The One Who Might Listen

I hadn’t been out in weeks.

Not really out. Not the kind where you go without checking your phone every ten minutes. Not the kind where you smile at strangers without calculating what it’ll cost later.

But that evening, something shifted. It was a Saturday in September, the kind that feels like monsoon has overstayed its welcome. The flat was too quiet, and the fan kept swinging between two corners like it had forgotten how to be constant.

So I walked out. No reason. No plan.

---

The café was loud. Not in a happy way. In a muffled, overlapping, headache-by-the-hour kind of way. Groups laughing too loudly. Music trying to be heard above them. A birthday group clapping off-beat. My kind of chaos.

Still, I ordered a black coffee and took a corner table.

Sometimes we choose noise to drown silence. Not because we like the noise, but because we fear what we might hear if it's just us and the quiet.

I sipped slowly. Stared at the raindrops racing down the glass window. People outside were running with umbrellas. Inside, nobody noticed I was alone.

That’s the thing about public places—loneliness becomes invisible.

---

And then she sat across from me.

Not because she knew me. Not because she meant to. Just because it was the only empty seat.

“Sorry,” she said, “place’s full.”

I nodded.

We didn’t talk for ten minutes. She was reading something on her phone, earphones in. I just stared at the half-melted foam in my cup, trying to remember why I came out at all.

Then she said, without looking up, “You look like someone who doesn’t talk much, but wants to be heard.”

It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t even kindness. Just... observation. Honest and accidental.

I looked at her properly for the first time. She was older, maybe by a few years. Wore no makeup. Her eyeliner had smudged from the humidity. She looked like someone who'd had a long day, but didn’t mind it.

I didn’t say anything back.

So she continued, “I’m not asking for your story. Just... if you want to say something weird and get it out, I’ll listen. I’m good at that.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes I need the same.”

---

We spoke. Slowly. Like peeling an orange and handing each piece one by one.

Not deep confessions. Just fragments.

I told her I had moved to this city three months ago. That my job was okay. That I had friends, but not the kind who knew when I was sad. That my mother still thought I was “adjusting well.”

She nodded between sips of her chai.

Then she told me about her dog, who passed away last winter. About a friend who stopped replying to texts. About a playlist she had on repeat for weeks, just to feel something.

None of it was dramatic. But none of it was light.

It was strange—how easy it was to open up when there was no expectation to explain.

---

When we got up to leave, she smiled again, softer this time.

“Next time, don’t wait for your silence to get heavy,” she said. “Sometimes walking into a deaf crowd is all it takes.”

And then, almost like an afterthought, she added:

“Kabhi kabhi behro ki mehfil mein bhi chale jana chahiye. Kya pata koi sunne wala hi mil jaaye.”

---

I never asked for her number. She didn’t ask for mine. But that night, I walked home lighter.

Because someone had listened, and someone had spoken.

And maybe that’s all some evenings are meant for.

Not healing. Not fixing. Just... being heard.