Monsoon Voice
A Girl’s Journey to Finding Love Within, Despite the World’s Doubts
In a town where the monsoon never learned to stop, Shamshaad waited.
Her mother’s voice was always soft, but the words sharp.
“He’s a good boy. Let’s see, this time.”
Every time, Shamshaad sat across from a stranger.
Her hands trembled around the chai.
She smiled, too wide, too polite.
By the time they left, the silence was heavy.
The look in their eyes said it all.
Sometimes, her height.
Sometimes, her skin.
Sometimes, her name.
Once, her laughter.
“A wife should be gentle.”
Each rejection sank deep, folding into her like a crumpled paper.
She learned to shrink. To twist herself smaller.
The mirror became her only friend.
It never judged.
But even it stayed silent when she whispered,
“What’s wrong with me?”
One night, when the power cut out and the world was swallowed by shadows and flickering candles, she climbed to the roof.
The rain hissed around her, soft and cold.
The rain wrapped around her like breath.
Each drop felt like a heartbeat she couldn’t claim.
And then, she heard it.
“You’re beautiful when you doubt yourself,” the voice said.
She froze.
Nobody there.
Only the dark.
The wet roof beneath her.
The quiet hiss of the rain.
“You’re beautiful when you cry.
When your hands shake.
When your braid falls apart.
When you try to hide that scar on your chin.”
The voice softened.
“Every part they rejected, I love.”
Shamshaad laughed, bitter.
But something inside her unknotted.
Something warmed.
Something forgotten.
The voice didn’t leave.
It whispered when she didn’t want to rise from bed.
It whispered when her writing was crooked, careless.
“You’re perfect,” it said.
“Not because you’re flawless, but because you’re you.”
Days passed.
People noticed.
“She looks different,” they said.
“Lighter.”
But Shamshaad kept quiet.
How could she explain?
One evening, Shamshaad was on the roof again.
The rain fell soft and endless, wrapping around her like a voice she knew too well.
She whispered to it, smiling without meaning to, her words carried away by the wind.
“Who are you smiling at, my child?” her mother’s voice broke through.
Her mother’s voice broke through the rain.
It felt like waking from a dream she didn’t want to leave.
Shamshaad turned slowly, the warmth still on her lips.
No one.
Only the roof.
Only the dark, heavy with rain.
The candlelight flickering through the window.
And the reflection in the glass.
Her own face, soft and true.
It came quietly, like a truth returning home.
The rhythm of the rain matched her heartbeat, and in that pulse she recognized it.
The voice had always been hers.
The love she had been waiting for had been inside her, always.
Tears slid down her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.
She whispered into the dark,
“I’m glad you came.”
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em — dash
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I won't say much, it's brilliant as usual. I am wondering about your choices of names, I like to think writers don't do it randomly, I like it to be symbolic even if I don't understand due to different cultures and all that. Tell me about her name?!!!
TAHIR.... DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT A GIFT YOU ARE? This is breathtaking. Please write a book.