| Harshita Nanda | October 2025 | Flash Fiction |
“You stole money? I guess mother was right, you were a badmash!”
I give a half-chuckle before glancing away and confessing, “For more than a month! A ten paise here, a 50 paise there.”
“And no one found out?” Dark, expressive eyes, eyes that one could drown in, stare at me.
I shake my head.
“But why?”
I fix my eyes on the laburnum tree laden with golden flowers near the gate of the playground. “I felt guilty.”
“For what?”
“Because I had broken the arm of your favourite doll, making you cry.”
Silence descends, one that makes me want to squirm, before she turns her head to look at me. The pearl earrings dancing on her earlobes fracture the afternoon sunlight into rainbows, as she places her hand on my arm and says, “Thank you.”
The touch is soft, too fleeting, before she pulls away, but not before I see the scar on her wrist.
Adjusting her dupatta, which has fallen from her shoulder, she asks, “Why are you confessing now?”
“Maybe seeing the children playing brought back memories of those days,” I answer, trying to tamp down the guilt rising in me. That maybe, I am the one responsible for the scar. Even though I do not live in the neighbourhood anymore, gossip finds its way to me.
Unaware of my turmoil, she replies, “Yes, they were the best days a child could have.”
Silence returns as we observe the children on the swings, their joyous shrieks echoing in the air. After a few minutes, I sneak a glance at her. Her eyes are soft, her lips slightly curved upwards, as if she is happy to be back in her childhood playground with her childhood companion.
She suddenly laughs, “That doll was hideous! My younger sister couldn’t stop wailing whenever I took it out to play!”
The dimple in her right cheek invites me, and I grin back in response, but soon the guilt returns.
It propels me to ask her a question I had been wanting to ask for more than half of my life. But I lose my courage halfway, “Would you have…”
“Would I have what?” she prompts.
“That night, if I had insisted you wait for me, would you have?”
There is a sheen in her eyes as she remembers the night I am talking about. It was at the same bench, in the same park, under the cold, silvery rain of a full moon. She had come to me with her hands dyed red with henna, her eyes pleading for something I could not give. All I had said to her then was congratulations.
She glances back at the swings. I know her eyes are on a young girl in a pink dress, with a dimple on her right cheek. One who looks exactly like her when she was that age.
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
We sit the rest of the time in silence, watching the children play.
The playground is empty, illuminated by the yellow glow of the streetlights when I finally leave. At the gate, my shoes trample the yellow petals of the laburnum.
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Harshita Nanda is a writer and a book reviewer based in Dubai, UAE. A shortlisted candidate for the Rama Mehta Writing Grant, 2023, she has four books to her name. Her short stories have featured in many anthologies, including Lightning Strikes: An Anthology of Flash Fiction by Indian Writers. Her words have also appeared on National Flash Flood Day, Kitaab, Porch Lit Mag and Roi Faineant Literary Press. She can be reached on Instagram as @author_harshita and on X at @ashnhash
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Photo by Shoummo Sen Gupta on Unsplash
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