The song that left

Chapter One

The Night the Gandharva Left

The wind that night did not move like wind.

It trembled.

It carried the faint scent of wild jasmine though no jasmine bloomed near the hostel balcony. The sky above Kochi was pale silver, moonlight drowning the city noise. Anjali stood still, her fingers cold around the rusted railing.

And he was fading.

Madhava.

A Gandharva — celestial musician of the higher realms, born of sound and sky, woven from fragrance and vibration. His form shimmered like a reflection disturbed by water. His eyes held the depth of monsoon clouds.

“You must not call me again tonight,” he said softly.

His voice was not heard by ears. It was felt — like a note of a veena trembling inside her ribs.

Anjali’s lips were still moving.

“Om… madhavaya gandharvaya swaha…”

The mantra had risen from somewhere ancient inside her. She did not know how she remembered it. She only knew that when she chanted it, the air thickened, and he came.

He always came.

But tonight—

“I have to go,” he whispered.

The city lights flickered. The air turned unbearably still.

“You said you would never leave,” she said, but the words broke before they reached him.

His hand almost touched her cheek. Almost.

“You are human, Anjali.”

“And you are not,” she answered, her voice shaking.

A faint smile touched his luminous face. “That is the beginning of every sorrow.”

The sky darkened though the moon remained. A wind passed through her — not around her — through her.

And then he was gone.

No fragrance.

No trembling note.

No warmth at her shoulder.

Nothing.

Anjali did not cry.

She simply stood there, numb. As if someone had removed a sound she had heard all her life without knowing it was there.

Three days passed.

She attended classes at Maharaja’s College in Kochi, studying English literature — Milton, metaphysical poets, myths hidden in metaphors. Her classmates discussed modern novels, job placements, exams.

She heard none of it.

Every page she read seemed empty.

Every night she whispered the mantra.

Nothing.

No fragrance.

No shimmer.

No Madhava.

The absence felt louder than his presence ever had.

But this was not where the story began.

It began long before she knew his name.

Flashback – The Child Who Listened to the Sky

Anjali was not like other children.

Her mother often said it with worry; her father said it with quiet pride.

She was born on a dawn when the temple bells rang longer than usual. The priest later told her parents that the vibration lingered unusually sweet that morning.

As a child, she would sit near the small pooja shelf in their house, staring not at the idols, but at the space between them.

“Amma,” she once asked at age six, “who sings when nobody is singing?”

Her mother laughed. “What kind of question is that?”

But Anjali was serious.

She heard things.

Not sounds exactly — but hums. Gentle currents in the air. As if someone invisible practiced music in another dimension.

She preferred old Sanskrit hymns to nursery rhymes. She memorized verses without being taught. She would hum ragas she had never learned.

Her elder brother teased her. “You act like some rishi reborn.”

She did not mind.

At eight, she found a book in her grandfather’s wooden trunk. It was an old compilation of mantras, yellowed and fragile. Among descriptions of devas and celestial beings, she first read the word:

Gandharva.

Celestial musicians. Guardians of fragrance. Masters of subtle sound. Beings who move between realms unseen.

Her chest tightened when she read it.

As if she remembered.

From that day onward, she read every myth she could find — the epics, Puranic stories, tales of unseen beings. She was not fascinated like other children fascinated by fairy tales.

She felt recognition.

Sometimes, while studying, she would feel someone standing behind her.

Not frightening.

Protective.

When she fell sick at age twelve, burning with fever, she remembered seeing a shadow beside her bed — not dark, not light, but shimmering.

She thought it was a dream.

But the fragrance of wild jasmine filled the room though the windows were shut.

Her mother thought it was imagination.

Anjali did not argue.

She began chanting small verses she found in the old book. Softly. Secretly.

And sometimes the air would thicken.

Sometimes her skin would feel brushed by wind that wasn’t there.

Present Again – The Girl Who Knows What She Lost

Now she is twenty-one.

Studying literature.

Quoting myths in classroom discussions.

Arguing about symbolism in ancient poetry.

But inside, she is not analyzing myth.

She is living one.

Because she knows he was real.

Madhava.

He had first appeared fully when she was seventeen. After she accidentally completed a half-forgotten mantra from that childhood book.

The world had gone silent that evening.

The air had rippled.

And he had stepped out of vibration into form.

Not human.

But beautiful in a way that hurt.

He told her little at first. Only that he had been near her since birth.

That she had always heard him.

That Gandharvas are bound by resonance — they are drawn to certain souls whose inner sound matches theirs.

“You were listening long before you were born,” he once told her.

“And you?” she had asked.

“I was waiting.”

But now he is gone.

And Anjali sits in the college library pretending to read John Donne while her heart feels hollow.

Her friend Meera asks, “Why do you look so lost these days?”

Anjali almost says:

Because a celestial being who has followed me since birth vanished three nights ago.

Instead she says, “Just tired.”

That night she chants again.

Longer.

Desperately.

“Om madhavaya gandharvaya swaha…”

The air trembles.

Just slightly.

For a moment — just a flicker — she feels warmth behind her shoulder.

Then silence again.

She closes her eyes.

And in the numbness, she realizes something terrifying:

If he does not return, she will still hear him.

Because he has always been there.

Even when unseen.

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