Category: Stories

By Spandan Upadhyay

The platform was empty. My footsteps echoed back at me as if mocking this sterile, hollow space. I had been here a thousand times before, but never like this—never in the aftermath of such a disaster. 9:30pm, and the metro hadn’t shown up yet. I sat down, unsure of where else to be. The evening had been a slow car crash — every minute at that poetry reading had scraped away at my dignity. Each time I glanced up from my notebook, I caught the same expression on people’s faces, that slightly bored politeness, the kind reserved for an artist you’ll never remember.

I loosened the strap of my satchel and rubbed my shoulder, trying to push the night out of my mind, but it stuck, like the words of my poems, lingering. Why had I called them ‘Words Left Unspoken’? It seemed so pretentious now, as if I was grasping for some profound truth when, really, they were just words no one cared to listen to. I saw my reflection in the mirror on the platform. Green kurta, brown sandals and black rimmed glasses, I didn’t really command much attention. Why would anyone care to listen to me anyway?

I glanced around the station. It felt unreal, like some purgatory where time stretched on forever, with nothing to look forward to. The fluorescent lights flickered, and the only sound was the occasional distant rattle of a train that would never come. Or at least it felt like it.

This city, Kolkata—it was once a place where artists mattered, where poets walked down College Street with a cup of tea in one hand and a burning idea in the other. Now? Now, the city didn’t care about poetry. It cared about money, about practicality, about getting from one station to the next as fast as possible.

I checked my phone again. Though there wasn’t really much to check. The poetry circle WhatsApp group was silent, like the station itself. No one had said a word about my performance. Probably because they were all too busy posting Instagram stories from some hipster café by now.

My eyes wandered to the far end of the platform. That’s when I saw her.

She was standing under one of the dim lights, a woman in her late forties, maybe early fifties, her face lined with age and fatigue. She had a basket of flowers slung over her arm—wilting roses, chrysanthemums, marigolds, all tired-looking, much like their owner. I’d seen her here before, always in the same spot. She was a fixture of the station, but I’d never paid much attention.

Tonight, though, there was something about her that pulled at me, maybe because she seemed as out of place as I felt.

I stood up, more out of curiosity than anything else, and walked toward her. My footsteps sounded loud in the silence, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Flowers at this hour?” I asked, my voice echoing off the walls.

She glanced at me, her eyes sharp, measuring me up. “Metro or no metro, people still need flowers. Weddings, funerals, who cares? Life goes on.”

Her voice was raspy, like someone who’d spent years yelling into the wind. And yet, there was something calm about her. Resigned. It felt familiar.

I shrugged. “Strange place to sell them, though.”

She didn’t look at me this time, just adjusted the flowers in her basket, fingers working methodically. “It’s quieter down here. Besides, I’m not here for the regular crowd. I’m here for people like you.”

“Like me?” I frowned.

“Late. Alone. Waiting for something that’s probably not coming.”

The words hit me like a slap, sharper than I expected. There was a tired smile on her lips when she finally looked up, and in her eyes, I saw something I didn’t want to acknowledge—recognition.

I smirked, though I didn’t feel like it. “I guess that makes two of us then.”

She chuckled softly. It was a strange sound, not of amusement but of knowing. She leaned back against the wall, the flowers now forgotten at her side. “You’re one of those types, aren’t you? The ones who think too much.”

I should’ve been offended, but I wasn’t. She was right. I was one of those types. I lived inside my own head more than I lived in the real world. “I suppose I am.”

Silence enveloped us, thick and uncomfortable, but I didn’t move away. Maybe it was because I had nowhere else to go, or maybe it was because this was the first time in a long while that someone had spoken to me without the usual pretence. The usual platitudes.

“What about you?” I asked, breaking the silence. “What’s your story?”

Her eyes flicked to me again, and for a moment, I regretted asking. It sounded cheap, like I was trying to force a connection where there wasn’t one. But she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, the question seemed to amuse her.

“My story?” she repeated, almost as if tasting the words. “My story is this city. I came here when I was a girl, like so many others. Thought I’d find something—maybe love, maybe money. Instead, I found nothing. Just a city that takes everything and gives you nothing back.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t anything like her. I wasn’t scraping by selling flowers at a metro station. But her words felt true, as if they could just as easily be mine.

“I know that feeling,” I said quietly, more to myself than to her.

She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Do you? What did the city take from you?”

I swallowed. How do you explain to someone that the city hadn’t taken anything tangible? It hadn’t taken my house or my livelihood. It had taken my belief, my sense of purpose. It had eroded me slowly, bit by bit, rejection after rejection.

“I wanted to be a poet,” I said, almost ashamed of how small that sounded in comparison. “But it turns out, poetry doesn’t pay the bills.”

The woman smiled — a slow, tired smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Ah, poetry. That’s a different kind of hunger.”

She stood up straight then, looking at me with something like pity in her eyes. “And has the city fed that hunger? Or has it starved you?”

I felt my throat tighten, that familiar ache creeping up again. The answer was obvious, but saying it aloud would make it too real.

“Starved me,” I whispered.

She nodded, as if she already knew. As if that was the only answer she had ever expected. “This city has a way of doing that,” she said softly. “But you’re still here, aren’t you? Still waiting.”

I couldn’t look at her anymore. The sound of a train rumbled in the distance, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t waiting for the metro. Not anymore.

*

The rumble of the approaching train faded, leaving only the familiar, dead silence behind. I stared at the woman, still leaning against the grimy wall, and realised how little I knew about her—this strange fixture of the metro station who spoke with such familiarity about a city I thought I understood.

I glanced at her basket of wilting flowers. The roses, once bright and promising, now drooped sadly, much like everything else in this place. I wanted to ask her something more meaningful, but I wasn’t sure where to start. Every time I opened my mouth, it felt like I was playing a part in a scene I hadn’t rehearsed for.

“How long have you been selling flowers?” I asked, almost awkwardly, knowing it wasn’t the right question, but asking it anyway.

She looked at me, then down at the basket as if only just remembering the flowers were there. “Long enough,” she replied with a wry smile. “It’s been… what, twenty years?”

“Twenty years?” I repeated, surprised. “At this station?”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “Not here, no. I used to sell near Howrah Bridge. It was better business back then. People actually bought flowers to take home. Now, people are too busy for things like that. They’re always in a rush—running to catch a train, running to get home. Nobody stops anymore. But down here, there’s time. The waiting… it slows everything down.”

Her words struck me in a way I hadn’t expected. The waiting—it was something I knew all too well. I wasn’t just waiting for the metro; I had been waiting for years, for something that never came. For recognition, for understanding, for someone to care about the words I scribbled on pages night after night.

“You said you came here when you were young. What brought you to Kolkata?” I asked, sensing there was more to her story than just flowers.

She hesitated, her eyes shifting toward the empty tracks. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. But then she sighed, the weight of the years settling into her voice. “A man,” she said simply. “A musician. He played the harmonium—beautifully, like he could make the city itself sing. I followed him here, thinking we’d make a life together. I was just a girl, then. What did I know?”

The way she said it—so matter-of-fact, without a trace of bitterness—made it seem like she had long ago accepted the futility of it all. But I could hear something else beneath her words, a kind of nostalgia wrapped in pain. Her story wasn’t unfamiliar; I had heard versions of it before. Hell, I had lived it, in my own way.

“What happened to him?” I asked, not sure if I was overstepping.

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “What happens to all men like that? He left. One day, he just… disappeared. No note, no goodbye. Just gone. I waited for him—days, weeks—but I knew. Deep down, I knew he wasn’t coming back.”

She let the words hang in the air between us. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? There was no way to ease that kind of loss. It wasn’t the kind you could fix with words. It just stayed with you, like a dull ache you learned to live with.

I shifted uncomfortably, memories of my own failed relationships creeping in, uninvited. I had been left before, too. Not in such a dramatic way, but in small, gradual steps. I had been with someone once—Megha, a girl who loved art, who loved the idea of poetry as much as I did. We would sit together in the old cafés of College Street, drinking endless cups of tea, talking about books and writing and the meaning of life.

But my ambition had killed it. She grew tired of waiting for me to be someone, tired of the rejection letters, the endless nights where I’d stay up writing instead of being with her. She had wanted a future, something stable, something real. I couldn’t give her that. I couldn’t be practical. And so, just like the woman’s musician, Megha had left.

I cleared my throat, trying to push the memory away. “Why did you stay here? In the city, I mean. After he left?”

She looked at me, surprised by the question. “Where else was I supposed to go?” Her voice was soft, as though the answer should have been obvious. “Once you come to this city, it doesn’t let you leave. Not really.”

I nodded, understanding more than I wanted to admit. Kolkata did that to people. It pulled you in with its promises of art, of culture, of something greater than yourself. But once you were here, it chewed you up and spit you out. And yet, you stayed. You stayed because there was something about this place, something that kept you hoping, even when you knew better.

“I stayed because this is where everything happened,” she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “This is where I loved, where I lost. And I figured if I left, it would all disappear, like it had never happened. The city… it holds the memories.”

She looked away then, her gaze drifting toward the tracks again, as if waiting for something that wasn’t coming.

I understood her in a way I didn’t expect to. I had stayed for the same reason. I had stayed because leaving would mean admitting that none of it had mattered—my poems, my dreams of becoming something more than just another face in the crowd. As long as I stayed, I could pretend that maybe, one day, things would change. Maybe one day, someone would listen.

The sound of another train rumbled faintly in the distance, but neither of us moved.

*

I stayed quiet for a while, letting her words sink in. The idea that Kolkata held memories—it was strange how true that felt. The city never let you forget. Every street corner had a history, every old café carried the weight of conversations long past. And if you had been here long enough, like I had, those memories started piling up on you, like layers of dust on an old book you no longer bothered to open.

The woman shifted, the flowers rustling in her basket. She wasn’t looking at me anymore; her eyes were somewhere far away, back in whatever time she was remembering.

“We used to walk,” she said suddenly, her voice softer now, almost wistful. “All over the city. He used to play his harmonium on the ghats by the river, you know. I thought… I thought we’d stay like that forever.”

I could almost picture it: her and this mysterious musician, strolling through the old streets of Kolkata, full of hope, maybe even a kind of reckless love. The kind of love that felt invincible when you were young, when the world hadn’t yet shown you its teeth.

“And you believed in him,” I said, not as a question, but as a statement. Because of course she did. That’s what love did—it made you believe, even in the most absurd dreams.

She nodded. “Yes. I believed in him. I believed that the music would carry us through. I believed in the city, too. I thought this was the kind of place where people like us could thrive, where art mattered.”

Her words echoed something I had thought once. Maybe still did, deep down.

“And now?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. Her fingers traced the edge of one of the wilted flowers, and for a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to say anything. But then she looked up, her eyes meeting mine. “Now, I don’t know. I think… maybe I was wrong. Maybe this city only cares about those who already have something. If you come here with nothing, you leave with even less.”

That hit me hard. I thought of all the nights I had spent in tiny cafés, hunched over my notebook, scribbling out poems with the belief that this city—the same one that had raised writers like Tagore and Ghosh — would eventually recognise me. I thought of all the open mikes I had attended, all the rejection letters I had collected over the years. The city had taken my words, my effort, and it had given me nothing in return.

But, like her, I had stayed. I had stayed because I didn’t want to believe I was wrong. I didn’t want to admit that maybe this city wasn’t what I had imagined it to be.

I rubbed my face, trying to shake off the feeling that was creeping up on me. “I used to believe too,” I said quietly. “When I first came here… I thought Kolkata was the place where dreams happened. I thought it would embrace me.”

I wasn’t sure why I was telling her this. I hadn’t even said it out loud to myself before. But there was something about the way she spoke, the way she seemed to understand without judgment, that made it easier to confess.

She didn’t respond, but there was a look in her eyes that said she understood.

“I came here to be a poet,” I continued, feeling the weight of those words more heavily than I had before. “I thought I had something to say, you know? I thought people would listen.” I laughed, though there was no humour in it. “But the city doesn’t care. No one listens. They just… move on. Poetry doesn’t matter to them.”

“Poetry matters,” she said softly, surprising me. “It’s just that most people don’t realise it does.”

I wanted to believe her. I really did. But it was hard, after all these years. I couldn’t even remember the last time someone had genuinely cared about what I had written.

The silence between us thickened, and I found myself drifting back to a time when things were different. The early days, when I had first arrived in Kolkata. I remembered the excitement, the feeling that the city was alive with possibilities. I had been younger then, full of optimism. And I hadn’t been alone.

There was Megha.

The memory of her came back so suddenly, it was like a punch to the gut. I hadn’t thought about her in a long time—not really. Not in any meaningful way. But now, in this quiet station, with this woman who reminded me too much of lost things, Megha’s face rose to the surface.

I could see her as clearly as if she were standing in front of me: dark hair that always fell into her eyes, a quick, teasing smile, the way she’d sit across from me in a café, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea, listening intently as I read her some new poem I was working on. She had loved words as much as I did. Or at least, that’s what I had thought.

We had met during my first year in the city. She was a literature student at Presidency, full of fire and ideas, always debating something, always questioning. She was the kind of person who seemed like she could change the world if she wanted to. And for a while, I thought we could change it together.

We spent hours in each other’s company, walking through the narrow lanes of College Street, visiting the old bookstalls, talking about poetry and art like they were the only things that mattered. I had never felt so alive, so full of potential. With Megha, everything seemed possible.

But ambition has a way of turning on you.

I had wanted to be a poet so badly, wanted to make my mark in the world of letters. I spent every waking moment writing, trying to create something that would last. I thought Megha understood, but slowly, I could feel her slipping away. She grew tired of waiting for me to “make it,” tired of the uncertainty, the nights where I chose my poems over her. She wanted stability, something I couldn’t give.

The end had been slow, like a candle burning itself out. One day, she was just… gone. She hadn’t left like the woman’s musician, without a word. But when she said goodbye, I knew it wasn’t just the end of us—it was the end of the belief that love could coexist with art. Not for me, at least.

“Are you thinking about someone?” the woman’s voice broke through my thoughts, pulling me back to the present.

I blinked, surprised that she had noticed. “Yeah. Someone I lost.”

She nodded, as if she knew that feeling all too well. “Funny how they never really leave us, isn’t it? Even when they’re gone, they stay here.” She tapped her chest lightly, right where her heart was.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. The station was silent again, except for the faint hum of the city above us, always moving, always forgetting.

The air felt heavy with all the things we hadn’t said yet. The train wasn’t coming, but neither of us seemed to care anymore. I glanced at the woman — this flower seller who seemed to know the city better than anyone I’d ever met — and wondered how many stories like mine she had heard over the years, how many late-night conversations had she had with strangers, all of us waiting for something.

“It’s funny,” I said, breaking the silence again. “I’ve been in Kolkata for years now, but I still feel like a stranger. Like the city doesn’t really belong to me.”

She looked at me, her expression unreadable. “The city doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Her words settled over me like a cold wind. Maybe that was the truth I had been avoiding all this time. Kolkata wasn’t mine. It wasn’t anyone’s. It just was, moving forward with or without us. And yet, somehow, I had convinced myself that it owed me something.

“I guess I’ve been waiting for it to recognise me,” I said, feeling a little foolish even as the words left my mouth. “Like, if I just wrote the right poem, if I just found the right words, then maybe…”

“Then maybe you’d matter,” she finished for me.

I nodded. There was no point in denying it. That’s exactly what I had been chasing—validation, recognition, something to prove that my words weren’t just disappearing into the void. But the truth was, no matter how many poems I wrote, no matter how many nights I spent scribbling away in dimly lit cafés, the city didn’t care.

She sighed, her shoulders sinking a little as she leaned against the wall. “This place… it makes you think you’re special. It makes you believe you’re destined for something more. But it’s just a city. It’s not listening.”

Her words hit harder than I expected. For years, I had clung to the idea that Kolkata was different—that it was a city that nurtured art, that it understood poets and dreamers. But the truth was, Kolkata wasn’t a living thing. It was just a backdrop. The stories we told ourselves about it were just that—stories.

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked. “Staying here, I mean.”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she looked down at the wilting flowers in her basket, running her fingers over the petals as if considering their fate.

“Regret?” she echoed, almost to herself. “I don’t know. I think, after a while, regret doesn’t mean much. You just… accept things. You stop fighting.”

There was a kind of peace in her voice, but it wasn’t the kind I wanted. It was the peace of someone who had given up on the fight. And that scared me.

“I don’t want to stop fighting,” I said, the words coming out more forcefully than I intended. “I don’t want to just… accept that this is all there is.”

She smiled softly, but there was something sad in it. “Then don’t. But the city won’t fight with you. It doesn’t care. You’re the only one who does.”

That was the hardest part to accept—that the city wasn’t an adversary or a friend. It wasn’t anything. All these years, I had been projecting my own desires onto it, waiting for it to give me something that it had never promised.

I ran a hand through my hair, frustration gnawing at me. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just been deluding myself this whole time.”

“Maybe,” she said simply. “Or maybe you’re just waiting for the wrong thing.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

She looked at me, her dark eyes sharp, searching. “You’re waiting for the city to recognize you. But what if that’s not what matters? What if… it’s about finding someone who sees you, instead?”

Her words lingered in the air between us, and for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t something I had thought about before. I had always assumed that if I could just succeed—if I could just make a name for myself—then everything else would fall into place. But what if I had been chasing the wrong thing all along?

“Someone who sees me…” I repeated quietly.

She nodded. “Isn’t that what we all want? To be seen, to be heard? Not by the world, but by one person who understands.”

Her words brought back the memory of Megha again. She had seen me once, hadn’t she? She had believed in me, in my poetry, in my passion. But I had let her slip away, too caught up in my own ambitions to realise that she had been the one who understood me.

I swallowed, the weight of that realisation settling in. All these years, I had been chasing after something abstract—recognition from a city, from an audience that didn’t even know me. But maybe what I had needed all along was something simpler. Someone to see me. Really see me.

“Did he see you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “The musician?”

Her eyes flickered with something I couldn’t quite place—pain, maybe, or longing. “He did. For a while.”

She didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t push. There was no need. I could tell by the way she looked at me, by the way her hand absently touched the petals of the flowers, that it was a wound she still carried. A wound that had never fully healed.

The sound of another distant train rumbled through the station, but it was faint, almost like a ghost passing through. We both stood there, lost in our own thoughts, the silence between us heavy but comfortable.

I felt something shift inside me, like a door that had been locked for years had finally creaked open. I didn’t know what was on the other side yet, but for the first time in a long while, I felt like maybe… just maybe, I was ready to find out.

*

The low rumble of the metro echoed through the station, growing louder with each passing second. But neither of us moved. The sound seemed distant, like a reminder that time was still flowing, even though it felt like we had stepped outside of it for a while.

I glanced at the woman. She wasn’t looking at me, or at the approaching train. Her eyes were fixed somewhere just past the tracks, as though she could see something I couldn’t. Maybe she was thinking about her musician. Maybe she was thinking about the life she’d imagined but never had. Whatever it was, I felt like I shouldn’t disturb her.

The train arrived, its brakes screeching as it slowed to a stop. The doors opened with a mechanical hiss, and for a moment, I considered getting up, walking toward the train, letting this conversation fade into memory like so many other late-night encounters in this city.

But I didn’t move.

I didn’t want to leave just yet. Not until I figured out why this conversation—this woman—had gripped me so intensely. I felt like there was still something left unsaid, something hanging in the air between us.

The woman turned her head slightly, her eyes meeting mine, and for the first time since we started talking, I saw a flicker of emotion there. Not just the weariness she had shown earlier, but something else. Something deeper.

“You’re not getting on the train,” she said, not as a question but as a statement.

“No,” I replied quietly. “Neither are you.”

She smiled faintly. “No. I guess not.”

We sat there for a few moments longer, the train doors still open, inviting us in, but neither of us made a move. The platform was empty except for us now. Everyone else had either left or never showed up. It was just the two of us, waiting for something we couldn’t quite name.

Finally, the doors slid shut, and the train began to pull away, leaving the station once again in silence.

“Why didn’t you get on?” I asked her, genuinely curious.

She shrugged, her gaze returning to the empty tracks. “I wasn’t waiting for the train.”

I frowned. “Then what were you waiting for?”

She didn’t answer right away, and for a moment, I thought she wouldn’t. But then she looked at me again, and this time, there was something in her expression that made my chest tighten.

“I’m not waiting for anything,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”

Her words hung in the air, heavy with finality. I didn’t know what she meant, not fully, but something in the way she said it made me feel like she had already made peace with whatever it was she had been waiting for all those years.

I wanted to ask her more—to pry open the door she had just cracked, to understand what lay behind her cryptic words. But I couldn’t. I felt like asking would break whatever fragile connection we had built, and I wasn’t ready to lose that yet.

Instead, I turned the conversation back to something I understood—something that had been gnawing at me since we started talking.

“Do you ever think about why we create art?” I asked, almost to myself. “I mean, why we bother with it at all? When no one’s listening, when no one cares, why do we keep going?”

She tilted her head, considering my question. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But maybe it’s because we’re afraid of disappearing. Of being forgotten.”

I nodded slowly, the truth of her words sinking in. That was it, wasn’t it? The fear of being invisible. The fear that if we stopped creating, stopped putting pieces of ourselves into the world, we would just vanish.

“Maybe,” I said. “But sometimes it feels like we’ve already disappeared.”

She smiled at that, a small, sad smile. “Maybe we have. But it doesn’t stop us, does it?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t.”

We sat in silence for a while, the hum of the empty station filling the space between us. I thought about all the poems I had written, all the nights spent hunched over my notebook, convinced that the next line, the next stanza, would be the one that finally made people see me. I thought about Megha, about how I had pushed her away in my pursuit of something that had never materialised.

And then I thought about this woman, sitting here beside me, selling flowers at a metro station in the dead of night. She had loved, she had lost, and yet she had stayed. Not because the city had given her anything, but because… well, maybe because she had nowhere else to go. Or maybe because leaving would have meant giving up on the idea that this place still held something for her.

“What will you do now?” I asked her, unsure if I was talking about tonight or her life in general.

She glanced down at her basket of flowers, then back at me. “I’ll go home. Get some sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll come back here and sell more flowers. And the day after that.”

Her words were simple, matter-of-fact, but there was a weight to them that I couldn’t quite shake. It was like she had accepted her place in the world, and I wasn’t sure if that was comforting or terrifying.

“And you?” she asked, her eyes locking onto mine. “What will you do?”

I didn’t have an answer. Not a real one, anyway. I could say I’d keep writing, keep chasing the dream of being a poet in a city that didn’t care. But suddenly, that felt hollow. I wasn’t sure I believed in it anymore—not the way I had when I first came here.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I’ll just… keep waiting.”

She nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “We all wait for something. Sometimes, we don’t even know what it is until it’s too late.”

The station fell quiet again, and I realized that this was it. This was the moment when I had to leave, when the night would end and I’d go back to my small, cramped apartment and try to make sense of everything that had happened. But something still held me there, some invisible thread connecting me to this woman and her basket of wilted flowers.

“I don’t even know your name,” I said, almost an afterthought.

She smiled—a real smile this time, not the sad, resigned ones from earlier. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Names are just another thing the city forgets.”

I opened my mouth to argue, to tell her that names did matter, that they were part of what made us real, what made us seen. But before I could say anything, the faint sound of another train approaching echoed through the station.

This time, I knew I had to go.

I stood up, slinging my satchel over my shoulder. “Goodbye,” I said, though it didn’t feel like enough.

She didn’t say anything, just nodded, her smile fading as the train grew louder. I turned and walked toward the platform, the noise of the approaching metro filling the space behind me. I didn’t look back, though I wanted to.

As the train doors opened and I stepped inside, I realised something strange. I had come here tonight feeling more lost and disconnected than ever, and yet now, leaving this woman behind, I felt a sense of closure. Like something had ended, even if I wasn’t sure what.

The doors slid shut, and the train began to move. I leaned back against the seat, staring out at the dark tunnel ahead. I didn’t know where I was going. But for the first time in a long while, that didn’t bother me.

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Spandan Upadhyay is a new writer whose work captures the vibrant nuances of everyday life. With a deep appreciation for the human experience, Spandan’s stories weave together subtle emotions and moments of introspection. Each of his stories invite readers into a world where ordinary occurrences reveal profound truths, leaving a lasting impact.

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