EK BAAR PHIR: THE INK OF DESTINY
A Novel by Navya Kaushik
About the Author
Navya Kaushik is a storyteller who finds
magic in the mundane and destiny in the
details. With a penchant for exploring the
intersections of fate, memory, and the human
heart, Navya weaves narratives that
resonate with the nostalgia of old India and
the complexities of modern love. Ek Baar
Phir: The Ink of Destiny is a testament to her
belief that no story ever truly ends—it only
waits for the right character to turn the page.
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2026 by Navya Kaushik
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means,
including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without
the prior written permission of the publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain
other noncommercial uses permitted by
copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Edition: 2026
Table of contents
*Chapter 1....The archeology of Ten
Rupee Note .................... Page 1
* Chapter 2: The Ladoo
Labyrinth...................................................
Page 3
* Chapter 3: The Symphony of Glass
............................................... Page 5
* Chapter 4: The Syntax of a Soul
................................................... Page 7 * Chapter 5: The Heavy Platform of Kanpur
................................ Page 9
* Chapter 6: The Great Erasure
........................................................ Page 11
* Chapter 7: The Mercy of Destiny
................................................. Page 13
* Chapter 8: The Five-Year Sentence
.............................................. Page 15
* Chapter 9: The Call of Mathura
................................................... Page 17
* Chapter 10: The Full Circle
......................................................... Page 19
* Epilogue: The Unwritten Page
................................................... Page 20
Chapter 1: The Archaeology of a Ten-
Rupee Note
The New Delhi Railway Station in 2005 was
a monument to transit and tears. It was a
cathedral of iron and echoes, where the scent of diesel exhaust mingled with the
aroma of cheap ginger tea and the salt of a
thousand hurried goodbyes. Abhimanyu
Varma stood on Platform 1, his khadi kurta
fluttering in the draft of the arriving Shatabdi.
At twenty-eight, he carried himself with the
quiet dignity of a man who lived more in his
mind than in the world. While others checked
their watches with frantic energy, Abhimanyu
watched the way the sunlight filtered through
the grime of the overhead rafters. His round
spectacles were a window to a soul that saw
stories in the steam of tea stalls.
To the casual observer, he was just another
traveler, but his eyes betrayed a deeper
search. Boarding the coach, he felt the
familiar, rhythmic hum of the tracks beneath
his feet. He navigated the narrow aisle,
avoiding the elbows of frantic businessmen,
and pulled a battered commerce textbook from his jute bag—a relic of a life he had
almost lived—a life of ledgers, balance
sheets, and the predictable safety of a
corporate desk.
As he opened it to page 142, a ten-rupee
note slipped out. It didn't fall like a normal
piece of paper; it drifted, dancing on the air
before landing on his knee. It was soft,
smelling of old ink and sun-drenched dust.
On the margin, scribbled in a handwriting
that looked like falling rain—delicate,
slanted, and purposeful—was a phone
number. The winter chill of 2005 vanished
instantly. The gray, peeling station walls
dissolved around him. Suddenly, the air was
thick with the phantom scent of roses, and
Abhimanyu was no longer a novelist; he was
a terrified boy again, running for his life
through the labyrinth of his own failures.
Chapter 2: The Ladoo Labyrinth
The memory shifted back to May 2000. The
North Indian heat was no longer just a
temperature; it was a physical weight that
pressed against the chest. In the Varma household, the air was thick with expectation
and the cloying sweetness of tradition.
Abhimanyu's mother believed that no exam
—especially the gargantuan CA finals—
could be conquered without a stomach full of
ghee. She viewed calories as armor.
She had spent the entire morning in the
kitchen, rolling besan ke ladoos, her prayers
literally folded into the dough. Each sphere
of chickpea flour was infused with a mother’s
desperate hope for her son’s upward
mobility. "Abhi, eat one more. It’s for brain
power,
" she had insisted, forcing the golden
sweets upon him as he tried to lace his
shoes. Because of those sweets—the extra
minutes spent arguing over "brain food" and
the subsequent search for a misplaced water
bottle—Abhimanyu reached the station just
as the Shatabdi began its predatory crawl
away from the platform. Panic, cold and sharp despite the 40°C heat,
surged through him. He lunged into a
General Coach. It was a metal box of human
chaos—the air a pungent soup of sweat,
engine oil, and the sharp, vinegar-like scent
of pickle jars. He found a sliver of space on
Seat 24, a small, bespectacled island of
panic amidst a sea of snoring laborers and
crying toddlers. He had a CA exam in nine
hours, and his brain felt like a desert—vast,
dry, and empty of every formula he had tried
to memorize. He leaned his head against the
vibrating metal wall, certain that this was the
worst day of his life. He was wrong; it was
the beginning of it.
Chapter 3: The Symphony of Glass Mathura Junction arrived with a roar of iron
and the scent of burnt milk from the
platform's famous pedas. Amidst the
shouting vendors and the desperate
scramble of people boarding, she appeared.
She wore a white Anarkali that seemed to
possess a supernatural ability to repel the
grime and soot of the carriage. Her hair was
a dark, brunette river, flowing over her
shoulders, and her presence felt like a cool
breeze in a furnace.
To Abhimanyu’s shock, the only available
space was directly across from him. As she
sat down, Abhimanyu, the "Writer Babu,
" felt
his entire vocabulary evaporate. He was a
man of words, yet he couldn't find a single
one to anchor himself. He tried to look busy,
snapping open his ‘Auditing’ textbook and
staring intensely at the pages. But it was useless. Every time the train jolted
or the wind whipped through the open
window, the rhythmic clink-clink of her glass
bangles sang to him. It was a symphony of
crystal and light, a sound more poetic than
any law or financial regulation he had ever
read. He realized that while he was auditing
accounts, she was, unknowingly, auditing his
soul.
Chapter 4: The Syntax of a Soul
For an hour, he played the role of the diligent
student. He hid behind his books, using the
thick pages as a shield against her
presence. But she was not a girl who
allowed people to hide. "You've been staring
at that same paragraph for thirty miles,
" she
said, her voice cutting through the
mechanical groan of the train. "Is the law that
cruel, or are you just a dreamer?".
Her voice was honey and gravel—sweet yet
grounded. Her name was Ananya. She was
a medical student, a world of biology and
precision, but she spoke of literature with a
passion that made Abhimanyu’s heart ache.
She noticed the corner of a notebook
peeking out of his bag—not his textbook, but his private journal. She dubbed him "Writer
Babu". In that cramped, smelly cabin, they
built a private universe. They didn't talk
about the exams that awaited them; they
talked about why people fall in love in poems
but fail so spectacularly in real life.
Chapter 5: The Heavy Platform of Kanpur
Kanpur Junction was a gray, industrial reality.
As the train screeched to a halt, the air
between them grew heavy with unsaid
words. The six-hour journey had felt like six
minutes, a fleeting moment of connection in
a lifetime of isolation. They stepped onto the
platform, swallowed by the morning rush of
the city.
Abhimanyu wanted to ask for her world—her
number, her address, her promise to write.
But his tongue was tied by the modesty of a
boy who hadn't yet found his voice. They
parted with a look—a lingering, haunting
gaze that said more than any conversation
could. He watched her white suit vanish into
the sea of khaki and blue, feeling a phantom limb syndrome of the heart. He stood frozen,
the noise of the station fading into a dull
hum, as he realized he had let the most
important person he’d ever met walk away
without a word.
Chapter 6: The Great Erasure
The nightmare manifested at the exam
center gates. The sun was a harsh spotlight,
illuminating his failure. Abhimanyu reached
into his bag for his admit card, the paper that
validated his existence for the last five years.
Instead, his hand found the sticky ladoo
dabba his mother had packed. He found his
pens, his ruler, and his eraser. But the card
was gone.
The world tilted. Without that paper, he was
a ghost in the eyes of the examiners; the last
five years were a waste. He sat on the dusty
curb, the heat of Kanpur mocking him. He
was a failure, just as he had always feared.
He stared at his hands, realizing that his
story had ended before the first chapter was
even finished. The dreams of his parents, the
sacrifices of his mother—all erased because he had been distracted by a girl with glass
bangles.
Chapter 7: The Mercy of Destiny
"Hurry is the enemy of the heart, Writer
Babu.". He looked up, his eyes blurred with defeat.
Ananya was standing there, breathless, her
white suit stained with the dust of the city.
She looked like a vision of mercy amidst the
grime of the street. She held the yellow
admit card like a flickering candle. "You
dropped it at the station. I saw the center
address on the back,
" she explained, her
chest heaving from the run.
He took the card, his fingers brushing hers.
The touch felt like an electric current,
grounding him to the earth. "Why did you
come?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
She smiled, a vision of mercy. "Because your
story isn't over yet. Now go. If destiny is as
stubborn as we are, we will meet.".
Chapter 8: The Five-Year Sentence
The years that followed were a masterclass
in longing. Abhimanyu did the unthinkable—
he walked away from the commerce exam and became a novelist, not a CA. His debut,
The Girl in White, became a sensation, a
bestseller that captured the hearts of a
nation. But he felt like a fraud because he
couldn't find the ending to his own story.
He searched every hospital, every book fair,
and every medical directory in the country.
He grew his hair, wore his khadi, and
became the "Writer Babu" she had named,
hoping that his fame would act as a
lighthouse to bring her back. He lived in a
state of perpetual waiting, the ten-rupee note
with her number—which he had discovered
years too late—acting as his only talisman.
Chapter 9: The Call of Mathura
Present Day. The note in his hand was no
longer just paper; it was a map. He had followed a lead—a Dr. Ananya Sharma in
Mathura. He stepped off the train, the
familiar station air triggering a thousand
memories of the girl in the white suit. He took
an auto-rickshaw to a quiet hospital on the
outskirts of the city.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a
trapped bird. What if she's married? What if
she's just a memory?. He stood in the sterile
hallway, feeling the weight of five years of
unposted letters in his chest. The smell of
antiseptic and old paper surrounded him as
he waited for a ghost to become flesh.
Chapter 10: The Full Circle
The hallway was silent until he heard it.
Clink. Clink. Ananya emerged from a ward,
her presence still as commanding as it had
been on the Shatabdi. She was a doctor
now, her hair in a sophisticated bun pinned
by a single red rose. She saw him and didn't gasp; she simply smiled, as if she had been
expecting him for tea.
"You took your time, Writer Babu,
" she said
softly. "I put that note in your book five years
ago. I thought a writer would be better at
finding hidden meanings.". He stood before
her, his voice trembling. "Do you love
someone, Ananya?".
She stepped closer, the scent of her roses
filling his world and erasing the five years of
silence. "I love a man who is consistently late
but always arrives exactly when he is
needed.". Abhimanyu didn't say a word. He
pulled her into a hug, the khadi of his kurta
meeting the white of her coat. "Now,
" she
whispered into his chest,
"will you keep on
staring at me like a character in a book, or
will you offer me some food? I am starving,
yaar.".
Epilogue: The Unwritten Page
A year later, Abhimanyu sat in their garden in
Mathura. He opened a new notebook, its
pages white and full of promise. He didn't
write about the train or the dust or the fear of failure. He wrote about the silence between
two heartbeats.
"Fate is a messy editor,
" he wrote,
"but it has
a way of bringing the right characters back
for the final draft.". He looked up as the
sound of glass bangles approached. He
smiled. The "Writer Babu" had finally found
his ending. Or perhaps, he realized, its just the beginning
THE END
