The Girl Who Writes in Margins

Vishakha folded her dreams between pages and stood.

The clink of cutlery echoed faintly from the dining hall. She smoothed the pleats of her skirt, checked her reflection in the mirror - braided, kajal sharp, expression unreadable. Perfect, as always. Perfection was her armor, her silence a strategy.

 Daughter of duty, wrapped in jasmine and silence,

            She writes her rebellion in margins, not in words aloud !

            A flame kept still by glass, yet aching to burn through..

She stepped out into the corridor, where the air buzzed with invisible expectations. The house smelled of filter coffee and rose agarbatti, an odd comfort she never questioned. The drawing room lights were warm, too warm, like a spotlight waiting to expose her.

Ayaan was already there. Tall, in a pastel kurta too crisp for comfort, with the confident ease of someone who had never been told no. He rose as she entered, offering a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Polite. Practiced. He probably rehearsed it in the mirror too.

“Vishakha,” her mother beamed, gesturing for her to sit beside him. “You remember Ayaan beta?”

She did. Vaguely. A family wedding years ago. He’d spilled cola on her lehenga and cried harder than she did. But now he was charming, all grown up. She offered a small smile and a nod, her voice caught somewhere between her throat and her spine.

Ayaan leaned slightly toward her. “You still write?”

The question sliced through her calm like a paper cut.

“I… write school essays,” she said smoothly. “Nothing interesting.”

Lie.

She’d written three chapters of *"*The Winter Promise" last night alone. Lia, her pen name, had fallen in love with a war-scarred pianist on the page. But here, she wasn’t Lia. Just Vishakha a future medical student, future wife, future... whatever they told her to be.

She glanced toward the hallway, half-expecting the usual sound of sneakers squeaking across polished tile. But today, Adhvik hadn’t shown up.

He always did. Through windows, through unlocked back gates, through sarcasm and late-night poetry he never admitted to writing. Her best friend since second grade. Her constant.

But not today.

“Beta, what are your future plans?” Ayaan’s father asked.

She started to answer, but her father spoke for her. “She’ll apply to AIIMS. Top rank. No distractions.”

Vishakha nodded. Distractions. That was what they called Adhvik.

Later, when the evening dissolved into chai and polite laughter, she slipped back into her room, closed the door softly, and leaned against it.

The notebook waited for her on the desk, the edge of a heart drawn in the margin still visible.

She picked up her pen.

And this time, Lia wrote not of war-torn pianists or noble heartbreak. This time, she wrote of a girl who wanted to scream in a house where girls were taught to whisper. Of a boy who knew her heart better than she did. Of a love that bloomed in margins—and dared to spill into the center of the page.

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