Mr. Sharma had constructed a four-storey building. Each floor had a spacious flat, consisting of three bedrooms, one hall, one veranda, and two kitchens. He had deliberately built two kitchens in each flat. His reasoning was simple — since the flats were quite large and hence expensive, it might be difficult to find a single tenant who could afford the full rent. So, he decided that if one person couldn’t pay the full rent, he could split the flat and rent it out to two different families.
As per his plan, he rented out the larger portion of the flat — which included two bedrooms, one hall, a kitchen, and a bathroom — to a tenant named Mr. Jha. The smaller section of the flat, which had one bedroom, one veranda, a kitchen and a bathroom, was occupied by our family.
Our family was a small one — just the three of us. My father, Mr. Narendra Kumar Singh, a quiet and principled man; my mother, Sulochana Devi, kind yet strong-willed; and I, Suhas Kumar, their only son.
It was the month of May, and summer had started to show its intensity. That morning, I was in a hurry — my schoolbag barely zipped, my tie crooked, and my lunchbox swinging from one hand. Just as I was about to step out of the door, we heard a knock.
I opened the gate.
Standing outside were two strangers. One was a middle-aged villager, dressed in a simple dhoti-kurta, his face slightly dusty from travel, and beside him stood a young girl, probably two or three years older than me. She looked modest, her eyes scanning the unfamiliar surroundings, with an expression that mixed both shyness and curiosity.
The man folded his hands politely and said,
“Namaste… hum Jha ji ke mehmaan hain. Ghar par koi nahi mil raha… socha kuch der yahin ruk jaayein.”
(“Namaste… We are guests of Mr. Jha. There’s no one at their flat… so we thought we might wait here for a while.”)
I was surprised. I had never seen them before. They didn’t look like city people — more like relatives from Mr. Jha’s native village.
I turned around and called my mother, “Maa… koi aaye hain Jha uncle ke mehmaan.”
She came to the door, wiped her hands on her saree, and after a brief exchange, she invited them inside to sit until Mr. Jha returned.
I left for school right after that brief encounter. I didn’t think much of it — just another guest visit, something that often happened in our small building where walls were thin and privacy thinner.
But when I returned home in the afternoon, dusty and tired, expecting the usual routine — lunch, a nap maybe — I was taken aback.
The only bedroom in our small portion of the flat had been taken over.
The villager and the girl — the ones I’d seen in the morning — were no longer just guests waiting for someone. They had settled in. Their bags lay near the bed. The girl had already spread out her books and notes, her brow furrowed in concentration. She barely noticed me as I stood at the door, confused.
I walked into the veranda where my mother sat, quietly peeling vegetables, her expression unreadable.
“Maa… woh log andar kyun hain?” I whispered.
She sighed. “The girl has a competitive exam in two days. She needs a quiet place to study. Mr. Jha and his family are on vacation and won’t return for another three days. So… they’ve decided to stay here for now.”
I was stunned.
Our only bedroom — the only space that had a fan and a door that could be closed — now belonged to strangers. That night, I would sleep on the floor of veranda with my father. Again.
It had all just… happened.
As I stood there, still processing the fact that our only bedroom had been handed over to strangers, my mother, sensing my discomfort, finally spoke — gently but firmly.
“They had nowhere to go, Suhas,” she said, not looking up from the vegetables. “The man is just a poor villager. He came all the way here so that his niece could take her exam in peace. They can’t afford a hotel. And even if they found one, it might not be safe for a girl her age, alone in a new city.”
I didn’t respond immediately. I just looked toward the bedroom — our bedroom — now occupied by the girl who hadn’t even looked up when I’d entered.
It wasn’t anger I felt. Not really. It was more like a mix of confusion, discomfort, and quiet resentment. I knew Maa was right. She always was. But that didn’t make it easier.
That room had my books, my clothes, my own little world. And now, all of that had been pushed aside for someone I didn’t even know.
Still, there was no drama. No loud arguments. Just a quiet adjustment — the kind of silent sacrifice that families like ours make without question. We rolled out the bedding in the hall . That night, as the fan made its slow, sleepy hum, I lay awake for a long time.
From inside the bedroom, I could hear the faint rustle of pages turning, the sound of someone chasing a future — while our lives had been paused for a while.
Over the next day, I watched her.
She sat in that bedroom — my bedroom — from morning till late into the night, hunched over her books, silently scribbling, flipping pages, muttering equations under her breath. It was like she was in her own little universe — one I wasn’t invited into.
But I couldn’t help noticing something.
She studied a lot, yes — but did that really mean she was intelligent?
In my thirteen years of life, I had grown a quiet belief in my own sharpness. Teachers praised me often, my math notebooks were filled with clean solutions and confident handwriting, and sometimes, even my father would silently nod in approval when I solved something tricky without his help.
So naturally, when I saw her — this quiet, older girl who had walked into our home and taken our space — I felt a challenge stirring inside me. Not of anger, but of ego. I just had to know where she really stood.
That evening, I walked up to the bedroom door and knocked, awkwardly.
She looked up.
“Hi… I’m Suhas,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
She blinked. “Yes?”
“It’s a math problem,” I said. “Algebra. A bit tricky. I just thought maybe you’d help me to solve it.”
She didn’t smile. She just nodded.
I gave her the question — one of my best. It had once stumped my teacher.
She read it. Then solved it — not once, but in multiple ways.
“There are at least five different methods,” she said, handing me the notebook. “I’ve written a few.”
I flipped through the pages.
There were techniques I had never seen — graphical analysis, symmetry-based logic, and alternate transformations.
And I stood there, silent.
My face flushed — not with embarrassment, but with a strange mix of awe and discomfort.
For the first time, I realized that studying all the time didn’t mean someone was dull. And that sometimes, quiet people carried storms of brilliance inside them.
I stood there, notebook in hand, still staring at her solutions — those clean, confident lines that had unravelled my trick question like it was nothing more than a warm-up exercise.
I couldn’t help myself.
“How do you read for such a long time?” I asked.
She looked up from her books again, her expression unreadable at first. Then, a faint smile — barely there — touched the corners of her lips.
“I don’t think of it as reading,” she said quietly. “It’s like… running toward something. If I stop, I’ll fall behind.”
Her voice was soft, but there was something sharp behind it — urgency, purpose, maybe even fear. She didn’t speak like someone trying to show off. She spoke like someone trying to survive.
I frowned. “But don’t you get tired?”
“I do,” she said, nodding. “Sometimes I want to lie down and sleep for days. But there’s no time for that. My exam is day after tomorrow. And if I don’t crack it, I may never get another chance to leave the village.”
Her words sat heavily in the air.
It wasn’t just about books or intelligence. It was about escape, about hope, about changing the story she’d been handed.
She returned to her notes, flipping to the next page, already leaving our little conversation behind — but something had shifted inside me.
For the first time, I didn’t feel superior.
I just felt… silent.
She was already turning back to her book when I spoke again — this time, more gently.
“But… sometimes, anxiety can hurt more than help,” I said.
She paused.
“I mean,” I continued, choosing my words carefully, “I understand that your exam is important. Maybe it’s the most important thing in your life right now. But being so tense… so desperate… it can backfire. It can derail you.”
She looked at me, surprised. Maybe she hadn’t expected advice from a boy two or three years younger than her — especially not someone who’d tried to test her just minutes ago.
“You have to be calm,” I said. “Even if things don’t go your way. Even if you fail this time — there will be a second chance. And if not exactly the same chance, then at least another way forward.”
She kept listening, quiet.
“I’m not that wise,” I added quickly. “But… my teacher said this to me today. I was anxious about a science test. I guess I just… passed it on.”
The room was still for a moment.
Then, for the first time, she really smiled.
A small, tired smile — but one that felt real.
“Thank you,” she said. “That means more than you think.”
And just like that, something shifted again. Not just in the air between us — but inside me too.
It wasn’t about being more intelligent anymore.
It was about being human.
The next two days passed quietly.
She studied. I watched.
Sometimes from the hall, sometimes from the kitchen door, pretending to fetch water or find something.
Occasionally, we spoke — small things at first. A math trick. A joke about our leaky ceiling fan. I even made her laugh with my imitation of our school principal’s strange walk.
And then, just like that, it was over.
Her last paper was on a hot Thursday afternoon. She came back, tired but visibly lighter — as if someone had lifted a hundred bricks from her shoulders. That evening, for the first time, she joined us for tea in the hall.
My mother offered her “Nimki” a snack popular in Bihar, and my father, usually silent, asked about the exam.
“I think I did okay,” she said modestly.
But in her eyes, we saw something brighter — relief, and perhaps, pride.
That night, we all slept peacefully.
The next morning, Mr. Jha’s family returned from their vacation. Laughter and luggage echoed up the stairwell. Life in the building returned to its usual rhythm — neighbours greeting each other from verandas, the milkman ringing his bell too early, kids shouting on the stairs.
She and her uncle packed their bags. Before leaving, she came up to me with a folded notebook.
“I noted down some of the tricks we talked about,” she said. “You might like them.”
I took it silently, unsure how to say goodbye.
“Your name?” I finally asked, realizing I had never known.
She smiled.
“Nirmala,” she said.
And then she left.
She left the next morning.
No dramatic goodbyes. No promises to write or call — just a small wave from the stairwell, her notebook in my hand and her name lingering in the air.
Nirmala.
That was all I had.
After that day, life returned to normal. The bedroom became ours again. I resumed my school routine. Mr. Jha’s family never spoke much about her visit, and I never asked. I don’t know why. Maybe it was pride. Or maybe I feared the answer wouldn’t match the memory I’d kept.
A year passed.
Life moved on, as it always does — slowly, without ceremony. I grew a little taller. My voice began to change. Studies got harder. And “Nirmala” became a name that only returned now and then — like a fading photograph tucked between the pages of an old book.
Then one evening, just as the heat of summer began to gather over the building again, Mrs. Jha came knocking.
She had returned from her brother’s place in the village and was doing her usual round of friendly conversations. She stood in our doorway, fanning herself with the edge of her dupatta, chatting with my mother about mangoes and power cuts.
But just before she left, she turned to me and said, almost casually,
“By the way, do you remember that girl… Nirmala?”
My ears perked up before I could stop myself.
“She cleared her engineering entrance exam this time,” Mrs. Jha said with a smile. “Got a seat at NIT.”
“That’s… great,” I managed to say.
She paused a moment, then added something that stayed with me far longer.
“She asked me to thank you,” she said. “I told her I’d be passing by your place . She had no business to call or write, she said — but she remembered your words. The ones you said about being calm… about second chances. She said she carried those with her after she could not crack the first time. Helped her find her composure again.”
And then she was gone — down the stairs and into the evening.
I stood there quietly.
There was no applause. No music. Just the slow realization that sometimes, the smallest things we say… stay.
Not because we planned them to. Not because we meant to change someone’s life.
But because, for a brief moment, we showed up — not as someone wise, but as someone human.
-SAURABH KUMAR GAUTAM
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