The monsoon had come early to the hills. Rain lashed against the classroom windows in silver sheets, blurring the view of the school grounds into streaks of gray and green. The corridors smelled of damp uniforms, wet socks, and ink-stained notebooks, and yet, amidst all the sogginess, the atmosphere was electric.
It had been three weeks since Tushar had started waiting outside Amrita's classroom every lunch break. At first, it had been a coincidence — he had lingered one day to return a pen she'd dropped in the library. The next day, she'd smiled at him and invited him to share her lunch. And from then on, it became a silent pact: every day at 12:40, they'd meet by the old neem tree near the east corridor, their shared sanctuary.
That corridor, though barely lit and often drafty, became their space. They sat side by side, sometimes talking, sometimes watching raindrops trace their way down cracked walls. On some days, they'd read stories from Amrita's secret collection of fairy tales. On others, they simply shared roasted peanuts, letting their thoughts roam free in companionable silence.
But school, as it always does, watched them.
One afternoon, as the clouds gathered darker than usual and thunder echoed off the mountains, a group of senior boys passed them by. One of them snorted, loud enough to be heard. "Oye Tushar," he jeered. "Found your girlfriend? Why don't you two just get married?"
His friends laughed, the sound cruel and echoing off the wet tiles.
Tushar stiffened. He looked down at his shoes, his ears burning. He wasn't afraid — just unsure. Unsure of how to react, of what to say, of how much this mattered.
Amrita turned her head and looked at the boys calmly. Her eyes, usually gentle, had turned into quiet embers. "Friendship doesn't need your approval," she said. "And gender doesn't make it less real."
The boys scoffed and moved on, but the moment stayed behind.
Tushar turned to her slowly. "You didn't have to say anything."
"But I wanted to," she said. "Some people need to be reminded."
There was a long pause before Tushar said, "You know… I never really knew what friendship meant until you sat next to me on the bus."
"And I didn't know what trust felt like until you listened without needing answers," she replied.
The corridor, once just a passageway of cracked tiles and broken lockers, had turned into something sacred — a whispering corridor where unspoken truths lingered in the air, wrapped in the smell of rain and roasted peanuts.
Moral: True friendship is unshaken by the noise around it — it speaks louder through silence and sincerity.