings. Melted in the fire.”
Ayan looked down at his screen.
The call history was gone.
No log.
No record.
Nothing.
---
That night, at exactly 1:33 a.m., the call didn’t come.
The silence felt heavier than the rain.
Ayan sat by the window, phone in hand, staring at the empty call log. A part of him wished it would ring again. That he could say something. Anything.
He whispered to the night:
> “I’m sorry.
I should have stayed.
I should have listened.”
The clock ticked to 1:34 a.m.
A notification appeared.
“Message received — 1:33 a.m.”
No number. No sender.
Just one line:
> “You finally heard me.”
Ayan smiled through the tears, eyes fixed on the screen, as the rain softened outside.
Some ghosts don’t haunt to scare.
Some haunt…
to be heard.
