Nikhil's diary

5Nov

What I Almost Believed Her

The rule on the wall frightened me more than Vikram did. Paper is such a ridiculous weapon until it is the only thing standing between a powerful man and the ha…

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4Nov

Nobody Knows I Moved

I keep thinking about the phrase about a wall to fall against. It sounded rehearsed, which frightened me more than an angry threat would have. Amateurs boast; f…

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3Nov

The Watch Kept Its Secret

My shoulder is still sore, but that is not what kept me awake. It was the watch. Matching watches on two different men is too deliberate to be ordinary, and som…

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2Nov

The car kept waiting

The grey car unsettled me more than the men did. They were crude enough to be honest. The car sat there like patience itself, and I could not decide whether tha…

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1Nov

The Betrayal I Chose

Suresh warned the dealer about me and still handed me his daughter’s phone. I keep turning that trick over in my mind. The humiliating part is not that he distr…

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31Oct

The Clearance I Cannot Bury

My shoulder is still complaining, but the part that unsettles me is not the impact. It is that Faisal wanted the envelope badly enough to turn fear into violenc…

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30Oct

Keeping The Doors Separate

I keep thinking about the safe. Not the lock, not the certificate, but the fact that I wanted both doors to open only after I was certain no one had touched the…

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29Oct

The Hour Between Two Doors

For ten minutes, the manager’s signature made me feel less like the dropout they joke about at home and more like someone who had earned the right to be believe…

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28Oct

The Handwriting Beside My Signature

The claim struck closer than Aryan intended. A fabricated certificate is one thing; a report carrying my clearance number makes the lie feel borrowed from me. I…

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27Oct

The Dropout They Made Public

Mohan calling me “the dropout” did not sting because it was new. It stung because journalists wrote it down, and relatives heard it as the full explanation of m…

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26Oct

The Cost of Trusted Faces

I keep thinking about the moment Nishita stepped out beside Aryan’s lawyer. I had trusted her with the decoy-room arrangements, and now her betrayal is sitting…

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25Oct

Proof Is Still Not Absolution

What unsettles me is not that someone altered the register. People alter registers; that is almost a courtesy in Bengaluru. What unsettles me is how easily the…

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24Oct

The Price of Being Believed

The accusation did not sting because it was false. It stung because Aryan’s lawyer described me as someone clever enough to manufacture a truth, and no one in t…

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23Oct

The compliment that felt like shame

Someone called me “the dropout investigator” in a hotel corridor, loud enough for nearby staff to hear. The words bothered me because they were accurate, but th…

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22Oct

The Threat at My Door

My old mistake did not arrive alone. Mohan used it as a weapon, and I hated how quickly fear made the room agree with him. I stayed still because every interrup…

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21Oct

The Room Shifted Around Me

I felt a cruel little thrill when the office manager refused Faisal in front of everyone. Not because I had won. Because his certainty had cracked just enough f…

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20Oct

The Kindness Before Confrontation

The watchman remembered me from the earlier pursuit. That was the unsettling part. I had spent months believing my work ended when I walked away, but here was a…

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