I’ve never seen the ocean.

Not as a child, when I ran barefoot through the fields, my world no bigger than the village that raised me.
The elders spoke of the ocean sometimes, in hushed voices, like it was something too vast for people like us. But no one I knew had ever seen it. We belonged to the land, to the soil beneath our feet.

Not as a wife, when my world became even smaller—just the walls of a home that was never truly mine. I learned to hide my dreams beneath folded saris and steaming cups of chai. I learned to serve before I spoke. My hands belonged in the kitchen, my feet to my husband’s doorstep, my thoughts to my child.

The ocean was something in books I never had time to read.

Not as a widow, when I became invisible.

I was thirty-eight when my husband died.

(Flashback)
That morning was like any other. I woke before dawn, felt the cold floor under my feet, boiled water, ground spices, made tea. It used to comfort me. Now, it was just habit.

My husband had been fading for weeks—his body shrinking, his voice quieting. Some days, he barely spoke at all. I had learned to read his silence. A frown meant discomfort. A shaky hand meant water. A slow blink meant he was too tired to ask for anything.

That morning, I brought him tea. He didn’t drink it. He hadn’t eaten much in days.

I sat beside him, pulled the blanket up to his chest.

I took my husband’s hand. His skin was cold. His chest rose once. A slow inhale. Then nothing.

I waited.

Seconds. Then minutes.

His eyes were still open, staring past me. I reached out and gently closed them.

And just like that, the house was no longer mine.

The first wail came from my mother-in-law. Then everything changed.

Neighbors, relatives, even strangers poured in. People who had barely cared for him in life but were now here, eager to witness his death.

They pulled me away from him. Someone reached for my bangles.

No even a person asked if I was okay.

I just stood there, looking at his body, not knowing what to do.

He was no longer my husband. He was a ritual. A duty passed from one pair of hands to another.

They covered him in a white cloth. Then they turned to me.

Before I could grieve, before I could feel anything, they stripped me of color. They took my bangles before I could even miss his touch. They took my sindoor before I could understand what it meant to live in a world without him.

And as I sat there, my husband’s body growing cold beside me, I realized the truth:

I had lost him long before this day.

By evening, the house was full of people. Some sat on the floor, whispering prayers. Others moved between rooms, offering condolences I barely heard.

Women I barely knew held my hands. Be strong, they said.

I sat on the floor, my hands empty, my body stripped of jewelry, my heart heavy with loss.

My son sat beside me, small fists clenched. He hadn’t cried. He only stared at the floor, lips pressed tightly together.

“Go to sleep,” I said.

He shook his head.

I didn’t force him. I understood. Sleep felt impossible. As if closing our eyes would make this day real.

At some point, they brought me food—plain rice, lentils, a glass of water. You must eat, they said.

But my stomach was a knot. How could I eat when my husband was smoke in the sky?

Widows do not complain.

Widows do not dream.

I had spent my life giving, bending, breaking, swallowing my voice until I barely recognized it. And now, even in mourning, they were telling me who to be.

No one asked if I had loved my husband. (I had.)
No one asked if I missed him. (I did, but not in the way they assumed.)
No one asked if I was lonely. (I was. But I had been lonely long before widowhood.)

And now after many years of living with grief .
I am standing at Train station going to see the ocean. My impossible dream.

I sold the last of my gold, the final remnants of a girl who once thought love would be enough. I packed a small bag, clothes .

The ocean was waiting.

And for the first time in my life, I was going to see it.

I just sat there, quiet and still, on an old wooden bench. My hands rested on a small cloth bag—the only thing I had left to carry.

The ticket in my palm was slightly crumpled, damp from the heat of my own skin. One-way. I had bought it without thinking. Without knowing why.

There was no one to stop me. No one to ask where I was going, or why I had left. My son had his own life now, his own family. The house that was never truly mine had long since stopped feeling like home. There was nothing waiting for me anywhere.

And yet, here I was.

The ocean. A place I had never seen, only imagined in the stories of others.

The ocean had never been for people like me.

But today, it was.

The train pulled in with a low, shuddering sigh. The doors creaked open. People rushed past me, their lives moving forward.

Then, without thinking, without understanding why—

I stood. I picked up my bag. And I stepped onto the train.

The air inside was thick with the mingling scents of sweat, iron, and the faint spice of something someone had packed from home. The faded seats held the weight of countless travelers before me.

I sat by the window, my small cloth bag clutched in my lap.

I sat in silence, unseen and unnoticed.

The train moved forward. I did not know what waited for me at the end of this journey. I only knew that the ocean was waiting. For the first time, I was going toward something that had never been mine.

I start noticing the people around me.

I didn’t know their names, their lives, or the pain they carried. But I could see it in their eyes.

Near the entrance, a woman sat clutching the edge of her saree. She looked around fifty, maybe older. But the tiredness in her face made her seem much older.

Exhausted. Worn thin.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor, her lips pressed together in quiet determination.
Maybe a mother whose children had grown and left, forgetting the hands that had once held them. She had spent her whole life giving, and now she had nothing left. She was going somewhere, but it did not seem like she was arriving—only leaving.

A girl, no older than sixteen, sat with her arms wrapped around herself. Her hair was messy, her feet bare, and her clothes too thin for the cold.. She was alone. Completely alone.She looked like someone who had learned too soon that the world isn’t kind, that home isn’t always safe. Her hands were shaking , but she hold them into fists, holding herself together the best she could.

By the window, a woman leaned her head against the window glass, her eyes are closed, maybe she pretending to sleep. But her fingers tracing the mangalsutra around her neck, gripping it tightly—I think maybe she couldn’t decide whether to hold on or let go. The darkness under her eyes was not just from lost sleep. It was from nights spent crying into a pillow, making sure no one heard. A house that never felt like home. A house that never felt like home. A love that had turned into bruises.

At the far end of the train, a woman sat with two young children beside her. One asleep, curled up against her lap. The other staring out the window, silent. She held them close, squeezing tight, as if afraid they might disappear.She was thin—too thin—but she had fed them first. Always them first. She had been a wife once. Maybe she still was, but she no longer spoke his name. Maybe he had left, It did not matter anymore. What mattered was the way she held her children.She had nothing. But she would give them everything.

A woman with gray in her hair sat still, her hands in her lap. Her eyes held a sadness that had been there for years and never left.She had loved once. Loved deeply. But love had not been enough. Maybe he had died. Maybe he had walked away. Maybe life had simply pulled them apart in the cruel, indifferent way that it sometimes does. Whatever the reason, she was alone now. She did not cry.
She had no tears left to cry.

Further down the train, a woman in a simple salwar kameez sat with her arms wrapped around herself, as if holding something broken inside. She was quiet, but not at peace. Just tired.
Her fingers trembled against her sleeve, the only sign of the storm inside her. She had spent her whole life waiting—waiting for her father to say yes, waiting for her husband to decide for her, waiting while her dreams faded into the background of her children’s laughter.

Now, there was nothing left to wait for. And yet, she still didn’t know where to go. Today, she was on a train. She didn’t know where she was going—only that, for the first time, she had taken a step forward.

Next to her A girl holds her textbooks close like a shield, her fingers pressed deep into the pages. Medicine. Law. Engineering. Dreams that do not belong to her, but to the father who chose them for her.

She does not know what she wants. She only knows she cannot fail.

A woman in her forties sat at the far end , her face empty, her hands resting neatly in her lap. She sat with the quiet stillness of someone who had spent a lifetime trying not to take up too much space. Her husband sat beside her, talking to another man, laughing.

She did not laugh. She did not smile. She did not speak.

She waited. For what, I wasn’t sure.

At one point, the husband called for her. Not by name. Just a sharp “Oye,” like calling for a servant. She moved immediately, adjusting his shawl, refilling his tea, wiping a stain from his sleeve. Then she sat back down, her hands returning to her lap like she had never existed outside of them.

I realized I had been holding my breath.

Did she even remember her own name?

Did she even remember who she was before she became his wife?

A schoolgirl sat beside me , her uniform neat, her hair in two braids. She held a notebook, scribbling furiously, her lips moving as if reciting something under her breath.

I caught a glimpse of the page. A list.
• Become a doctor.
• Make my own money.
• Buy a house.
• Take Ma away.

Her hands trembled as she wrote. As if she was afraid the words might disappear before she could make them real.

She did not see the way her mother, sitting beside her, kept looking at her with quiet desperation. A woman who had learned, too late, that wings are clipped young.

I wanted to tell the girl to run. To escape before the world decided for her. But I said nothing.

Because once, I had been her.

The train moved forward, carrying them all—women who had lost, women who had left, women who had survived things they never spoke about.

None of them looked at each other.

They had all known grief. They had all known love.

And yet, here they were. Moving forward.

I can still hear the train.

Hours turned into miles. Miles turned into a dream.

And now, I stand.

The train has slowed.

My heart pounds. My hands clutch the small bag in my lap. This is it. The final stop. The place where my dream will finally become real.

I stand, my body swaying with the last movement of the train. My legs feel weak, but I force myself forward.

I step onto the platform

I blink.

This is not the ocean.

This is where I started.

My stomach twists. The same station. The same cracked benches. The same rusting signboard.

I am back where I started.

No. No, this can’t be. I turn sharply, searching for a sign—anything—that tells me I have truly traveled. But the streets ahead are the same ones I have walked my whole life. The tea stall on the corner. The old banyan tree near the exit.

The ocean is not here.

It was never here.

I stumble back. My bag feels too heavy, my limbs too weak. I turn to the train, my mouth opening to call out—to ask the conductor, the passengers, anyone if I have made a mistake.

But the train is gone.

The platform is empty.

Had I imagined it all?

I reach into my bag with shaking fingers, pulling out the ticket. My hands still.


There is no ticket.

I dig deeper.

I never bought the ticket.

I never left.

I never saw the ocean.

The realization creeps in, slow and suffocating, settling deep in my chest . My legs falter, too weak to hold me up, and I sink onto the bench—the same bench I sat on this morning, full of hope, full of plans.

I never escaped.

I never even moved.

The journey never happened.

I have spent my life waiting. Believing that one day, I would be more than a widow in white. That I would be something other than grief, something other than silence.

But I am still here.

And the ocean is still too far away.

I close my eyes.

And in the darkness, I hear it—the waves, soft and endless, calling me home.

A dream that was never meant to be.
A dream like that were not meant to be possible