The first time Rajesh delivered to flat 1205, Tower B, he waited eleven minutes. The app said to leave the food at the door after five minutes of no response, but something made him stay. Maybe it was the thin line of light under the door, or the sound of shuffling feet inside. When he finally set the bag down and turned to leave, an envelope slid out from underneath. Inside: exact change plus a thirty-rupee tip, and a note in careful handwriting: "Thank you for waiting."
That was Tuesday. Thursday, same order: one portion of hakka noodles, no MSG, less oil. This time he only waited seven minutes before the envelope appeared. Same tip, new note: "The food was still warm. Much appreciated."
By the third week, Rajesh had started looking forward to Tower B. His roommate Prakash thought he was crazy.
"You're wasting time on one customer," Prakash said, sprawled on their shared mattress, scrolling through his phone. "Time is money, brother."
"She tips well," Rajesh said.
"Thirty rupees? I make that in the time you spend standing at her door."
But it wasn't about the money. Rajesh couldn't explain it. In a city where everyone rushed past each other, where he made forty deliveries a day to people who barely looked at him, this strange ritual felt like something else. Something quiet and necessary.
The notes changed gradually. After a month, they included observations: "The rain today reminds me of Guangzhou." Then questions: "Do you like this work?" He started writing back, leaving his replies with the food. "It pays for my family's needs." "The rain makes traffic worse but the city smells cleaner."
Mrs. Chen—he learned her name in week six—ordered every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Same dish, same time, between 7:30 and 8:00 PM. She told him, through her notes, that she'd lived in Mumbai for twelve years. Her husband had worked for a shipping company. "He passed four years ago," she wrote. "I stayed because leaving felt like losing him again."
Rajesh found himself saving things to tell her. Small moments from his day. The man who tried to pay with a torn 2000-rupee note. The traffic cop who recognized him and waved him through. The stray dog near Bandra station who'd had puppies. He wrote these down during red lights, his handwriting getting worse as the weeks went on, but she never complained.
"Your Hindi is getting better," she wrote once, though he'd been writing in English.
"I'm writing in English, Aunty," he replied.
"I know. That's what's improving."
It made him laugh, alone on his bike, weaving through traffic.
Prakash got a job at a call center in October. "Better money, AC office, sitting all day," he said, packing his things. "You should apply."
"Maybe," Rajesh said, but he knew he wouldn't. The thought of sitting in a cubicle, talking to angry customers about phone bills, made his chest tight. At least on the bike, he was moving. At least there was sky above him, even if it was gray with exhaust.
The new roommate was younger, from Bihar, and played music on his phone speaker until 2 AM. Rajesh started spending more time out, taking extra shifts, riding even when the orders were slow.
Mrs. Chen's notes grew longer. She told him about translating technical manuals from English to Mandarin, about her son in Toronto who called once a month, about the view from her window—"Twelve floors up, I can see the Arabian Sea on clear days, though clear days are rare now."
"Why don't you open the door?" he finally asked.
The next note took four days to come. Saturday's delivery. "I'm not presentable," she wrote. "And this way, we can be whoever we need each other to be."
He understood that. On the bike, in his helmet and jacket, he wasn't the engineering dropout who'd failed his parents' dreams. He was just movement through the city, essential and invisible at once.
November brought unseasonable rain. The kind that flooded the streets and made delivery times impossible to predict. Tuesday came and went with no order from flat 1205. Rajesh checked the app obsessively. Thursday, nothing. Saturday, nothing.
"Maybe she went to visit her son," he told himself. But she would have mentioned it. She mentioned everything now—the price of vegetables, the new watchman who didn't smile, the cat that sometimes sat on her balcony.
He waited until the next Tuesday. When no order came by 9 PM, he rode to Tower B anyway. The security guard, who knew him by now, waved him through.
"No delivery?" the guard asked.
"Just checking on something," Rajesh said.
At her door, he knocked softly. No answer. No light underneath. He slipped a note under: "Aunty, are you okay? - Rajesh"
Wednesday morning, before his first delivery, he went back. The note was still there, visible from the hallway. That's when he knew something was wrong.
The security guard didn't have a key. The building manager was useless—"We don't interfere with residents' privacy." It took Rajesh two hours to find the right hospital. She'd been admitted ten days ago. Stroke. Stable now, but weak.
Room 408 smelled like disinfectant and old flowers. She was smaller than he'd imagined. Frailer. But her eyes, when she saw him, were exactly as sharp as her handwriting suggested.
"You shouldn't have come," she said. Her voice was softer than expected, accented but clear.
"You shouldn't have stopped ordering," he replied.
She almost smiled. "How did you find me?"
"I deliver all over this city. I know people."
They sat in silence for a while. It wasn't uncomfortable. It was like the pause between his knock and her envelope sliding under the door.
"My son is coming," she said finally. "To take me to Toronto."
Rajesh nodded. He'd expected this.
"I don't want to go."
"But you'll go anyway."
"Yes."
A nurse came in to check her IV. Rajesh stood to leave, but Mrs. Chen caught his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
"Wait," she said.
After the nurse left, she pointed to her purse on the side table. "Inside. An envelope."
It was thick, marked with his name. He started to open it, but she stopped him.
"Later," she said. "After I'm gone."
"Aunty—"
"It's not what you think. Just... later."
He visited twice more before her son arrived. A tall man with worried eyes who looked at Rajesh suspiciously until Mrs. Chen explained in rapid Mandarin. Then the son shook Rajesh's hand, said thank you in accented Hindi, and that was that.
The envelope contained three thousand rupees and a long letter. She wrote about her husband, really wrote about him for the first time. How he'd loved Mumbai's chaos, how he'd learned to make pakoras from their downstairs neighbor, how he'd died on a Tuesday (which is why she always ordered on Tuesdays—to mark the day, to fill it with something else).
She wrote about loneliness, the kind that sits in your chest like wet cement. About being foreign in a city even after twelve years. About how his notes had become the thing she looked forward to most.
"We never really met," she wrote, "but you knew me. Thank you for that gift."
At the bottom, she'd added: "Your English has improved remarkably."
Three weeks later, Rajesh got a new roommate, another driver from UP. Prakash called to complain about the call center job—the fluorescent lights gave him headaches, his supervisor was an ass, the coffee was terrible.
"Come back to delivery," Rajesh said.
"Maybe," Prakash said, but they both knew he wouldn't.
Tower B got a new tenant in 1205. A young couple with a baby. They ordered frequently, always pizza, always paid through the app, never tipped. Rajesh left the food at the door and walked away.
But sometimes, on Tuesday evenings around 7:30, he'd find himself pausing at that door. Remembering the thin line of light, the shuffling feet, the careful handwriting sliding into view. The city moved around him, urgent and indifferent, but for a moment he stood still, holding space for what had been.
Then his phone would buzz with the next delivery, and he'd move on. That's what the city demanded. That's what the work was. But he kept her final note in his wallet, folded carefully behind his license. Not to read—he'd memorized it anyway—but to carry. Proof that even in a city of twenty million, even through a closed door, two strangers could know each other.
The rains came again in December, unexpected and harsh. The streets flooded, traffic stalled, and delivery times stretched impossible. But Rajesh kept riding, moving through the city's chaos with something like purpose. He'd started writing things down again—small observations, moments worth noting. Not for anyone in particular. Just to mark them, to make them real.
At a red light near Linking Road, he pulled out his notebook and wrote: "The street dog had three puppies. They're all brown with white paws." He looked at his handwriting—still terrible, but getting better. Maybe.
The light turned green. He tucked the notebook away and merged back into traffic, carrying other people's dinners through the rain, maintaining the small connections that kept the city running. It wasn't much, but it was something. It was enough.
Months later, he got a postcard from Toronto. A picture of snow-covered trees, foreign and beautiful. On the back, in that same careful handwriting: "My son's apartment has no stairs. I miss the climb to the twelfth floor. I miss the view of the Arabian Sea. The food here arrives cold. - Mrs. Chen"
Below that, smaller: "P.S. Your English remains excellent."
He laughed, standing in the building lobby where he'd stopped to check mail that wasn't usually for him. The security guard looked over, curious.
"Good news?" the guard asked.
"Yeah," Rajesh said, tucking the postcard into his wallet with the letter. "Good news."
That night, he took an order for Tower B. Not 1205—that young couple had moved out already, replaced by someone else he'd never really know. But 903, an old man who always ordered soup and always paid exact change. Rajesh climbed the nine flights instead of taking the elevator. At the door, he waited an extra moment after knocking. The man answered, surprised to find him still there.
"Sorry," the old man said, fumbling for money. "I'm moving slowly today."
"No problem," Rajesh said. "Take your time."
The man looked at him then, really looked. "You're the one who used to deliver to Mrs. Chen."
"You knew her?"
"We played cards sometimes, in the community room. She mentioned you. Said you wrote each other letters."
"Notes," Rajesh corrected. "Just notes."
"She said letters," the man insisted, and handed him a fifty-rupee tip.
Riding away, Rajesh thought about that. Letters. Maybe that's what they had been. Maybe in a city where everyone was rushing past each other, where connections were digital and brief, they'd found an older way of being. Slower, quieter, but real.
His phone buzzed. Another order, another tower, another door. He accepted it and turned his bike around, heading back into the stream of evening traffic. The city lights were coming on, windows lighting up in thousands of apartments, each one containing its own stories, its own isolations and connections.
Somewhere in Toronto, Mrs. Chen was probably eating dinner. Something her son had cooked or ordered, delivered by someone who wouldn't wait, wouldn't leave notes, wouldn't know that she could see the Arabian Sea on clear days, even though clear days were rare.
But that was okay. That had been their story, their time, their particular way of knowing each other. It was finished now, but it had been real. As real as the money in his account, as real as the roads he traveled every day, as real as the city itself with all its impossible distances and unexpected proximities.
The next delivery was in Bandra East, twenty minutes away if traffic cooperated. Rajesh merged onto the main road, accelerating into the space between cars, carrying someone's dinner through the dark, maintaining the thin threads that held the city together. It was good work, necessary work. Not forever, maybe, but for now.
For now, it was enough.