The village is called Deuldanga.
People here don't laugh much—but they remember everything.
There is a river beside the village.
It doesn't just break houses.
It brings back words—
the ones people bury deep inside themselves.
At the very edge of Deuldanga lives a man named Niranjan Pal.
He looks ordinary.
Medium height, greying hair, calm eyes.
Nothing about him seems important—
yet there is no one in the village who hasn't stood at his door at least once.
Because Niranjan writes letters.
For mothers whose sons work in distant cities.
For wives whose husbands left and never truly returned.
For people whose voices broke long ago.
They tell him what to write.
And Niranjan writes—
but never exactly what they say.
He writes what they cannot say.
One day, an old woman named Shashibala Devi came to him.
Her hands trembled as she spoke.
"Write to my son," she said.
"Tell him I'm doing fine."
Niranjan pulled the paper closer and wrote:
"Mother is not fine.
Her body works, but every evening she sits in the courtyard, listening—
hoping to hear your footsteps."
Shashibala read the letter and cried.
But she didn't ask him to change a single word.
Because it wasn't a lie.
That is why people in Deuldanga fear Niranjan.
They say:
"He isn't a man.
He's a mirror.
And mirrors show what we try to hide."
In the corner of Niranjan's house sits an old iron trunk.
He doesn't keep money in it.
He doesn't keep valuables.
He keeps letters.
Every letter is addressed to one person—
himself.
On every new-moon night, Niranjan writes himself a letter.
He writes:
"I heard Kamala's footsteps again tonight."
"The river called my name."
"I am still waiting."
Kamala was his wife.
She spoke little.
Her silence was deep—like the river itself.
One monsoon night, Kamala stepped into the river
and never came back.
The village said,
"It was fate."
Niranjan knew better.
Kamala didn't die.
She simply ran out of words.
After that night, Niranjan began hearing the things people never spoke aloud—
as if the river whispered them into his ears.
There was a girl in the village then—Madhabi Pal.
Young.
Eyes full of fear, spine unbent.
She came to Niranjan to study.
One day she asked him quietly,
"Uncle, don't you ever feel afraid?"
Niranjan thought for a moment and replied,
"I feel fear only when I hide my words.
When I write them down, fear goes silent."
One new-moon night, the post office bell rang.
The post office was closed.
The next morning, letters were found outside the door.
People froze when they read the names.
All the recipients were dead.
Inside the letters were confessions—
regrets, love, sins—
things the dead had never told anyone while alive.
Madhabi looked at the handwriting and whispered,
"These are Uncle Niranjan's letters."
The village erupted.
Then the flood came.
The river broke its banks.
Houses collapsed.
Memories floated.
The last time anyone saw Niranjan,
he was standing at the riverbank.
He said only one thing:
"What was buried… the river will return."
The next morning, Niranjan was gone.
When the floodwaters receded,
the iron trunk was found in the middle of a field.
Inside were letters.
One for every person in the village.
People read them and wept—
because the letters held their truths:
their shame,
their love,
their buried selves.
The final letter was for Madhabi.
It read:
"Write.
Even if no one listens, write.
Those whose words are buried under the soil—
writing is how they breathe."
Even now, on new-moon nights in Deuldanga,
people say they hear the sound of paper by the river.
They say Niranjan Pal did not die.
He became
the village's unspoken truth.