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Rain in Manju Ka Tilla
~ By Santanu Ghose
The first time Riku Sato and Aritra Dey met, it was at a painfully formal corporate dinner in a central Delhi hotel ballroom that smelt faintly of old money and over-polished cutlery.
They were mid-tier executives in their respective firms celebrating the start of a new chapter in their firms’ corporate journey. Riku, 28, was from Tokyo but had spent the last three years in Bangalore. Aritra, 32, a Kolkata boy with the old-school charm of Durga Pujo pandals and yellow taxis, was now working in New Delhi.
They were assigned adjacent seats by some HR intern who probably didn’t know they were about to launch a friendship rooted in unspoken symmetry.
“Do you like Indian food?” Aritra asked with a polite grin as the first round of drinks came in, swirling his glass of Indri, an Indian single malt, touted to be a drink for the gods. Riku was nursing his glass of Akashi 5-Year-Old sake cask.
“I do,” Riku replied, his English clear and careful, with a slight lilt of Japanese “But I like Bengali food more. Mustard fish, Ilish, to be precise. The smell reminds me of miso.”
That was the spark.
Two hours later, they were ignoring their bosses’ speeches and trading childhood memories instead. Riku told Aritra about his grandmother’s quiet Shinto rituals, the first time he learned to fold a paper crane properly, how his Otōsan, father —tall, strict, distant—taught him to tie a fishing knot before he taught him to shave. He had passed when he was 21. Riku had to drop a semester to sort out hospital bills and family papers.
Aritra shared how his Ma would wake him up on Saraswati Pujo mornings with the fragrance of sheuli phool (night queen), mild and dreamy hanging in the air, sandalwood paste and chalk powder on the floor. How he’d spent a decade in a strict boarding school in Darjeeling, where boys cried at night but never in public. His father, too, had died young—cardiac arrest they had told him –a third attack was fatal, just before Aritra could finish his law degree, a career path of his father’s choosing, a burden he did not want to carry.
Both had learned to cook out of necessity. One enjoyed, one didn’t. Both had filled that hollow space with long hours and longer commutes, slowly climbing the same kind of rickety ladder.
They exchanged numbers. Soon after WhatsApp texts and senseless forwards graduated to phone calls.
⸻
Two months later, to escape a Delhi deluge and weeklong fatigue they were sitting cross-legged on the floor cushions of a Korean restaurant at Majnu Ka Tilla, a vibrant New Delhi neighbourhood of exiled Tibetans. Rain drummed hard against the window panes. The smell of gochujang and grilled pork filled the warm, close air.
“Soju?” Aritra grinned, pouring them each a shot.
“Dangerous,” Riku smirked.
“That’s why it’s good.”
They toasted to rain, to Friday, to memories they’d already begun sharing more often than they meant to.
Riku’s cheeks were flushed, his collar slightly damp from the humidity. Aritra’s shirt clung to his back. The first bottle was empty. They lingered, because the rain refused to let up and because neither wanted the night to end.
They were well into their third bottle when the stories deepened. Layers stripped away.
“My first crush,” Aritra said abruptly, staring at his chopsticks, “was my senior at school. We used to play the flute together. I never said anything. He got married last year. I saw it on Facebook. His flute notes stayed on.”
Riku nodded slowly. Something in made his heart ached. A pain he knew too well.
“There was a boy in high school,” he said. “He was in the kyūdō club—archery. I admired how quiet he was. Precise. I lent him my umbrella one day. He returned it the next morning with a thank you note and never spoke to me again.”
A silence hung between them, soft and heavy.
“I used to think,” Riku said, “maybe I imagined it all. That I saw what I wanted to see.”
“I still do that sometimes,” Aritra said quietly. “It’s safer.”
Lightning flashed. Rain roared harder.
Something stirred in Riku. He looked into Aritra’s lowered eyes. He leaned in.
He kissed him.
A soft, unsure kiss. Quick. Warm. And full of panic.
Aritro’s eyes widened. Breath gasped. Heart skipped a beat or two.
Riku pulled back immediately. “Gomen’nasai!” he groaned. “I’m sorry, I’m drunk. It’s the soju. I don’t—Japanese sake… less… reckless… is much more dignified—I didn’t mean to.”
Aritra didn’t speak. He reached out and took Riku’s hand. It was trembling slightly.
He pulled him forward, gently, until Riku’s forehead rested against his chest. Aritra’s hands ran through his damp hair. The moment was quiet, sacred, and trembling.
“You don’t need to apologise,” he whispered, like a balm, “Not when we both wanted it."
Riku looked up, eyes searching. “You mean it?”
Aritra nodded.
Their fingers locked. There were no more words.
⸻
The rain hadn’t let up. Water slid down the frosted glass ceiling that served as the roof of the restaurant, pooling along the edges, pattering like a thousand tiny fingers. Caressing.
Inside, the warmth of grilled bulgogi and kimchi mingled with the sweet burn of Korean soju.
Riku and Aritra were cross-legged on the floor cushions, their jackets now hung on the back wall, both a little more drunk, but not on soju, a little more flushed, and perhaps, more honest than they meant to be.
“You know,” Aritra said, tracing a bead of condensation down his glass, “I hated myself for years.”
Riku turned, slowly. “Why?”
“For feeling things I wasn’t supposed to. For wanting things that weren’t in the movies I grew up watching. You grow up in a boys’ boarding school in Darjeeling, where the dorms smelt of moist wool and old books, you learn to blend in. Be invisible. Make sure your eyes don’t linger too long in the locker room.”
Riku nodded, eyes soft. “In my high school, we had silence drilled into us. Boys didn’t talk about emotions. If you liked someone, you folded it into a paper crane and hid it in your desk.”
Aritra smiled, sadly. “First time I kissed someone was when I was 19. A college fest. He was my senior. We were drunk on cheap rum and hormones. Afterwards, he looked at me like I’d ruined his life.”
“And did you?” Riku asked gently.
“I didn’t even kiss back,” Aritra said. “I froze. I hated myself for wanting it, and for being too scared to want it properly.”
Riku looked down. “First time I kissed someone was at 21. In Kyoto. A foreign exchange student. He kissed me in a temple garden. I pushed him away before anyone saw. Then I cried. I thought I’d defiled the space.”
There was a long silence.
“You ever feel,” Aritra asked, “like you’re living two lives at once?”
“All the time,” Riku said. “There’s the good son. Polite. Respectful. Career-driven. And then there’s… the one who aches. Who dreams. Who stares too long at strangers on the train.”
Aritra stared at his empty glass. “I spent years thinking it was a phase. Then thinking I was cursed. Then thinking I’d just stay alone forever.”
“And now?” Riku asked.
“Now,” Aritra said slowly, “I think I deserve someone. Not a hookup. Not a secret. Just… someone who doesn’t flinch when our fingers brush in public.”
Riku nodded, his voice quieter. “I want someone who knows what I’m thinking without asking. Someone I can pray next to. Sleep next to. Grow old next to.”
Their eyes met again. Something in the silence cracked open.
“You know what’s strange?” Aritra said. “How similar we are. Cultures apart. Yet…”
“My Tōsan, dad,” Riku said, “used to say “No” before I finished a sentence. No late nights. No earrings. No hangouts at the malls. No questions.”
“Mine too,” Aritra murmured. “No long hair. No talking back. No drama. I cried inwardly.”
They laughed.
Riku smiled faintly. “My mother never said much. But when I was fifteen, she bought me a book of haikus about love. She never said why. But she left it on my desk.”
Aritra’s eyes lit up. “My Ma used to say, ‘You’re different. That’s not bad. That’s rare. A shoulder to cry on, to lean on in your weakest moments, is what all one needs.’”
Riku raised his glass. “To the mothers who saw us.”
Aritra clinked. “And didn’t look away.”
They sipped.
Then Aritra said, more softly now, “You know that myth about the missing rib? How God made man, and then woman out of his rib?”
“I always wondered,” Riku said, “what if the rib wasn’t meant to be a woman at all? Just someone who fits. Someone who filled the quiet. The void.”
Aritra smiled. “Maybe some ribs curve toward other ribs. Doesn’t make them less real.”
They stared at each other for a moment longer.
Rain fell louder outside. Thunder cracked.
And then, without asking, without warning—Aritra leaned in.
And kissed Riku.
Soft. Hesitant. Real. This time Riku did no gasp or apologise. He melted.
His lips trembled slightly against Aritra’s. He tasted of rice wine and something deeper. Longing. Love.
Then he pulled away, eyes aglow. Yet awash with a love and acceptance that had washed away the shame that his Japanese upbringing had beaten into him.
Riku took Aritra’s hand.
Held it.
Then gently pulled Aritra forward, until his forehead rested against his chest, his shirt buttons unbuttoned God-knows-when! Aritra snuggled in like a lost puppy.
“There’s nothing to feel the way you are feeling,” Riku said quietly, running a hand through Aritra’s hair. “Not when we’re both looking for the same thing.”
Aritra looked at Riku, breath shallow. “You mean—?”
“I mean,” Riku said, “maybe the rib finally found its match.”
Their fingers laced together on the warm wood of the table.
And this time, no one looked away.
⸻
Later, in the small guesthouse across the alley, they lay on a thin mattress under a whirring AC. The room was barely lit, the yellow light pooling in soft circles.
They held each other like survivors of some long, invisible war.
“I was always scared of being alone,” Riku said, his voice muffled into Aritra’s neck.
“I thought loneliness was safer,” Aritra replied.
Their kiss now was different—slow, confident, reverent.
They undressed without urgency. Each touch was a question. Each gasp, a yes.
It wasn’t about lust. It was about recognition.
It was about finding a mirror in a stranger. A second heartbeat.
And when the rain finally stopped outside, there was still the sound of breathing.
Soft. Steady.
Together.
