When I got back from a business trip, something in my room felt… off.
It wasn’t messy. In fact, it was a little too tidy. My pillow looked like someone had bothered to fluff it. A different brand of toothpaste had appeared beside the sink. A used razor, not mine, lay in the bin.
I walked out to the hall. Kamali was folding clothes on the sofa.
She looked up and smiled faintly. “Back early?”
“Just by a day,” I said. “Hey… did someone use my room?”
Her hands paused mid-fold. “I should have texted you,” she said. “My ex-husband came to the city. He didn’t have a place to stay.”
She hesitated before continuing, “I let him use your room. Just for a night.”
I didn’t respond immediately. Our flat — two bedrooms, a hall, and a kitchen — was one of those leased-out units the local builders handed to professionals. No frills. Just walls, water, and shared silence. A man and a woman living together with no real connection — not relatives, not lovers — raised questions in this part of the world. But we minded our own business. It worked.
I’d never locked my room when I travelled. Trust had been unspoken but understood. But now, something had shifted — gently, but without warning.
She must’ve sensed it. “He had a court hearing here,” she added. “He left this morning.”
That evening, we sat in the hall watching the news. Kamali sat unusually still, her eyes fixed on the scrolling headlines. Then she said, without looking at me, “You didn’t ask me why I let him stay.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t want to pry.”
Her voice softened. “Because it gave me a chance to see my daughter. For two days. My mother-in-law hasn’t let me meet her in over a year. They’ve hired lawyers to make sure he gets custody.”
She didn’t cry. But something in her face crumpled quietly inward.
Next day, I paused at my bedroom door, suitcase in hand. My fingers hovered near the latch.
And then I turned away, leaving the room unlocked.
—
Some weeks later — I don’t remember the exact day — I returned home at the usual hour.
Kamali was at the stove, stirring Maggi noodles. That morning, I’d noticed half a cake of it left on the counter. It must have been the same one, now simmering in the pan.
Only God knew what else — if anything — she had eaten all day.
She still hadn’t found a job. Rent was due in two days. Her savings, I suspected, were long gone. She never spoke about money, but you could read it in the small details — milk skipped in tea, the quiet neatness of someone stretching what little they had, her tired silences.
“Any word from the interview?” I asked.
She didn’t turn around. “They said I’ve been shortlisted for the final round — with the MD.”
“That’s good news.”
“It is… but he’s travelling. So they’ve scheduled it for the 4th.”
There was something in her voice — thin hope, trying not to sound like hope.
She ate quietly, washed her plate, and went into her room. The door clicked shut behind her.
I drifted off on the sofa, the news channel murmuring in the background. At some point, I woke to a faint, muffled sound — someone crying. The kind of crying where you try to stay quiet, but can’t.
It was coming from Kamali’s room.
I walked up and tapped the door gently.
“Kamali?”
The crying stopped.
—
The next morning, before leaving for work, I left some cash on the dining table. Not much — just enough to help. I placed the salt jar over it like a paperweight.
Her room was still closed.
When I returned in the evening, the flat was quiet. Kamali wasn’t home. But on the table was a small packet. Inside it — the same notes I had left.
I found a Post-it on my bedroom door.
“Be careful with money. Looked like you dropped it — notes were all over the floor this morning.
Also… I got the job. Final round happened today — MD cancelled his trip. Got an advance. Went to buy groceries. See you soon.”
I read it again, slowly.
And smiled.
–
A week or two later, Kamali returned late from work. It was past nine. She walked in with her hair loosely tied, a tote bag slung over one shoulder, her face drawn but alert — the kind of look you see in someone trying to act less tired than they are.
I was in the kitchen, stirring some leftover upma from the morning. A half-filled steel plate waited on the counter. The only light in the flat came from the yellow kitchen tube and the flicker of the muted TV in the hall.
“You cooked?” she asked, letting her bag down gently, as if out of habit more than fatigue.
“Just something I made before leaving for calls,” I said. “Didn’t feel like ordering in.”
She walked over and leaned slightly on the doorframe. “Doesn’t seem worth it, does it? Ordering food just for one.”
I smiled faintly. “And it tastes the same, no matter which town.”
She let out a short laugh. “You must get sick of hotel rooms.”
“Three cities this week. Clinics blur into chemists, blur into bus stands. This flat feels like a pause between trips.”
She said nothing for a moment. Then: “Do you ever go back to your hometown?”
I looked up. Her voice wasn’t casual, but not intrusive either. A question asked because she wanted to know, not because she wanted to be polite.
“There’s no one there,” I said. “My parents died when I was fifteen. Lorry accident on the Vellore bypass. My uncle took me in. That lasted till I finished school.”
“And then?”
“Courier boy. Grocery delivery. Logistics office. Whatever I could get. Took evening classes to finish a degree. Worked through most of my twenties. Still working through it.”
She didn’t move or blink too much. Her face had a calm I hadn’t seen earlier — as if she was seeing me for the first time, minus the coat and bag and quiet.
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she said softly.
I gave a dry smile. “I don’t say it often.”
She stayed by the fridge, sipping water slowly, both hands around the glass.
I sat at the table and began to eat, not rushing. The fan hummed. The TV in the hall muttered headlines to no one.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
But somehow, it didn’t feel like silence.
–
It was a Sunday evening. The kind that settles softly, without saying much. A cricket commentary floated in from a neighbour’s window. Kamali was cooking — something with jeera, I guessed from the smell.
She opened the fridge, paused, and muttered, “No tomatoes.”
Then, to no one in particular, “I’ll just go down and get some.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
I stayed on the sofa, half-lying down, flipping through news channels without sound. The pressure cooker hissed once, then fell quiet. A window creaked. In that stillness, I noticed a large brown envelope on the dining table — the kind legal documents come in. It hadn’t been there yesterday.
It was partly open, sheets jutting out. I told myself not to look.
And yet, my eyes caught words too heavy to ignore.
“Affidavit.”
“Custody of minor child.”
“Respondent failed to create a safe emotional environment.”
I don’t know when I stood up. I didn’t plan to touch anything. But the envelope tilted, and one sheet slid out farther.
Her name. His. A court in Chennai.
I saw a paragraph underlined in blue:
“Refused physical contact for extended periods. Exhibited withdrawal, emotional unpredictability. Unable to cooperate in shared parenting.”
There were other words — clinical, deliberate, impossible to unread.
One handwritten note in the margin simply said:
“History of depressive symptoms post childbirth?”
The room felt smaller.
I slid the paper back in. Tried to align the stack as I’d found it. Sat down. Then stood again. Walked once to the window and back. When the door finally opened, I was in the exact spot she’d left me — remote in hand, screen flickering useless light.
She didn’t notice the envelope had shifted.
Or if she did, she chose not to show it.
The tomatoes went into the pan. Mustard sputtered. A metal spoon clinked against the kadhai.
We didn’t speak. But something quiet had changed.
Not affection. Not pity. Just… a knowing.
And the beginning of a gentler silence.
–
Two days before Cuddalore, she left. Small suitcase. Said she was going for a hospital check-up, court arrangement. No other words.
“All the best,” I said. Her eyes caught mine — not for long. Something like anger, or the edge of it, passed through her face. She left.
Two days passed. Her door stayed shut. Her mug on the kitchen counter. Half a bar of soap by the sink. A steel plate drying on the rack.
The evening before I was to leave for Cuddalore, I felt the worry rise. First time I ever called her. Her tiny phone, the one with the peeling keypad, usually rings so faint that I used to wonder if she’d hear it even if she were holding it. Once. Twice. No reply.
Three days in Cuddalore. Field visits in the sun — bus stops, tea stalls, the smell of diesel from slow lorries. At night, hotel beds too white, too cold. In the mornings, the sound of water in plastic buckets down the hall.
I thought of the flat — its quiet, its open balcony door.I told myself she was fine. I told myself she was strong.I told myself too many things.
Came back to find it unchanged. Her door closed. Or maybe just empty.
The next morning, in the shower, I heard the latch turn. Fifteen minutes later, towel dried, I stepped into the hall.
Suitcase. Two leather bags. Her face was pale, swollen. She drank three cups of water in quick gulps, as if each one had been owed to her for days.
“Hi,” I said. No glance.
“I might be off for months… don’t try to call me.”
“Where?”
“No idea.”
A pause.
“Actually it makes no difference where I go.”
She stood for a minute more. Then the door opened, closed.
The salt jar was still on the table. The fan still clicked. And the flat felt bigger than it had in months.
–
The next day, the real estate company called. Said the other room had been vacated. Someone would come to see the flat in a day or two.
I didn’t ask about her key. Maybe she had given it back to them.
I walked to her room. Tried the handle. It turned easily — not locked.
Light burst in — windows wide. I shut my eyes for a moment.
The bed had no pillow. On the dressing table — a comb,hairs caught in its teeth.
The almirah was empty. On one shelf, an unopened bottle of moisturizer. I picked it up, sniffed. A faint, clean scent — It was the kind of scent that makes you check if someone’s still in the room — I put the bottle back. Beside it — slips of blank paper, edges curling.
The bathroom was spotless. A blue towel hung from the hook. I’d seen it on the balcony railing.
I pulled it down. The cloth was soft, holding the quiet smell of a place recently lived in. For a moment it felt like she was still here. I folded it back on the hook.
Before leaving, I shut the windows. The light went out.
The room fell into dark.
—
It had been a few weeks since she left. The flat had adjusted to its new rhythm — a little more quiet, a little less lived-in. The real estate company had sent a new tenant: a Bengali boy from Alipore, studying engineering in one of the city colleges. Polite, always with earphones around his neck, he came and went without much notice.
One evening, around seven, the doorbell rang. My flatmate pulled out his earphones and opened the door. Two policemen stood there — one older, with a notepad; the other younger, eyes scanning the hall as if measuring it.
“Mr…?” the older one asked.
The boy turned to me. “They’re asking for you.”
They stepped inside, sat on the sofa without waiting for an invitation. “We need to ask about your previous roommate. Woman, about thirty, Kamali…?”
I nodded.
The questions came steadily — when I’d last seen her, what she’d taken with her, where she might go. I answered what I could, which wasn’t much. My answers were small islands in what was clearly a much larger sea they already knew.
Then the older one said it, almost offhand: “She went to her husband’s town. Took the child. Without custody.”
The younger one wrote something in his pad.
I sat there, unsure what to say. The words “took the child” felt strange — soft, almost harmless. But the older man’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if ticking off a crime from a list.
They called it kidnapping.
I kept thinking — how can it be kidnapping when it’s the child’s own mother? The law clearly thought otherwise.
An hour passed. They closed their notepad, stood up, thanked me in a way that wasn’t thanks, and left.
The boy seemed curious but didn’t ask any questions. He couldn’t have understood much anyway—the cops had been speaking to me in Tamil.
The flat felt heavier. Not with her absence — that had already settled in — but with the knowledge of what absence can make someone do.
I still wonder why she stays in mind. We were never friends. Only the quiet shape of her things — the salt jar, the towel on the railing, those slips of curled paper on her shelf.
Maybe it’s just what happens when two lives share walls. Some of it rubs off and stays. Like scent on a towel long washed.
If I hadn’t seen those legal papers — and I shouldn’t have — the police would have brought a different story. I’d have believed it. Funny how one glance can set the compass forever.
Whenever the Bengali boy vacates, I’ll take the whole flat which will include the other room too. Open those wide windows of that room. Let the air move through. And see what it chooses to keep.
இலைகள், மலர்கள், மரங்கள் 