Calcutta was nothing like Tal Sonapur.
The narrow village lanes were replaced by wide roads lined with tall, dusty trees. The houses rose two and three stories high, some with carved balconies and shuttered windows. The air smelled of smoke, river water, and the strange tang of coal fires.
Devdas felt both excited and uneasy. In the village, everyone had known his name. Here, he was just another boy in a crowded city.
His father settled him in the home of a distant relative—a man who worked in the railway office. The rooms were small but neat, with dark wooden furniture and heavy curtains that shut out the sun.
Each morning, Devdas put on a clean cotton dhoti and walked to the school down the road. The building was an old structure with cracked walls and long corridors that smelled of chalk and ink.
The teachers were stern. They spoke in English when they wanted to show authority, and the lessons were harder than anything he'd studied before. Sometimes, in the afternoons, his head felt too full of Latin grammar and arithmetic to think of anything else.
But in the quiet moments—when he sat alone in the courtyard after dinner, or when he lay awake in the dark—his thoughts drifted back to the village. He remembered the neem tree, the pond at the edge of the fields, the way Paro's laughter had echoed through the courtyard.
In the first months, he tried to write to her. Once, he filled an entire sheet with small, careful letters, telling her about the city and his classes. But when he finished, he read it over and felt suddenly foolish. What could she care about the Latin names of plants or the layout of the school grounds?
He crumpled the letter and threw it away.
Paro, meanwhile, was finding her own life without him. She spent her days helping her mother with chores—grinding spices, cleaning rice, tending the small vegetable patch behind the house. But at dusk, when the lamps were lit and the village grew quiet, she would sit in the courtyard and look toward the Mukherjee house, half-expecting to hear his voice.
Months passed this way. Seasons changed. Letters were never written.
When Devdas came home for the first time—almost a year later—it was during the monsoon. The fields around the village were flooded, and the roads were deep with mud.
The bullock cart carried him slowly through the rain. He leaned out to watch the familiar trees slide past, the leaves dripping in sheets of water. Even before they reached the house, he saw Paro standing near her gate, a small cloth covering her head.
She didn't wave. She didn't call out. She only watched him, her expression unreadable in the silver rain.
He climbed down, his clothes soaked almost immediately. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The rain fell harder, blurring the world around them.
At last, he smiled—awkward, uncertain. "Won't you say something?"
Paro tilted her head, studying him. "You've changed," she said quietly.
Devdas laughed, though he didn't know why it felt like a reproach. "I've only been gone a year."
She looked away. "It's a long time."
He wanted to argue, to say it hadn't been so long at all. But then he realized he didn't know if that was true.
That evening, the two families gathered together, as they always had. The courtyard smelled of damp earth and turmeric. The lamps flickered in the wet breeze.
Their mothers were delighted to see Devdas again. They fussed over his thinness, his tired eyes, the way his clothes hung a little loose. His father asked about his studies and nodded, satisfied, when Devdas recited a few lines of Latin.
But Paro didn't sit beside him as she once had. She stayed near her mother, helping serve dinner. When she did glance his way, her eyes seemed darker somehow—full of thoughts he couldn't read.
Later, when the meal was over, Devdas stepped into the courtyard alone. The rain had eased, leaving the ground slick and shining. He saw her standing by the neem tree, her scarf pulled tight around her shoulders.
He walked over slowly. For a moment, they only listened to the dripping of water from the branches.
"You really didn't write," she said, her voice soft.
"I tried," he admitted. "But I didn't know what to say."
Paro didn't reply. She only looked up at him, her gaze steady and a little sad.
Standing there, Devdas felt something shift inside him—a realization that the distance between them was more than miles. It was something else, something that neither of them could name.
And in that moment, he wondered if anything would ever be the same again.