Time Period: 2000s – Delhi
Lie : Miscommunication and unspoken expectations.
The Hollow Circle
Delhi in the 2000s was a city of contradictions. The ancient and the modern jostled for space: historic tombs stood in the shadows of gleaming malls, and traffic jams were punctuated by the cries of chai vendors weaving between cars. Sanya Khurana drove through this chaos in silence, her husband Raghav seated beside her, scrolling through emails on his phone.
“How was the meeting?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Fine,” Raghav replied without looking up.
Sanya nodded, gripping the steering wheel tighter. The silence returned, heavy and familiar, filling the car like a third passenger.
The Cracks Begin to Show
Sanya had once loved this man. Or, perhaps, she still did. She wasn’t sure anymore. When they married five years ago, he had been her anchor—steady, ambitious, and practical. But now, their conversations felt like small talk between strangers.
That evening, while tidying up their bookshelf, Sanya found an old, yellowed paperback wedged behind a stack of magazines. The title read Echoes of the Heart, its cover adorned with hand-drawn birds. Curious, she flipped through it.
The pages were filled with poems. One caught her eye:
I loved a fire and thought it warmth.
But fires burn.
And I am ash.
Something about the words stirred her. She turned to the back of the book and found a name scrawled in faded ink: Ananya Chatterjee.
Pieces of the Past
The next day, Sanya visited a new art gallery in Khan Market, hoping to distract herself from the unease that had taken root in her chest. She wandered through the exhibits, her eyes lingering on a black-and-white photograph of a young woman standing beneath a flickering streetlight.
The woman’s face was hauntingly beautiful, her expression a mix of defiance and sorrow. The caption read: Rohini Mehta, untitled self-portrait, 1986.
Sanya stared at the photograph for a long time, wondering what had driven Rohini to capture herself in such a raw, vulnerable moment.
Later that evening, while reviewing designs on her laptop, Sanya came across a strange error in a program her firm was using. The error message contained an unusual string of text:
“I loved the idea of love more than its truth. The lie felt safer.”
She blinked, rereading it. It felt personal, almost confessional. She asked a colleague about it the next day. “Oh, that’s Ravi Prakash’s encryption software,” the colleague explained. “He embedded weird little messages in the code. Genius, but kind of eccentric.”
Sanya couldn’t shake the feeling that all these remnants—Ananya’s poetry, Rohini’s photograph, and Ravi’s words—were pieces of something larger.
The Confrontation
That night, Sanya and Raghav sat across from each other at the dinner table. The hum of the air conditioner filled the silence.
“Do you ever feel like something’s missing?” Sanya asked suddenly.
Raghav looked up, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Us,” she said, setting down her fork. “I feel like we’re going through the motions. Like we’re… strangers.”
Raghav frowned. “We’re busy, Sanya. That’s life. It doesn’t mean something’s wrong.”
“But it does,” she said, her voice trembling. “We don’t talk anymore. I don’t even know what you’re thinking half the time.”
Raghav sighed, his shoulders slumping. “What do you want me to say? That I’ve been too focused on work? That I’ve failed you? I’m doing the best I can.”
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “I wonder if we were ever really in love, or if we just thought we were supposed to be.”
His silence was deafening.
The Hollow Circle
Sanya didn’t leave Raghav, and he didn’t change. Their lives continued as before, filled with polite conversations and quiet evenings. But something shifted in her.
She began to revisit Ananya’s poetry, Rohini’s photograph, and Ravi’s encrypted story, finding fragments of herself in their words and images. Each told a tale of love that was imperfect, confusing, and ultimately painful. Yet, in their honesty, she found solace.
One afternoon, she sat in a café, rereading Ananya’s poem:
I loved a fire and thought it warmth.
But fires burn.
And I am ash.
She smiled faintly. Love, she realized, was never meant to be perfect. It was flawed, messy, and often disappointing. But even in its imperfections, it offered moments of clarity and beauty.
As she sipped her coffee, Raghav called, his voice hurried. “I’ll be late tonight. Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t,” she said, her tone calm.
For the first time in years, the silence didn’t feel heavy.
Narrator : Love wasn’t the absence of flaws, she thought. It was the quiet acceptance of them, like sitting in the stillness of an empty room and finally feeling at peace.