Chapter 3 – Clues in the Margins
The next week passed in a blur. For the first time, Ananya’s world tilted away from lectures, assignments, and her usual routine. Her heart, her mind, her hours—all belonged to the black diary.
Every evening, she locked her door, pulled the curtains tight, and read. The words seemed to call her by name, as though the writer, “R,” had meant for her to find them.
One entry from the middle of the diary made her sit upright:
“It was the annual fest today. She sang in the courtyard, her dupatta brushing the microphone stand. I clapped like everyone else, but in my heart, I wanted to stand up and scream her name. Instead, I wrote it here, a name that will never be mine.”
Ananya turned the page eagerly, hoping to see the name—but the ink had bled, the page water-stained. The name was lost forever.
She bit her lip. Fate was teasing her, giving her fragments but no whole.
---
In class, she grew quieter. Her friends noticed her sudden obsession with the library. Ananya, who once preferred the chatter of canteens, now spent her breaks among dusty shelves, searching. She wasn’t looking for books anymore—she was looking for him.
One afternoon, she pulled out an old college magazine from the archive shelf. Its cover was dated 1999. As she flipped through faded articles and student poems, her heart skipped when she saw the poetry section.
There, in small letters at the bottom of a page, was a familiar sign-off:
“—R”
The poem was untitled, but it carried the same ache as the diary.
“To speak is to lose her,
To write is to keep her.
So I write, though she will never read.”
Ananya pressed her palm over the page, trembling. He was real. He had been here, in this very college, writing under the same initial.
Excitement surged through her veins. She quickly noted the year—1999—then ran to the librarian.
“Do you have old student records? Yearbooks?” she asked breathlessly.
The librarian raised an eyebrow. “Why? Planning to write history of the college?”
Ananya chuckled nervously. “Something like that…”
With reluctance, the librarian fetched a dusty stack of yearbooks. Ananya flipped through them, searching for faces, for names starting with “R.” Rahul, Rakesh, Rajat, Rohit—too many possibilities. Each face smiled back from the yellowing pages, frozen in time.
She felt both closer and farther away.
---
That night, unable to sleep, she returned to the diary. A late entry caught her attention.
“Tomorrow she leaves. I don’t know if I will ever see her again. Maybe this is the end of my writing too. I had so many words, and yet none reached her. If someone finds this diary one day, maybe they’ll know—there once lived a man who loved in silence.”
Her throat tightened. He hadn’t just written about love; he had written about goodbye.
Closing the diary, she whispered to herself, “Not anymore. I’ll find you. I promise.”
---
The next day, during her literature lecture, the professor spoke about “unheard voices in literature.” Ananya’s mind drifted immediately to R. He was one of those unheard voices, buried in time.
After class, she approached her professor hesitantly. “Sir, do you remember any remarkable writers from the late ’90s batch? Someone who wrote poetry but never published it?”
The professor frowned, thinking. “Hmm… there was one boy. Reserved fellow. Brilliant with words. I can’t recall his full name, but yes—he always signed off with just ‘R.’ Strange habit.”
Ananya’s heart pounded. “Do you know where he is now?”
The professor shook his head slowly. “Lost touch. Some say he moved abroad, others that he… didn’t do well after college. It’s been too long.”
She left the room with her mind racing. Abroad? Lost? Or worse? The diary gave no answers, only questions.
---
That evening, Ananya sat at her desk, diary open, pen in hand. For the first time, she wrote inside it—not over his words, but at the edge of a blank page near the end.
“Whoever you are, I hear you. You are not forgotten.”
The ink shivered under the glow of her lamp. For a moment, she imagined him on the other side of time, reading her reply.
And in that instant, a shiver passed through her. She was no longer just a reader. She was part of his story now.
