The blue light of the screen was burning into Maya’s retinas. It was 1 AM, and the cursor on her document blinked mockingly, a tiny, rhythmic reminder of her failure.
Another day, another failed attempt to contact Aditya Sehgal.
For three weeks, she had been trying to write a profile on Aditya Sehgal, the youngest Businessman of the Year.
Maya Sharma, the award-winning (okay, nominated-for-an-award-once) journalist, was now fed up.
Frustration, sharp and acidic, churned in her gut. She needed to vent. Grabbing her phone, she opened a chat with her best friend, Aliya. Her thumbs flew across the keyboard, a torrent of unfiltered exasperation.
"Uggghhhhhh I am going to scream. This Aditya Sehgal piece is killing me. The man is a ghost wrapped in an enigma. His agent won't give me anything, his past assistants have clearly signed NDAs with their own blood, and his buildings are more forthcoming than he is. I’m starting to think he communicates exclusively through cantilevered balconies. Also, my landlord just emailed to say the rent is going up, Chota Chetan threw up on my favourite rug AGAIN, don’t know why I still love that cat so much! And I am one minor inconvenience away from moving to a remote village and spend rest of my life as a housewife. Don't let me do it."
She hit send with a gusty sigh of relief, sinking back into her chair. The message was a chaotic jumble, but Aliya would get it. Aliya always got it.
A moment later, her phone pinged. That was fast. She smiled, expecting a string of laughing emojis or a sympathetic meme.
But the message wasn't from Aliya.
Aditya Sehgal: Chota Chetan sounds like a tyrant. My condolences.
Maya stared at the screen. The words swam, then sharpened into a nightmare. Her blood ran cold. She scrambled to check the contact. There it was, clear as day. Aditya Sehgal. His name was right above Aliya in her contacts list. Her thumb, in its frantic haste, had betrayed her.
A wave of nausea crashed over her. She had just sent a career-ending, deeply unprofessional rant to the subject of her most important assignment. The ghost. The enigma. The man who communicated through cantilevered balconies.
Her first instinct was to throw her phone into the nearest body of water. Her second was to fake her own death and begin that new life as a housewife immediately. The option to "unsend" was long gone. The dreaded blue ticks confirmed he had read it. All of it.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her mind racing through the catastrophic fallout. The profile would be cancelled. Her editor would kill her. She would be a laughingstock, the journalist who complained about her cat to Aditya Sehgal.
An hour passed. Then two. She drafted and deleted a dozen apologies, each one more cringeworthy than the last.
“Mr. Sehgal, I am so sorry, my thumbs are agents of chaos…” Delete. “Dear Mr. Sehgal, that message was a social experiment…” Delete. “Please disregard my earlier text. My cat stole my phone.” Definitely delete.
Finally, resigning herself to her fate, she decided silence was the least mortifying option. She would wait for his agent to call in the morning and formally pull the plug. She put her phone face down and tried to breathe.
Ping.
She flinched. With trembling hands, she turned the phone over.
Aditya Sehgal: For what it’s worth, my last landlord tried to charge me for sleeping before 11 PM. Some people are just villains.
Maya blinked. This was not the icy dismissal she had expected. What should she do? Hesitantly, her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. What was she supposed to say?
Maya: That’s a new one. Did you fight it?
Aditya Sehgal: I gave him a book titled “100 ways of getting successful in life.” Early to bed, early to rise was the first chapter.
A small laugh escaped Maya’s lips. She couldn't help it.
Maya: Of course you did. That’s the most Aditya Sehgal solution I can imagine.
She froze. Had she just done it again? Been too familiar?
Ping.
Aditya Sehgal: Is that what they say about me?
Maya: Among other things. The phrase, ghost wrapped in an enigma’ may have been used. By me. Five hours ago.
The three dots appeared. They danced on her screen for a full minute, a tiny ballet of suspense.
Aditya Sehgal: Ghosts can’t be seen. Am I an Enigma? You can find out if we grab a cup of Coffee.
There’s a small place on Vesper Street. The coffee is decent. Let me tell you why I communicate exclusively through cantilevered balconies. Tomorrow 10 a.m.?”
They met that morning. He was not a ghost. He was a man with tired eyes and handsome face. He talked about his life, friends and parents. About pressure and the quiet joy of success. He asked about Chota Chetan.
Maya wrote the profile. It was honest and raw and, to her surprise, deeply personal. It wasn't about a myth; it was about a man. It was the best work she had ever done.
A week after it was published, a package arrived at her apartment. Inside was a small box, attached with a note.
“Thanks for letting people know the real Aditya Sehgal. You are a great journalist Maya, and you definitely shouldn’t think of being a housewife ever.”
Smiling, she opened the box to find a beautiful keychain. Trying it to her office keys, Maya looked at it proudly.
She looked at her phone, at the message history that had started with a mortifying mistake. It had been the wrong message to the wrong person, a single, clumsy tap in the dead of night. And it had turned out to be exactly right.
React
