The Ghost Writer

In the humid bustle of Mumbai, 2025, Priya Sharma hunched over her laptop in her cramped Bandra apartment, the cursor blinking mockingly on a half-finished manuscript. Her novel, a sprawling tale of love and loss set in the monsoon-soaked ghats of Varanasi, had been stalled for months. Deadlines loomed, her publisher’s patience waned, and her savings dwindled. Desperate, she posted an ad on a freelance writing platform: Ghostwriter needed for romance novel. Urgent.

Enter Devansh “Dev” Mehra, a reclusive writer from a small town in Himachal Pradesh, who responded with a crisp, witty email. “I can breathe life into your story,” he wrote, “but I work best in the shadows. No calls, no meetings—just words.” Intrigued by his confidence and sample chapters, Priya hired him, agreeing to communicate only through emails and shared drafts.

Their collaboration began with cautious professionalism. Priya sent Dev her fragmented manuscript, and he returned edits laced with sharp insights and poetic flourishes. His notes in the margins were bold yet tender: “This scene needs more ache—let her heart break like a monsoon cloud.” Priya found herself smiling at his metaphors, her replies growing playful. “You’re making my characters fall in love faster than I can keep up, Dev. Are you secretly a romantic?” His response was coy: “Only on paper, Priya. Only on paper.”

Weeks passed, and their emails evolved from work to warmth. Dev shared snippets of his life—a stray dog he fed outside his mountain cottage, the way fog clung to the pines at dawn. Priya countered with tales of Mumbai’s chaotic charm—street vendors hawking vada pav, the rhythm of local trains. Their words danced, each email a brushstroke painting an invisible bond. She’d write late into the night, heart racing as she awaited his reply, imagining his fingers on the keyboard, crafting sentences that felt like whispers meant only for her.

The tension grew as the novel neared completion. Dev’s revisions to a pivotal love scene left Priya breathless: “He looked at her like she was the only story worth telling.” In her next email, she dared to flirt. “Dev, if you write love like this, I wonder what your heart’s story is.” His reply came hours later, unusually hesitant: “Some stories are too fragile for the page, Priya. But yours… yours I’d write forever.”

She began to dream of him—a faceless figure with a voice woven from his words, soft yet commanding. She’d reread his emails, searching for clues to who he was beyond the screen. Was he tall? Did he smile easily? Why did he insist on staying hidden? The mystery only deepened her longing. She wrote a draft where the protagonist confessed her love through a letter, and Dev’s edit came back with a single note: “This feels… personal.”

As the final chapter approached, Priya’s heart ached with a truth she couldn’t ignore—she was falling for a man she’d never seen. She proposed a meeting in her next email, her fingers trembling as she typed: “Dev, we’ve built this world together. I want to see the man behind the words. Meet me in Mumbai?” His reply was agonizingly brief: “I can’t, Priya. Not yet. Let’s finish the story first.”

The rejection stung, but she poured her frustration into the novel’s climax, where the lovers finally met under Varanasi’s rain-soaked skies. Dev’s final edits arrived with a note that broke her restraint: “This ending feels like us—close, but never close enough.” Unable to hold back, Priya wrote a raw, unfiltered email: “Dev, I don’t know your face, but I know your soul. Your words have made me fall in love with you. If you feel even a fraction of this, please, tell me who you are.”

Days passed in silence. Priya feared she’d crossed a line, that Dev would vanish like a ghost. Then, on the eve of her manuscript’s submission, an email arrived. No text, just an attachment—a new epilogue for their novel. In it, the protagonist found a letter from her lover, revealing he’d stayed away not from fear, but because he felt unworthy of her light. The letter ended with a promise: “I’m coming to you, if you’ll have me.”

Below the attachment, Dev had added a single line: “Priya, I’m booking a train to Mumbai. Will you meet me at CST station, Sunday, 6 p.m.?”

Heart pounding, Priya typed a one-word reply: “Yes.”

On Sunday, she stood under the grand dome of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, scanning the crowd. A man approached, holding a worn notebook, his eyes hesitant but warm. “Priya?” he said, his voice as familiar as his words. She smiled, her heart recognizing him before her eyes did. “Dev.”

Their story, unwritten but real, was just beginning.