chapter - 1

Oxford, 2025

It was raining again.... the kind of soft English drizzle that didn't soak your clothes but crept in anyway, like a thought you couldn't shake.

Abhiram ducked into the second-hand bookstore just off Cowley Road, mostly to escape the weather. He wasn't planning to buy anything. He rarely did. His flat was already overflowing with books, most of which he hadn't finished. That didn't stop him from collecting more. Old books felt like people... flawed, forgotten, full of stories.

He drifted toward the South Asian literature shelf, fingers tracing the cracked spines until he found an old copy of Gitanjali, Tagore. A first English translation, softcover, corners curled in like tired petals.

He opened it.

And something fluttered out.

A piece of pale blue stationery, yellowed at the edges, folded in thirds like a secret. He blinked, surprised. There was handwriting on it... neat, flowing curves in black ink.

 Hyderabad, 17 March 1995

Dear Stranger,

I don't know who you are. Maybe you'll never find this letter. But if you do… I hope you're someone who still believes in letters. Real ones. Not emails or pagers or whatever's coming next.

Today I turned 20. I came to the library alone. My friends forgot. My parents were busy. So I wrote to you instead. Whoever you are.

Do you ever feel like you're living in the wrong time? I do, almost every day.

If you find this, write me back. I mean it. Leave your letter in the same book.

Until then,

Anuradha.

Abhiram stared at the page, heart oddly still.

It had been sitting inside this book for thirty years.

She was probably...

Realize and said to himself, Wait, What?......In her late forties now?, Married?, Living in the States?, Maybe she forgot she ever wrote this.

But something about the words felt... unfinished. Like a thread waiting to be pulled.

He glanced at the old bookshelf. Third shelf from the bottom.

He smiled, just a little. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was nothing.

Still, that night, he wrote back.

Ah, yes. Let's return to that quiet, rain-soaked night in Oxford... he said to himself.

Abhiram in his flat, sitting at his desk, staring at the blue paper with Anuradha's words from thirty years ago.

He doesn't know if she'll ever read his reply. But something about her letter won't let him stay silent.

∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆

It was past midnight.

Abhiram sat at his desk with a cup of masala chai that had long since gone cold, the rain ticking softly against the windowpane behind him. The library copy of Gitanjali lay open, Anuradha's letter resting beside it like a fragile piece of forgotten time.

He picked up a clean sheet of paper, took a breath, and began to write.

Oxford, 2025

Dear Anuradha,

I don't know if you'll ever read this.

If you do.... then somehow, impossible, you and I have managed to speak across time.

I found your letter inside Gitanjali this afternoon. I wasn't looking for anything. But something about your words made me pause.... like I knew the person behind them. Isn't that strange?. To feel something so familiar from someone who may no longer even exist in this time?.

You said you feel like you're living in the wrong era. I feel like I'm stuck in one I can't connect with.

The world moves too fast here. Everything's data, algorithms, and artificial meaning. But sometimes, I stop and think about all the things that don't fit into code..... like handwritten letters from 1995 tucked into old books halfway across the world.

You mentioned your birthday. I wonder.... are you still in Hyderabad?. Did you become the writer you sounded like?. Do you still visit the library, third shelf from the bottom?.

Maybe this is just a moment, and nothing more.

But if this letter somehow reaches you.... write back. Please.

Abhiram,

MSc, Literature & Memory Studies

*****College, Oxford.

ఇంకో విషయం(Inkō viṣayaṁ): Happy belated birthday, even if it's thirty years late.

{ఇంకో విషయం(Inkō viṣayaṁ): One more thing.}

Abhiram folded the letter carefully, slid it into the same Gitanjali copy, and returned to the bookstore the next morning. The clerk gave him a strange look when he insisted on putting it back on the shelf... but let him.

The book went back. The letter went with it.

And now, all he could do was wait.

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