The Table Next to Mine
Hi… I am Ayaan. And sometimes the best stories find you — even when you've given up looking for them. It was a Sunday afternoon. Raining outside. I was seated at my favorite café in Bangalore — notebook open, coffee getting cold, mind completely blank. I had been sitting there for a while trying to find something worth writing about. A poem. A short story. Anything. Nothing was coming. I looked through the glass at the rain instead. The café was crowded — the kind of Sunday crowd that fills every corner with noise and warmth. Luckily, the table next to mine was empty. A small quiet pocket in the middle of all that noise. It didn't stay empty for long. I saw a guy outside, parking his bike in the rain. He was wiping his hair with his hand, half-running towards the entrance. Something about the way he moved made me look up from my notebook. This might be interesting, I thought. My instincts were right. He spotted the empty table next to mine and settled into it quickly...
