Short Story: Air

Samya Jayachandran narrates a short story set in a Himalayan Hill town following a sullen and withdrawn teenager whose encounter with a blind girl gradually alters his perception of the surroundings.

Editor’s Pick

This piece is available for free reading this week

The world, as far as Tenzin was concerned, was a canvas left out in the rain too long. Colors had once existed, perhaps, but they had bled into one another and surrendered. The town wore a permanent film of dampness. Grey clouds pressed low against the ridgelines. Moss crept over stone steps like a patient invasion. The air carried the smell of wet timber, coal smoke, and something faintly sour that lived in the beams of his grandmother’s house. Tourists loved it. They called it quaint. They lifted their phones and pointed at prayer flags as if they had discovered them. Their laughter ricocheted off corrugated iron roofs and drifted down the market lane in thick, careless waves. Tenzin watched them from the edge of the pavement, hands buried deep in the pockets of his faded bomber jacket. He saw the cracks in the cobblestones, the strain in the shopkeepers’ smiles, the way currency changed hands like a quiet surrender.

He was seventeen and built of angles. His hair fell into his eyes, which reflected very little. A sneer lingered at the corner of his mouth as if it had grown there permanently. His grandfather still tried to persuade him into wearing a gho on festival days. Tenzin refused. The bomber jacket felt like armor. He walked with a restless, punishing stride, boots striking the ground as if it had offended him. Most people avoided him. He preferred it that way. Boju did not. She shuffled through the kitchen with her arthritic fingers sorting lentils and called after him in a voice that trembled but never surrendered.

“You should help your uncle at the shop.”

“So I can hear him complain about ginger prices again?”

“It is good to be useful.”

“I am useful. I count how many selfies the tourists take.”

Her sighs scraped against his nerves more sharply than anger ever could. His route often passed the old missionary school, a block of grey stone that looked older than the hills. Children spilled into the yard in neat uniforms, their laughter clear and uncomplicated. He found their brightness irritating. He had never felt that light. He had always felt like an observer, positioned slightly outside the frame of everything.

One afternoon, while cutting through a narrow alley that smelled of wet earth and dung smoke, he heard something unfamiliar. Laughter. Not loud, not brittle. It moved like water over rock. There was a soft, steady tap against the gravel.

He slowed, irritated at the intrusion into his chosen solitude. The alley opened onto a small, neglected garden behind a crumbling colonial bungalow. Ivy climbed the stone pillars. Wild marigolds forced their way through cracks in the patio.

A girl stood near a rhododendron bush. She wore a simple dress. Her long dark hair was braided down her back. In one hand she held a polished wooden cane, tapping it lightly before her. Her head tilted as if listening to a distant melody. Her eyes were clear brown and unfocused. They did not settle on him or on anything.

She was blind.

A scruffy terrier mix sat at her feet, tail thumping gently against the weeds. The girl traced the bark of the bush with careful fingers and laughed again, softly. Tenzin felt the familiar rise of irritation. Another person for the town to pity. Another fragile figure for the world to protect. “Hello?” she said, turning her face toward the sound of his halted footsteps. “Is someone there?” He did not answer. “I thought I heard someone stop. Did I interrupt you?” He remained silent. A cutting remark formed and dissolved before reaching his tongue. “If you are still there,” she continued, “this is a nice place to think. The air feels softer here.” Softer. He almost scoffed aloud. The air smelled like mud and smoke.

He scraped his boot deliberately against the gravel and walked past the edge of the garden. Her head followed the sound. She did not flinch. She simply listened. As he left, her hand found the dog’s head and rested there. The image stayed with him long after he reached home. He tried to bury it beneath his usual resentment. He snapped at Boju. He stared at the television while a newsreader spoke about melting glaciers and rising seas. Still, the sound of her voice returned.

The air feels softer.

On Tuesday the main road was blocked by a broken tourist bus. At least that was what he told himself when he turned toward the alley again. The lie was thin. She was sitting on a low stone wall this time, knitting something small and blue. The cane leaned against her knee. Her fingers moved with practiced precision.

“You are back,” she said.

He stopped short. “How do you know it is me?”

“You walk like you are trying to punish the ground. And you smell like clove cigarettes.”

Heat climbed his neck. He disliked cigarettes. He liked the smoke.

“I’m Pari,” she said.

“Tenzin.”

She repeated his name quietly. “You sound like you are frowning. Are you always this miserable, or only on Tuesdays?” “There is nothing to be happy about,” he said. “Everything here is rotting. The mountains hide behind clouds. The sky is ashamed.” She laughed, bright and unbothered. “Describe the sky.” “It is grey.” “That’s lazy. Is it pigeon grey or woodsmoke grey?”

He looked up, truly looking. Clouds churned low over the ridges. “It’s darker. Like a bruise.” “A bruise,” she said thoughtfully. “I can feel that kind of air. It presses.” The next day he came again. And the day after that. It wasn’t a drBojutic decision, his feet simply turned that way.

He brought her things. A jagged piece of quartz from the stream. A rusted gear from a tea factory. A wet rhododendron leaf. She examined each object with reverent patience. “This stone feels like a secret,” she said once, running her thumb along its edge. “It’s just a rock.” “Nothing is just anything.” He found himself talking. At first, he described what he disliked. The grime, the crowds, the decay. As he tried to make her understand, the bitterness thinned.

He told her about prayer flags snapping in high wind, sounding like tiny hands applauding. He described monks in crimson robes against morning mist. He spoke about the Teesta River flashing silver between trees. Without noticing, he began to search for beauty so he could place it into words for her. The weeks folded into one another. The damp persisted. The tourists came and went. Boju asked fewer questions about where he spent his afternoons. Sometimes she watched him with quiet understanding. One evening the monsoon paused. The sky cleared as if someone had drawn back a curtain. The air felt electric.

Pari turned her face upward. “Something’s different.” The peaks of Kanchenjunga burned in fierce orange light. The valley sank into purple shadow. The river gleamed like molten metal. Tenzin stared, struck silent. “Tenzin,” she whispered. “Tell me.” He opened his mouth and found nothing sufficient. The sight felt too immense to reduce to language. “I can’t,” he said, voice rough. “It is too big.” “Then don’t use words.” She reached for his hand and guided it to her cheek. Her skin held the warmth of the fading sun. “Show me.” He closed his eyes and focused on sensation. He traced the arc of color across her temple with his fingers. He pressed gently where the red felt deepest in his memory. He softened his touch where gold dissolved into green. “It’s like a weight,” he murmured. “A golden weight saying goodbye.” She leaned into his hand. A tear slipped free. “I see it,” she breathed.

The days that followed felt lighter. He smiled once at Boju without realizing it. He bought a small wooden bird from the market, carved with delicate wings. He wanted her to feel the feathers he had described. The morning, he carried it to the alley, voices filled the air. Yellow tape cut across the path. Neighbors stood in small clusters. There had been a landslide in the night. Rain had loosened the upper road. Earth and stone had collapsed into the back of the bungalow. Her room.

He stood at the edge of the crowd; the wooden bird clutched so tightly its beak snapped in his palm. He didn’t feel the sting. He felt only a hollow opening inside his chest where something bright had lived. The rain returned, it came heavy and relentless. The hillsides wept mud while the Teesta roared below. Tenzin sat on the slick stone wall in the ruined garden. The marigolds were crushed. Ivy hung torn and dripping. He waited for the steady tap of a cane that would not come.

Three days later Pari’s mother found him. Her eyes were swollen but steady. She pressed a small envelope into his hand. “She was making this,” she said. “For the boy who taught her how to see.” Inside was a square of blue knitting, uneven and imperfect. Through its center ran a stripe of bright yellow silk thread. He ran his thumb across the raised stitches. The rain thinned to mist. A single beam of light slipped through the trees and fractured across wet leaves. Gold shimmered in the air.

He stood. His boots did not strike the ground in anger. He moved carefully, as if carrying something fragile against his chest. At the end of the alley, he turned back. The garden lay broken, but light lingered stubbornly among the leaves. He whispered into the damp air, steady this time.

“Gold. Like sunshine through leaves.”

Author’s Bio

Samya Jayachandran is a school student based in New Delhi. She has lived across Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi. Her writing is informed by these shifting geographies, as well as by vacations spent in her paternal and maternal villages in Kerala and Kalimpong . Her work explores themes of memory, places and cultural identity. Her poem “Who am I?” was published in Zegerist, the online cultural magazine of the Goethe-Institut.