It happened gradually, then all at once: Neha was gone.
At first, Padmavathi noticed her absence only in flickers — a missed sighting in the corridor, an empty seat in class, the absence of her bright yellow umbrella leaning against the wall. She didn't think much of it. People skipped classes, especially during monsoon. Maybe Neha was out chasing light through her camera lens, or simply tired of the everyday.
But then a week passed. Then another.
The murmurs began to surface — low-voiced speculation traded between sips of chai and whispers in the back rows of lecture halls. Someone said she had dropped out. Someone else claimed she'd gone home due to a family issue. One version involved a breakdown, another a scholarship overseas. No one really knew. No one dared to ask.
Padmavathi didn't join the rumors. She didn't need to. All she felt was absence — a strange, quiet ache, like walking into a room and forgetting why you came, only to realize what you were looking for is no longer there.
And the part that surprised her the most — the part that unnerved her — was how deeply it hurt.
She and Neha hadn't been close. Their words had been few, their friendship tentative, unformed. And yet, Neha had seen her — had really seen her, if only for a moment. That day in the rain had planted something in her — a sense of being noticed, being invited to exist. Now, with Neha gone, it felt like that part of her had been taken back.
One afternoon, restless and searching for anything to fill the growing silence, Padmavathi wandered into the campus darkroom, a place Neha had once mentioned offhandedly. It smelled of chemicals and dust, and most of the shelves were empty. But tucked behind a stack of film reels, she found a folder marked only with a blue sticker.
Inside were photographs — candid, intimate, moody. Some were of strangers in motion, some of empty benches, cracked doorways, spilled chai cups — Neha's world, composed in fragments. She flipped through slowly, reverently, like handling someone's diary.
And then she saw it: a photo taken through a rain-streaked bus window. Reflected faintly in the glass was a figure, barely visible — a girl holding a notebook to her chest, her face half-obscured by mist and light.
Padmavathi froze. It was her.
Not posed. Not aware. Just... there — soft, blurred, thinking.
Her throat tightened. Neha had captured her in the one place she never expected to be seen: in her in-betweenness. Neither joyful nor broken, just existing.
Something broke open inside her.
That night, she didn't write with flowery metaphors or guarded symbolism. She didn't filter the feeling through fiction. She let the pain in. Not just pain about being left behind — but pain from it. The pain of fleeting connections. Of almosts. Of being close enough to matter, but not enough to ask where someone went or why they never said goodbye.
She wrote through the ache, not around it.
She wrote as though she were leaving a message for someone who might never read it — but needed to be written anyway.
The page filled slowly, then quickly, like rain pooling in the street.
She wasn't writing to be understood anymore.
She was writing because she finally understood herself.