This happened nine years ago, I remember it in fragments.
It was May 1995 when I stepped out of the airport expecting the familiar , thick, oppressive heat that usually wrapped around your body like a second skin, the kind of heat that shaped my childhood. But that day, the air was cool. Breeze, known but unknown. Mumbai, in the peak of summer, was never supposed to be this quiet.
I saw my boarding pass ,the ink had already begun to fade, quicker than usual, as if it were trying to erase itself before I could question it. I slipped it into the side pocket of my backpack, out of habit more than reason.
Everything looked how it should .The signs in Marathi, the layered smell of tadka and jet fuel mixed together, the chaos of traffic. But it was all… a little too polished. Like someone had cleaned it all up for a commercial.
My friend .. Joshua , he was supposed to pick me up and he did. He was standing at the arrivals gate with a cardboard sign that said “Welcome Home”, like some budget movie scene. He used to do that , make dumb jokes about us being in a non green lit Bollywood film. But this time I didn’t laugh. Because it wasn’t him.
When he smiled ,
It wasn’t his.
Not the one I knew.
He had my friend’s build. His voice. Even the small mole on his left cheek.
But the face , the face didn’t belong to the memories I carried. The jaw was sharper, the smile wider. His eyes…a little too dark. Like someone had purposely changed the bits from his appearance.
Yet some sort of force beneath reason kept insisting it was. Something primal. Like recognition without evidence. When he hugged me, he even smelled the same. But I didn’t hug back. Not right away. I told myself it was jet lag, a long flight, a frayed brain trying to reconcile two timelines.
The drive from the airport took three hours. It used to be one. Joshua smiled the whole way, unbroken, like a loop. It wasn’t a comforting smile, it was static, like he was programmed to maintain it. When we reached my house, he said, “Welcome, you weren’t gone for too long.” That sentence rang in my head longer than it should have. I thanked him, closed the door, and stood still.
The house was empty, just as I’d left it fifteen years ago after my father died. That’s why I left , some silences are too loud to live with. But when I stepped inside, the silence had taken a shape. The house had changed or rather, reversed. The kitchen that was always on the left now stood on the right. The entire layout mirrored. Same furniture. Same cracks in the floor. Same golden sunlight slanting in through the windows , just hitting the wrong wall. It was like someone had rebuilt my life using a photograph flipped the wrong way. Close enough to fool a stranger. Not close enough for me.
I didn’t speak for days. Not to Joshua. Not to myself. I began convincing myself that I was the one misremembering. Maybe I had built perfect replicas of these people and places in my mind, and reality was simply correcting them.
But then I saw Sneha.
We were childhood best friends. The kind where every summer afternoon had our names scribbled across it.
Her house was next to us, and I hadn’t told anyone I was back. I just… walked on my roof top and saw her in hers , I found her sitting on a bench , feet dangling out, sipping tea from a steel tumbler like she always did. Her laugh floated across the air , unmistakable.
But the face?
It belonged to someone else. But how could she remember if this wasn’t her face?
But she remembered me.
She screamed my name, asked when I’d come back.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I stood there, staring at this stranger who wore my best friend’s laughter like a mask. And still, I felt drawn to her. Pulled toward a version of the past that didn’t fit anymore.
That night, I opened my school photo album. I don’t know what I expected ; confirmation, maybe. Proof that my mind wasn’t folding in on itself. The handwriting was mine. “Me and Arjun - 8th Grade.” “Sneha’s 14th birthday.” The dates, the labels, the locations, all correct. But the faces… every face was a forgery. Familiar postures. Stranger expressions. Like the photos had been altered long after they were taken. Recast with new actors, still playing old roles.
I couldn’t sleep. It was like my life had been stitched back together by someone who got the pieces right but used the wrong thread.
Instead of unpacking, I opened the suitcase looking for something - anything - that felt real. The things inside the suitcase did not belong to me. I thought I my suitcase was exchanged while collecting, There are way too many red suitcases in Mumbai anyway.
The boarding pass was still there in my backpack, folded exactly where I’d left it.
I searched for the flight number online to contact the airlines . It didn’t exist. At least not anymore. What did exist was a headline report from 1995 .
IC-471. Munich to Mumbai ,
Vanished mid-air over the Black Sea.
No wreckage. No survivors. Nothing.
I shut my laptop close,
I was on that flight, but I'm here now.
When I walked to the window, hoping for night air to offer clarity,
I ended up staring at my own reflection and I swear , even I didn’t look like myself anymore.
