The Beginning of Silence: A Story by Jyoti Mandal

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I am a freelance writer | I believe words can shape, heal, and reveal — so I write about life, love, and truth.

LAXMI👣The Beginning of Silence : The morning air shimmered with chalk dust and sunlight.Children ran across the schoolyard, their laughter bubbling like a stream after rain. Laxmi jumped rope in the corner — her plaits flying, her feet light on the red earth. For a moment, she looked almost weightless, like joy had forgotten whereContinue reading

Purple:The Girl Who Lived in My Mind and Refused to LeaveThe Girl Named Purple The city was only half a place that evening half-awake, half-forgotten — as Shrestha climbed to the highest corner of her building, to the broken edge of the terrace where no one ever came. Evening, like a tired dancer, was folding itself into the arms of the night.The air held thatContinue reading

THE LAST LETTER FROM LAHORE: Story By Jyoti MandalThe rain had a rhythm that night a soft, relentless drumming against the wooden lattice of the old haveli. Lahore, 1946. The city was drenched, the scent of wet earth and jasmine curling through narrow lanes, and thunder rolled far off like the slow turning of a restless heart.Veer stood on the rooftop, a darkContinue reading

My Story : Whispers from the Writer Within📑Who am I? In the words of a writer: I am Jyoti Mandal, i am a freelance writer. Writing has been a part of my life for nearly 12 years. I express myself through poetry, stories, shayari, and nazms, and stories gathering fragments of dreams, sorrows, and silences. My writings are not just creations, butContinue reading

The morning air shimmered with chalk dust and sunlight. Children ran across the schoolyard, their laughter bubbling like a stream after rain.

Laxmi jumped rope in the corner — her plaits flying, her feet light on the red earth. For a moment, she looked almost weightless, like joy had forgotten where it came from and rested on her shoulders.

“Faster!” one of the girls called out. Laxmi laughed, breathless, her eyes bright and open to the sky.

It was one of those rare mornings when everything felt right — the air, the rhythm, the smallness of her happiness.

But joy, in her life, never stayed longer than a bell’s ring.

The moment the recess ended, the rope slipped from her hand and hit the ground with a soft thud. As she bent to pick it up, a polished shoe pressed it down.

He stood there, sunlight bouncing off his ironed shirt, his grin already half-formed. “Careful, Crow Girl,” he said, his voice smooth and cruel.

The children giggled, a few too loudly, pretending innocence. Laxmi froze. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but somehow it always felt new — like being stung again by the same bee.

“Why do you call me that?” she whispered, but her voice was too soft, swallowed by laughter.

Dev plucked a feather from the dusty ground — probably from a passing crow — and dropped it into her hair. “Now you look perfect,” he said.

The girls laughed harder. Someone clapped. And the warmth that had glowed inside her only minutes ago turned to ash.

That afternoon, the classroom smelled of chalk and sweat. Laxmi sat alone in the back, pretending to copy notes while her eyes blurred the words into nothing. Sunlight fell through the barred windows, laying trembling stripes across her desk. She traced one with her finger, wondering why even light had to pass through cages.

When the bell rang, she waited until everyone had left before packing her bag. The silence that followed was heavy, but at least it didn’t mock her.

The home was a one-storey house with faded green walls and a veranda full of drying clothes. As she stepped in, her mother’s voice came sharp from the kitchen. “You’re late again! Always walking like you’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Sorry,” Laxmi murmured, slipping off her shoes.

Her mother turned, soap on her hands, her hair tied up in a loose bun. “What did you do to your hair?” she scolded, grabbing the comb. “It’s a mess, like a bird’s nest. Can’t you even look decent?”

The comb’s teeth pulled hard against her scalp. Laxmi bit her lip and stayed still. It wasn’t the pain that hurt — it was the tone.

Her mother didn’t mean to be cruel. Cruelty just ran in the house like a second language — something everyone spoke without thinking.

Dinner was a ritual of clinking steel plates and unspoken words. Her father read the newspaper with his glasses low on his nose.

“How was school?” he asked, not looking up.

“Fine,” Laxmi replied.

That word again — her small, fragile armour. Fine. A lie that fit every shape of pain.

Later, when the house slept, she climbed to the terrace.

The village below was dark except for scattered lanterns.

She sat by the parapet, legs folded, watching the moonlight slide over rooftops like spilled milk.

Somewhere a dog barked.

Somewhere a mother sang her child to sleep.

Laxmi looked at the moon— each time a small wound in the sky — and whispered, “Why do they hate me?”

But the wind didn’t answer.

Maybe it was tired of carrying questions no one wanted to hear.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to quiet habits. She stopped playing with the other girls. Stopped drawing in her notebooks. Stopped laughing, because every laugh sounded borrowed.

Her mother still combed her hair each morning, still said, “Smile a little, Laxmi. Girls who look sad grow up alone.”

Laxmi nodded. And when her mother turned away, she let her face go blank again — because pretending took energy she no longer had.

Her tenth birthday arrived with no candles, no songs — only a neighbor dropping off sweets and reminding her mother what day it was.

“Oh, right!” her mother said with a quick laugh. “Our Laxmi’s birthday!”

Later, an aunt came by and pinched her cheek. “Such a quiet child,” she said. “And still so plain. You’ll grow prettier, maybe.”

Everyone laughed — softly, kindly, cruelly.

Laxmi laughed too, because that’s what good daughters do when love and mockery wear the same face.

That night, she went to her room and stood before the old mirror hanging near the window. Its glass was cracked on one corner, spidering into her reflection.

She studied herself — her brown skin, her large eyes, the faint scar on her chin she’d gotten from falling once in the schoolyard. She didn’t look ugly. She just looked like someone no one wanted to see.

“If I break it,” she whispered, “maybe I can be someone new.”

But she didn’t. She just stood there until her reflection blurred with her tears.

At dawn, she woke before her parents and went back to the terrace. The world was painted in pale blue, birds gliding low across the fields. She watched them until her eyes burned.

How light they looked. How sure of where they were going.

She smiled — faintly, fleetingly — and whispered to herself, “One day, I’ll fly too.”

But the words fell heavy, and the sky stayed silent.

That was how it began — the quiet unraveling of a girl who only wanted to be seen, and was instead taught to disappear.

Because some heartbreaks don’t make a sound. They grow, like weeds in the corners of childhood, and bloom only when no one’s watching.

The morning light in small towns has a strange kind of honesty — it shows everything too clearly.

The chipped paint on doors, the dust on verandas, the people pretending to smile.

That morning, even the sunlight felt heavy on Laxmi’s shoulders.

She walked to school with her books pressed tight against her chest, her dupatta pinned too carefully — as if neatness could be a kind of armor.

Behind her, laughter followed like shadows she couldn’t shake.

The classroom:

Her voice was soft, careful — the kind that trembles before it reaches anyone’s ears. The teacher asked her to read, and she stood, palms sweaty, throat dry.

“Louder, Laxmi,” the teacher said.

From the second row, Dev’s voice sliced through the silence: “Maybe crows can’t speak properly, Ma’am. They just squawk.”

Laughter erupted — bright, cruel, alive.

The teacher frowned, but didn’t say a word. Laxmi forced herself to keep reading, her lips barely moving. Each word felt heavier than the one before.

When she sat down, she found a scrap of paper in her notebook — a crude drawing of a bird with dark eyes and a noose around its neck.

No name. Just that.

She tore it silently into pieces so small even shame couldn’t read them.

The schoolyard

Every recess was a battlefield without blood.

The girls walked in pairs, whispering, glancing, laughing — laughter that always ended when Laxmi passed.

One afternoon, someone tripped her. Her tiffin spilled open — cold sabzi, crushed roti, splattered across the dusty ground.

Everyone laughed again.

Dev bent down beside her, pretending to help, and said under his breath,

“You should thank us. At least people notice you now.”

She didn’t answer. Her hands shook as she picked up the metal box.

Even the food looked ashamed.

Her mother’s voice was the same every evening — sharp, tired, disappointed. “Why do you always look so sad? God has given you everything — food, clothes, education. What else do you want?”

Laxmi wanted to say, I just want to breathe without fear. But she knew the house had no room for that kind of truth.

Her father barely looked up from his newspaper. “Don’t take things so seriously. Life is hard for everyone.”

Sometimes, when her mother scolded her for being “too dull,” she could feel tears pressing against her ribs — but she never let them out. Crying would make the world right about her.

One evening she went to buy notebooks.

On the way, she heard her name.

“Laxmi!”

She turned — Dev again, standing with his friends near the pan shop.

He smirked. “Still drawing birds? You should draw yourself next time — the saddest crow in town.”

The boys laughed.

Someone added, “Maybe that’s why even crows avoid her. Bad omen.”

Her throat burned. The air itself felt sharp.

The shopkeeper looked at her, pity mixed with curiosity.

She dropped the coins on the counter and walked away quickly, clutching the notebooks so tightly they bent.

That night, she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She lifted her hair, examined her face, her dull eyes, the uneven scar on her chin.

She whispered, Is this what they see? Is this all I am?

The mirror said nothing.

A month later, the rumour came. Someone — everyone knew who — said she had written Dev a love letter. They passed a forged note around, loud enough for her to hear the words.

When she walked in, the room went silent. Then the laughter began — slow, rolling, poisonous.

“Don’t be shy, Laxmi.” “Such passion!” “Dev, your crow loves you!”

Her face went hot, her hands cold. The teacher entered, saw the scene, and said sternly, “Stop this nonsense.”

But even that felt like a punishment. Because everyone now believed something had happened.

By the next day, the rumour had reached her mother.

Her mother’s words hit harder than any slap could. “I raised you better than this, Laxmi. Have you no shame?”

Laxmi tried to explain — “I didn’t do anything.” But her mother’s eyes were already full of disbelief.

Sometimes silence isn’t empty. It’s filled with all the things no one believes.

A few weeks later, there was a small fair in town — strings of light, music, the smell of fried sweets. Laxmi went with her cousins.

At the edge of the crowd, she saw Dev again. He walked close enough to whisper, “You should smile more, Crow Girl. Maybe then someone will love you for real.”

Her cousin laughed, not understanding the history between them. Laxmi did.

Something inside her sank so deep she couldn’t feel it anymore.

That night, she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan turning in slow circles. The blades hummed like tired wings.

The town slept early. Dogs barked in the distance. She sat by the wall, her sketchbook on her knees.

The wind tugged at the pages, flipping through every drawing — the tree near her school, the market, the empty road. She drew one last thing: a mirror with cracks running through it. In each fragment, her face looked different — smaller, blurrier, less real.

The first raindrop landed on her sketch. Then another.

She closed the notebook, hugged it to her chest, and whispered, “I’m tired of being the joke.” uh

The sky answered with thunder.

Below, the world kept sleeping — unaware of how a soul can vanish quietly, without sound, without even the dignity of being missed.

Coda:

Days later, the whispers changed tone. Neighbours spoke in hushed voices. Teachers avoided eye contact. Dev stopped laughing so loudly.

The town that once mocked her now spoke her name softly, like a prayer they didn’t mean.

And in that small, dusty lane where Laxmi used to walk every morning, even the crows stopped calling for a while.

Her mother thought she was still asleep. “Lazy girl,” she muttered, banging utensils in the kitchen. When there was no answer, she went to the small room at the back — the one with peeling paint and a single mirror.

The bed was made. The window was open. And on the desk lay her sketchbook — open to a page that seemed to tremble in the light breeze.

It wasn’t a drawing this time. Just words, scrawled unevenly across the paper:

“I tried to stay. I really did.”

Her mother stood there, staring, the spoon in her hand shaking. Somewhere outside, a crow called — harsh, broken — and for the first time, she noticed how alone that sound was.

At school, the teacher marked Laxmi’s name in the attendance register. “Absent,” she said softly.

She looked up at the empty bench — the one near the window, where the light always hit just right on Laxmi’s notebook.

The chalk in her hand slipped and broke in half. No one laughed this time.

Later, when she found out, she sat at her desk long after the last bell, whispering the lesson she’d made Laxmi read that day — each word trembling like it had forgotten how to stand.

Dev

Dev heard it at the tea stall. Someone said it too casually — as if speaking about the weather.

He froze. The sound around him dissolved — the clinking cups, the laughter, the rustle of morning newspapers.

For a long time, he couldn’t move. His fingers still held the half-burnt cigarette, the smoke curling up like a question he couldn’t answer.

That night, he walked to the edge of the school field — the place where he’d once mocked her. The chalk drawing of the crow was long gone, but he could still see it, bright as if it had been carved into his eyelids.

He sat there until the stars blurred. The wind moved through the grass, whispering her name in a voice only guilt could hear.

Grief in small towns is public. Neighbours come with sympathy measured in teaspoons — “Such a good girl,” they say, “Quiet. Never troubled anyone.”

Her mother just nods. Her eyes are dry now — tears have rules too, and hers had already broken them.

At night, she sits by the mirror in Laxmi’s room. The same mirror that once caught her daughter tracing her reflection. Now, it shows her own — older, harsher, haunted.

She touches the cracks on the surface and whispers, “I was supposed to protect you.”

Outside, the wind picks up, and for a fleeting second, it sounds like laughter — small, soft, familiar. Then it fades.

On the terrace, where she used to sit sketching, the rain had washed away her footprints, but one corner of the parapet still bore faint pencil marks — lines, shapes, smudges — like the last heartbeat of someone who wanted to be seen.

The sky that evening turned the colour of old bruises — violet, grey, and gold. And as the crows circled above the banyan tree, their cries cut through the dusk, echoing over the narrow lanes, over the market, over the small-town roofs that had once watched her walk below.

Somewhere, a mother called out her daughter’s name into the wind — and for the briefest moment, it almost sounded like an answer.