Short Story: The Space Beside Me

Mainak Gupta shares a moving conversation filled with love and longing, that leaves the reader questioning about its existence.

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“I feel sad, where are you?” he said.

“Here, here,” he saw her occupying the space beside him. “Sorry for being late. Pray tell me, what is the matter?” she asked.

“I feel sad. I wanna write about something.”

She smiled. “Okay. Tell me, what do you wanna write?”

“I don’t know. Something. Something that can reduce this unease within me. This sadness. This heaviness that I feel within me right now.”

“For that, I think you need to acknowledge why you are feeling what you are feeling. You need to know the reason for your sadness.”

He shrugged. “That’s not important. I just need to put pen to paper. I need to create something. Wish I could create music on paper.”

“Well, technically, you can. You can write the notations and sargams of the tune.” She replied.

“No, not like that. I want to compose a complete song, with lyrics and orchestration, with a full arrangement. With Shreya Ghoshal or Rupam Islam singing.”

“Strange combination of singers, but okay. I need you to come back now, though. You have gone too far for yourself there,” she smiled.

“No, no. I haven’t gone anywhere. I am right here, sitting in front of Neel Pukur. I was thinking loudly, that’s all.”

“Aren’t you a little too old for such dreams now?”

He shook his head vehemently. “No, not at all. I dream such dreams all the time. They kind of help me remain sane. Like, just the other day while sitting in school, I was dreaming that I had been transported to Miami or Hawaii and was dancing on the streets as Pritam, Arijit and the band were singing at the back, with hordes of people joining in!”

She laughed. “Oh, pray tell me more! Did you fall asleep in your workplace again? You lucky bastard! No wonder the government schools are going bust! The teachers are sleeping and dreaming about stuff teenagers have instead of taking classes!”

“Please don’t talk like an idiot. It wasn’t like that. I had just gone out for a smoke between classes, and I had walked to the rear of the school. That’s when I saw this woman standing on the balcony of her house, which is just behind our school. It was still early morning; she had come out of the bath, and in true Bollywood fashion, she emerged, drying her misty hair with a towel, slightly bent to her right, her eyes looking down. She was wearing a pink tee. I was awestruck for a moment. Life looked very happy suddenly. Time slowed down, violins started playing in the background, and a fan started blowing at me from somewhere. And I was suddenly on the beaches of Miami or Hawaii…”

“Why couldn’t you be in Puri or Goa?” she interrupted him. “As far as I know, you haven’t stepped out of India ever! Never been to Goa once either…”

“Haha, very funny. Haven’t been to Goa, and Puri isn’t cool enough.”

“The common Indian beach isn’t cut out for a stylised larger-than-life romantic dance number anyway. Yeah okay. I’ll give you that!”

“They aren’t suited for action films either. With them full of people, hawkers, and gutkha packets littered around. It will end up becoming a spoof of an action film!”

“Or an Anurag Kashyap gritty thriller, if made with the right approach.” She laughed. Her shoulders touched his, making him aware of how close they were sitting. He did not move away, but stiffened a little. She straightened, but showed no sign of realising his discomfort.

“Anyway,” she said after a pause, “what do you want to write, then, now that you can’t create music and ask Shreya Ghoshal to perform?”

“I wish I could write some poetry. Urdu shayaris. Ghazals. ‘Who jo hum mein, tum mein qarar thha, tumhe yaad ho ken aa yaad ho’…”

“And then what, ask Pritam to make it into a song?” she burst into a laugh again.

“Sure. In my dreams.”

“Well, a guy can try, can’t he?”

“No yaar. I am a bad writer. An incompetent writer. All I do is dream and daydream. Build castles in the air. Tried writing fiction, failed. Tried writing poetry, failed harder. And to imagine the audacity that I analyse and critique the writings of such as Tagore and Wordsworth in the classroom!”

She put her hand lightly on his shoulder. “You are being way too harsh on yourself for no reason. Keep at it, the way you are working hard, you will definitely achieve what you have set out to. As they say, consistency is the key. I can see it in you. Please don’t lose hope.”

He turned towards her. He looked at her eyes. They were bright and clear. He could see his reflection in them. “That success, or whatever that might be, won’t be the same without you,” he sighed.

She hit him playfully on his arm. “Now, who is being stupid? Where can I go? I am always circling you, accompanying you. And always will be. Don’t even for a second think that you’ll get rid of me!”

He smiled. A sad smile. He moved his hand to touch her other hand, which was thus far resting on her lap, but realized that she had moved it away. He sighed silently.

“You should try writing a play,” she said. “A drama. A closet drama. People don’t publish plays anymore. But I think you can do it. A dialogue-heavy script, without heavy scene description. You can approach it like a movie, by bypassing the heavy technical nature of the film script.”

“And will that script do justice to what I want to write about? About the claustrophobia that I feel every breathing second, about the meaninglessness that I experience in my life, how breathless I get when I am amongst people, the restlessness that I feel when I don’t get to see you, or talk to you. How will I be able to write about them in a screenplay?”

She smiled. “Write a fantastical romance! Magic realism. Give wings to your suppressed thoughts and emotions. Make lions sing, and tigers dance. Make flowers fly, and rivers swing. Celebrate what you want, rather than indulging in what you hate…”

He laughed. “Who is daydreaming now? What am I, Del Toro on cheap steroids?”

“Oh shut up, I was just suggesting something that you can try out, to make you feel better!”

“I am already feeling better, thank you.”

“Oh, really? How? Just by talking with me?”

“Yes. And no.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled. “I just wrote. A short story of sorts.”

“You did? When? And what about?”

“Just now. The conversation that we could have had. The one I want to have with you. But cannot. I’m doing two things at once right now – talking to you and writing about you. The only two things that have ever made me happy.”

She kept quiet for a moment. She lowered her head and kept staring blankly at the dark water in front of her. Her hair covered the sides of her face, and he had the urge to brush the hair away from her face to get a better look at her, but restrained himself.

“How long will you keep writing about me?” she said, finally.

“As long as I don’t cover all that we ever said to each other. And all that we never said.”

“Look who is making poetry now?”

“It’s all for you. You bring it all out. Your memory brings it all out!”

“What’s that sound?” she asked, as she turned behind to look.

“It’s Niladri Kumar, at his Zitar, playing a new song just for you! For us!”

“It’s time you started writing for someone else.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I can. I mean, yeah, okay, never say never; nobody knows what can happen tomorrow. But I don’t think I will ever be able to move away from you. You are the only woman I have ever written. You are the one who brings the creative side in me, and I don’t think I have it in me to even look for someone else, forget writing for someone else.”

“It’s high time you let me go.”

He smiled a sad smile, “Fortunately, or unfortunately, I guess I am beyond that stage now. And you’re not in a position to act anymore.”

“You should let me go now. Unless you move on from me, you won’t be in a position to have someone else. And it’s high time you have someone else. Someone real!”

“Don’t say that. We are not having this conversation again! I will decide that. Okay, fine, I will let you go. Soon. As soon as I get the confidence of writing something without being pushed by your memories. I will let you go.”

“Thanks. And yeah, you won’t regret it, trust me.”

He sighed. He looked up at the dark blue sky. The moon was peeking out from a soft cloud. He clutched the papers he had just filled with the imaginary conversation, wiped his moist eyes with them, and then threw them into the pond. He looked at the vacant space beside him, where she had been a few moments before. He smiled, got up, and silently walked towards the darkness.

Author’s Bio

Mainak Gupta teaches at a suburban college in West Bengal, India. An alumnus of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, he completed his Master’s degree from the University of Calcutta. He has published a notable academic paper on the portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi in Indian fiction in the Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in 2023, which can be read here: https://rupkatha.com/v15n307/. His narrative essay titled “An Untitled Encounter” in Kitaab.org, which can be found here: https://kitaab.org/2025/09/30/essay-an-untitled-encounter/. He recently published his first poem, titled “Nobody Writes to Me Anymore” in Spillwords: https://spillwords.com/nobody-writes-to-me/. He currently lives in Kolkata, India.