Across the narrow lane, on a rooftop he'd never paid attention to, a woman sat alone on a plastic chair. She wasn't looking at her phone. She wasn't talking. She was just there , wrapped in a faded blue shawl, staring at the empty sky.

Some nights, they read poetry to each other—Bharathidasan, Neruda, even silly couplets they wrote on napkins. Other nights, they simply breathed into the receiver, the sound of someone else's existence enough to stitch the loneliness shut.

Every pale night, he sits on his balcony, alone but not lonely. Somewhere in a darker town, he imagines her painting new maps, new hours.

And the wind, like an old friend, whispers back.