For the first time that day, his face changed. His jaw softened. His eyes lost a little of their dullness. He reached for the phone quickly, as if afraid the moment might fade if he delayed.
"Amma".
His voice came out brighter than it had sounded in weeks. Lighter. Younger. As if the version of him who answered was not the one who had spent the whole day in meetings and glass rooms, but the boy who once sat on a thin mattress in lantern light.
On the other end, her laughter bubbled through, warm and familiar. It rolled into the empty apartment like something that belonged here, something that should never have left. She did not start with questions about work or health or money. She went straight into stories, the way she always had.
She told him about her aunt who still argued with the neighbors over the smallest things, about cousins who could not stay out of trouble, about a relative who claimed to have back pain only on the days there was work to do. Her words came fast, full of rhythm and little details that did not matter to anyone else but somehow pulled him back into a world that felt more real than the one he lived in every day.
Arjun leaned back on the couch, a slow smile forming at the edge of his mouth. He tossed in his own comments, groaned when she repeated old stories, teased her when she forgot what she had said five seconds earlier. His laughter slipped out without permission, light and easy. The version of him that spoke to her did not sound like the man whose colleagues called him sir. There was no formality, no distance, no practiced calm.
For a few minutes, he did not feel like a man who had built his life on routine.
He felt like a son.
Arjun, she said after a while, her voice softening.
"Do you have any opinion on getting married."
He chuckled, the sound quieter now, and scratched the back of his neck, even though she could not see him.
"Amma, I do not even love myself. How can I expect someone else to do that."
Her sigh travelled through the speaker. It was gentle and familiar, carrying a weight that held neither anger nor pressure. Only concern. Only love.
She did not scold him. She did not try to convince him he was wrong. She did not list names or options or timelines. Instead, she changed the subject with the skill of someone who knew exactly how much weight his shoulders could take in one evening.
They drifted back into smaller topics. What she had cooked that day. Which neighbor asked about him. A childhood memory that turned into shared laughter. Her voice moved through the apartment like a long lost song, touching the corners of the room the way light never quite did.
For as long as the call lasted, the house no longer felt hollow.
When the conversation finally wound down, she reminded him to eat properly, to take care of his health, to call more often. He promised he would, knowing both of them understood how rarely he kept that promise, yet also knowing he would try.
"Good night, Amma."
"Good night, kanna."
The line went silent.
The call ended.
And the silence that replaced her voice was different from the one that had filled the apartment before.
Earlier, it had felt empty.
Now it felt heavy.
The match still played on the television. The crowd still screamed. The commentator still filled every gap with frantic words. But all of it sounded distant now, as if someone had moved the television far down a corridor and shut a door.
Arjun leaned back on the couch, the phone resting against his chest. The beer remained in his hand, but his fingers had loosened around it. He stared past the screen, past the room, into a place that did not exist in front of him but somewhere inside.
His mind drifted away from the present.
Back into a space between thought and memory.
He was not remembering something clear. Not yet. It was more like a feeling. A sense of another room, another light, another version of himself. One who had once listened to stories about boys who refused to bow. One who had once believed that life could be more than this.
The feeling sat there, patient and restless at the same time.
He blinked and looked away, as if the television had suddenly become too bright.
He set the bottle down on the table with a soft clink and pushed himself to his feet.
For a moment, he simply stood there, not sure what he was looking for. Then his eyes drifted to the corner of the room.
To the shelf.
To the place he had ignored for years.
Dust lay thick on the wood, soft and gray, smoothing over edges and corners. Things rested there that had not been touched, not because they were unimportant, but because they belonged to a version of him he no longer visited.
He walked toward it slowly.
Each step felt strangely careful, as if he were entering a room that still remembered who he used to be.
He reached out and brushed his palm across the top of the shelf. The dust parted in a long streak, revealing the original color of the wood beneath. The simple act felt intimate, like clearing dust from an old photograph or wiping a fogged mirror.
There, tucked behind a few old files and forgotten objects, sat a wooden box.
It was plain, rectangular, and quiet. The kind of box that did not reveal its importance by appearance, only by the feeling it carried.
He pulled it out and placed it on the table.
His fingers hovered above the lid for a moment. Then he lifted it.
Inside lay a small stack of books. Ten, perhaps fifteen. Their covers were faded, some corners frayed, some spines slightly cracked. They did not belong to this polished house. They belonged to a different time. A different life.
He picked up the top one and brushed his hand over it, clearing a thin film of dust. As the title slowly revealed itself, his chest tightened with a strange, quiet ache.
The room around him seemed to blur at the edges.
The sound of the television faded.
The present loosened its grip.
And in that gentle, disorienting shift
he was no longer sitting in a rich, silent apartment
he was back in a different world entirely
he was back in college.