Padmavathi, a 22-year-old aspiring writer with quiet eyes and a restless heart, stepped off the bus into the soft chaos of Mysore, her suitcase in one hand and a worn-out shoulder bag slung across the other.
She had come to the city with a purpose — to study literature at the University of Mysore — but deep down, she carried far more uncertainty than ambition. Known affectionately by a few close friends as "Prema Padmavathi," a nickname that had stuck after one of her short stories, a wistful tale about young love and longing, was published in a local magazine during her college days, she often felt like a fraud wearing the name of a writer she hadn't yet grown into.
The PG accommodation she found was modest and dimly lit, tucked away on a quiet lane shaded by gulmohar trees that bloomed crimson in the August heat. The rent was low, the room small, with a creaky ceiling fan and a narrow bed pushed against a cracked wall. Yet something about the stillness of it felt right — or at least, not entirely wrong. It was the kind of space where she could disappear, observe, listen.
Uncertainty hung over her like the monsoon clouds gathering above the Chamundi Hills. She was unsure of herself — her voice, her choices, her very place in the world. Her writing, once her refuge, now felt distant and foreign. The words that used to come so easily now clung stubbornly to the edges of her thoughts, refusing to form. Even her decision to pursue literature felt shaky, more a retreat than a bold move forward.
But despite the quiet panic that pulsed beneath her calm exterior, Padmavathi began keeping a notebook. At first, it was just a few scribbled lines — phrases, overheard dialogues, snippets of dreams. She would sit by the window in the evenings, watching the streetlights flicker on as the city around her stirred into a different rhythm. There was something about Mysore — something ancient and modern, structured and chaotic — that stirred a strange energy within her. The temple bells at dawn, the sudden bursts of traffic, the scent of filter coffee, the mosaic of languages, colors, and movement — all of it began to work on her like quiet magic.
The city didn't give her answers, but it gave her questions worth chasing. And for the first time in weeks, she found herself wanting to write — not because she had to, but because she needed to.