She was seen once, donning a Paithani, balancing a rusted bicycle, riding past the tamarind tree whose fruits now smell of burned silk.

The cloth’s draped around an empty frame in her father’s house.

“Girls don’t vanish,” her aunt insists. “They’re just hard to find where men forget to look.”

Shivam Pailwan is a writer based in Mumbai working at the intersection of literature, media, and the rural-urban divide. He’s usually found at the cinemas.