Mihika arrives with guavas and spends an evening talking about work, adulthood, and the shame she feels around becoming ordinary. What begins as casual conversation slowly reveals her fear that stability has replaced significance. She does not want fame or spectacle. She only wants proof that her life will leave some visible shape behind when people remember it later.
------
Mihika brought guavas.
Not in a basket or paper bag. Just four of them in the transparent produce packet from a supermarket downstairs somewhere, the sticker still attached. She placed them beside the stove while I boiled water for tea and said they were softer than they looked.
I washed two and left the others near the sink.
She had already started talking by then. Not about herself yet. About a café near her office that had replaced all its chairs with stools because people were “lingering too long.” She said this while opening the steel container of mathri I kept on the counter.
“You can’t sit properly on stools,” she said. “That’s the whole business model.”
I handed her a plate.
She sat near the window and broke a mathri into exact halves before eating it. Not carefully. Just automatically, like someone who had been eating while working for too many years.
Outside, someone in the building opposite was shaking dust out of a bedsheet.
Mihika watched for a second.
“You know what scares me?” she asked.
I looked up because the sentence arrived too early for the room.
She pointed outside. “Imagine doing the same thing every Thursday for thirty years.”
The kettle started making noise against the lid. I lowered the flame.
“That’s most Thursdays,” I said.
She smiled a little at that, though not because it was funny.
Mihika worked at a branding agency. She had explained her job before, but each explanation sounded slightly different. Sometimes she wrote campaign decks. Sometimes she handled “positioning.” Once she had called herself a narrative consultant and then looked embarrassed immediately after saying it.
Today she said, “Mostly presentations nobody reads fully.”
I poured tea into two cups.
She took hers without thanking me, which I preferred. People who thanked too much usually wanted something from silence later.
“There’s this twenty-three-year-old in my office,” she said. “He speaks like LinkedIn became a person.”
I sat down.
“He uses words like ecosystem without blinking.”
“That sounds tiring.”
“It is. But everybody likes him because he says things confidently. Doesn’t even matter if they mean anything.”
She bit into another piece of mathri.
“Last week he called me ‘reliable.’”
I waited.
“That’s not a compliment at work anymore.”
The room stayed quiet for a few seconds after that. A scooter passed outside, then another. Someone upstairs dragged furniture for no clear reason.
Mihika looked around the kitchen as if checking whether it had changed since the last time she came.
“You still have that same clock.”
“It works.”
“Yeah.”
She drank tea too soon and burned her tongue slightly. I could tell because she paused halfway through swallowing but kept her face neutral.
I nodded once.
Mihika always spoke about articles and people in the same tone. Nothing received more emotional weight than anything else. Restaurant reviews, divorces, election results, someone quitting Instagram. Everything arrived flattened into observation first.
“That guy from your office still there?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“The one who microwaved fish.”
“He left.”
“Good.”
She smiled properly this time.
I cut one of the guavas into slices and pushed the plate between us. She ate immediately, standing halfway out of her chair to sprinkle salt over the pieces because the shaker was closer to me than her.
No hesitation. No symbolic refusal. Just hunger arriving on time.
She told me her mother had started forwarding apartment listings again.
“For you?”
“For me and a hypothetical husband who apparently works in finance.”
“That’s specific.”
“She’s become very practical lately. All the romance is gone now. Earlier she wanted me to marry someone brilliant. Now she just wants covered parking.”
I laughed softly.
Mihika looked pleased for half a second, then distracted again.
“Do you know what’s strange?” she said. “When we were younger, everybody spoke like ordinary lives were temporary.”
I didn’t answer.
She continued anyway.
“Like all of this.” She gestured vaguely at the kitchen, the building outside, the drying clothes visible through another balcony. “This was what happened to other people.”
The tea had become slightly cold. She still drank it.
A child somewhere outside shouted for a ball. Someone shouted back immediately, irritated already.
Mihika looked toward the window again.
“When I was twenty-one, I used to think people with stable routines had given up.”
“And now?”
She shrugged.
“Now I book dentist appointments three weeks in advance.”
I got up to switch off the stove fully though nothing was cooking anymore.
Behind me she said, “I don’t even hate my life, which is the irritating part.”
The sentence sat there longer than she expected it to.
She reached for another guava slice.
Then, abruptly:
I asked if she wanted more tea.
“Maybe later.”
Her voice had shifted slightly by then. Not emotional exactly. Narrower.
Like the room had become smaller while we were sitting in it.
Mihika set her cup down and kept her hand around it for a second even after she had stopped drinking.
“My mother asked me yesterday whether I was still doing the same role,” she said.
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did she want?”
“She wanted the version with a title she could explain to relatives.”
That made me look up.
Mihika gave a small laugh through her nose. “That sounds mean. It is not mean. She just hates sounding vague. She thinks vague means struggling.”
She pulled the guava plate closer and ate the last slice.
“I told her I was fine.”
“You are fine,” I said.
She looked at me as if I had used a word from a different room.
“I know,” she said. “That is the problem.”
The fan was not on. The kitchen felt warmer than the rest of the apartment. A smell of tea leaves stayed in the air, a little sharp. Mihika loosened one sleeve and pushed it to her elbow.
“There was this award in college,” she said after a while. “Not even a big one. A department thing. But they called my name and I remember thinking, for one second, that this is how it starts.”
I waited.
“It did not start.”
I did not answer that.
She looked at the empty tea cup in front of her, then at mine.
“Do you remember Riva?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I put the plate in the sink.
When I turned back, she had taken out her phone and set it face down on the table without checking anything on it. That was unusual enough to notice. Mihika usually kept the phone in her hand the way some people keep a pen.
“I had a school friend call last month,” she said. “Not a close friend. Just one of those people who remembers you because you were useful in chemistry class.” She smiled a little, but the smile did not stay. “She said my life looked calm. She said that like it was a feature.”
“You like calm.”
“I do. That is not the point.”
She said it firmly, then softened straight after, almost embarrassed by the firmness.
“I used to think calm meant I had chosen well,” she said. “Now it just feels like proof that nobody is waiting for anything from me.”
The line came out plainly. No drama in it. That made it worse.
I asked if she had eaten enough, because the conversation was starting to move past the point where food could interrupt it naturally.
She nodded.
“I met one of those old professors at a wedding,” she said. “He asked what I was doing now, and I told him. He nodded like he was being kind. Then he said, ‘And after this?’”
“After what?”
“That was what I wanted to ask him. After this. After the version of life where I keep showing up and that is all there is.”
She rubbed her thumb against the side of the cup. The movement was small and steady.
“I said I was considering a move.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Why did you say that?”
“Because he had already finished asking.”
That was a little funny. Not enough to make either of us laugh.
She went on.
“At school everyone had a category for me. Smart. Promising. Good at speaking. The kind of girl who would ‘do something’.” She made air quotes, badly, with two fingers still resting around the cup. “I heard that phrase for years. Do something. As if the rest of us were furniture.”
The room was quiet except for a pressure cooker hissing somewhere in another flat.
“I think the worst part is,” she said, and stopped.
I looked at her.
She stared past the window, not at anything in particular.
“The worst part is that I did do something. Just not the thing they were talking about.”
The sentence landed and stayed without asking for more.
She picked up her phone, turned it over once, then face down again.
“Last week I opened an old folder on my laptop. Everything in there was from when I still thought my life would announce itself properly.” She gave a small shrug. “Drafts for competitions. Half-finished essays. One folder called ‘important’ that was mostly screenshots.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Nothing.”
“Still there?”
“Yes.”
She said this like it mattered that it was still there.
Then, in a quieter voice, “There’s a strange dignity to having evidence that you once believed in your own future.”
I did not answer because she was not asking for one.
Mihika looked annoyed with herself for saying that last line. She reached for the tea again and found it had gone cold. She drank it anyway.
“You know what nobody tells you?” she said. “Being average is not even the hard part. The hard part is when you can feel yourself getting used to it.”
She kept her eyes on the cup.
“I hate that I know how to do taxes now. I hate that I know which toothpaste is on offer and which one doesn’t make my mouth sting. I hate that I can manage a month without calling anyone and there is nothing dramatic in that. It is all useful. It is all fine.”
“You sound angry,” I said.
She looked at me then, directly.
“I’m not angry.”
But her knee had started moving under the table.
There was a pause after that. Not a long one, just enough for the room to settle around us again.
When she spoke next, it came out more awkwardly, as if she had meant to say something cleaner and had missed it.
“My brother got married last year. Everyone kept saying he was so settled. Settled is such a stupid word.” She shook her head. “He looked settled because he had a wedding photographer and a new sofa. That is all.”
I almost smiled, but stopped because she was not smiling.
“He asked me why I never post pictures of my apartment,” she said. “Can you believe that? My own brother.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because what would I post. The sink. The pile of invoices. My reflection in the microwave door.”
She said microwave door with a flatness that made it sound almost absurd, which may have been the point.
Then she added, “And before you say it, yes, I know that sounds ridiculous.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“I know. I just wanted to say it first.”
She was quiet after that.
The phone on the table lit up once. She did not touch it.
I noticed then that her shoulders had not relaxed once since she arrived. She had been speaking as if the whole visit was happening on a slight incline.
Mihika rubbed both palms against her jeans.
She let out a breath through her nose.
“I used to think the people who were visible had earned it by being louder than me,” she said. “Now I think some of them were just less embarrassed about taking up space.”
That was the first time her voice thinned at the end of a sentence.
Not breaking. Just thinning.
I asked if she wanted more tea.
“Maybe not.”
She stayed where she was.
Outside, someone called a child’s name twice. A door shut hard enough to rattle the frame.
Mihika looked at the guava skin in the sink, then at the untouched second cup on the counter.
“I do not want my life to become one of those lives people describe with the word decent,” she said.
The word came out with more force than the rest.
Then, after a pause, “I mean. I do want it. That is the problem.”
The room had started getting darker without either of us noticing properly.
Not evening yet. Just that hour when the buildings outside lose detail first and then colour.
Mihika stood up finally and walked to the kitchen counter while I rinsed the cups. She opened the fridge, looked inside for no reason, then closed it again.
“You still buy too much coriander,” she said.
“It finishes eventually.”
“That’s a very hopeful way to shop.”
I dried my hands.
She stayed standing.
“There’s a girl in my office,” she said. “Twenty-six maybe. She quit last month to start one of those independent newsletters.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Cities. Culture. Softness. Something with beige graphics.” Mihika leaned against the counter for half a second before straightening again. “Everyone talked about her like she was brave.”
“You don’t think she was?”
“I think people confuse movement with courage.”
The sentence sounded too prepared. She heard it too.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “That sounded like something written under an Instagram reel.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, but that’s exactly the kind of thing I hate. Everybody talks like they’re narrating themselves now.”
She rubbed her forehead once.
“I saw her profile yesterday,” she continued. “She already has interviews lined up. Brand collaborations. People commenting things like proud of youuuu.” The last word stretched strangely in her mouth. “And I sat there thinking, I have spent ten years becoming dependable.”
I opened the lower cabinet looking for another packet of tea though we did not need one yet.
Behind me she said, quieter this time, “Nobody dreams about becoming dependable at nineteen.”
I shut the cabinet.
Mihika looked embarrassed suddenly, like the sentence had exposed more than she intended.
“I know how childish this sounds,” she said.
“You’ve said that three times.”
She frowned a little. “Have I?”
“Yes.”
“That’s irritating.”
Then she laughed once, briefly, and the laugh stayed in the room longer than expected because it was the first uncomplicated sound she had made since arriving.
She sat down again, slower this time.
“When I was younger,” she said, “I thought there would be a moment where adults around me would point at my life and say, yes, that one turned out correctly.”
“Correctly?”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
She tucked one foot under the chair.
“But nobody is watching closely enough for that,” she said. “Everybody is busy maintaining their own little systems.” Her voice softened on the last words. “Rent. Groceries. Parents getting older. Skin care routines. Water filters.”
The list came out unevenly. Water filters did not belong emotionally with the others, which was probably why it stayed.
“I went to a birthday dinner three weeks ago,” she said. “One of those expensive places where all the lighting is designed for people to post stories.” She paused. “Everyone there looked good in a very tired way.”
I sat opposite her again.
“One guy was talking about buying property in Goa. Somebody else was freezing embryos. One woman kept saying she wanted to slow down while checking three apps between sentences.” Mihika looked at the table while speaking. “And I had this horrible thought that maybe this is it. Maybe this is the whole thing. You just keep arranging your life into manageable shapes until your face changes.”
I waited.
She shook her head slightly.
“That sounded dramatic.”
“You keep apologising for sentences before they finish.”
“I know.”
The kitchen light flickered once overhead.
Mihika watched it happen.
“My father still introduces me as ‘creative,’” she said after a while. “Do you know how humiliating that is at thirty-one?”
“Humiliating?”
“Yes.” She almost smiled. “Creative is what people call you when they can’t explain your job but still want relatives to think you had potential.”
Potential.
That word stayed between us for a second.
Mihika noticed it too.
“There it is,” she said softly. “That stupid word.”
She rested both palms flat on the table now, as if trying to keep herself from drifting into something larger.
“When I was twenty-four, I thought thirty would look cinematic,” she said. “I genuinely believed there would be sharper clothes and better conversations and maybe bookshelves that meant something.”
“And now?”
“Now I know which detergent ruins black fabric.”
The line should have been funny.
It wasn’t.
She looked at me carefully then, almost suspiciously.
“Do you ever feel embarrassed by how normal your day was?” she asked.
I did not answer immediately.
She nodded before I could.
“See. That pause. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Outside, rain began suddenly. Not heavy. Just enough for people on scooters to start covering their heads with bags and folders.
Mihika watched through the window.
“I keep thinking there’s still time to become another version of myself,” she said. “But I’ve started noticing how often I say that sentence.”
She pressed her lips together after that.
Then came the rhythm break, abrupt and oddly specific.
“I bought matching containers last month. For lentils.”
I looked at her.
“I know that sounds insane, but I stood in the kitchen labelling things and suddenly I thought, oh my God, this is a woman who owns labels for cumin.”
The sentence collapsed under its own weight halfway through and she laughed once, but her eyes stayed fixed somewhere near the sink.
“I used to think people like that had surrendered,” she said.
“People who label containers?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head.
“The irritating thing is I like the containers. They stack properly. They make mornings easier.”
Rain tapped lightly against the window grill.
Mihika’s voice dropped again.
“I don’t even want a glamorous life,” she said. “That’s what makes this difficult to explain.” She looked frustrated now, not emotional exactly, just cornered by her own wording. “I don’t need interviews or followers or whatever people chase now. I just…” She stopped.
I waited.
She looked at the table for so long I thought she might leave the sentence there unfinished.
Then quietly:
“I just thought there would be some visible consequence to being me.”
Neither of us moved after that.
The pressure cooker somewhere upstairs had stopped. The building sounded flatter without it.
Mihika rubbed at a water ring on the table with her thumb.
“When I was younger, adults kept saying things like you’re going places.” She smiled faintly, but it did not hold. “Nobody tells you the place can just be another apartment with good Wi-Fi.”
The rain outside thickened a little.
She sat there listening to it, shoulders still tight, face calmer than the words coming out of her.
And then, almost too softly:
“I don’t want to be famous.”
A pause.
“I just don’t want to disappear.”
I got up to make fresh tea because the first batch had gone cold enough to taste metallic.
Mihika moved aside automatically when I reached for the kettle. She knew the kitchen well enough now to stop opening the wrong cabinets. The guavas were still near the sink. One had bruised slightly where it rested against the steel bowl.
“You always make too much tea,” she said.
“You always stay longer than planned.”
“That sounds accusing.”
“It wasn’t.”
She leaned one shoulder lightly against the fridge.
“There’s a woman in my building who waters her plants at exactly seven every evening,” she said. “Not around seven. Exactly seven. I know because her balcony is opposite mine.”
I rinsed the tea leaves into the sink.
“She has those ordinary plants people buy after they start saying things like we should host more.” Mihika folded one sleeve higher again. “Money plant. Tulsi. One dying fern.”
“You sound fond of her.”
“I’m not.”
But she smiled faintly before the smile disappeared.
“I think about her constantly,” she admitted. “Not her specifically. Just that life.” She paused. “There’s a husband somewhere inside probably watching cricket with low volume. Maybe a child doing homework badly. Maybe nobody. I don’t know.” Her voice slowed. “And every evening she waters plants like she has accepted the terms of her existence.”
I turned the stove on.
“That bothers you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because lately I cannot tell if I envy her or pity her.”
The kettle clicked softly against the burner.
Mihika looked tired suddenly. Not physically. More like somebody who had been holding one thought upright for too long.
“When did everybody become so good at living?” she asked.
I looked back at her.
“They haven’t.”
“No, but they know how to continue.” Her hands opened briefly in the air and then dropped again. “People buy insurance and renew licenses and remember birthdays and book airport cabs in advance. They move through life like they signed something I never received.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is exhausting.”
She said it too quickly.
Then, after a second, “I keep waiting for adulthood to feel temporary.”
The kettle began to hum softly before boiling.
Mihika watched the steam rise.
“There’s this man at work,” she said. “Forty-two maybe. Nice enough. He heats fish in the office microwave and wears sports shoes with formal trousers.” Her face tightened slightly. “Every Friday he leaves at six sharp to take his daughter to badminton practice.”
I took two cups down from the shelf.
“He sounds fine,” I said.
“He is fine.”
The word came out sharper than before.
“That’s the terrifying part. He’s probably happy. Or close enough to happy that it makes no practical difference.”
I poured the tea.
Mihika stayed standing.
“When I first joined the company, I used to look at people like him and think, I’ll never become that version of an adult.” She laughed once, quietly. “Last month I bought orthopedic slippers.”
I handed her a cup.
She accepted it with both hands because it was too hot.
“I keep having these moments,” she said. “Tiny moments. I’ll be comparing electricity plans or checking if coriander can be frozen and suddenly I feel this…” She stopped and shook her head once. “Not panic exactly. More like embarrassment.”
“For what?”
“For adapting.”
Rainwater had begun dripping from somewhere outside in a steady rhythm.
Mihika sat again, but sideways this time, one leg folded under her.
“You know what nobody admits?” she asked. “A lot of us were raised like we were exceptions.” She looked into the cup while speaking. “Not in arrogant ways. In soft ways. Teachers saying things like you’ll do big things. Parents introducing you differently in front of guests. Relatives expecting stories.”
The tea burned her tongue again. She ignored it.
“And then one day you are thirty-one and somebody from school has become a dentist in Pune with two children and patio furniture.”
“Patio furniture specifically?”
“Yes.” Her expression tightened with irritation at herself. “I don’t know why that upset me so much. She posted photos and everybody commented life goals under them.” Mihika looked at me directly now. “There was a swing chair.”
I laughed despite myself.
“I know,” she said immediately. “I know how petty that sounds.”
“You hate the swing chair?”
“No. I hate that she looked complete.”
That quieted the room again.
Mihika stared out the window for a while before continuing.
“She used to cheat during exams,” she said. “Not even cleverly. She once copied an entire wrong answer from me in chemistry.” Her voice flattened. “And now she has matching outdoor cushions and certainty.”
The rain outside eased slightly.
“I sound horrible tonight.”
“You sound specific.”
“That is not better.”
She smiled a little after saying it.
Then her face shifted again, almost imperceptibly.
“There was this week recently where I realised nobody from my old life asks me ambitious questions anymore.”
I stayed quiet.
“No one says what’s next,” she continued. “They ask practical things now. Whether my landlord increased rent. Whether I’m eating properly. Whether I’ve considered buying instead of renting.” She pressed her thumb hard against the cup handle. “My mother asked me if I wanted an air fryer. That conversation lasted twenty minutes.”
“Did you want one?”
“I bought one.”
“You like it?”
“Yes.”
She looked genuinely irritated by the answer.
The room smelled stronger now because of the fresh tea.
Mihika exhaled slowly through her nose.
“When I was younger, I thought ordinary people had failed secretly,” she said. “I thought they had wanted more and settled because life cornered them.” She rubbed one eyebrow briefly with the heel of her palm. “Now I think some people genuinely want ordinary things. They want clean kitchens and mutual funds and someone waiting at home asking if they ate.”
“That still sounds fine.”
“I know it sounds fine.”
“No,” I said. “I mean it is fine.”
Mihika looked at me for a long moment.
Then she said something socially off enough that the room changed shape around it.
“I don’t trust people who become content too early.”
I did not answer immediately.
She noticed.
“See, that sounds terrible,” she said. “But every time someone my age says they’re happy, I immediately think either you’re lying or you stopped expecting anything from yourself.”
“That’s unfair.”
“I know.”
“You still think it.”
“Yes.”
The honesty in that landed harder than the sentence itself.
She tucked loose hair behind one ear and missed slightly the first time.
“I had dinner with cousins last month,” she said. “One of them kept showing me videos of storage hacks for small apartments.” Her mouth tightened again, almost amused. “Everybody around the table got genuinely interested. Containers under beds. Rotating spice racks. Foldable laundry systems.”
“You hated that.”
“No.” She looked frustrated again. “That’s what I’m trying to explain. I didn’t hate it. I took notes.”
The rain stopped almost completely after that.
Somewhere downstairs, a pressure cooker started again.
Mihika leaned forward now, elbows on knees though she seemed unaware of the posture.
“I think I thought significance would feel louder,” she said. “I thought there would be witnesses. I thought there would be some visible shape to it.” Her voice thinned slightly at the edges again. “But most days I answer emails and decide whether tomatoes are too expensive.”
She laughed once, very softly.
“And then occasionally I look at myself doing all that and feel this horrible grief for someone who technically still exists.”
I stayed where I was.
Mihika stared into her cup.
“When I say this out loud,” she said slowly, “it sounds like I think ordinary lives are beneath me.”
“You don’t?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
The pause stretched longer than either of us expected.
Finally she said, carefully this time, “I think I’m afraid I built my entire personality around becoming somebody later.”
No movement after that.
Just the kitchen light humming faintly overhead and the tea cooling again between us.
Mihika looked at the cup for a while before speaking again.
“So that sounds embarrassing,” she said.
“It sounds like a sentence.”
“It is both.”
I sat down opposite her.
She gave a small nod, as if deciding whether to keep going.
“My mother would hate that sentence,” she said. “She would say it like I had made a personal decision to disappoint her.”
“She says that?”
“Not exactly.” Mihika pressed her lips together. “She says things like, ‘You were always capable of more.’ Which is worse because it sounds polite.”
I said nothing.
She went on, a little faster now.
“My father is easier. He just asks practical questions. Did you eat. Is your building safe. Do you need money. He does not pretend to know what a life should look like.”
“Lucky.”
“Maybe.” She looked at me and then away again. “Though he also once told my cousin that I was the serious one. That was ten years ago and I still think about it.”
“Serious sounds fine.”
“It does if you are not the one wearing it.”
Her voice had that dry edge again, but it was thinning underneath.
I asked, “Do you want to talk to them about this?”
Mihika laughed once, sharp and short.
“No. God, no.”
“Why not?”
“Because what would I even say.” She turned the cup slowly between both hands. “Hi, I feel myself becoming the sort of person who buys dish soap in bulk and knows where all the extension cords are.”
“That does sound like a difficult call.”
“It would be a terrible call.”
We both let that sit.
Then she said, “There was a cousin of mine, older by six years, who used to tell everyone I would not settle for a small life.”
I looked at her.
“She meant it as praise,” Mihika said. “She really did. She would say it in front of me, like she was handing me a medal. And I loved her for it. I still do, probably.” She paused. “But I think I built a whole shelf in my head for that sentence, and now I keep checking whether the shelf is empty.”
The kitchen was nearly dark now. The only light came from the stove clock and the streetlamp outside.
“What would count as not small?” I asked.
She blinked at that.
“You make it sound very simple.”
“It is not simple.”
“No.” She leaned back slightly, then corrected herself and sat forward again. “No, it is not.”
Mihika stared at the tea and spoke to it more than to me.
“A bigger title. A job people can explain. A flat in a better part of the city. Someone who posts pictures of me without looking awkward. Fewer invoices. More certainty.” She raised her eyes. “That sounds ridiculous when I list it out.”
“It sounds practical.”
“No, it sounds like I want to be legible.”
The word stayed there.
I asked, “And you do not think you are?”
She gave me a flat look.
“That is such a generous question that I almost hate it.”
“It was not meant generously.”
That got a brief, real laugh from her.
“Fair enough.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose and then said, “The worst part is that nothing is wrong. That’s what makes me feel insane.”
I did not answer.
She continued anyway.
“I have a salary. I pay my rent. I can choose what I eat. Nobody is shouting at me in my house. If I wanted to be dramatic, I could find a reason. But this is not drama.” She shook her head once. “This is just a feeling that I am slowly turning into somebody I will not recognise in old photos.”
The sentence came out in one piece, but the end was soft enough to almost vanish.
I asked, “Do old photos bother you?”
“Not the photos. The captions people will make for them later.” She frowned slightly. “She looked happy there. She seemed settled there. She had become a person by then. That sort of thing.”
“Do you think those captions are lies?”
“Mostly lazy.”
She took another sip of tea, smaller this time, and winced because it had gone too hot again.
“I keep thinking about all the things I said I would not do,” she said. “Not in some grand way. Just small things. I said I would not become someone who compares grocery prices. I said I would not get excited about storage. I said I would not spend half an hour choosing a bedsheet color.” Her mouth tilted slightly. “And now I do all of it. Very efficiently.”
“That is not a crime.”
“It feels like one.”
I moved the guava skin to one side of the sink.
Mihika watched my hand for a second, then looked back up.
“Do you remember how people used to talk about being discovered?” she asked.
“Like talent scouts.”
“Like anything could happen if the right person noticed you.” She made a face. “What a stupid way to live.”
“You believed it.”
“I did.” She said it flatly, with no defense in it. “And now I keep waiting for the noticing to turn into something. That is the embarrassing part. Even now, I still expect some correction. Some message saying, no, you were meant for a different kind of life.”
The tea steam had nearly gone.
I said, “Maybe that message is not coming.”
She looked at me.
“Obviously.”
The way she said it made me think she had already known that and had not wanted to say it first.
There was another pause. A long one this time.
Then Mihika shifted in her chair and said, “I hate that I sound ungrateful.”
“You do not sound ungrateful.”
“I do.”
“You sound tired.”
She looked at me carefully.
“That is a nicer word for it.”
“It may be the only honest one.”
Mihika’s mouth twitched.
“See, this is why I do not talk like this with friends.” She pointed vaguely toward the window. “They would start saying all the right things. At least you stay boring.”
“That is generous.”
“It is.”
She was smiling a little now, but her eyes stayed fixed somewhere past the counter.
“I had this thought on the auto ride here,” she said. “A very stupid thought.”
“What was it?”
“That if I died tomorrow, people would say she was so capable.”
The room went still in a way that did not feel dramatic. Just exact.
Mihika kept going, because once the sentence was out, it clearly did not matter whether it was pretty.
“They would say it to each other. She was so capable. She handled everything. She never made a fuss. And I know that sounds like a strange thing to be upset about, but I hate the idea of being reduced to someone who coped well.”
“That is not strange.”
“It is a little strange.”
“No.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then looked away.
“I do not want to be praised for disappearing politely.”
No one moved after that.
The street outside had almost emptied. A water tanker passed at the far end of the lane, its engine dragging slightly.
Mihika set the cup down and put both hands flat on the table, not because she needed support, just because they had nowhere else to go.
“I keep wondering whether this feeling is just what people call adulthood when they want to sound respectful,” she said. “Maybe everyone feels smaller. Maybe they just stop mentioning it.”
“That would be very efficient of them.”
She gave a tired smile.
“I know you are trying not to make this bigger than it is.”
“I am not trying anything.”
“Yes, you are.” She nodded once. “That is okay.”
Then, after a beat, she said, “Tell me honestly. Do I sound ridiculous?”
I looked at her. She held still, waiting in a way that was not needy, just plain.
“No,” I said.
She blinked once, as if that answer had not been the one she expected.
“Good,” she said, and stood up. “Because I do not want to be the sort of person who keeps saying things like this and then gets embarrassed when someone listens.”
She reached for her phone from the table, but did not check it.
At the door she paused, one hand on the frame.
“Do you know what is annoying?” she asked.
“What?”
“I could have had a perfectly fine evening without saying any of that.”
I stayed where I was.
She nodded to herself, once, as if that were answer enough, and then looked down the corridor toward the lift without moving toward it yet.
“What do people do,” she asked, “when they notice they have become exactly what they were afraid of?”
I did not answer immediately.
Mihika stayed by the door, waiting without looking at me. Her thumb moved once against the edge of her phone case and then stopped.
Outside in the corridor, someone dragged a bucket across the floor. The sound scraped past the apartment and faded.
“What would you even say to that?” she asked after a few seconds. “Congratulations. You became manageable.”
“You are not exactly manageable.”
“That is because you are seeing me on a strange evening.”
“You think this is temporary?”
She looked back at me then.
“I think most things are.”
The sentence sounded automatic, like something she had been telling herself for a while.
I got up and carried the empty cups to the sink. When I turned around, she was still standing there.
“You can sit,” I said.
“I know.”
But she came back anyway.
This time she did not take the same chair. She sat near the end of the table, angled toward the window.
“For a while after college,” she said, “I genuinely thought someone would come looking for me.”
“Looking for you where?”
“I do not know.” She laughed softly at herself. “That is the humiliating part. I never had specifics. Just this feeling that eventually my real life would begin properly.”
“You say properly a lot.”
“I know.”
She pulled one knee up slightly onto the chair.
“There was always this sense that the current version of life was temporary. Like all the boring bits were waiting rooms.” Her face tightened faintly. “And now the waiting room has my Wi-Fi password and grocery lists.”
I leaned against the counter.
Mihika watched the rainwater slipping down the window grill.
“When did you first notice this?” I asked.
“The shrinking?”
I nodded.
She thought about it properly before answering.
“Not all at once.” Her voice slowed. “It kept happening in tiny embarrassing moments.” She counted them off absently against the table with one finger. “Renewing health insurance. Knowing which pharmacy gives discounts. Being relieved when plans get cancelled because I am tired.” She paused. “One day I heard myself recommending a good mattress to someone younger than me and I almost stopped mid-sentence.”
“That sounds severe.”
“It was severe.” She looked at me with a tired smile. “I sounded like an aunt.”
“You are somebody’s aunt probably.”
“That is not helping.”
I smiled a little.
Mihika looked away before the smile could settle into comfort.
“My manager said something strange last month,” she said. “He told me I have become stabilising for the team.”
“That sounds complimentary.”
“Yes, exactly.” Her expression flattened again. “That is the issue.”
She exhaled through her nose.
“When people stop describing you as exciting and start describing you as stabilising, something has already happened.”
The room went quiet.
I asked, “Would you rather be unstable?”
“No.” The answer came quickly. “No, obviously not.” She rubbed at her forehead once. “I just did not think stability would feel this close to invisibility.”
A bike accelerated loudly outside and then faded down the lane.
Mihika’s voice softened again.
“When I was younger, adults used to ask what I wanted to become.” She looked down at her hands. “Now they ask whether I am sleeping enough.”
“That sounds normal.”
“Yes.” She gave a short laugh without amusement. “Everything I am saying tonight sounds normal. That is why it is difficult.”
She sat quietly for a few moments after that.
Then she said, almost conversationally, “I met an old classmate recently. We were never close, but she used to cry before math exams and borrow my notes.” Mihika tilted her head slightly. “Now she runs workshops about intentional living.”
I waited.
“She kept saying things like slow mornings and reclaiming softness.” Mihika pressed her lips together. “And people were listening to her like she had discovered fire.”
“What bothered you?”
“I used to think I would be the person people listened to.”
The honesty of it arrived without decoration.
No apology after it. No joke.
Just the sentence.
I stayed quiet.
Mihika nodded once to herself.
“There,” she said softly. “That is probably the ugliest version.”
“It is not ugly.”
“It is a little ugly.”
“No.”
She looked unconvinced.
“I do not even mean famous,” she said. “That is what people always assume. I do not want followers. I do not want strangers recognising me in cafés.” She paused. “I just wanted some shape around my life that made it feel particular.”
“You think you do not have that?”
“I think most people are replaceable faster than they expect.”
The sentence sat heavily in the room because she did not say it bitterly. She said it like weather information.
I asked, “Do you feel replaceable?”
She looked at me directly for the first time in several minutes.
“At work?” she asked. “Completely.”
“And outside work?”
That took longer.
Mihika leaned back slightly, caught herself doing it, then straightened again.
“I do not know,” she said quietly. “That is maybe worse.”
The corridor light outside switched off automatically with a click. A few seconds later it switched on again when someone walked past.
Mihika followed the sound with her eyes.
“My mother sent me photos of pressure cookers yesterday,” she said suddenly.
I waited.
“She said there was a sale.” Her mouth twitched once. “Three years ago she used to send me writing fellowships.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
Then she added, “I think she adjusted before I did.”
The sentence seemed to surprise her while she was saying it.
I asked, “Adjusted to what?”
She looked down at the table.
“To me.”
That stayed between us longer than most things had that evening.
Mihika pressed her palms together once and then apart again.
“She is not cruel,” she said quickly. “I do not want it to sound like that.”
“It doesn’t.”
“She still believes in me, I think.” Mihika frowned slightly. “Just in a smaller way now.”
I walked to the stove and switched off the kitchen light because it had started buzzing faintly.
The room dimmed. Streetlight came in through the window instead.
Mihika sat very still in the softer light.
“When I was a child,” she said, “grown-ups used to lower their voices around talented children. Have you noticed that?” She did not wait for an answer. “Like they were handling something fragile and important.” A pause. “Nobody lowers their voice around adults who answer emails on time.”
I leaned against the counter again.
“You answer emails on time?”
“Almost immediately,” she said, disgusted with herself.
That made me laugh quietly.
She smiled too, but it faded quickly.
“I know this sounds self-absorbed,” she said. “Trust me, I know.” Her fingers tightened briefly around the phone in her lap. “But sometimes I look around and think everybody else accepted being ordinary much earlier than I did.”
“Maybe they did not.”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “Some of them definitely did.”
A silence followed that.
Not awkward. Just tired.
Then Mihika said, very softly, almost to herself, “I thought there would be witnesses.”
I did not ask what she meant.
Maybe because I already knew.
She looked toward the window again.
Across the lane, the woman with the plants had come out onto her balcony. She watered each pot carefully, moving from one to the next without hurry.
Mihika watched her for a long time.
Then she said, without taking her eyes off the balcony, “What if she is happier than I am?”
I did not answer.
Mihika nodded once after the silence, like the silence itself had confirmed something unpleasant.
After a while she stood up again.
This time she picked up the remaining guavas from beside the sink and held them awkwardly against her arm before putting two back down.
“You keep these,” she said.
I said okay.
She looked around the kitchen once, not emotionally, just thoroughly, as if checking the room would stay where she left it.
At the door she stopped again.
“You know the worst part?” she asked.
I waited.
“I can already feel myself getting better at this.”
She left before I could say anything.
The lift took a long time to come up. I could hear it stopping on other floors first.
By the time the building went quiet again, the tea leaves in the sink had stained the water brown.
The lift doors opened and shut somewhere below, then opened again. The sound carried up the shaft in a dull, patient way.
Mihika did not turn back.
When she finally did, she had one hand on the doorframe and the other around the guava packet.
“I should go before my bus gets stupid,” she said.
“Take the cab.”
“I will get there faster than my guilt either way.”
That was a small joke, but it landed with a tired face behind it.
I stepped aside so she could leave cleanly if she wanted to.
She did not move.
“There is something I have not said properly,” she said.
I waited.
She looked at the packet in her hand and then at me.
“I am not afraid of a small life,” she said. “That is what I kept telling myself, and it was not true.” Her mouth tightened once. “I am afraid of being told, quietly and by everyone, that this was the size of me.”
The corridor light from outside was weak now. It made her face look more exact than before.
I did not answer.
She nodded, as if that was fine.
“People think the fear is about missing success,” she said. “It is not. Success is just the obvious thing to say. The real fear is that you will wake up one day and there will be no wrong thing left to blame.” She looked away for a moment. “No bad break, no cruel boss, no impossible city. Just you, and the life you kept.”
The sentence stayed in the doorway.
I took the guava packet from her because she had started gripping it too hard.
She let me.
For a second her hand stayed suspended there, empty, before she put it into her pocket.
“I used to think ordinary meant invisible,” she said. “Now I think it means knowable.”
“Is that worse?”
She gave a short laugh that did not quite become one.
“For me, yes.”
A floor below, someone shouted for their child to hurry up.
Mihika tilted her head toward the sound and then back to me.
“You know what is ridiculous,” she said. “I spent half my twenties trying to become interesting enough that nobody could reduce me. And now I think I would settle for being difficult to explain.”
“That is not ridiculous.”
“It is a little ridiculous.”
“No.”
She smiled, but her eyes had gone flat again, not empty, just tired of being bright.
“I keep having these moments,” she said. “I’ll be washing a spoon or checking a work file or standing in line at a pharmacy, and I will feel this sudden shame, like I have been caught living a life that no one will be impressed by.” She pulled the word out slowly. “Impressed. That is such an ugly standard, and still I keep using it.”
I said, “You do not need to be impressive.”
She looked at me with a kind of polite disbelief.
“Of course I do not need to be,” she said. “That is not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. For once, the sentence did not arrive quickly enough to save her.
When she spoke, it came out lower.
“I am saying I do not know how to stop wanting it.”
The corridor stayed quiet after that.
Someone on the floor below slammed a gate. The lift bell rang once, then nothing.
Mihika laughed softly under her breath, almost at herself.
“I sound vain.”
“You sound honest.”
She gave me a look that was nearly annoyed.
“That is a very dangerous thing to say to someone like me.”
“Why?”
“Because then I might keep talking.”
I did not answer that.
She shifted the guavas to her other arm and looked at the floor for a moment before speaking again.
“My cousin has two children,” she said. “She sends me videos of them singing in the car and I feel bad because they are sweet and I do not care as much as I am supposed to.” She frowned at the confession. “Not because I dislike them. I don’t. I just keep thinking that she has become somebody that the world can point to and say, yes, that is a life.”
“And you do not think that about your life.”
“No.” She said it immediately, then more quietly, “Not at the moment.”
“That can change.”
She looked up at me.
“Can it?”
The question was not sharp. That made it harder.
I could hear the kitchen clock behind us. It had started making that tiny clicking sound it did whenever the batteries were low.
Mihika noticed it too and smiled once, without joy.
“Even the clock sounds disappointed.”
“It needs batteries.”
“So do I,” she said, then stopped because the line had arrived too close to being neat.
We both sat with that for a second.
Then she said, “My father called last Sunday and asked whether I had thought about visiting relatives during Diwali. I told him maybe.”
“Would you go?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to?”
She shrugged with one shoulder.
“I want to be the kind of person who can say no without feeling like I have failed a test.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It is.”
A silence again.
Then, because she was not done and did not want to be, she said, “There was a girl in my class who used to get praised for being normal. I remember that because it sounded impossible. Everyone said she was so well adjusted.” Mihika’s mouth twisted slightly. “I used to think that was the saddest compliment in the world.”
“What do you think now?”
She looked straight at me.
“I think maybe she was lucky.”
That stayed there, plain and uncomfortable.
Her phone buzzed once in her pocket. She did not take it out.
Another buzz followed, then another.
She ignored all three.
“You should check that,” I said.
“I know.”
“Could be work.”
“I know.”
But she still did not move.
The buzzing stopped, and the room became smaller again.
Mihika pressed the heel of her hand into her eye for a moment, then dropped it.
“I am very tired of being myself in this particular way,” she said.
The sentence came out so simply that it almost sounded casual.
I said nothing.
She looked around the apartment, not searching, just taking in the same objects she had been taking in all evening: the kettle, the guava skins, the tea stain on the sink, the window with the rain marks drying into lines.
“Do you think,” she asked, and then hesitated, which was unusual enough to notice, “do you think people can tell when someone has started to go smaller?”
I waited.
She gave a short, embarrassed breath.
“Never mind.”
“No,” I said. “Say it.”
She looked at me as if deciding whether I had earned it.
Then, very quietly, “Do you think other people can see when you are becoming ordinary before you can?”
The lift bell rang from somewhere below again, and the sound took a while to vanish.
I looked at her. She held still, but only just.
“No one says it out loud,” I said.
Mihika nodded once, almost gratefully, though not enough to be called gratitude.
“That is not what I asked.”
I did not answer.
She took the guavas more firmly under her arm and opened the door.
This time she stepped into the corridor.
Then she stopped and turned back once more, one hand already on the lift button.
“I think I know what the answer is,” she said.
I stayed where I was.
She waited a beat, then shook her head as if dismissing her own thought.
“Actually, no. Forget it.”
The lift doors down the corridor started opening.
Mihika looked toward them, then back at me one last time.
“Do you ever get used to the idea that nobody is coming to mark your life for you?”
I did not answer.
The doors stayed open downstairs for a second too long, then began to close. Mihika stood in the corridor with the guavas tucked under her arm and watched the numbers above the lift change.
Mihika pressed the lift button again even though it was already lit.
The doors opened on the wrong floor first. Someone stepped out carrying grocery bags, looked at her briefly, then walked past without interest.
She moved aside to let them through.
When the corridor emptied again, she said, “That felt symbolic in a very irritating way.”
I almost smiled.
“See,” she said quietly. “Even now I’m still trying to make things feel meaningful.”
The lift began moving upward again.
Mihika watched the numbers.
“I had this teacher once,” she said. “Class eleven maybe. She told my parents I had presence.” Her expression changed slightly around the word. “Not talent. Presence. I remember because I went home and wrote it down.”
The lift stopped one floor below.
“She probably forgot saying it by dinner,” Mihika continued. “Meanwhile I built a whole future around it.”
The doors opened downstairs.
A child’s voice drifted up the shaft. Someone laughed. Metal gates scraped.
Mihika looked tired in a very ordinary way now. Less sharp. More human.
“I don’t even know if I wanted a remarkable life,” she said. “I think I just wanted evidence that I had not imagined myself.”
I stayed quiet.
The lift started coming up again.
Mihika rubbed at a faint tea stain near her sleeve without looking at it properly.
“When people describe someone as ordinary,” she said slowly, “they always say it kindly after a certain age.” She looked toward the open lift doors arriving at our floor. “Like they’re helping the person not notice.”
The lift stopped with a soft jolt.
She stood there another second without entering.
Then she asked, almost conversationally, “What if this is the version of my life that survives?”
I did not answer.
Someone below shouted for the lift impatiently.
Mihika nodded once to herself, stepped inside, and pressed the ground floor button.
The doors started closing.
Just before they met, she said, “I still think something is supposed to happen.”
Then the doors shut.
I stood in the corridor a little longer because the apartment behind me had gone warm from the closed windows.
Downstairs, the lift opened again. I could hear voices for a moment, then traffic from the street outside.
When I went back into the kitchen, one of the guavas she had left behind had split slightly near the stem.
I put it in the fridge before it spoiled.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is Spill the Tea about?
Spill the Tea is a literary fiction series built around intimate conversations in ordinary spaces. The stories focus less on dramatic events and more on emotional imbalances people carry quietly through daily life.
2. Why do the stories avoid clear endings?
The series is designed to stay unresolved because many emotional realities do not conclude neatly. The discomfort lingering after the conversation is often the actual event of the story.
3. Why is food always present in these stories?
Food exists as part of normal domestic life in Spill the Tea. It is not treated as metaphor, reward, punishment, or emotional shorthand. People eat because people eat.
4. Are the narrators meant to represent the author?
No. The narrators function more as containers than interpreters. They observe, respond minimally, and allow the visitor’s contradictions to remain visible without correcting them.
5. Why are the conversations so restrained?
Because restraint changes how discomfort behaves on the page. When characters avoid speeches and emotional performance, smaller details begin carrying more weight.
About Spill the Tea
Spill the Tea is an ongoing literary fiction series set in kitchens, balconies, tea tables, rented apartments, and ordinary rooms where conversations last longer than people expect. Each story explores one emotional imbalance through quiet dialogue, domestic detail, and unresolved endings. The series follows contemporary emotional life without turning pain into a lesson.
About the Author
Tushar Mangl writes literary fiction, essays, and emotionally observant narratives about modern relationships, identity, and urban life. His work often focuses on what people avoid saying directly, even when they have already said everything else.
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