There Was Also a Day

 

"There Was Also a Day" 

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There was also a day—one that didn’t make it into the photo albums, the social media timelines, or the memory reels of the mind. It was a quiet day, plain and unspectacular on the surface, but wrapped in a kind of silence that echoes long after it ends.

That day belonged to Aarav.

He was a man like many others—working a 9-to-5 job in the heart of a city that never stopped pretending to be alive. His life was a series of trains, keyboards, emails, and takeouts. He lived on the 11th floor of a grey apartment block where neighbors didn’t greet each other, and time passed not with seasons but with software updates. He had dreams once—of writing, of traveling, of building things that didn’t just end in “.xlsx”. But the world, in its clever disguise of duty and responsibility, had traded his dreams for a salary.

The Morning

That morning began like every other. Aarav's alarm buzzed at 6:30 AM. He didn’t hit snooze—he hadn’t in three years. He brushed, bathed, and put on his light blue shirt, the one that didn’t wrinkle easily. He made instant coffee, toast, and glanced at the notifications on his phone—none of them urgent, none of them human.

As he waited for the elevator, he saw an old woman from the 10th floor. She held her grocery bag close to her chest, trembling slightly. Aarav nodded politely. She smiled—a rare, broken smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The elevator ride was quiet. She got off at the 6th floor.

"There was also a day," she murmured, almost to herself, as the doors slid shut again.

Aarav frowned. What did she mean?

He reached the ground floor and stepped into the morning chaos of the city. The sky was overcast, and the usual crowd bustled past him with robotic rhythm. Horns blared. Hawkers shouted. Life moved in a blur.

But something about that old woman’s words stayed with him.

The Commute

The metro was late. That never happened.

When it finally arrived, it was unusually empty for a Tuesday morning. Aarav found a seat—another anomaly. He sat beside a boy, no more than ten, who stared out the window.

“You waiting for school?” Aarav asked casually.

The boy turned, blinking. “No, I’m waiting for time to catch up.”

“Catch up?”

The boy nodded. “Some days run too fast. Some days, too slow. Today’s one of those slow ones. But there was also a day… when everything felt just right.”

Aarav’s heart skipped a beat.

“What do you mean?” he asked, but the boy only smiled and pointed to the metro window.

Outside, the city flickered like a film reel out of sync. People moved slower. The clouds didn’t drift—they hovered. A dog barked in reverse. Aarav blinked, and everything returned to normal.

He turned to the boy. He was gone.

Aarav stood abruptly. Had he fallen asleep? Was he dreaming?

But his stop was still a station away.

At Work

His office was a fortress of beige. Beige walls, beige desks, beige cubicles. He logged into his system, checked his emails. A dozen unread ones—deadlines, updates, memos.

His colleague Rina walked over. She looked unusually thoughtful.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“You look like someone who’s remembering something they didn’t know they forgot.”

That hit too close. He tried to brush it off with a smile, but her gaze didn’t waver.

“There was also a day,” she whispered, “when you talked about your dreams. Do you remember?”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

She stepped back, her expression changing. “Nothing. Just a long day, I guess.”

The rest of the workday passed in a fog. Every screen flickered more than usual. Every message seemed to whisper instead of beep. At lunch, the canteen played an old song he couldn’t remember knowing but could hum perfectly. It made him ache, inexplicably.

The Call

At 4:37 PM, he got a call from an unknown number.

“Hello?”

Static.

Then, a voice.

“There was also a day,” it said, “when you stood at a bus stop in the rain and decided you would change your life.”

Aarav felt a jolt. He had. He remembered now—ten years ago, college days, when he almost bought a one-way ticket to the mountains. But he didn’t. He had a job offer waiting. His father told him not to throw away his future.

“Who is this?” he asked, his voice trembling.

But the line had already gone dead.

Evening Shadows

Aarav left work early. He couldn’t concentrate. He walked instead of taking the metro, through streets he hadn’t visited in years. He passed an old bookstore that had somehow survived the onslaught of digitalization. He stepped in.

The smell of paper and dust calmed him. The shopkeeper, a bespectacled man in his sixties, nodded.

“Looking for anything special?”

“I don’t know,” Aarav admitted. “Maybe something I forgot.”

The man nodded thoughtfully and handed him a worn journal.

“No price. Just write.”

Aarav opened it. The first page read:

“There was also a day when the world paused just long enough for you to notice it was alive.”

He bought a pen from the counter and began writing.

Not a story. Not fiction.

Memories.

The time he first fell in love. The time he almost proposed but didn’t. The time he sat under a mango tree in his village, watching fireflies as a child. The time his mother sang to him during a power cut.

He wrote for hours.

The sun had long set when he emerged. The street looked different. Softer, warmer.

Alive.

The Return

When he reached home, the apartment building looked the same—but he greeted the security guard for the first time. He helped the old woman from the 10th floor carry her bag to the elevator. She smiled again—this time, fully.

“Did you find your day?” she asked.

Aarav smiled back. “I think I found many.”

She nodded. “Good. Then you’ll remember to live them.”

The Dream

That night, Aarav dreamed.

He was standing in a field of yellow grass. The wind blew softly. In the distance, children laughed. He looked beside him—there was the boy from the metro, the old woman, the shopkeeper, and Rina. All looking at him.

“There was also a day,” they said in unison, “when you woke up.”

He opened his eyes.

It was morning.

The sun was golden. A bird chirped on his balcony. The city moved as usual. But something had changed.

He didn’t check his phone.

He brewed his coffee slower.

He looked at the sky longer.

He smiled more often that day.

He didn’t do anything extraordinary.

But he was aware.

And that was the miracle.

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Epilogue

Years later, when Aarav finally did leave his job to become a writer, he published a book.

Its title?

“There Was Also a Day.”

It was about moments we miss, whispers we ignore, and days that pass unnoticed yet change everything.

And in the front dedication, he wrote:

For the forgotten days.
For the unlived dreams.
For the quiet awakenings.
There was also a day—when you remembered.

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