Station Announcement:
"Attention passengers: the network of longing is now unstable. Please reconnect manually."
The power went out during the call.
Leena had been mid-sentence, explaining to a corporate investor that Offline Minds was never designed for profit — when the lights flickered, died, and the screen went black.
She waited in the dark, laptop still warm under her hands, the spinning wheel of her head echoing the same panic:What if the storm has taken it all?
Outside her Bengaluru apartment, the rain surged like static.Thunder rolled slowly, like trouble continuing its file transfer.
She stood up, moved to the window, and wasn't surprised by the absence of light across the city.Something always looked different in a blackout — buildings shedding posture, neon billboards losing teeth.
In that sudden quiet, she remembered how much of her life she had given to screens.
Her work, her reputation, her contributions — all stored in a realm that went silent the moment power failed.
You built for the disconnected, she thought. But when did you disconnect yourself?
She lit a candle.
The flame reflected off the silver cross her mother had pressed into her palm years ago — the one she wore as a quiet superstition more than faith.
She sat on the floor and opened her notebook — the analog one, the one with coffee stains and illegal thoughts her team would never see.
She wrote:
Everyone wants to go wireless. I forgot to ask if I need grounding.
The words sat there, mocking her.
She closed the book.
A message buzzed on her phone as the network hiccuped back for a moment.
It was from her father.
Monsoon coming heavy. Amma's cough is worse. When will you come?
She stared at the screen long after the signal dropped again.She hadn't been home in nearly three years.
She had always meant to go.
But code had deadlines.And ambitions had long shadows.
And what would she even return to?Old rooms? Moulded memories?A life she thought she had outgrown?
She heard thunder again — closer now.
Something in her chest trembled in reply.
The next morning, the city was broken open.
Traffic lights blinked nonsense.Trees lay like fallen sentinels.Phone towers went down.
At work, servers sputtered even with backup systems.
Her boss stood at the whiteboard, calm as a glacier.
"We'll pivot," he said. "Markets adapt. Our app should aim for coastal logistics now — fisheries, transport, maybe even flood prediction."
She blinked.
"But what about the learning initiative? It's helping—"
"Wonderful for PR. But that's not our growth load," he cut in.
His pen squeaked on the board.
Revenue maps appeared.
Her chest hollowed.
Something inside her finally sank and stayed there.Not code. Not confusion.
Quiet resignation — the kind that doesn't announce itself until it's fully installed.
She heard her own voice answering, "Got it. I'll export the code by evening."
She thought about following that with something dramatic — I quit, maybe, or a poetic outburst.
But nothing felt dramatic anymore.
Instead, she went home early.
She didn't turn the lights on — she didn't need to see much to feel everything.
Without thinking, she opened the email Sara had sent months ago:
Whenever you're ready, the river is.
She wrote a reply:
I think I am.
She clicked send.
The moment felt like a power switch flipping inside her.
Two nights later, she was on the train to Kerala.
She sat by the window, laptop closed, phone in airplane mode.
The train rocked gently, and rain lashed against the glass.Her reflection blurred into the night; she didn't mind how unfamiliar she looked.
She thought about incomplete code repositories, unanswered emails, a presentation she was scheduled to lead the next week.
She felt no regret.
Instead, she thought of the children in Arjun's class reciting lessons through her app.Of Sara's calm voice sending weekly logs from the Houseboat Hospice.Of the necklace of local servers she had helped assemble, one link at a time.
They didn't need her present anymore.
But their voices — those voices she'd spent a year amplifying — had begun calling her back.
Maybe it was their turn to teach her something.
When she reached the coast, it was past midnight.
The roads glistened with rainfall. Wisps of fog curled off the river like smoke signals.Her father's old auto arrived for pickup, headlights blinking tiredly.
He stepped out, thinner than she remembered — but the way he waved felt exactly the same.
"You're back," he said.
"I'm back," she said.
They didn't hug; they didn't need to.
On the ride home, he said softly, "Amma will talk a lot tomorrow. Today, just rest."
She nodded.
And then — softer — "I'm sorry. It's been too long."
He didn't turn around."Not as long as those who never return."
They drove home in silence, stopping once to let a black dog cross the road.
The next morning, she walked toward the school.
She heard them before she saw them — laughter spilling out of open windows, the melody of children mid-argument, the whistle of a chalk piece hitting the floor.
She slowed when she reached the gate.
Arjun stood under the veranda, writing something on a chart.Behind him, Basil — older, thinner, recovering — sat with a notebook opened on his lap.Arun stood in the courtyard teaching a younger boy to pronounce the word "moment."
Leena's chest flooded with unexpected warmth.
Everything she had coded returned to her, translated into sound and breath and human bodies in motion.
She stepped forward.
Her voice went ahead of her, quietly.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," she said.
Six heads turned.
And it was, impossibly —
As though they had been waiting for this moment.
Arjun smiled first.
"No," he said simply. "You've arrived."
The rain began falling again — soft, steady, patient.
She stood among them — not coder, not builder, not outsider.
Just one more junction in a story that refused to finish.
She looked at Basil, who nodded once — a gesture of gratitude that said more than speech.
She saw Sara in the doorway, raising a hand from across the yard.
She saw Arun, beaming, notebook ready.
She saw the others, too — even those not present in body — as if beneath the monsoon, all signals somehow aligned.
And for the first time in months,
She felt connected.
Without wires.
Without metrics.
Just rain, memory, and people who had quietly waited for her to remember where she was needed.