Captain Peck is beside himself. Timmy has disappeared! The captain's concern is magnified by the darkness that has swallowed the ship, a sliver of cloud now covering the moon.
He motions to ... [+]
He motions to ... [+]
The power in my town goes out at 2:15 p.m. every day, but it's not about the power.
It's about what disappears with it. The whirr of the fan, the static of old FM radio, the illusion of time moving forward. When the lights cut, everything pauses—including me.
I come from a town where things are slow. Not lazy-slow. More like everything's been here a while and doesn't see the point in rushing. The barber remembers your childhood haircut. The pani puri guy asks how your exams went. There's a comfort in being known like that, even when it aches.
I used to think I'd outgrow this place. That I'd become too big for its narrow lanes and peeling cinema posters. I thought the smallness would crush me.
But the truth is, this town has stretched around me, quietly. Like an old shirt you thought you'd stopped wearing, but it still fits better than anything new.
I met her under the gulmohar tree behind the college. It wasn't planned. Nothing real ever is here. She was sitting on a concrete slab, the buildings dark behind her, sketching people who didn't know they were being sketched. I asked if I could bum a cigarette.
"Do you even smoke?"
"Not really," I said, "but I want to."
We shared that cigarette, and five more after it. Talked about things you're not supposed to say out loud to people you just met—how her mother cries while folding clothes, how I still talk to my grandfather's photograph before sleeping, how we both hated being called "mature" for handling things kids shouldn't have to handle.
That was the first time I didn't want the light to come back.
Love in a small town isn't like the movies. There are no neon lights or secret rooftops. It's in the tiny glances during tuition, the way your fingers brush when you reach for the same kulfi. It's in borrowed books and missed calls, and the one shop uncle who pretends not to notice you've been loitering there too long.
We'd sit under that gulmohar tree after classes, carving stupid things into the bark. Our initials. The word "FREEDOM" in all caps. A badly drawn crow, because she liked how ugly and brilliant they are.
"Do you think this town will forget us?" she asked once.
"I think we'll forget ourselves first," I said.
I said it like a joke. But even then, it stung.
Because some days, I do feel myself fading—not just in memory, but in meaning. Like I'm a character someone else wrote, just moving through the motions. I drink chai at the same stall every evening, but I don't always taste it. I laugh with friends, but it feels like watching a version of me from the outside.
That's the thing about small towns. There's nowhere to hide from yourself.
And yet, there's hope. Not loud hope. Not the kind that stands on rooftops screaming dreams. Quiet hope. The kind that grows between cracks in cement. The kind that lingers in familiar voices calling your name just right.
She left last year—got into a design school in Delhi. We text sometimes. Sometimes not. But I still sit under that tree. Sometimes I smoke, sometimes I just close my eyes and listen to the birds arguing overhead.
Our carvings are still there. Faded, but there. The crow looks more like a bat now.
The town is still slow. The power still cuts at 2:15.
And every corner still holds our stories, like little invisible monuments.
The bench where I waited for her with trembling hands. The staircase where she told me she didn't believe in forever, but she believed in "right now." The shop where we once bought matching pens and never used them.
I used to think life had to be loud to matter. But here, it's in the dust on your shoes after a walk through fields. It's in the gulmohar petals crushed into the ground like confetti from a festival no one remembers attending.
And in the quiet, when the fan slows and the lights blink out, I lie back on the marble floor and remind myself:
I was here.
I loved someone.
I'm still learning how to stay.