By Sapoorna

Dedication

For the ones who watched quietly.

And for the ones who spoke when it mattered.

Preface

There are stories that belong to everyone.

And there are stories that belong to no one.

This is not your story.

It is mine.

It is hers.

It is a space between silence and sound.

I didn’t write this for everyone.

I wrote this for someone who needed it.

If you are holding this, maybe it’s you.

And maybe it’s not.

But you are here now.

That’s enough.

        

                          1

Neel sat by the window again. He always did. As if it was some old habit, some ritual to remind himself that he was still breathing. His hands rested on the chipped wooden frame, his fingers tracing invisible maps on its surface. Outside, the world moved. People moved. Time moved. But Neel, he stayed still like a word caught between two pages, waiting to be read but never spoken aloud.

He had learned to be silent long before he had learned to speak. Not the kind of silence that draws attention, but the sort that wraps around your existence like a second skin. It was not dramatic. It was not noticeable. It was mundane. The kind of silence that seeps into your bones until it feels natural. Until you forget what it was like to be heard.

As a child, Neel was always called the quiet one. Teachers wrote it on his report cards. Relatives mentioned it like an apology when introducing him. "He’s quiet, but he’s good," they would say, as though the two things could not exist separately. No one ever asked why he was quiet. They didn’t need to. They had already written his story for him.

But Neel didn’t want their story. He didn’t want their definitions.

He grew up in a house where the clocks ticked louder than conversations. His mother hummed old songs in the kitchen, her voice soft and tired, as though she was singing to herself and not to the boy at the table. His father read the newspaper every evening with furrowed brows, shaking his head at things Neel didn’t understand. They loved him, he knew. But they didn’t know him. They loved the idea of him . their son, the boy who would make them proud one day.

But he wasn’t proud of himself. He wasn’t sure he even knew how to be.

In school, he sat in the corner of the classroom, always by the window, where the light could reach him even if no one else did. He was the boy who didn't raise his hand. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because he didn't see the point. They measured brilliance in ranks and percentages, and Neel had no interest in running races that felt rigged before they began.

He spent his breaks alone, sketching in a small, worn notebook. His drawings weren’t pretty. They were messy and dark, full of shadows and crooked lines. But they were honest. More honest than he could ever be with words. The other boys played cricket. The girls huddled in corners, whispering secrets he was never meant to hear. And Neel? Neel drew worlds where no one asked him to be something he wasn’t.

By the time he was sixteen, he had stopped trying to explain himself. He walked through life like a ghost, present but unseen. Teachers forgot his name during roll call. Friends drifted away like smoke through an open window. Even his parents spoke to him in instructions, not conversations.

“Study harder.”

“You can’t waste time like this.”

“What will you do with your life?”

He didn’t have answers for them. He wasn’t sure he wanted answers. He wasn’t sure if there were answers. All he had was the aching feeling that this life, this quiet existence, wasn’t meant for him.

But he didn’t know how to leave it behind.

Sometimes, he dreamed of other lives. Lives where he wasn’t Neel , the disappointment, the failure, the boy who never spoke enough. In these dreams, he was someone else entirely. A traveler. A storyteller. A painter who lived in Paris, sketching strangers in the streets, drinking coffee at tiny cafés. No one knew his past there. No one cared about his grades. He was just a boy who told stories, and that was enough.

But morning always came, and with it, the suffocating weight of reality.

The breakdown wasn’t dramatic. It never is. It was quiet, slow, like the gentle dripping of water that eventually cracks stone. He was sitting at his study table, textbooks open in front of him, when he realized he couldn’t breathe. His chest felt tight, his vision blurred, and his hands shook so violently he couldn’t hold his pen. He stared at the equations he was supposed to solve, but they meant nothing to him. Just numbers on a page. Symbols in a language he no longer understood.

That night, he told his father he wanted to stop studying. Just for a while. Just to breathe.

His father didn’t shout. He didn’t even raise his voice. He simply looked at Neel with an expression that said everything. Disappointment, shame, confusion. As though Neel had just confessed to being a stranger.

His mother cried quietly in the kitchen.

And Neel realized something that night. He would never be who they wanted him to be. No matter how hard he tried. No matter how much he broke himself apart to fit their expectations.

He left a week later.

He didn’t leave a note. There was nothing he could say that would make them understand. He packed a small bag , his sketchbook, some clothes, and the little money he had saved over the years. He took a train heading somewhere. Anywhere. He didn’t care. He just needed to leave.

The city he arrived in was loud, chaotic, alive. The streets were crowded with people who didn’t look at him twice. He was invisible, but in a way that felt freeing. No one knew his story here. He could be anyone he wanted.

He found work at a small bookstore. The owner didn’t ask questions. He just handed Neel a broom and told him to sweep the floors. Neel worked quietly. He arranged books on dusty shelves. He read when there were no customers. He drew when there was time.

At night, he walked through the streets, sketching people he saw. Lovers sitting on benches. Old men playing chess. Children chasing stray dogs. No one cared who he was. No one asked him what he wanted to be.

And for the first time, he felt like he was writing his own story.

Months passed. He lost track of time. He stopped counting days. He lived quietly, simply. Some days were good. Some days were empty. But they were his days.

One evening, he met a girl at the bookstore. She was buying an old copy of The Little Prince. She asked him if he had read it. He nodded.

“Do you think he ever found his rose?” she asked.

Neel thought for a long time before answering.

“Maybe the rose wasn’t the point,” he said. “Maybe it was the journey.”

She smiled. And for a moment, Neel felt like maybe he wasn’t alone.

They met again. And again. She was kind. She listened. She didn’t ask him to be anything other than who he was. They talked about books, about places they wanted to visit, about dreams that didn’t make sense but felt important anyway.

She told him her name was Mira. She told him she had run away too. Different reasons. Same ache.

They sat by the sea one night, watching the waves crash against the rocks.

“Do you ever miss it?” she asked.

Neel shook his head.

“There’s nothing to miss.”

But he wasn’t sure if that was true. Sometimes, late at night, he still thought about his mother’s songs. His father’s quiet presence. The house where the clocks ticked too loudly.

“You’ll go back,” Mira said softly.

“One day.”

Neel didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he believed in “one day.”

But she was right. He went back.

Not because he missed them. Not because he had something to prove. But because he was ready.

He found his father sitting in the same chair, reading the same newspaper. His mother was humming in the kitchen. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything had.

They looked at him like they were seeing him for the first time. He told them he was okay. That he was alive. That he had found something. Not success. Not brilliance. But something better. Himself.

They didn’t understand. But they tried. And that was enough.

Years later, Neel sat by another window. In another city. With another life.

He wrote stories now. Stories about people who didn’t belong. Stories about boys who sat by windows and dreamed of leaving. Stories about girls who asked about roses. Stories about journeys that mattered more than destinations.

His books weren’t bestsellers. But they found people who needed them. People like him.

And sometimes, he thought about what he would tell his younger self.

“This is not your story,” he would say.

“But you can write it now.”

And so he did.