Chapter 30- Through the Drizzle
The ride back from the gardens was quieter than the storm had been. Drops slid silently down the van windows, distorting the city lights into flickering shards.
Vinay sat at the back, chin propped against the fogged glass. The chill didn’t bother him; the ache in his chest was the kind that no warmth could touch.
Two rows ahead, Keertana watched the rain slide down the glass, her chin tilted, a faint smile flickering in the reflection, as if something she’d been waiting for had finally taken place.
Back at the hostel, no one was ready to sleep. Sahu Sir discussed a hunt with Prinaka, something to make up for the rain stealing Old Town. Laughter followed, light and tired.
Vinay didn’t join. He lay on his bed.
Then came a knock. Prinaka’s voice, soft but bossy.
“Did you eat?”
“No,” he admitted, voice small.
She stepped closer, hands on her hips. “If you don’t, I’m calling Amma. Right now.”
He winced a little. “You’d really do that?”
“In a heartbeat.”
He smiled faintly, defeated. “Okay… I’ll eat.”
Each bite afterward felt like a small surrender to the comfort she refused to let him forget.
Later, in the half-dark, the rain folded around him, soft and constant. Between its rhythm and his breath, sleep came.
He dreamed of Keertana standing before a blurred doorway, rain trailing down her hair.
Someone stood behind her, just out of focus, their shadow stretching long across the wet floor.
When she turned, it wasn’t clear if she was smiling or fading.
He stirred, heart quickening, reaching toward the image just as it dissolved into the hiss of rain.
“Oi, Vinay! Get up, man! Today’s the scavenger hunt!” Venky’s voice came through his phone.
Blinking away the remnants of his dream, Vinay swung his legs off the bed. Spirits lifted quickly, today was for the Scavenger Hunt for History, and the drizzle only added a playful challenge.
They split into two groups: one under Sahu Sir’s steady hand, the other with Prinaka’s bubbling enthusiasm.
Keertana and Vinay joined Prinaka, while Venky and Catherine moved with Sahu Sir. The rest divided evenly, some gravitating toward discipline, others toward mischief.
Maps and clues in hand, they set off. The streets came alive with their laughter. They darted into side lanes, peered into hidden courtyards, and asked bemused shopkeepers for directions.
Vinay lagged a few steps behind, the residue of yesterday clinging to him. Each street corner felt heavier than the last, as if memories had seeped into the cobblestones themselves.
He noticed Sahu Sir crouched beside Catherine, pointing out a detail on the map.
“Sir… how do you stay so calm when everyone else is panicking?” Vinay asked quietly.
Sahu Sir looked up, rain streaking his face, and smiled faintly. “When you rush, you miss the markers. When you panic, you stop noticing what’s important.”
Vinay blinked, taking it in, but the tightness in his chest refused to ease.
“You carried something heavy yesterday,” Sahu Sir said, stepping closer. “I can’t carry it for you, but you don’t have to walk through it alone.”
It wasn’t a pep talk. Just enough, a nudge to notice, to move, to trust. A subtle shift moved through him, as though a window had been cracked open in the room where his thoughts were trapped.
Keertana, trailing a few steps behind, watched with a quiet smile. She felt a flicker of satisfaction, insisting Sahu Sir to come had been the right call.
Vinay was beginning to open up in small ways, and she got to witness it, right there in the middle of the hunt.
For a while, they were just students again, sprinting through cobbled alleys, scribbling down answers, trading jokes.
It was in one of those alleys that Keertana surprised him. Their team had been circling the same block, frustrated by a clue that hinted at “the lion that watches the square.” While the others argued,
Keertana suddenly stilled, tilting her head back.
“There,” she whispered, pointing upward.
Vinay followed her gaze but saw only vines and crumbling balconies. “What are you—”
“Trust me,” she said quickly, eyes flashing with certainty. Before anyone could stop her, she darted toward the fountain, climbed onto its ledge, and tugged at the vines.
The stone lion emerged, weathered but proud, and beneath its paw was the faint inscription, the next clue.
She looked down at him, triumphant. “Found it!, she called.”
Vinay stood still, breath caught, as if the world had softened around her, half-awed by her daring nature; he bowed quietly before her sharp and luminous clarity of vision.
Keertana’s voice flowed like a quiet hymn, soft yet certain.
“Sometimes, Pause boy, you can’t keep your eyes on the ground. You’ll miss the answers that are waiting above.“
He opened his mouth to reply, but the bustle of students around them reminded him that the scavenger hunt waited for no one.
Clues grew trickier, streets more confusing. Prinaka’s group made good progress, buoyed by Keertana’s quick eye, yet they were a step behind.
Across the city, Sahu Sir’s team moved with discipline and coordination, Catherine’s patience balancing Venky’s bursts of energy, and Sahu Sir himself quietly nudging them forward with unerring intuition.
When the final whistle blew and they gathered back at the gates, breathless and wet from the drizzle, it was Sahu Sir’s team who raised their hands first, answers complete.
Cheers erupted, mock groans followed, and Venky was already recounting their clever shortcuts.
For Vinay, the memory of the hunt wasn’t about who finished first, but the moment when the world had tilted just enough for him to see someone differently, and smile again.
Still, even that warm thought couldn’t keep the cold from settling into their bones, and soon hunger and shivers drove them forward.
By midday, they stumbled into a narrow café tucked between stone walls, its fogged windows glowing like a beacon.
The air inside wrapped around them, thick with the scent of baked cheese, garlic, and fire-warmed bread.
Plates began to arrive, heavy and generous: golden khachapuri with yolk pooling like molten sun, steaming khinkali swollen with broth, and bowls of earthy lobio seasoned with herbs that smelled of soil and rain.
The table became a small kingdom of comfort. Steam rose, curling like a secret language meant only for the weary and hungry.
Prinaka, cheeks flushed, proclaimed herself the champion of dumpling-eating, one hand raised as if to seal it with solemnity before tearing into another khinkali.
Caterine, laughing so hard her camera shook, captured their each bite as though the act of eating was a story worth remembering, like a catalog of joy tucked between gray hours.
Keertana tore into her first wedge of khachapuri, the cheese stretching in silken threads. She closed her eyes at the first bite, her face softening into something near wonder.
She leaned toward Vinay. “You have to try this,” she urged, almost pleading, her voice carrying both command and care.
The buttery bread, the molten cheese, the warmth of the yolk, it hit him all at once, but what lingered most was the quiet intimacy of tasting it because she wanted him to.
The cheese, rich and warm, still clung to his tongue, but it couldn’t chase the shadows crawling through his chest.
When the rain thickened again, pinning them in, Vinay found himself drawn to it, needing the cold drops to wash through the sticky sweetness embedded in him.
While laughter and clinking plates filled the café, Vinay slipped into the open street. Mist clung to his skin, and each drop traced icy paths along his shoulders, drawing the past into the present with quiet insistence.
He stood there, unmoving, letting it run down his face until he could no longer tell what was rain and what was memory.
The rain always took him back. Ten years old. Small. Standing in the shower, tears swallowed by the rush of water.
His father’s elder brother, soured by jealousy, had never once offered him a smile, never a word of care.
At a family gathering he laughed with the cousins, but when Vinay drew near, he turned away as if the boy did not exist.
That quiet exclusion cut deeper than any insult, and so he slipped away, hiding his tears beneath the rush of water. From that day, the shower became his only safe place.
Yet it was Nateshwar who became the answer to that silence. Where his father’s elder brother let bitterness rot into cruelty, Nateshwar’s love grew without envy, without measure.
In every gesture, a hand on his shoulder, a word of praise, a quiet listening, Nateshwar undid what the other man had tried to carve into him.
If his uncle was proof of how family could wound, Nateshwar was proof of how it could heal.
With Nateshwar gone, no one remained to lift him from the weight he carried, and once again he surrendered to the solitude that had always been his refuge.
Why did you leave me here, carrying only echoes of the love we shared?
Then, through the curtain of water, a voice.
“Here’s your favorite Nutella gelato.”
He blinked. Turned.
Keertana stood just beyond the café doorway, her smile glowing warmer than the gray sky behind her.
She held out the cone of chocolate swirled with hazelnut as though it were more than ice cream, as though she were offering a bright flame against the drizzle.
“Dream achieved,” she said, tilting her chin toward the rain-slick street. “Afternoon showers, ice cream, and your favorite person.”
Her laughter rose softly, like raindrops hitting wind chimes under an awning. “Since I’m clearly the favorite person here, you can thank me once the clouds clear.”
The words It’s you pressed against his lips, trembling, like a secret carried in the rainfall.
She extended a small cup toward him, droplets running down her wrist. “I got you the gelato, you know, the one you said always reminded you of summers. Thought it might taste different with rain in the air.”
Vinay took a careful bite, brushing a bead of water off the rim before tasting it. The cold sweetness settled on his tongue.
His voice dropped to a murmur. “The rain, the ice cream… they were just the dream. You’re the reason it feels like I finally woke up in it.”
Keertana’s eyes softened, a quiet laugh slipping out, the kind that seems to blend with the rhythm of the drizzle outside.
“So… how is it?” she asked, her eyes shining brighter than the puddle-reflected lamps on the street.
Vinay’s eyebrows lifted. “Chanceless,” he said, shaking his head in mock defeat, though the corner of his mouth curved like a raindrop sliding down glass.
“Thanks to the weather report,” she replied, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear. “I knew I’d catch you in the middle of a shower. Perfect timing for this little ambush.”
Vinay blinked. “Weather report?”
She grinned. “Yeah. Checked it while heading from the airport. Wanted to surprise you with your favorite.”
His heart skipped. At the edge of his vision, the shadow from his dream wavered, blurred by the rain, impossible to reach.
