Ek Khidki Thi Deewar Mein

What is this book about?

The title translates to "There was a window in the wall." It is a collection of short stories by Nirmal Verma. If you have read Bahaya and liked it, this collection feels like its companion — same world, same quiet tone, same deep loneliness.

A window in a wall is a perfect Nirmal Verma image — something that lets you see out but cannot take you anywhere. You are still inside. You can watch life from behind the glass but you are not quite part of it. That feeling runs through every story here.

The stories

These are not stories with neat beginnings and endings. Each one captures a moment — a man watching snow fall from a window in Prague, a woman returning to a city she once lived in, two people sharing a silence that says more than words could. Very small moments, but Verma fills them with extraordinary weight.

Many of the stories draw from his years living in Czechoslovakia. The cold European landscapes add to the emotional coldness of the characters — people who are physically present but emotionally somewhere else.

What I took from it

• Displacement — living far from home, belonging neither here nor there — creates a very specific kind of loneliness that Verma captures perfectly
• Human connections are fragile and often missed entirely because both people are too afraid to reach out
• The ordinary details of life — a cup of tea, a street at night, morning light on a wall — become very moving in Verma's hands
• Silence between people is a whole language of its own

Who should read this

If you like quiet, literary writing — the kind that does not explain everything but trusts you to feel it — this is for you. If you need a clear story with plot twists and a resolution, this is probably not the right book. Nirmal Verma asks for patience and he rewards it.