CHAPTER 1: A WINDOW TO HER WORLD
“She lived in a house full of noise…
But no one ever heard her.”
The world outside was a shade of gold that morning—sunlight slipping through rusted window grills, dust dancing mid-air like forgotten memories. The kind of light that should feel warm.
But warmth had long left Naila’s home.
Fifteen-year-old Naila sat cross-legged by the window, tracing foggy circles on the glass. School uniform pressed and ready. Hair braided tight, not out of choice, but control. Her mother believed discipline started from the scalp.
From outside, her house looked ordinary—white walls, potted plants, the smell of turmeric and kerosene wafting from the kitchen. But inside, silence didn’t mean peace.
It meant absence.
Her parents rarely spoke unless it was to correct her.
“You’re always daydreaming.”
“Sit straight.”
“Girls who talk too much become problems.”
She obeyed. Always. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening. Watching. Feeling.
The world never gave her space to speak, so she built one inside her mind—a world where notebooks had no lines, and hearts didn’t have to whisper.
She’d scribble poems when no one was looking:
“Main akeli hoon, par kamzor nahi,
Tooti hoon, par bikhri nahi.”
Sometimes she’d write stories about girls who ran away—not from home, but from the idea that love had to be earned with silence.
Rayna, her younger sister, burst into the room that morning, eating toast as if in a race.
“Dad’s in a mood again,” she whispered, mouth half full. “He’s upset about the electricity bill.”
Naila nodded. Nothing new.
She often wondered if the air inside their house was different—heavier, thicker, as if every sigh and swallowed scream had settled into the walls.
But Rayna still laughed. Still danced around to old Bollywood songs when no one was watching.
Maybe she hadn’t learned how to hide her soul yet.
At school, Naila was the girl teachers forgot to call on. She never caused trouble, never spoke out of turn. Yet, when she wrote essays, her words made teachers pause.
“You have a way with pain,” one teacher said once, reading her short story.
Naila only smiled.
She didn’t write to impress. She wrote to survive.
Jessica was the only friend who really saw her. Loud, stubborn, sharp-tongued—Jessica was everything Naila wasn’t allowed to be. And somehow, they made sense together.
“Yaar, kabhi toh khud ke liye socha kar,” Jessica often scolded her.
“I do,” Naila replied once. “Just… quietly.”
That evening, she sat again by her window—the one crack of freedom she owned. Across the street, boys played cricket. Bikes roared. Laughter echoed.
Then she saw him.
The boy in the maroon hoodie.
Suhyl.
She didn’t know his name yet. But she knew his rhythm—always reaching late, always laughing the loudest, always riding like the world was chasing him and he didn’t care.
He didn’t look her way. Not yet.
Still, her heart beat a little louder. Not with love. Not with attraction.
But with… awareness.
As if the air had changed.
As if the world had tilted just a little.
She looked down, embarrassed by her own thoughts.
And wrote her last line of the day:
“Maybe the universe sends us storms
before it sends us shelter.”
