Only the Faces Would Change

City Notes: Mumbai August 2026

It was a humid evening. His shirt clung to his back even after he stopped walking. His skin felt tired. 

But the park was peaceful. 

Not the polished peace of postcards. A slightly frayed, municipal peace. The grass was green in some places and yellow in others, flattened by children’s shoes, walkers’ feet, old men’s slippers, and the long punishment of summer. Alive and dying at the same time, A breeze moved through the trees, touching leaves that had survived dust, heat, rainwater, and neglect. 

Above him, the sky stretched wide and blue, absurdly generous. Grey clouds dragged themselves slowly across it like tired animals.

A plane appeared from the direction of the Western Ghats. For a few seconds, it was only a silver dot in the sky, carrying people from another city to here, from one set of anxieties to another. Then it descended, became bigger and slipped into Mumbai, into its towers, traffic, glass, sweat, and ambition.

He stood watching it longer than necessary.

His worries, which had filled the day like bad weather, seemed suddenly less urgent under that enormous sky. Deadlines. Bills. Age. Health. The vague fear of having failed in ways he could not name. The little headaches of being alive. 

Not gone. Only been pushed back, like dirt swept under a carpet.

The azaan floated from a nearby mosque and mixed with the cries of children, the thud of running shoes, the rustle of dry leaves, and the traffic beyond the gate.

The park went on living. 

Parents sat on benches, half-watching their children, half-lost in their phones. Walkers moved in circles, orbiting the same trees. Men and women exercised with hard faces, fighting sugar, cholesterol, loneliness, death. A group of Gen Z took selfies, trying to freeze the evening inside a screen before it leaked away. A few old men sat together, speaking of better times, as if the it had not also been cruel. 

He looked up again.

The sky did not care. That was its beauty. That was its cruelty.

He noticed he had not thought about himself for several minutes. The wind moved through the trees. The sky darkened. Evening made its own sounds. They asked nothing of him.

The breeze touched his face. The clouds moved. The azaan faded.

Time slowed.

His worries did not leave him. But they became smaller.

A hundred years from now, he thought, everyone in the park would be gone. 

The children with their plastic balls. The parents with their tired eyes. The walkers circling trees. The selfie-takers with their bright faces and vanishing afternoons. The old men with their edited memories.

And he would be gone too.

Others would come. They would sit on the same benches, walk the same paths, look up at the same indifferent sky. They would bring with them their own worries, their own small joys, their own fragile moments of peace. 

Life would go on.

Only the faces would change.