Whispers of Feelings (অনুভূতি)

In the sleepy, red-dust town of Santiniketan, where poetry lived in the trees and time moved to the rhythm of Tagore’s verses, lived a quiet girl named Meera. She wasn’t loud, nor particularly extraordinary to anyone who passed her by. But to those who noticed, Meera had a world inside her—soft, quiet, full of unspoken colors.

She lived with her grandmother, whom she lovingly called Dida, in an old house where the walls had stories to tell. Books lined the shelves like old friends, and the scent of incense clung to the air like memory. Since her parents’ accident, Dida had been her anchor. Dida used to say, “Feelings are like the wind, Meera. You can’t see them, but you always feel them.”

Every morning, Meera walked past singing bauls, sleepy tea stalls, and curious children to reach the art school where she taught painting. Her students adored her—not for what she said, but for how she made them feel. To Meera, art wasn’t about showing off; it was a way of feeling everything she couldn't say out loud.

Then, one Monday afternoon, a man named Arjun showed up.

Arjun wasn’t from there. A writer from Kolkata, he had come to finish a novel he no longer believed in. Burnt out, distracted, and quietly miserable, he rented the house next to Meera’s hoping to find some kind of peace.

Their first meeting was almost awkward. He had knocked on her door looking for the nearest grocery. Meera, paint on her fingers and a faint frown on her brow, simply pointed without saying a word. Her eyes though—those spoke plenty.

Over the next few days, Arjun kept noticing her. Sitting by the window, painting like the world wasn’t watching. Playing Rabindra Sangeet softly in the evenings. Sometimes smiling to herself as if remembering something only she knew.

Something about her silence felt familiar. Comfortable.

One evening, on a whim he couldn’t explain, Arjun left a handwritten note under her door:

“Your paintings say more than most people I know. Would love to see more, if you don’t mind.”

He expected nothing.

But the next morning, he found a reply slipped under his door. A hibiscus flower, and a note that read:

“Not all feelings need to be spoken. Some are meant to be felt.”

That was how it began.

They didn’t text. Didn’t exchange numbers. Just little notes, poems, and sketches. A paper conversation, unfolding in ink and silence.

One day he sent her a small poem about loneliness. She replied with a painting of a boy in the rain, holding a paper boat. Another day she drew a sky with birds flying toward the sun, in response to something he’d written about hope.

He started writing again. Really writing. Not just the novel, but letters—to her, to himself, to the world he thought he’d lost.

Weeks passed. Then one rainy afternoon, he saw her standing in the garden, soaked and crying. He rushed out, unsure of what to say.

She looked at him with quiet eyes.

“Dida’s gone,” she said, barely audible. “She went in her sleep.”

He didn’t speak. He just stood beside her in the rain, both of them letting the silence hold them like a blanket.

That night, she told him stories of her Dida. About how she believed emotions were rivers. "Let them flow," Dida used to say. "Don’t bottle them up."

Arjun stayed. Not just for the funeral, but after. He watered her plants, cooked simple food, made her tea, even though he barely knew how. And Meera let him in, piece by piece.

One morning, he handed her the first copy of his finished novel. The dedication page read:

“To the girl who taught me that silence is a language too.”

She looked up at him, her eyes full of something soft and deep.

Later that evening, he asked, gently, “What do you feel for me, Meera?”

She didn’t speak right away. Instead, she led him to her studio.

There, on an easel, was a painting. Two figures under a tree—one reading, the other painting. Above them, a sky swirling with colors and scattered words. Not holding hands. Just... being.

“This,” she said simply. “I feel this.”

It was the first time he touched her hand. She didn’t let go.

They never rushed love. It grew the way poetry does—slow, quiet, certain.

On the first anniversary of their meeting, Meera gave him a canvas with a single word written in bold, vibrant strokes.

Feelings “অনুভূতি”

Below it, two hearts floated side by side. Free. Unbound. Together.

He hung it above his desk, where the light hit just right every morning. And each day, as Meera painted in her corner and Arjun wrote in his, they shared a love that needed no words.

It simply... was.