The room held the heat as if it were a duty. Walls breathed dampness back into the air, and the floor retained the day’s warmth despite the hour’s attempt at mercy. Outside, Guwahati moved carefully along the river’s edge, its houses listening more than speaking. The Brahmaputra was close enough to be felt even when unheard, its presence pressing against the city like a held opinion. Inside, illness rearranged time. It slowed it, thickened it, made each moment insist on being counted…
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 
You did a good job of making the atmosphere come to life. I was about to say that the room itself felt sick. When you mentioned the illness at the end. And that heat just makes it worse.
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Dear MM, that is a perceptive reaction. I wanted the room to carry the illness before it was ever named. Sometimes a space absorbs the condition of the person within it. The air grows heavy, the heat refuses to move, the light feels tired. By the time the sickness is mentioned, the room has already whispered it.
Heat has a way of intensifying everything. It presses on the body, slows the mind, and makes the silence thicker. In that atmosphere the river outside becomes almost the only thing still breathing freely.
I am glad the setting spoke to you so strongly. When a room begins to feel unwell before the character admits it, the story has started to breathe on its own.
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Indeed, you wrote this well. It actually reminded me of a nasty cold I had as a child. I actually vomited pure phlegm one night. That room you described recalled the memory. And Florida is always hot no matter what so that made it worse 🤣
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If my story brought back a childhood memory of yours, then its so special for me to have been able to write something which touches someone so deeply. Good that it was just a cold and not something very severe.
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No, it was just a cold. Children don’t have super strong immune systems. But yes it felt just like that. The description was spot on. I commend you on that.
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🙏👍
Aum Shanti
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Thank you so much… 🙏
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