The street belonged to another flag. It announced itself quietly, without hostility, through signboards that curved their letters differently and uniforms that carried their authority with casual ease. Bharati stood at the edge of it, just where the shade from the building thinned and the light sharpened, and watched the children play. Their game required no permission. It made its own rules, revised them mid-movement, forgot them altogether when laughter intervened. Dust rose around their ankles and settled again, indifferent to borders…
To read the full story and 19 other short stories in this series click on the links below:
This story is a part of the book “Lives Between the Dates“, my first printed collection of short stories, bringing together twenty well thought moments from twenty well known lives across twenty Indian cities. These stories do not revisit achievement. They enter the quieter hours around it. The hesitation before action. The doubt behind conviction.
Rooted in real places and shaped by history, this collection gathers the unrecorded moments that define a life more truthfully than any monument.
If you have found something here that stayed with you, some of my other books are now available in print and digital editions. They gather longer journeys, quieter questions, and stories that continue beyond this page.
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 
🙏🙌🏻
Aum Shanti
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I could almost hear the laughter of children when reading this.
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Am glad that my words have such a moving effect on you.
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They really do. You are very expressive my brother
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So wonderful these are available.
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Yes, I am publishing regularly now, 3 of my books have already been published and are available on Kindle and paperback.
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What lingered for me was the idea of a language that does not disappear, but waits. The street may carry another flag, the letters may curve differently, yet something older remains just beneath the surface — patient, attentive, unhurried.
The children feel important here. Their games seem free of permission and border, as if language, at its most alive, resists ownership. Perhaps waiting is not silence at all, but a quiet form of continuity. A presence that does not need to argue in order to endure.
Thank you for letting that restraint speak so gently.
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Dear Livora, Your reading feels like an echo of the very patience the story tries to honour.
I have always been fascinated by the idea that languages do not vanish as easily as we fear. They retreat, they soften, they bend to new scripts and flags, but somewhere beneath the surface they continue to breathe. Waiting, not in defeat, but in quiet continuity.
You noticed the children, and that makes me especially glad. In their games there are no decrees, no permissions, no guarded borders. Language there is instinctive, playful, alive. It belongs to whoever speaks it with innocence. Perhaps that is where endurance truly resides, not in argument, but in unselfconscious use.
Your thought that waiting is not silence but continuity touches the heart of the piece. Restraint is often mistaken for absence. Yet what endures does not always need to announce itself.
Thank you for listening so carefully to that gentle undercurrent. It means more than I can easily say.
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