The Things We Carry Home
By Lokanath Mishra:
Aarohi Sen believed people when they spoke gently. She believed Ritwik Malhotra when he said, “You’re my best friend,” because the sentence sounded ordinary, and ordinary things are often the most trusted. They had grown into each other’s lives without naming it. Shared meals. Shared silences. The kind of closeness that doesn’t demand promises.
Care came easily to Aarohi. It was how she had been raised by Naina Sen—quiet attention, small rituals, love expressed through routine. When Ritwik forgot his lunch one afternoon, Aarohi packed the tiffin without irritation. Rice. Dal. A little pickle on the side. She wiped the lid clean before leaving, as if cleanliness could protect feelings too.
The office door was half open. She paused, not knowing why. Sometimes the body understands before the mind does.
Ritwik was leaning back in his chair. Meera Kapoor stood in front of him. They were laughing. The spoon lay unused. Aarohi watched food pass from his mouth to Meera’s. Mouth to mouth. Casual. Playful. As if intimacy were a game anyone could join.
She did not interrupt. She did not speak. She stood there like someone who had arrived at the wrong address and realized too late that the place had already changed.
When Ritwik noticed her, his face hardened into impatience. “It’s just fun,” he said. “Don’t overreact.”
Fun. The word fell between them and broke something that had been quietly holding Aarohi together. She placed the tiffin on the table and walked out. She carried nothing except herself.
That evening she cooked again. She ate alone. The food tasted the same. Only the direction of love had shifted. When she told her mother, Naina sighed and said, pata nahi kiski nazar lag gayi thi. Aarohi smiled faintly. Maybe no one’s. Maybe this was simply the truth arriving late.
Loneliness did not come all at once. It arrived in pieces. Empty evenings. Unanswered messages. Then, slowly, space. In that space, Aarohi began learning herself again. She packed her own lunch every morning. Same care. Same warmth. For herself.
It was during this time that Katy Wilson came to India.
Katy had met Aarohi years ago during a short exchange program. They had bonded over long walks, cheap coffee, and the strange comfort of being young in unfamiliar places. When Katy decided to spend a few months in India, Aarohi offered her home without hesitation. Ritwik was still around then. Still charming. Still everyone’s friend.
The three of them moved easily together at first. Katy’s boyfriend back home was also a friend. They cooked together. Talked late into the night. Life felt open and unfinished.
One night, after Ritwik had gone out, Katy sat beside Aarohi on the balcony. The city hummed below them. Katy looked unsettled, the way people do when they are holding something sharp inside.
She told Aarohi about the night in her small rental house back home. About the screaming sound. About thinking she might die alone without understanding why. About calling her mother in panic. About the fire department arriving. About the embarrassment. And then the laughter. “It was just a toilet valve,” Katy said, smiling now. “It was stuck. Screaming for attention.”
They laughed together.
“But,” Katy added, quieter, “I realized something. Fear isn’t always danger. Sometimes it’s just something unfamiliar asking to be fixed.”
Aarohi listened carefully. Some truths enter gently.
Time moved forward. Ritwik moved away from the center of Aarohi’s life without ceremony. Katy stayed. Their friendship deepened into something steady. They learned each other’s rhythms. Shared silences. Shared fears. Two women learning adulthood in parallel lines that often touched.
It was Katy who noticed Aarohi reading about investments during lunch breaks. Not obsessively. Just carefully. “Why are you doing this?” Katy asked once.
Aarohi thought for a moment. “Because I don’t want my future to depend on anyone remembering me,” she said.
She did not speak of money as ambition. She spoke of it as safety. As choice. As dignity. She invested slowly. Quietly. The way she did everything else now. Later, when Katy moved back and faced her own uncertainties, it was Aarohi who explained—not as advice, but as lived experience. How small, consistent choices could build something strong without noise.
Katy listened. Learned. Began her own careful steps.
They stayed connected across time zones. Shared updates. Shared jokes. When Katy finally lived alone again, the quiet did not scare her the way it once had. When Aarohi walked past Ritwik’s old office, she no longer felt invisible.
Both women had learned this: love that requires you to shrink is not love. Fear that teaches you to listen is not your enemy. Independence is not loneliness. It is space.
Aarohi still packs her tiffin every morning. Katy still laughs at false alarms. They carry their lives forward gently, with care, with awareness, with the quiet knowledge that self-love is not loud, not dramatic, not performative.
It is simply the decision to come home to yourself, again and again.
And everything else is just a lesson along the way.