There was a boy—quiet, with eyes like a smudged sketch, always half-finished. His name was Aryan, and he lived in a house full of voices that never listened.
From a very young age, Aryan understood that silence was safer than speaking. Words, when he tried to use them, bounced off walls like rubber bullets—wounding no one but himself. His thoughts were like paper boats in a flood—delicate, hopeful, but always washed away.
His mother had died when he was four. He remembered her warmth vaguely, like the feeling of sunlight on skin—present, comforting, but hard to grasp once it passed. Her face was a fading photograph in his mind. People told him she had a laugh like windchimes. He had no memory of it.
His father remarried. Aryan did not object—he was too young to object, too numb to feel rage. The woman was polite, kind even, but in the hollowed room his mother left behind, no new person could bloom. Aryan never hated her; he simply couldn't let her into a place that still held echoes.
Life at home was a structured silence. His father never yelled, never forced him to read or run or do well in school. He simply said with a distant tone, "If you do well, life will be kind. If not… you'll end up begging. That's how the world works."
It was meant to be wisdom, but it felt like a warning painted in grayscale. No emotion, no fire. Just cold, bland consequences.
Aryan tried to please him. He truly did. He joined the tuition classes his father paid for, signed up for Math Olympiads, tried to answer every teacher's question with something clever. But each attempt felt like holding a paintbrush in a room with no light.
Because Aryan didn't care for equations.
He cared for shadows, for light, for the way paint bled into canvas, for how words formed stories, for how sketches could whisper secrets louder than voices.
He loved art.
He loved learning—not cramming, but discovering. He would spend hours reading about ancient pottery or watching videos of Japanese calligraphy. His notebook margins were filled with doodles more expressive than any essay he'd ever written.
But whenever he showed his art to anyone at home, they simply nodded and moved on. Once, he painted a portrait of his mother from his own blurry memories and fragments of photographs. He had used soft, blurred strokes, as if her face was blooming from smoke. His father glanced at it and said, "Looks good. Maybe you should focus on things that can actually earn money."
Aryan smiled. Not because he agreed. But because he was tired of not being seen.
At school, teachers called him "inconsistent." He could shine in creative writing and fail algebra the same week. He could build a small paper replica of the Eiffel Tower and then forget his social studies homework. They never saw his brilliance—just his imbalance.
He grew older. A little more withdrawn. But he never stopped drawing. At night, when the house fell asleep, he would spread sheets across the floor and paint until his fingers stained in colour and his mind, finally, felt alive.
He didn't hate his father. He wanted to love him. Wanted to understand what would make the man proud. But it was as if his father was speaking in a language Aryan didn't know.
"Just do what's best for you," his father said one evening.
But the boy wanted to scream, "I don't know what that means! If I choose what I love, you'll call me foolish. If I follow what I hate, I'll lose myself. How is that a choice?"
But he said nothing. Just nodded.
Years passed.
One day, Aryan submitted his artwork anonymously to a local gallery contest. He didn't expect to win.
But he did.
His painting, "The Colour She Never Wore", was a mother-shaped silhouette standing in the middle of a garden, faceless, arms outstretched, surrounded by colours she never had time to wear in life. It touched something deep in the judges.
When his father saw the award, the article in the paper, the cheque—he paused for a long time.
"So… this is what you've been doing?" he asked, unsure whether it was amazement or confusion.
Aryan didn't answer right away.
Instead, he said softly, "This is the only time I've felt like someone listened to what I was trying to say."
His father looked at him. Really looked. For the first time, perhaps.
There was silence.
Not the usual kind.
This one felt full of possibility.