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The Distance Between Two Chairs

 



Arun had always believed he was an easy son.

Never rebellious. Never dramatic.

He thought he had made fatherhood simple for his own dad.

But that confidence began to crumble the day his son turned thirteen.

Now, their home felt like two separate islands.

Arun stood on one, his boy on the other — a teenager whose eyes were always elsewhere, whose laughter came from screens, whose words fell short and cold.


Conversations had become rituals without meaning.

“How was your day?”

“Good.”

“Want to talk?”

“Later.”


Later never came.

Arun began to feel like a man standing outside his own child’s world, knocking on a door that refused to open. He worried constantly — not about grades or friends — but about the silence between them. A silence that wasn’t angry, just… empty. Quiet in a way that hurt.

One evening, after yet another attempt at a simple chat failed, Arun walked out to the veranda and sat down heavily. The loneliness of fatherhood surprised him — it wrapped around him like an unexpected winter.

He pulled out his phone almost without thinking and dialed his father.

“Appa… it’s me.”

His father’s voice arrived like a warm blanket that had been folded away for too long.

“What happened? You sound tired.”

Arun swallowed. For a moment he couldn’t speak — not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he feared crying if he started.

“Appa… am I a bad father?”

There was a soft, startled silence on the other end.

“I try to talk to him,” Arun continued, voice shaking. “But everything I say feels wrong. He’s slipping away from me and I don’t know how to hold him. I don’t know how to be… what I need to be.”

Another long pause.

Then his father exhaled, a sound carrying decades of memories.

“Arun,” he said quietly, “do you think you were easy for me?”

Arun stared into the dark sky.

“But I was calm. I didn’t trouble you.”

“You didn’t talk to me,” his father replied, his voice breaking just enough. “You kept everything inside. I spent so many nights wondering if you needed me, or if I had already become a stranger to you.”


Arun felt a sting behind his eyes.

“I never knew,” he whispered.

“That’s how fatherhood works,” Appa said. “We both feel lost. We both feel distant. But we stay. That’s what keeps the bond alive — not perfect conversations, not wisdom… just staying.”

Arun closed his eyes.

For the first time, he saw his father not as a strong, silent figure… but as a young man once, fumbling through the same fears.

“Will he come back to me?” Arun asked.

“He will,” his father replied. “Children walk away to grow… and return when they are ready to be seen. You just keep your chair next to his, even if he doesn’t look at you. One day, he will.”

Arun wiped his face quietly before going inside.


His son sat at the table, bent over a screen. He didn’t look up.

But Arun sat next to him anyway — close enough for their shoulders to almost touch.


A minute later, the boy shifted slightly, just enough to make space for him.


A small movement.

A tiny gesture.

Almost nothing.


But to Arun, it felt like a beginning — a faint, tender crack in the walls between them.


The kind of moment only fathers notice.

The kind that hurts and heals at the same time.

And for the first time in months, the distance between the two chairs felt just a little smaller.

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