Short story - a yellow sari

The Woman in the Yellow Saree- :

The first time I saw her, I was five. She stood at the far end of the street, where the old banyan tree drooped over the cracked pavement. A woman in a bright yellow saree, swaying like she belonged to another world. Her long black hair fell down her back, untouched by the humid wind that made everything else in Mumbai stick together—skin to skin, dust to sweat, past to present.

I tugged at my mother’s hand.

“Who is she?” I asked.

My mother looked around, confused. “Who, beta?”

I pointed.

She wasn’t there anymore.

For years, she remained a fleeting presence. Once at the corner of my school, another time near the railway station when I was fifteen, always distant, always just at the edge of my vision. I told myself she was a trick of the light, a fragment of my imagination.

Until the day she spoke to me.

I was twenty-three, running late for an interview, cursing the monsoon for making taxis disappear when I turned a corner and nearly bumped into her.

She smelled like jasmine and old books.

“You’re ready now,” she said, her voice a song I had never heard but somehow knew.

I froze. “What?”

She smiled. “You’ll see.”

A car honked, the rain picked up, and just like before—she was gone.

That evening, I got a call from a publishing house. My rejected manuscript, the one I had given up on, had found its way into the right hands. A woman had recommended it.

They didn’t remember her name.

But I did.

A woman in a yellow saree, always watching, always waiting.

And for the first time, I wondered if she had ever been a stranger at all.

---

Would you like any tweaks, or do you want something in a different genre? 😊 let me know in the comments ,

#Fiction #ShortStory #Mystery #Supernatural #IndianFolklore #Storytelling #GhostStory #Spiritual #MagicalRealism #WriterLife #VocalCreators #WomenInStories #MythAndMagic #IndieAuthor #Paranormal #Folklore #HauntingTales #MonsoonMagic #MumbaiDiaries