Arjun was 24, working as a barista and guitarist every evening at a small café tucked away in a narrow lane in Koregaon Park. The café had a gentle name – “March Breezes.” Every evening, soft golden light bathed the rustic wooden tables, and simple acoustic melodies echoed, seemingly comforting weary souls. Here, Arjun didn’t just brew coffee – he told stories through music, with melancholic covers or his own unnamed compositions.

It was in this very place that Arjun met Mrs. Sharma – a 52-year-old woman, experienced, elegantly dressed but not ostentatiously so. She would often sit in her usual corner, ordering a black coffee, no sugar, no ice. No one knew what she did, only that a private driver occasionally picked her up in a luxury car. The café staff called her “the solitary businesswoman.”

Initially, Arjun only saw her as an unusual customer: always coming alone, always sitting for a very long time, but her eyes were quiet and sad, as if listening to something from the past.

One day, after a rendition of “Old Flame” (a classic Indian melancholy song), Mrs. Sharma approached Arjun and said: “You play this song as if you’ve lived an entire lifetime.”

That remark was the beginning of short, yet profound, conversations. Then longer ones. Mrs. Sharma spoke of her youth, of her marriage to a busy husband, of her child who went abroad to study and never returned for Diwali. Arjun spoke of his dream of becoming a musician, of losing his mother early, and of his struggles to make ends meet.

No one in the café knew when Arjun began taking Mrs. Sharma home after each musical set, or when he started feeling her absence whenever she didn’t come.

Rumors began to spread: “Arjun is dating the rich lady!”, “It must be for money!”, “She’s probably just lonely.” But both Arjun and Mrs. Sharma remained silent, as if their relationship needed no definition. They were two lost pieces, serendipitously finding peace in each other.

One night, after a rendition of “Dust of My Soul” (another classic Indian reflective song), Mrs. Sharma asked: “If one day I leave, will you be sad?”

Arjun smiled softly: “You are the most beautiful melody that has ever entered my life. Even if you leave, you will resonate in my memory forever.”

And then Mrs. Sharma truly left. A “short” trip abroad, but with no return date. She left Arjun only a letter and an old leather-bound notebook, filled with hundreds of pages of her diary entries about the days she spent in the café, about the sound of his guitar, about him.

Arjun remained at the old café, still playing music every evening. But now, every song carried a deeper poignancy, as if dedicated to someone who was no longer there, but had never left his heart.