That night, the silence from the wall lasted a long time. It wasn't uncomfortable—but it wasn't ordinary either. Krishna sat leaning against the wall, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on the floor. Inside him, thoughts moved in restless circles. Radha's memories were still warm. Time had not softened them. They remained fresh, sharp, alive. In the middle of those memories, Janaki's voice suddenly emerged, and Krishna flinched slightly.
"I want to ask you something…"
The words came very softly. There was no force. No urgency. But there was resolve in them.
Krishna remained silent. He had known this question would come someday. He just didn't know when—or how.
"Ask," he said at last. His voice sounded calm, but inside, something had begun to stir.
"About the woman you mentioned…"
Janaki paused. Even that pause felt like a sentence.
"Can you tell me your love story?"
The question crossed the wall and struck Krishna straight in the heart. This wasn't the question he had imagined. He thought she would ask how it happened, or whether it still hurt. But tell me your love story carried a gentleness. It wasn't asking for pain—it was asking for life.
Krishna smiled. A very small smile. There was no irony in it. No sorrow either. Just fatigue.
"Love stories are usually meant to be told," he said. "Ours…"
He stopped.
The words stalled there. Janaki didn't rush him. She didn't pull at the unfinished sentence. She knew—some stories must walk a long distance inside before they can come out.
"It's okay if you don't want to," she said.
Krishna heard her. But instead of pushing him back, her words opened something.
"We met in college…"
His voice slowed. It was no longer just a voice speaking to someone beyond a wall. It was a voice speaking to himself.
"When I first saw her, it didn't feel like love. But her questions stayed with me."
He began to tell the story. How Radha spoke. How she stayed silent. How she turned small things into large meanings. How the days spent with her felt different from all other days. The words came slowly. There was no hurry in them. Janaki did not interrupt even once—not even with a soft hmm. She was listening. Truly listening. Krishna could feel it.
He spoke about their journeys to Chidambaram. About caves. About research. About how Radha stepped into that cave for the first time, how she saw the stone.
"Her eyes shone differently then," he said. "There was no fear in them. There was responsibility."
His voice grew heavier. Still, he did not stop. Because he had been trying to stop this story for a very long time.
"We talked about marriage," he said.
His voice trembled slightly as he spoke that sentence.
"This flat too… we chose it together."
Silence spread on the other side of the wall. A deep silence. Krishna's heart began to race. Had he said too much? Was he placing unnecessary pain on her? As those thoughts rose, Janaki's voice came gently.
"You loved her very much, didn't you?"
It didn't sound like a question. It sounded like acceptance.
Krishna closed his eyes.
"I still do," he said.
There was no explanation in those words. None was needed.
Finally, he spoke about that day. The accident. The hospital. Time coming to a halt.
"Everything ended at once," he said. "Before I could even understand what was happening, she was gone."
As he spoke, his voice broke. The words stopped coming. It felt as though something had shattered inside his chest. But he didn't cry. Tears didn't come. They were still trapped somewhere deep within.
From the other side of the wall, he heard the sound of breathing. Janaki was feeling something too. But she didn't speak. That silence was exactly what Krishna needed. It gave him more than answers ever could.
After a long while, Janaki said softly,
"Thank you… for telling me."
There was gratitude in her voice. But no pity. No sympathy. Krishna liked that. After telling the story, he felt lighter. Not because the pain had gone—but because the pain was no longer alone.
After a while, Janaki changed the subject.
"I'm feeling sleepy," she said. "I did a lot of work today."
Krishna understood. She was tired. Listening itself is work—often the hardest kind.
"Alright," he said. "Good night."
"Good night, Krishna."
It was the first time she had called him by his name like that.
It felt new to him.
That night, Janaki fell asleep. But when she drifted into sleep, Krishna's story stopped midway. He didn't realize it then. He assumed she had heard his story. That she had understood it. He never imagined that beyond his story, another story was asleep on the other side.
The night Krishna began telling his love story, even after the words ended, his mind did not. Though Janaki slipped into sleep, every word he had spoken seemed to strike the wall and return to him. "We met in college…" echoed inside his mind, pulling him back into those days. Back then, time did not feel this heavy. Days ran freely. Even pain felt lighter. He did not know then that love itself could become pain.
The college campus still lived vividly in his memory. Morning sunlight slipping between trees, the quiet in front of the library, the chaos in the canteen at noon, tired footsteps circling the ground in the evening. Krishna was not much of a talker in those days. His books, notes, and maps were his companions. He already loved archaeology—but that love was only one part of life. Life itself had not yet unfolded.
Radha first caught his attention in the library. Books lay scattered across her table—one on physics, another on astronomy, another on ancient temples. The combination felt strange to him. She would pause while reading and stare out the window. There was longing in that gaze. A hunger to know something more. He looked at her once, then buried himself back into his book. But that gaze did not leave him.
A few days later, they traveled on the same bus during a fieldwork trip. That day, they spoke for the first time.
"If your map looks like this, you'll end up in the wrong place," she said with a smile.
Krishna was surprised. He hadn't expected her to know archaeology so well.
"I'm interested," she said. "Not in places—but in the meanings behind them."
He liked that sentence. Because that was exactly what he was searching for.
From that day on, conversations began. First about studies. Then about life. They would walk together, stop midway, and discuss something endlessly. Radha asked questions. Krishna searched for answers. Sometimes answers didn't come. Then she would smile and say,
"Not having an answer is sometimes the best question."
Those words rooted themselves inside him.
Love did not happen suddenly. It wasn't declared one day. It formed slowly—through familiarity, through accepting each other's silences. When Radha sat beside him reading a book, it was enough for Krishna. Even when she didn't speak, her presence gave him peace. He didn't realize then that it was love. But it was.
Their journey to Chidambaram brought them even closer. Walking through forests, descending into caves, sitting beneath temple shadows—they stepped into a shared world. Radha was different there. Her eyes grew more serious.
"There's something here," she would say softly. "True power lies in what we cannot see."
Krishna listened and watched her. In those moments, his feeling for her was more than love—it was respect.
One evening, sitting near a cave and watching the sunset, Radha turned to him and asked,
"Do you think we could live like this—together?"
It wasn't a proposal. Not even a question. It was a thought spoken aloud. Krishna smiled.
"Anywhere," he said.
That one word made everything clear between them. They didn't name their love that day. But it was acknowledged.
College days ended. Education was complete. Life moved forward. Yet the lightness of those days, that freedom, that love—all of it still lived inside Krishna. Now, sitting in Flat Number 369, staring at the wall, he was remembering those days.
Krishna took a deep breath. College felt like a dream now. But it had been real. And that reality was still keeping him alive. Janaki was asleep on the other side of the wall. But between these walls, a love story that once began was still moving forward. Even if it seemed finished, time had not let it go.
That night, in Flat Number 369, time walked backward for a while.
And in that walk, Krishna found himself again.