The rains had just begun in Goa. Not the wild monsoon yet, but those playful showers that came and went, leaving behind streets glistening like wet glass and the faint scent of sea mixed with wet earth.

​

Anaya, a painter from Mumbai, had rented a small villa for three months. She wasn’t running away, she told herself, she was simply taking a break. Yet she knew, deep inside, that the city had left her bruised. The fast pace, the endless deadlines, the breakup with someone she thought was “the one” all of it had drained her. She needed solitude, space to breathe, maybe even space to forget.

​

The villa stood a little away from the beach, surrounded by old Portuguese-style houses. Its peeling blue walls and squeaky wooden windows felt like the perfect metaphor for her life - flawed, imperfect, but still standing.

​

On her first evening there, she set up her easel by the veranda and tried to paint the horizon. But the sea was restless, and her brush trembled. That’s when she heard it - a flute. Soft, hesitant at first, then steady, floating over the salty air like a whispered secret.

​

She followed the sound down the lane, and there he was: a man sitting on the steps of an abandoned chapel, eyes closed, flute in hand, completely lost in the music.

​

Something about that sight stilled her. It was as though the season itself had shifted around her, like the air carried a promise she hadn’t known she was waiting for.

​

The next day, she found him again, this time at the small café run by an old couple. He was sketching in a notebook, absent-mindedly humming.

​

“Do you always play at abandoned chapels?” she asked, half-teasing.

​

He looked up, startled, then smiled. “Only when the sea feels too loud.”

​

His name was Kabir. He was an architect, originally from Delhi, working on restoring old Goan houses. But music, he admitted, was his refuge.

​

“What about you?” he asked.

“A painter. Or at least, trying to be one,” she replied.

​

Their conversation flowed like they had known each other for years. They spoke of art, of colors, of why music sometimes felt like painting with invisible strokes. Anaya found herself laughing, genuinely laughing, after months of being locked in her own heaviness.

​

When she returned home that evening, she realized she had painted again just a few strokes, but with life in them.

Over the next weeks, they kept crossing paths. Sometimes at the beach where Kabir sketched ruined boats, sometimes at the café, and sometimes just by chance. Slowly, their silences grew as comfortable as their words.

 

One afternoon, a sudden downpour caught them by surprise. They took shelter in a half-finished house Kabir was working on. The rain drummed on the tin roof, and Kabir began to play his flute. The sound mingled with the rhythm of the rain, and Anaya closed her eyes.

​

When he stopped, she whispered, “It feels like your music fills all the cracks in me.”

Kabir didn’t reply, but his gaze lingered on her longer than before.

​

She realized then that her heart, which she had sworn to keep locked, was stirring again.

But love doesn’t arrive without shadows.

​

One evening, Anaya received a call from Mumbai. It was Aarav - her ex. His voice was too familiar, too persuasive. He spoke of mistakes, of wanting her back, of missing her presence in his chaotic life.

​

She hung up, unsettled. The walls she thought she had left behind seemed to creep back into her new world.

​

Kabir noticed her silence the next day. “Something’s changed,” he said gently.

“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she admitted. “I came here to escape… not to begin again.”

Kabir looked at her with an understanding that hurt. “Sometimes beginnings find us, even when we’re not ready.”

 

One morning, Anaya painted for hours without stopping. When she finally stepped back, she saw what she had created - a portrait of Kabir, sitting by the chapel steps with his flute. It wasn’t exact, but the essence was there: the stillness in his eyes, the calm he carried.

​

She was terrified at what it meant.

​

That evening, she invited him to her villa. She showed him the canvas.

Kabir was silent for a long while. Then he turned to her and said, “Do you know what I sketched the first day I saw you?”

​

He opened his notebook. On the page was her standing on her veranda with a brush in hand, hair loose in the breeze, looking fragile yet luminous.

​

For a moment, neither spoke. The air between them was filled with everything they couldn’t yet put into words.

But just as the season ripened, hurt followed.

​

A week later, Aarav appeared in Goa. He showed up at the café, arrogance intact.

​

“Anaya, you don’t belong here,” he scoffed. “This - flutes and paintings - this isn’t real life. Come back. You know we’re meant to be.”

​

Kabir had watched quietly, but the storm in his eyes was unmistakable.

​

When Aarav left, Anaya felt torn. Old loyalties, old wounds, old habits, they tugged at her even though her heart screamed otherwise.

That night, she wept. “I don’t want to be weak, Kabir. I don’t want to fall back into something that hurts me, but what if I don’t deserve this- us?”

​

Kabir held her hand gently. “You deserve everything that makes you whole, Anaya. And if that isn’t me, I’ll still be grateful to have known you.”

​

It was in that moment, through his selflessness, that she knew.

​

The days that followed became a season she would never forget. They wandered through old churches, painted murals together, sat by bonfires at the beach. Sometimes, they said nothing, letting the world speak for them.

​

Love, Anaya realized, wasn’t always grand gestures. It was Kabir making her tea when she worked late. It was her sketching while he fixed a broken chair. It was the rhythm of two lives quietly aligning.

​

She often thought to herself: What is this strange spell? How can such ordinary days feel like a festival of the heart?

Her three months in Goa were ending. The thought of leaving twisted her stomach.

​

On her last night, Kabir took her back to the abandoned chapel. He played his flute under the stars, and when he finished, he looked at her with a steadiness that made her heart tremble.

​

“I won’t ask you to stay, Anaya,” he said. “But I’ll ask you to choose - do you want to return to what broke you, or step into what heals you?”

​

Her eyes filled with tears. For once, the choice didn’t feel like a burden. It felt like freedom.

​

Six months later, an art exhibition opened in Mumbai - Anaya’s first solo show. On one wall hung her series called The Season of Rain: canvases filled with the sea, the rain, the chapel, and always, in some corner, the figure of a man with a flute.

​

The guests admired the work, but her eyes searched the crowd for only one person. And when Kabir walked in, carrying nothing but his old sketchbook, she knew her story had come full circle.

​

After the exhibition, they walked out into the Mumbai rain. She held his hand and whispered, “This is home. You are home.”

And as the city lights blurred into the drizzle, Anaya finally felt whole.

​

Years later, when they sat on the same veranda of their little home in Goa, their daughter asleep inside, Kabir picked up his flute. The notes drifted into the night, familiar yet new.

​

Anaya smiled, sketchbook in hand. The season had changed, the years had passed, but the feeling remained the same - an endless wonder that made her heart bloom every time.