The email arrived on a muggy Thursday afternoon, just as Padmavathi was about to close her laptop.
She read it three times before she allowed herself to believe it: her short story — the one she had written in the wake of Neha's disappearance, unpolished and painful — had been shortlisted for the National Young Writers Award. It wasn't the kind of news she knew how to receive. She didn't scream or call anyone. She just sat there, blinking at the screen, her fingers hovering uncertainly above the keyboard, as if the words might vanish the moment she moved.
A month later, she found herself in Delhi, the farthest she'd ever been from Mysore, standing under the white lights of a glossy conference center. Her name was printed on a badge that hung around her neck, small and trembling like the rest of her. The award event wasn't a quiet gathering of bookish types, as she'd half-hoped — it was loud, brilliant, intimidating. Flashbulbs popped. Voices bounced off the marble walls. The other writers — most of them in their early twenties, some younger — were everything she wasn't: articulate, stylish, sure of themselves.
They talked about residencies in Berlin and fellowships in Iowa. They quoted obscure theorists, debated literary movements, pitched ideas for novels over coffee. Padmavathi hovered near the periphery, sipping slowly, feeling like a cardboard cutout someone had mistakenly brought to life and placed in the room.
She smiled politely, nodded often, and kept her story to herself.
That evening, the shortlisted authors were invited on stage, one by one, to speak briefly about their work. Padmavathi sat in the green room, clutching a folded sheet of paper she didn't intend to read. Her heartbeat was a drum in her ears. When her name was called, she stepped into the light with the same uncertain grace with which she had first stepped into Mysore — overwhelmed but still walking.
The microphone stood taller than her confidence. For a moment, she simply stared at the audience. Rows of faces — curious, expectant, indifferent.
She didn't read the excerpt she'd prepared.
Instead, she took a breath and spoke — her voice soft, almost apologetic.
"I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer," she began. "I didn't even know I could be one. The first time I wrote something real — something that wasn't for school or grades — it was because I was lonely."
The room quieted.
"I was seventeen, sitting on a balcony while it rained. I had just moved to a new city. I had no friends, no idea who I was. So I wrote. Not because I knew what I was doing, but because I needed to put something — anything — outside of myself. That story was about a girl who disappeared. I didn't realize it then, but… that girl was me."
She glanced down, then back up.
"I still don't know what I'm doing most days. I still feel like I'm hiding half the time. But I've learned that writing isn't about knowing everything. Sometimes it's just about telling the truth. Even when it scares you."
There was a pause. Then silence.
But not the kind that swells with discomfort — the kind that leans in.
She looked out into the crowd and saw something shift. Not grand or theatrical, just… quiet recognition. Heads tilted. Eyes softened. A stillness she hadn't expected. For the first time in a long time, she didn't feel like she was performing someone else's idea of a writer.
She simply was one.