The Last Letter from Saanvi

 

Chapter 1: The Morning Train

The sun rasped shyly over the railway tracks as the tiny station of Kotgarh awoke. A few vendors bellowed in the distance. The air was crisp, and the tea at the vendor's stall had a taste of rusted iron and cardamom.

Ayan moved his satchel, tugging in his jacket. He wasn't here to catch the train, though he was standing by the tracks every day. The rest of the crowd at the station had started to know him—a taciturn guy in his thirties, always gazing down the line, always waiting.

But he wasn't waiting for a train.

He was waiting for Saanvi.

She had vowed, three years before, that she'd come back on the same train that she'd departed on.

And each morning since, Ayan remained there, waiting.

Chapter 2: The Day She Left

Three years ago, summer had been generous. Kotgarh's hills had yellowed in mustard, and apples scented the air. Ayan and Saanvi had lived their days spinning fantasies from tomorrow's threads. She had aspired to be a teacher in Dehradun. He had dreamed of having a small bookstore, hidden under pine trees.

On the day that she climbed aboard the train, Saanvi had slipped a letter into his hand. "Don't read it until now," she'd told him. "Unless I don't come back."

He'd grinned. "Don't be dramatic. You will be back."

But she hadn't come back.

And Ayan had never read the letter.

Until today.

Chapter 3: Ink on Paper

That evening, under the flickering bulb of his father’s old study, Ayan finally slid his fingers beneath the envelope’s flap. The paper had yellowed, but her handwriting was unmistakable—round and neat, slightly slanted like her smile when she teased him.

My dearest Ayan,

If you’re reading this, then something has gone terribly wrong.

I don't want you to worry. I don't want you to search. But I need you to know the truth…

I did not go to Dehradun to teach. I went to see my mother.

Ayan stood still.

She had told him her mother passed away when she was ten.

I discovered a letter after Baba died. It read that she was alive. That she was institutionalized for reasons I was too young to comprehend. Baba had kept it from me all these years.

 

I had to seek her out, Ayan. I had to discover why she departed. I couldn't involve you in it—not with the burden I did not comprehend myself.

The letter had been cut short. Half a sentence, followed by a smudge, as if she had been interrupted in mid-sentence.

He read it again.

Then again.

With every repetition, the room became heavier with silence.

Chapter 4: The Forgotten Asylum

It was a need he couldn't articulate that impelled Ayan onto the early morning Mussoorie bus. All he had to guide him was the address scribbled on the back of the letter: St. Helena's Restorium.

The place, it turned out, was as forgotten as the memories it housed. Tucked behind mossy gates and overgrown vines, the building looked abandoned. A man with a crooked spine and kinder eyes than expected opened the door.

“Yes?” he asked, adjusting his glasses.

Ayan hesitated. “I’m looking for a woman named Indira Kapoor. She would’ve been here… maybe around 1995?”

The man's eyes narrowed. "That's ages ago. Records aren't what they were."

Nevertheless, he invited Ayan in. There was dust on the walls like unwelcome memories.

They discovered the record—one delicate line on a crumbling register.

Indira Kapoor. Admitted: 1995. Status: Transferred. No forwarding address.

Transferred where?

The man had no idea.

But hidden within the record, nearly concealed between pages, was a photograph. A woman with weary eyes and a gentle smile.

And next to her, unmistakably, Saanvi.

Ayan stumbled.

She had located her.

So why hadn't she returned?

Chapter 5: Echoes in the Wind

The back of the photograph had a postmark: July 2020 – Roopnagar.

Ayan went on to Roopnagar, a rural village hidden in the creases of Himachal. The natives were close-mouthed, wary. But the proprietor of a small bakery recalled the two women.

"Yes, they lived just up that hill. A mother and daughter, but they didn't talk much. The younger one used to work at the library."

Ayan's heart beat faster.

He walked up the hill.

The house was standing but in ruins. Windows broken, the front gate on one hinge. An old man cleaning the neighbor's porch looked up.

"They departed one monsoon night. Took with them just one suitcase. Said they were headed to Mumbai for treatment."

Treatment?

He did not know, for what.

But Saanvi had left one thing behind—a little notebook, hidden between the wooden supports of the collapsed roof.

Ayan opened it. Page after page of jotted musings, doodles, pressed flowers.

And a last entry:

She doesn't remember me today.

She said "nurse." Then "stranger."

But I still read to her. I still sing her lullabies.

Somewhere, in the music, she smiles again.

I hope that smile stays longer than the disease.

I hope I stay too.

Chapter 6: Mumbai's Heartbeat

Mumbai was pandemonium. Ayan never liked cities, but now he walked through the city streets like a ghost hunter. He went from hospital to hospital, centre to centre.

Days went by.

Weeks.

And at last, in Jeevan Jyoti Neurological Centre's dark corridor, he saw her.

Saanvi.

But she was no longer the girl he knew.

She sat in a wheelchair, hair cut short, eyes faraway. Her hands quivered and a nurse murmured, "She was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Probably brought on by trauma. She's only 32."

Ayan couldn't talk.

He moved closer, knelt down beside her.

"Saanvi?"

Her eyes darted towards him.

Nothing.

Then, weakly, her lips parted. "Did the train come yet?"

Tears clouded his eyes.

She remembered.

Something.

Chapter 7: The Sound of Memory

Ayan came back each day. He brought books. Her favorite—Ruskin Bond stories. He played the flute she used to love hearing in the orchards.

Fragments came back slowly.

One day, she smiled and breathed softly, "Do you still have the letter?"

He nodded.

"Never throw it away," she said. "That's where I still reside."

They sat together, hardly speaking. Just being. Healing.

The physicians informed him her memory can never be restored. That the illness would triumph in the end.

But time wasn't calculated in years for Ayan anymore.

It was calculated in seconds she remembered his name.

Chapter 8: A New Light

Six months passed, and Ayan brought her back home.

To Kotgarh.

To the same house with squeaking floorboards and tulsi sprouting next to the window.

He quit his job. Opened that bookstore she had always dreamed of.

Named it Saanvi’s Letters.

Some days, she was herself. Dancing barefoot in the rain, scolding him for not shaving. Other days, she stared out the window, lost in clouds.

But every evening, as the sun dipped behind the orchard, he read her the last letter she ever wrote.

And she smiled, as if some piece of her still remembered what they once had.

Chapter 9: The Letter That Came Too Late

One morning, during winter, there was a letter. Postmarked 2020. Late, lost, forgotten.

To Ayan.

Her handwriting.

My dearest,

If this finds you, then maybe I couldn't. I am writing this on a hospital ward where Ma sleeps next to me.

*I found her. But in the process, I started forgetting myself. Not merely in memory—but in spirit.

If one day I forget your face, your voice, your stories—don't let that be the end of us.".

Read me verse. Take me up to the hills. Murmur the names of all the flowers we used to gather.

Because deep within, even when the world dissolves to haze, I know… I'll recall love.

And that love is you.

He held the note to his heart and wept, not from sorrow, but thankfulness.

Because she had returned.

Not as he had hoped.

But in the manner that counted.

Chapter 10: Forever in the Orchard

Years on, children were at Saanvi's Letters for storytime. Ayan, who was now silver-haired but still warm-eyed, read stories she had once written in old diaries aloud.

Saanvi sat by the window, observing the mustard fields swaying.

When a small girl asked, "Is that your wife?"

Ayan smiled.

"She's more than that," he said. "She's the story I never stop reading.