By Debajyoti Majumder
I. The Woman Who Waits
The air is thick with yesterday’s perfume,
with the ghosts of conversations unfinished.
She leans against the window bars,
holding a phone, holding a voice,
holding onto a promise that will never come.
“You’ll come?”
A pause.
Static fills the gaps where promises should be.
Outside, the world moves,
but in this room, time is obedient,
kneeling before her like every man she has ever known—
there, but never truly present.
II. The Cat & the Unanswered Call
A black cat sits on a stool, watching, waiting,
as if it too knows that voices in a phone
are never meant to stay.
The cat does not ask why the window is locked,
why the wind has fingers,
lifting the torn curtain like a sari pallu,
like a woman’s hair before it was cut,
like an old habit trying to return home.
The cat has no need for metaphors.
It understands hunger.
It understands doors that never open.
III. The Brothel Gods
There are gods here, but they do not answer prayers.
They sit in the corners, cross-legged,
counting money that does not belong to them,
sipping chai that has grown cold.
One of them watches the girl by the window.
“You’ll come?”
He has heard this before.
It is the hymn of the unloved.
It is the scripture of those who hold a phone
as if it were a hand,
as if it could be more than just sound.
He knows the answer before it arrives.
IV. The Exit That Isn’t
A brothel is not a prison.
A brothel is not a home.
It is a room where women stand by windows,
where men say “I’ll come,”
and silence says, “No, you won’t.”
The door is unlocked.
The road is open.
The train station is a rickshaw away.
But she stays.
Because he said,
“I’ll come.”
And tonight, she still believes him—
even as the light crawls through the bars,
even as the cat yawns, unimpressed.
V. The Final Whisper
By morning, the light will return,
crawling through the bars like a thief.
The phone will ring again.
The cat will stretch, unimpressed.
The gods will sip their cold chai.
And the story will begin again—
the phone, the cat, the gods,
the light crawling through the bars,
the women waiting by the windows.