CHAPTER 1 :-The words never sent
The fading sun spilled through the half-open window of Kabir’s room, painting streaks of gold and orange on the pale blue walls. His desk, cluttered yet carefully organized, bore the traces of an old routine—a half-burnt candle, a fountain pen with a nib darkened by ink, and a stack of papers folded neatly into envelopes. Some were sealed, some not, but all bore no address. They were ghosts of words never spoken.
Kabir sat hunched forward, his elbows resting on the desk as though the weight of his heart pressed them down. The page before him was still blank, except for the salutation: Dear Meera.
His lips shaped her name silently. There was something sacred in it, something that made his chest ache each time it crossed his mind.
For years, he had written to her. Sometimes in hurried scrawls after hearing her laugh across the street, sometimes in measured lines after watching her braid her hair while sitting on the veranda, sometimes in sleepless midnights when the thought of losing her left him trembling. He poured it all onto paper—his confessions, his fears, his dreams of a life with her. And yet, not once had he placed an envelope in her hands.
He dipped his pen, hesitated, then began again.
“I wonder if you’ll ever know how much of you lives in the smallest corners of my days. How your smile rewrites the air I breathe. How silence feels less cruel when I imagine you sitting beside me. I have wished a thousand times to tell you, and a thousand times I have swallowed the words. Perhaps one day courage will visit me. Until then, these letters will have to be enough.”
Kabir set down the pen, staring at the words until they blurred. His heart hammered with that familiar contradiction—relief at having written it, pain at knowing it would remain unread. He folded the page with careful fingers, slid it into an envelope, and placed it into the small wooden box beneath his bed. Dozens of others already lived there. His secret archive of unsent truths.
Outside, voices floated in from the narrow lane below—boys calling out scores in a cricket match, a bicycle bell chiming, the distant bark of a dog. Then came the sound that rooted Kabir in place: Meera’s laughter.
It carried like music, light and unburdened, rising above the street noise. Kabir’s chest tightened. Even now, after twenty-two years of knowing her, that sound still felt like the first time sunlight had touched his skin. He closed his eyes, as though savoring it might make it last longer.
A knock at the door startled him. He straightened quickly, sliding the pen aside.
“Kabir?”
Her voice.
He opened the door to find Meera standing there, framed by the dusk. Her dupatta fluttered lightly in the evening breeze, strands of her hair falling across her forehead. She held a worn novel in her hands—the one she had borrowed weeks ago.
“I finally finished it,” she said, smiling as she handed it back. “But honestly, how do you read things this heavy? My head hurt halfway through.”
Kabir chuckled, slipping the book onto his shelf. “Not all stories are meant to be light.”
“Hmm,” she tilted her head, teasing. “That’s why you’re always lost in thought, isn’t it? Too much drama in these pages.”
If only you knew, he thought. But all he said was, “Maybe.”
For a few minutes, she lingered. Her presence filled the small room as if it belonged to her. She looked around absentmindedly, tapping the edge of the desk with her fingers. Kabir’s heart raced. What if she noticed the envelope lying there? What if, by some cruel accident, she reached for it?
But she didn’t. Instead, she turned back to him. “Anyway, I’ll go. Amma’s waiting for me. Don’t lock yourself up with your books all evening. Come out sometime.”
And then, with another smile—so casual, so familiar—she left.
The door closed, and silence returned. But the air still carried her laughter. Kabir sank onto his chair, pressing his palms against his face. For one reckless moment, he had almost done it. Almost pulled out a letter, pressed it into her hand, and whispered the truth that had lived inside him for years.
Almost.
Instead, he dragged the unfinished envelope into the box and shut it firmly. His cowardice was safe again.
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That night, long after the world outside fell asleep, Kabir lay awake staring at the ceiling fan turning lazily above. Sleep never came easily on days he saw her. His mind replayed every detail—her smile, her words, even the way her shadow had stretched across his floor as she stood in the doorway. He longed for that shadow to remain.
But morning brought reality. And reality was a weight.
Meera was not his. She had never been his, not in the way he wished. To her, Kabir was the quiet friend next door—the one who always carried her books, who fixed her bicycle when the chain broke, who listened patiently when she ranted about exams or quarrels with her cousins. She trusted him with everything, except the part of her heart he yearned for most.
And perhaps that was his fault. He had never asked for it.
When the sun rose, Kabir forced himself into his usual routine. Tea at his desk, notes for a story he was supposed to submit to a magazine, and another letter—this one half-hearted, his words faltering as though even the page had grown weary of his silence.
At noon, the lane outside filled with commotion. Kabir leaned from his window and saw Meera with her parents, greeting relatives who had come visiting. Her mother’s voice carried proudly as she introduced her daughter. There was talk of alliances, hints of proposals, laughter mingled with serious nods. Kabir’s throat tightened. He knew what it meant.
Marriage.
Of course it would come. She was twenty-one, graceful, beloved in the family. Suitors would line up. And what was Kabir in comparison? A struggling writer with ink-stained fingers, no fortune, no name.
He shut the window, but the voices still found him. Each word of laughter was a nail driven into his chest.
That evening, when Meera crossed the lane to ask if he had another book she could borrow, Kabir forced himself to smile. He handed her one at random, his hand brushing hers by accident. The contact lasted a fraction of a second, but it set fire to his pulse. She didn’t notice. Or perhaps she did and chose not to.
“Don’t give me another one that makes me cry,” she warned playfully.
“You don’t like stories that make you feel?” he asked quietly.
“I like happy ones,” she said simply. “Life has enough sadness.”
Kabir wanted to tell her that sometimes sadness was the deepest kind of love. That sometimes, a letter written but unsent carried more weight than a thousand spoken words. But he only nodded.
After she left, Kabir returned to his desk. His hands trembled as he wrote that night. His words came raw, unpolished, bleeding:
“They will take you away from me one day, Meera. And when that day comes, I will stand silent, clapping with everyone else, pretending to be happy for you. But inside, I will be breaking. I don’t know how to exist in a world where you belong to someone else. Still, I will not say it. I will never stop writing it, but I will never say it.”
Tears blurred the ink, staining the paper. He folded the page anyway and slipped it into the box. Another secret among many.
The wooden lid creaked as it closed, a quiet promise that his love would remain buried—at least, for now.
Kabir lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling once more. In his mind, he saw Meera in bridal colors, walking away, her hand in someone else’s. The image gutted him, yet he clung to it. Because wasn’t that the truth he had chosen? To love in silence, to let her happiness outweigh his own?
Outside, the night deepened. Somewhere beyond the stars, fate was already writing its own letter.
And Kabir had no idea that one day, Meera’s hands would open the very box he guarded so carefully, and every word he had hidden would come alive.
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End of Chapter 1
