Chapter 1: The Hole in the Wall

The first day I rented the flat, I discovered a hole in the wall. The paint was peeling, and the faint smell of agarbatti from the neighbour’s flat drifted through the cracks, mixing with the mustiness of old walls and the city’s endless noise.

On that first day, as I dragged my battered suitcase over the broken tiles of the corridor, I found a faint, finger-sized hole in the faded blue wall near the corner of my bedroom. I had just set my tiffin on the little table and the sound of pressure cooker whistles drifted up from the street below. Through that hole, my life would change in ways I could never have imagined.

Through it, I saw the strange couple next door: they seemed affectionate, yet oddly unfamiliar with each other. I adjusted the torn bedsheet on my charpai, feeling like a thief in my own home, peering through a secret that wasn’t meant for me.

It was a strange feeling, watching strangers in such intimacy yet sensing a distance between them. In India, the walls are thin but lives are often even thinner—people live close, yet remain worlds apart. Their gestures were warm enough, the kind that would have made any aunty in the building nod approvingly, but still, there was something missing, something that made me pause every time.

From that day on, I became obsessed with watching their lives from the sidelines.

The old fan above me creaked, and the distant cries of the sabziwala faded as night fell. Somewhere, a dog barked, and the distant echo of a train horn mixed with the hum of the ceiling fan. Even as I told myself to mind my own business, I couldn't help myself. That hole in the wall became my window to a world that was both achingly close and completely out of reach.