The phone rang a little after midnight, and Meera almost let it go. In Bengaluru the nights were loud with traffic and deadlines, and a call at that hour usually meant trouble. But the number was from home — the small town in coastal Karnataka she had not visited in two years.
“Beta, are you eating properly?” Her grandmother’s voice crackled over a weak signal, as though it had travelled not three hundred kilometres but across an ocean. Meera laughed, surprised by the sting of tears. They talked about nothing in particular — the mango tree that had finally fruited, the neighbour’s new grandchild, the rain that arrived early this year.
Some voices carry further than any distance
When the line finally dropped, Meera sat in the dark for a long while. She realised the call had not been about news at all. Her grandmother simply wanted to hear her breathe, to know she was somewhere in the world, safe. The next morning Meera booked a train ticket she had been postponing for months.
We tell ourselves we will visit “soon,” that the people who love us will always be a phone call away. A distant call is sometimes a gentle reminder that distance is a choice — and that the people who matter are never quite as far as they seem.
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