Life in words

  By the Beach, By the Heart The sun hadn’t yet risen fully, but the salt was already in the air—stinging, thick, stubborn. Just like her love for him. Radha walked barefoot along the shore, sari pinned tightly around her waist, carrying a small tin box wrapped in cloth. She paused every few feet, bending to pick seashells, not for their beauty, but because they reminded her of resilience. Shells break, yet they return to the sea. She had lived in this coastal village for 27 years. Her father sold salted dry fish from a wooden stall. Her mother made papads during summer to sell in bulk. Radha had grown up with the smell of brine and burnt turmeric, the sound of waves folding into themselves. And then Arjun came. He arrived in the village on a blue Hero Honda, wearing a white shirt too crisp for the heat. The panchayat had hired him from the city to help digitize land records. “He’s a government boy,” her father had whispered proudly. Radha met him during ration distribution,...

  Chapter 5: Richer Than Before Six months later, Ravi sat on a wooden bench outside a modest office in Lucknow. A ceiling fan creaked overhead. The air was thick with the scent of ink, chai, and faint desperation—familiar now. The sign outside read: “Shiksha Foundation – Financial Literacy for All.” Inside, volunteers were conducting a workshop for small shopkeepers on how to manage debt, avoid loan traps, and use digital payment systems responsibly. Ravi had just finished his part—an hour-long session on the psychology of money , delivered not with corporate polish, but quiet honesty. He spoke not as a professional, but as a cautionary tale. It hadn’t been easy to get here. After his termination, Ravi had returned to his hometown in Kanpur, broken and directionless. His parents had said nothing when he walked in with a backpack and no job. But their silence was warm, not judgmental. They made space for him—on the old swing, at the dinner table, in their prayers. ...

  Chapter 4: The Price of Trust The first unethical decision was small—almost invisible. Ravi had access to internal client data as part of his analyst duties. Nothing too sensitive, just portfolio trends, preferences, and upcoming investment interests. One afternoon, as he scrolled through a report, his eyes lingered on a line: Client X to invest ₹20 lakhs in emerging tech fund next week. A spark flickered in his mind. That fund was likely to surge when the news became public. If he entered before it did, he could ride the wave. He hesitated. He thought of his father’s medical bills. His mounting debts. Neha’s quiet but increasing expectations. The ever-lurking fear of losing everything. He told himself, It’s not illegal. Just… early awareness. That night, he made the trade through a personal account in a friend’s name. The fund spiked as predicted. In two days, he earned ₹34,000. The rush was addictive. He did it again—this time with a larger amount. Within a...

  Chapter 3: The Debt Trap The morning the markets crashed, Ravi was holding his phone like it was a lifeline—one that had suddenly snapped. Red arrows. Falling graphs. Panic in every WhatsApp group. The high-risk crypto scheme he’d invested in had vanished overnight—vanished like monsoon puddles under the sun. One app notification read: “Server temporarily down. Please check back later.” It never came back online. He sat frozen at his desk, the bustling Mumbai office around him blurring into static. ₹50,000—gone. His attempt to recover it by doubling down on a volatile stock pick two days earlier had backfired. Another ₹30,000 evaporated. He had barely enough left to pay rent. Ravi closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. For a man in finance, he had done the most financially reckless thing imaginable: believed in shortcuts. Worse, his salary was already committed to three credit cards, a personal loan, a car EMI, and an apartment deposit he had borrowed from a friend...

Chapter 2: A Pocketful of Promises Ravi’s life was moving at a pace he could hardly keep up with—new clients, new targets, new clothes, and a new relationship that seemed to shimmer with potential. Neha had a way of making him feel as though anything was possible, as though his small-town roots were not a limitation but merely a chapter in a story still being written. They spent weekends exploring Mumbai—Carter Road for sunset walks, Colaba for overpriced coffees, and Powai for rooftop dinners where Ravi would subtly check the prices before pretending to be unfazed. Neha, on the other hand, never blinked at a ₹600 bill for two lattes. She had grown up with privilege, and money, to her, was a resource—not a miracle. “Ravi, why don’t you just upgrade your car? That second-hand Alto is like a tin box,” she said one day as they exited the parking lot of a luxury mall. “It gets me from point A to point B,” he replied, but the embarrassment in his tone didn’t escape her. She sm...

  Chapter 1: The Golden Illusion Ravi Verma had never seen a lift before the day he stepped into the glass tower of Sunrise Finance. The building glimmered like a diamond under the Mumbai sun, its clean glass panes a far cry from the soot-stained windows of his one-room house in Allahabad. Clutching a borrowed suitcase and wearing his cousin's blazer, he had arrived in the city of dreams to begin his career as a junior analyst. To say he was nervous would be an understatement. His palms were sweating, and his heart thudded like a dhol at a wedding procession. Yet, beneath the anxiety was a current of excitement. He had made it—escaped the cycle of scarcity that had defined his life so far. His father’s small paan shop barely managed to keep the household afloat. His mother, a woman of quiet resilience, had pawned her only gold bangles to buy him a second-hand laptop for his MBA entrance prep. And now, here he was. Earning ₹40,000 a month—an amount his family saw as nothing sh...

  Chapter 1: The Meeting It was one of those chilly Delhi evenings when the air smells like roasted peanuts and adventure. The college fest at DU was buzzing with music, laughter, and the usual chaos of youth trying to find meaning in noise. Aarav Mehta, a final-year engineering student from Jaipur, stood backstage, heart thumping like a tabla before a performance. He wasn't a performer in the traditional sense—no guitar, no flashy dance. Aarav was a poet. A shy one. His friends had pushed him to participate in the open mic, saying, "Bhai, teri poetry sunke ladkiyaan fida ho jaayengi." He didn't care about girls, though—he only cared about words. Until he saw her . Meher Qureshi. Eyes full of mischief, dupatta flying in rhythm with her laughter, standing in the front row with her friends. She wasn’t clapping out of politeness—no, she was feeling every line he recited, nodding as if she’d lived those words herself. After his poem—about longing and the scent of f...