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A Novel By Dipjyoti Sharma
Part One — Different Lives
Arjun woke up at five-thirty every morning.
Not because he wanted to. Because the chai stall needed to be open before six, and his father’s hands had been shaking badly since last winter. Some days the shaking was small — just a tremor when he poured tea into glasses. Other days it was bad enough that he spilled things, and customers complained, and his father would come home quiet and ashamed.
So Arjun woke up at five-thirty.
He was twenty-two. He had a thin face, dark eyes, and hands that were always a little rough from washing dishes and carrying things. He had finished his graduation from the local government college — not because anyone expected much from it, but because his mother had wanted him to. At least a degree, she always said. At least that.
They lived in Basant Nagar, a neighborhood that had been on the wrong side of the city for as long as anyone could remember. The lanes were narrow. The houses were close together. In the evenings you could hear your neighbor’s television and your other neighbor’s arguments without trying. The walls were thin. Everything was thin there — the walls, the mattresses, the bank balance.
Arjun’s father ran a small chai stall near the railway station. It wasn’t much — a wooden cart, two gas cylinders, some glass tumblers that were always being broken and replaced. But it was theirs. They had built it slowly over fifteen years. There was a small handwritten sign above it that said Ramu Bhai ki Chai and people from the neighborhood knew it, and some of them were even loyal.
On weekdays, Arjun helped in the morning and then went to work his second job — data entry at a small insurance office. The office was cramped and the chair hurt his back, but it paid a salary every month without fail, and that was more than he could say for anything else in his life.
He wasn’t unhappy, exactly. He just didn’t think much about happiness. He thought about the electricity bill. He thought about his younger sister Priya’s school fees. He thought about whether his father would need a doctor visit this month or whether it could be pushed to next.
Nandini Mehta had never worried about an electricity bill in her life.
She was twenty years old and she lived in a house in Shanti Park that had a name — Mehta Villa — carved in stone near the front gate. The driveway was long enough that you couldn’t see the front door from the road. There were three cars parked inside. Two of them had drivers.
Her father, Vikram Mehta, ran a construction business that had made him very rich and had made him very certain that he was always right. Her mother, Sunita Mehta, had grown up in a similar family and had married into this one and had spent thirty years being the right kind of wife — elegant at parties, quiet about her own opinions, present but somehow not quite there.
Nandini had a younger brother named Rohan who was their parents’ real joy. He would inherit the business. He would carry the name. Nandini would be married well — that was the plan — to some boy from a good family with a clean background and a good income and no surprises.
She went to Greenwood College, the private one near the lake. She wore good clothes without thinking about them. She had a phone that her father had bought her and a laptop and a small car she was learning to drive. Everything was provided. Everything was arranged.
But she was bored.
Not the dramatic kind of bored that people talked about in movies. Just a quiet, steady boredom. A feeling that her days were all the same. That the people around her in college were performing a version of life rather than actually living it. That the parties she went to and the clothes she wore and the conversations she had — all of it was like being inside a glass box. You could see everything clearly. You just couldn’t actually touch any of it.
She had one real friend. Her name was Divya, and Divya was the only person Nandini felt she could actually talk to. Divya wasn’t rich. Her father worked in a bank. She had gotten into Greenwood on a scholarship. She said what she thought and she didn’t care much about appearances and for that reason, Nandini loved her.
It was Divya who first introduced her to Arjun.
It happened the way most things happen in real life — by accident, without meaning to.
Divya’s cousin was getting married, and the wedding venue needed decoration. Divya had taken on the task of helping to coordinate it, and she needed extra hands. She had asked Nandini to help, and Nandini had said yes because she had nothing else to do that Saturday.
Arjun was there because the venue was owned by a man named Prakash, who was a distant relative, and Prakash had called him to help set up chairs and carry boxes and do the things that needed doing.
They didn’t speak at first. Nandini was helping Divya arrange flower garlands on the entrance pillars. Arjun was moving plastic chairs from a truck into the main hall.
The first time they actually saw each other was when Arjun accidentally bumped into Nandini while carrying a stack of eight chairs that was clearly too many chairs for one person to carry.
The chairs fell.
Three of them hit the floor loudly. One bounced and nearly hit Nandini’s foot.
“Sorry,” Arjun said immediately. He was already picking up the chairs. His face was embarrassed. “I wasn’t looking. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Nandini said. She stepped back to give him room. “Do you need help?”
He looked up at her. Just a quick look — a measuring look. She could see him deciding whether she was serious or just being polite. “No, it’s okay. I’ve got it.”
He picked up all the chairs and carried them inside.
That was it. That was the first meeting.
To be continued ………………
If you enjoy emotional stories about love, sacrifice, and human connection, The Space Between Us delivers a powerful romance between two people separated by class, family expectations, and harsh reality. Fans of touching fiction like “Holi in a Hospital: A Heartwarming Story of Kindness and Second Chances” and “Emotional Short Story: The Letter He Never Opened” will find similar emotional depth here.
Read also:
➡️ Holi in a Hospital: A Heartwarming Story of Kindness and Second Chances – https://dipjyotisharmabooks.com/holi-in-a-hospital-a-heartwarming-story-of-kindness-and-second-chances/
➡️ Emotional Short Story: The Letter He Never Opened – https://dipjyotisharmabooks.com/emotional-short-story-the-letter-he-never-opened/