“His laptop sat open on the table, the Skype window still visible. He had spoken to Madan an hour ago — his son's face pixelated by the weak hill-station Wi-Fi but still recognizable, still carrying the features that made Rahul's chest ache every time he looked too closely. Madan had Rahul's jaw, Rahul's height, Rahul's tendency to talk with his hands. But his eyes — those deep, dark, impossibly expressive eyes that seemed to hold entire conversations in a single glance — those were Jessie's. Every time Rahul looked at his son's eyes, he saw the woman he had lost, and the seeing was simultaneously the greatest comfort and the sharpest pain of his life.”
© 2025 Atharva Inamdar. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.