The cold drizzle outside Rishi's modest flat in North London blurred the windows and glazed the streets, casting the city in a palette of silver, steel, and quiet melancholy. It was the kind of rain that didn't quite pour, but persisted endlessly—gentle, yet unshakable—seeping into the bones of the city and its inhabitants. The sky hung low, a thick woolen blanket of grey pressing down on rooftops and thoughts alike. Inside, the warmth of the living room offered a fragile sanctuary from the gloom. Rishi sat motionless in the corner of his secondhand sofa, wrapped in a thick, pilled sweater, his fingers gently moving through the soft fur of his feline companion, Oggy. The cat lay curled in his lap like a living cushion, purring steadily, its vibrations a quiet lull against the ever-present hum of the central heating system. The flat was sparse but clean, a reflection of its owner's orderly life—a man who preferred control in small things when the larger ones slipped too easily through his fingers.
Rishi was thirty, single, and a man of habits more than ambition. A quiet cog in the rapidly turning wheel of a London-based tech company, he spent his days immersed in code, and his nights in the comfort of solitude. His world was a private one, punctuated only by muted video calls with his family, an occasional text to his college friends back in India, and his weekday chats with Olivia—a buoyant, ever-curious colleague who often dropped by his desk uninvited, armed with questions, snacks, or stories. Reserved by nature and deliberate in speech, Rishi never sought the spotlight. He had perfected invisibility not as an act of self-erasure, but as a method of survival.
That morning, however, the routine cracked.
Olivia's approach had been quieter than usual, her footsteps uncertain, her ever-bubbly demeanor replaced with an unfamiliar weight. She placed a hand gently on the corner of his desk, her voice low but steady.
"Rishi… I'm really sorry. There's been some news from home. Your grandfather—Rajasekhar—he passed away."
The sentence landed like a rock dropped into still water. Rishi froze, the name echoing in his head, colliding with a thousand half-formed memories. His grandfather. Rajasekhar. A stern yet gentle presence from long ago summers. The smell of sandalwood and jasmine, the distant hum of a tanpura during early morning prayers, the quiet authority in the man's posture. Rajasekhar had been more than just a grandfather—he had been a guardian of family traditions, a keeper of silences, and the spiritual backbone of their ancestral home in Sriperumbudur. Though decades and continents had come between them, Rishi had never quite let go of that early connection.
Without much deliberation, Rishi booked the next available ticket to India that evening. There was no time to grieve properly; the practicalities of death demanded urgency. His mind was a blur of timelines, formalities, and packing lists. Mourning would have to wait.
By the time he stepped onto Indian soil two days later, the formal rituals were already in motion. The ancestral house in New Delhi had transformed into a space of mourning—filled with relatives from across the country, strands of marigolds, curling trails of incense, and the rhythmic chanting of Sanskrit verses. He moved through the house like a guest in his own memory, nodding to familiar faces, awkwardly embracing distant cousins, accepting tea he didn't drink. The air felt heavy—not just with grief, but with the scent of camphor, turmeric, and old conversations.
It was then that a moment of clarity arrived, tucked within the quiet authority of his uncle's voice.
"Your grandfather left something," the man said, producing an old, leather-bound notebook, its corners frayed and its pages yellowed. "He had a wish—not a command, but something he hoped for."
The family gathered close as the pages turned to Rajasekhar's final message.
"He wanted all of us to spend at least one day in the village. Not just for the rites, but for remembrance. To feel the land again. To connect—not just with the place, but with who we were before we forgot."
Plans materialized swiftly—tickets, schedules, coordination. The entire family would fly south to Tamil Nadu to honor Rajasekhar's wish. But bureaucracy, as always, found its way into tradition. At the bustling airport, beneath the cold, fluorescent buzz of departure gates, a clerical error surfaced. Ten tickets had been confirmed. Eleven had been planned.
The air shifted. Silence bloomed.
Eyes moved toward Rishi—the outsider, the one who had been away the longest, the one who, by virtue of foreign residency, was assumed to be the most adaptable.
"He's young," a cousin murmured.
"He'll be fine on his own—he's used to travel," said another, with an air of finality.
Rishi didn't protest. He never did. He gave a quiet nod and accepted the verdict. Before they parted, a relative handed him a large, aged trunk—too heavy, too bulky for air travel, but precious. It had belonged to Rajasekhar, containing who-knows-what from a life now concluded. Rishi accepted that, too.
And so, while the rest of the family ascended skyward in a flurry of boarding passes and polite announcements, Rishi stood outside Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, a lone figure among thousands, with a worn rucksack on his shoulder and a second-class sleeper ticket in his pocket. At his side, the old trunk sat like a silent companion, its iron clasps echoing a forgotten era.
The Tamil Nadu Express loomed before him—a behemoth of blue steel, groaning with the weight of lives and stories. It was to be his home for the next 33 hours and 55 minutes. A journey across the heart of India, from the chaos of the capital to the stillness of Sriperumbudur—a village where time moved slower, and where his grandfather's oldest friend still kept watch over the land they once walked together.
Inside the sleeper coach, life surged around him—vendors shouting chai-chai-chai, families adjusting luggage, children swinging from the lower berths. Rishi found his spot, folded himself into the narrow space, and tried to settle. The scent of diesel, iron, and a thousand meals hung in the air.
At exactly 3:35 PM, the train jolted into motion, slowly tearing away from the station and into the unknown. He pressed his face to the window, watching Delhi blur into brown, then green, then something he couldn't yet name. The city melted behind him. His phone buzzed with a final message from Olivia—"Take care, Rishi. And listen to the silence. It speaks."
He inserted his earphones, the soft strains of Tamil music wrapping around him like a shawl. He opened a film to distract himself, but his heart wasn't in it. The countryside rolled by in golden streaks, the sun dipping into the horizon like a secret. Somewhere beyond those fields, his past waited.
Somewhere in Sriperumbudur, Rajasekhar's friend still lived, and perhaps, so did a part of Rishi he had long forgotten.
This journey wasn't just a farewell.
It was a return.