Chapter 1 – The Forgotten Pages
The city was alive that evening, though the sun was tired. It hung low in the sky, scattering orange light across the crowded streets of Ahmedabad. The smell of roasted peanuts and frying pakoras drifted through the bazaar, mingling with the dust that rose from hurried footsteps. Stalls stood in rows like impatient storytellers, each one eager to draw attention—bright sarees fluttering in the wind, cheap jewelry twinkling under fading sunlight, and second-hand books stacked in untidy heaps.
For most people, this market was ordinary. A place to bargain, to hurry through, to collect forgotten necessities. But for Ananya, this lane was magic. She often came here after college, not to shop for clothes or jewelry like her friends did, but to get lost among things people no longer wanted. She believed old objects held secrets. A cracked teacup once warmed countless conversations. A broken alarm clock had guarded someone’s mornings. And old books, she was certain, carried not just stories printed in ink but also the imprints of hands that once turned their pages with care.
Her friends teased her for this strange habit. “Anu, you live in the past too much,” they would say. But Ananya only smiled. She wasn’t living in the past—she was collecting pieces of it.
That day, her steps led her to a stall she rarely noticed before. It was tucked between a bangle shop and a cobbler’s bench, almost invisible. The vendor, an old man with a white beard, sat lazily fanning himself with a newspaper. His stall was stacked not with shining things but with faded ones—rusty locks, chipped photo frames, and piles of paper that looked like they belonged in a dustbin.
Something tugged at Ananya’s heart. She knelt down, brushing her hand over the pile of books. The covers were torn, some pages eaten by silverfish, others browned with age. Yet to her, they looked like sleeping souls.
Her fingers stopped on something unusual—a black leather-bound diary, wedged between a geography textbook and a half-torn comic. Its cover was cracked, corners frayed, but the texture felt different—soft, almost velvety, despite its age. She pulled it out gently, as if afraid it might fall apart.
The vendor barely looked up. “Pachaas rupaye,” he muttered, naming the price without interest.
Ananya didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to buy it. She just wanted to see what was inside. Standing up, she opened the diary, and immediately, the world around her went quiet.
The first page carried a sentence written in deep black ink. The handwriting was neat, slightly slanted, with the kind of care that only comes from someone who writes often:
“Some loves are not meant to be spoken aloud. So I write… hoping the pages will understand me better than people ever could.”
The words hit her like a whisper in her ear. Her heart skipped. She glanced at the vendor—he was still fanning himself, uninterested. People pushed past her, bargaining, shouting, laughing. Yet she felt strangely alone, as if she had stepped into another world.
She turned a few more pages. The entries weren’t dated in a neat order; some were months apart, some just days. But all of them carried an intimacy that made her feel like an intruder. The writer described sunsets, the sound of rain on the roof, the laughter of someone unnamed. And beneath it all was a thread of longing, of unspoken love that trembled between every line.
“Today she smiled at me. It was nothing, just a polite curve of her lips. But for me, it felt like the sun had chosen to shine only on my side of the world.”
Ananya exhaled slowly. She had always been a lover of stories, but this was different. This wasn’t fiction—it was someone’s heart bleeding on paper.
The vendor noticed her still holding the diary and said gruffly, “Chahiye toh le lo, warna rakh do wapas.” (If you want it, buy it. Otherwise, put it back.)
Without a second thought, she pulled out a fifty-rupee note from her purse and handed it to him.
Clutching the diary tightly, she walked out of the market. The noise of the street returned to her ears—the shouting of hawkers, the blaring of scooter horns—but none of it touched her. She held the diary against her chest as if afraid someone might snatch it away.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, she already knew this diary was not just another old object. It was a door. A door to someone’s world, someone’s story, and maybe… to something much larger waiting for her.
The rickshaw ride back home felt longer than usual. The evening breeze carried dust and chatter, but Ananya barely noticed. Her fingers kept tracing the cracked leather of the diary resting on her lap. Every time she thought of those words—“Some loves are not meant to be spoken aloud…”—a strange shiver ran down her spine.
She reached her lane, paid the rickshaw driver, and hurried into the small but warm house she shared with her parents. The comforting aroma of dal and ghee-roasted rotis filled the air.
Her mother looked up from the kitchen. “Tu aa gayi, Anu? Chal, fresh ho jaa, khaana tayaar hai.”
“Ji, Ma,” Ananya replied quickly, hiding the diary behind her books. She wasn’t ready to share it yet. Somehow, it felt too personal, too secret to reveal.
Dinner was simple, filled with her father’s gentle jokes about politics and her mother’s scolding about the rising price of vegetables. Ananya smiled, nodded, and responded where needed, but her thoughts kept slipping back to the diary waiting on her study table.
The moment her plate was empty, she excused herself, went to her room, and shut the door. The small desk lamp glowed faintly, casting a circle of yellow light across her books. She placed the diary in the center, as though it were something sacred.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she opened it again. The inked words stared back at her like an old friend finally trusted with secrets. She turned to the next page.
“I saw her again today. She doesn’t even know my name. But I could tell you everything about the way she brushes a strand of hair from her face. How ridiculous is that? To notice such details when she will never notice me.”
Ananya’s lips curved into a faint smile. There was something achingly beautiful about such confessions. She had read countless novels—love stories by famous writers—but this felt different. This wasn’t created for readers. This was written for survival.
She turned the page.
“Sometimes I wonder if I am cursed. My heart has chosen someone it cannot have. I laugh with friends, I work, I eat, but in the quietest moments, it is only her. And she will never know.”
The handwriting slanted slightly here, ink pressed deeper as if the writer’s hand trembled.
Ananya leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes for a second. Who was he? A student? A young man? Was he still alive, still carrying this silent love? Or had he long moved on, leaving this diary behind as nothing more than forgotten ink?
Her mind buzzed with questions.
She kept reading. Hours passed without her noticing. Outside, the neighborhood grew silent, interrupted only by the occasional bark of a street dog. The clock struck eleven. Still, she read.
One entry caught her breath:
“I wanted to speak today. The words almost reached my lips. But then I saw her smile at someone else. And suddenly, I felt foolish. Who am I to dream of her? Who am I to imagine a world where she chooses me?”
Ananya’s throat tightened. She pressed her palm against the page, as if to comfort the stranger who had written it years ago. She didn’t know him, but she felt him—his loneliness, his hesitation, his aching love.
At last, she forced herself to close the diary. Her eyes burned from reading, yet her heart felt restless. She placed the diary carefully in the drawer of her desk, locked it, and whispered to herself, “Tomorrow… I’ll read more tomorrow.”
But even as she lay down in bed, staring at the ceiling, the words replayed in her mind. She couldn’t help wondering—where was the writer now? Did he still carry this love silently, or had life swept him somewhere far away?
For the first time in months, Ananya’s dreams weren’t filled with exams or lectures or casual chatter with friends. They were filled with nameless handwriting, silent longing, and a voice that seemed to whisper across time—waiting for someone like her to listen.
The first rays of sunlight slipped through the curtains, painting Ananya’s room in a soft glow. She stirred awake, but unlike other mornings, she didn’t reach for her phone or her textbooks. Instead, her gaze went straight to the drawer of her desk—the one that held the black leather diary.
Her heart skipped. Should I open it again? She hesitated for a moment, chewing her lip, then finally gave in. She pulled it out, caressing the worn cover as if it were alive.
The pages smelled faintly of old paper, mixed with something indefinable—like time itself. She opened to where she had left off.
“The world laughs at poets, at dreamers. But what else am I supposed to be? My silence is my cage. My words are my escape.”
Ananya’s eyes softened. He’s a poet at heart, she thought. Not a professional one maybe, but someone who felt deeply. And wasn’t that rarer than anything else?
She turned another page. A dried flower petal slipped out, fragile and golden with age. Ananya caught it carefully before it crumbled. She stared at it in wonder. Someone had pressed this flower here years ago, maybe decades. Was it connected to the girl he loved?
The next entry gave her the answer.
“She wore a yellow dress today. I couldn’t stop staring, though I tried to hide it. When she laughed, the flower in her hair shook gently, and I wished I could keep that moment forever. I picked a similar flower from the ground after she left, pressed it here, hoping these pages will remember her even if she forgets me.”
Ananya’s breath caught. She touched the petal again, this time more gently, as though she were holding his memory itself.
Her mother’s voice called from outside, “Anu! Jaldi kar, class ke liye late ho jaayegi!”
Startled, she shut the diary, slipped it into her bag, and rushed out. But even in class, as professors droned on about economics and statistics, her mind was far away. She kept thinking of the diary. Who was the girl? Did she ever know she was the center of someone’s world?
By lunch break, her friend Riya nudged her. “Yaar, tu theek hai? Subah se chup hai. Kal raat ko padhi thi na woh boring textbook?”
Ananya smiled faintly. If only you knew, she thought. Out loud, she said, “Bas thoda tired hoon.”
But the truth was she wasn’t tired—she was consumed. Every moment felt like a pause between the diary’s words.
When classes ended, she didn’t go to the canteen or linger with friends. Instead, she went straight to the library, not for studying but for something else. Sitting at the far corner, she opened the diary again.
She noticed, for the first time, faint impressions at the edge of one page—like someone had pressed their pen too hard and the imprint carried onto the next sheet. Carefully, she tilted it toward the light. There it was: a half-visible word.
“R…”
Her heart jumped. A name, perhaps? She turned back to see the page before. Yes—there was a signature at the bottom of one entry, faint but real:
“—R.”
R. Just one letter, yet it felt monumental.
Ananya whispered it under her breath. “R.”
She imagined him—this unknown writer who had loved so deeply and silently. What kind of man was he? Sensitive, surely. Gentle, maybe. But was he still alive? If he wrote this diary ten, twenty years ago, he might be older now. Married? Alone? Did he still remember that girl in the yellow dress?
The bell rang in the library, startling her back to the present. Students were packing up. She quickly hid the diary in her bag again, but this time, her determination had sharpened.
It wasn’t enough just to read. She needed to know him. The diary wasn’t just a story—it was a thread. A thread leading to someone real. And Ananya had decided she would follow it.
As she walked home that evening, the diary pressed against her side, she whispered to herself, “I’ll find you, whoever you are. I’ll find you.”
