Stone Face 3: Mr.
Stone Face The Lohaghat market occupied a long, gently sloping street lined with small shops whose fronts opened directly onto the road, their goods spilling out in colorful, chaotic abundance — mounds of tomatoes and cauliflower stacked in wicker baskets, brass utensils hanging from hooks catching the morning light, bolts of fabric in every conceivable shade draped across wooden counters.
It was smaller than Delhi’s endless, layered chaos, but it carried its own particular energy — vegetable sellers calling out prices in voices pitched to carry over the general din, a radio somewhere playing an old film song at a volume that suggested the shopkeeper had simply given up trying to compete and decided to contribute to the noise instead, children weaving between the legs of grazing cows with the fearless, practiced ease of kids who had grown up navigating exactly this obstacle course their entire lives.
Vihaan walked through all of it with his camera slung over one shoulder, more genuinely interested in the temple’s crumbling silhouette visible on the hill above the market than in anything happening at ground level — which was, in retrospect, precisely why he didn’t notice the girl until she’d nearly knocked him flat.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” she snapped, her voice sharp with the particular indignation of someone who had almost lost an entire basket of apples to someone else’s carelessness.
She steadied the basket against her hip with practiced ease, apples wobbling but ultimately staying put, and then actually looked at him properly for the first time — her irritation flickering, almost visibly, into something more like curiosity.
“You’re not from here,” she said, tilting her head slightly, taking in his city clothes, his camera, the particular way he was standing that suggested he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his hands in a crowd.
“I am,” Vihaan said, a little more defensively than he’d intended.
“My family’s from Lohaghat.” “Really.” She raised one eyebrow, thoroughly unconvinced, hands finding her hips in a posture that suggested she’d had this exact argument with tourists before and generally won it.
“So you must know the local weather patterns too, then?
Because you’re dressed like Delhi weather followed you here and forgot to tell you it was leaving you behind.” He didn’t have a ready answer for that.
He was already looking past her shoulder, toward the temple’s broken silhouette rising above the rooftops, some part of his attention permanently, unconsciously drawn back to it regardless of what else was happening in front of him.
She followed his gaze, and something in her expression shifted — quick, sharp, unmistakably wary, the easy teasing dropping away for just a moment to reveal something more serious underneath.
“You’re going up there?” she asked, and this time there was no performance in the question at all.
“Maybe,” Vihaan said, genuinely surprised by the change in her tone.
“Why does it matter?” “It doesn’t.” She recovered quickly, forcing her voice back into something lighter, though Vihaan — who made a habit of noticing exactly these kinds of small, deliberate corrections — filed the moment away carefully.
“I mean, it’s basically falling apart up there.
Half the structure could come down on your head if you’re not careful.
Tourists shouldn’t be climbing around unstable ruins just for a nice photo.” “I’m not a tourist.” “Could’ve fooled me.” She narrowed her eyes at the camera hanging from his shoulder, clearly cataloguing it as evidence in an ongoing case against him.
“Are you one of those Instagram types who show up in villages like this to take pretty, artfully filtered photos of ‘authentic rural life’ and then leave without ever actually buying a single samosa from the people you’re photographing?” Despite himself, despite the strange unease still sitting in his chest from his grandmother’s careful silence that morning, the corner of Vihaan’s mouth twitched upward.
He said nothing, which seemed, if anything, to annoy her further.
“Oh my god, you don’t even talk,” she said, throwing both hands up in a gesture of theatrical exasperation.
“Fine.
That’s it.
You’re officially ‘Rock’ from now on.
No — ‘Mr.
Stone Face.’ That’s better.
That’s what I’m calling you.” “I didn’t ask for a nickname.” “You didn’t have to ask.
You earned it, standing there being all silent and mysterious like you’re auditioning for a role in a serious art film.” She adjusted her grip on the apple basket, gave him one last thorough, assessing look — the kind that made Vihaan feel, uncomfortably, like she was seeing considerably more than he’d intended to show — and added, almost as an afterthought tossed casually over her shoulder as she turned to leave, “Careful near that temple bell, by the way.
Especially after dark.
Just a friendly local tip, free of charge.” “Everyone keeps saying that,” Vihaan called after her, unable to help himself.
“Nobody ever actually explains why.” She paused, just for a moment, something complicated crossing her face — gone again before he could properly name it or hold onto it.
“Because the people who keep asking why,” she said, not quite turning back to look at him, “usually stop asking anything at all, eventually.
Best not to find out the hard way, Mr.
Stone Face.” She walked off then, disappearing into the market’s colorful chaos with the easy, unhurried confidence of someone who had never once, in her entire life, been lost in her own hometown.
Vihaan stood there a moment longer than he probably should have, oddly unsettled by a conversation that should have meant absolutely nothing at all, and found himself, against every reasonable instinct, hoping he’d run into her again.
He didn’t yet know her name.