The House Where Songs Never Stopped🪕
The House Above the Pines
I came to the mountains because I had stopped being able to write.
For almost three months, every page I touched felt empty. I lived in a crowded hostel in Delhi where people were constantly talking, laughing, fighting, playing music through thin walls—yet somehow I had never felt more alone in my life.
I was studying literature, and writing used to be the only thing that made sense to me. But slowly even that started feeling exhausting.
So during winter break, I left.
A professor once told me about a quiet village in Himachal where he used to go when he needed “silence loud enough to hear yourself think.” At the time I thought it sounded pretentious.
Turns out he was right.
The village was small, cold, and surrounded by endless pine forests. Fog rolled through the mountains so heavily in the evenings that entire roads disappeared into white silence.
I rented a tiny wooden room above an old grocery shop and spent my first few days doing almost nothing except walking aimlessly and pretending I would eventually start writing again.
That was when I met Meher.
She couldn’t have been older than nine.
The first time I saw her, she was sitting on a broken stone wall near the forest trail with a white-and-grey cat sleeping peacefully in her lap. She wore an oversized green sweater that nearly covered her hands, and her shoes looked slightly too big for her feet.
She looked at me for a few seconds without speaking.
Then she glanced down at the cat and said quietly,
“Momo doesn’t usually sit this calmly near strangers.”
It was such a strangely serious thing for a child to say that I laughed a little.
The cat opened one eye, stared at me briefly, then went back to sleep.
After that, I started seeing her almost every evening.
Sometimes near the hills behind the village.
Sometimes outside the tiny post office.
Sometimes walking slowly through the fog with Momo following behind her.
She was quiet in a way that didn’t feel awkward.
We would walk together for long stretches without speaking at all.
Oddly enough, I liked that.
Most people exhausted me.
She didn’t.
Over time, she started talking more.
Mostly about small things.
How one of her sheep once disappeared during snowfall.
How Momo stole food from the kitchen whenever nobody looked.
How she hated school because the teachers spoke too loudly.
And most often—
she talked about her grandmother.
“My dadi puts too much ginger in tea because she thinks ginger fixes everything,” she told me once very seriously.
Another day she explained that her grandmother sang old pahadi folk songs while knitting sweaters near the fireplace at night.
“She forgets the lyrics halfway,” Meher said, “so she just makes up new ones.”
I don’t know why those conversations stayed with me so strongly.
Maybe because something about her reminded me of myself as a child.
Quiet children recognize each other somehow.
One evening while I was sitting inside a small tea shop trying unsuccessfully to write, Meher suddenly appeared outside the window holding Momo under one arm.
“You’ve never seen my house,” she said.
I looked outside.
The sky was already darkening, and fog had started moving between the trees.
“Right now?”
She nodded once.
“It’s close.”
Her house stood farther uphill beyond most of the village, hidden between tall pine trees where fewer homes existed. By the time we reached it, cold wind had started pushing mist across the path.
It was an old wooden house with faded blue windows and a roof darkened by years of rain and snow.
Inside, it smelled faintly of smoke, old books, and wet wool.
The place felt strangely warm.
An old woman sat near the fireplace knitting quietly.
Meher smiled immediately.
“Dadi, this is the writer I told you about.”
The old woman looked up at me over her glasses.
“So you’re the boy who keeps wandering around staring at trees.”
I laughed awkwardly.
Her grandmother turned out to be surprisingly funny. She spoke slowly, with the calmness old mountain people seem to carry naturally. She made tea for us in steel cups and complained about winter arriving too early this year.
Meanwhile, Meher wandered around the house showing me things proudly like I was an old friend.
Her books.
Her toys.
A cracked snow globe.
Tiny hand-knitted sweaters for Momo.
At one point, she carefully showed me a wooden flute placed inside a glass box upstairs.
“Mama used to play this,” she said softly.
I instinctively glanced toward her grandmother, expecting that uncomfortable silence adults usually carry around grief.
But it never came.
Her grandmother simply continued knitting.
Outside, the wind grew stronger.
And then I heard it.
A woman singing.
Soft. Distant. Beautiful.
An old folk song carried faintly through the house.
The voice was coming from upstairs.
Meher’s face lit up immediately.
“Mama’s practicing again.”
I froze slightly.
The singing continued.
Low and haunting and impossibly gentle.
I looked toward her grandmother.
“You can hear that?” I asked quietly.
The old woman frowned.
“Hear what?”
“The singing upstairs.”
She stared at me for several seconds.
Then she smiled sadly.
“After her mother left, Meher started imagining things sometimes.”
The song still echoed faintly above us.
Clear as day.
I looked at Meher.
She seemed completely normal. Almost happy.
“She sings more when it rains,” Meher whispered to me.
Her grandmother sighed softly.
“Poor child still thinks her mother walks around this house.”
Something about that moment unsettled me deeply.
Not because I believed in ghosts.
But because I was still hearing the singing.
Every word.
Every note.
Meher suddenly picked up Momo and stood.
“I’m going upstairs.”
Then she looked at me.
“You can come too.”
Curiosity overpowered common sense.
I followed her upstairs while her grandmother remained near the fireplace downstairs.
The wooden staircase creaked softly beneath our feet.
The singing continued until we reached the hallway above.
Then it stopped.
Instantly.
The silence afterward felt wrong.
Meher calmly walked toward the last room.
The door was already half open.
Inside was a small bedroom lit warmly by a yellow lamp.
And standing near the window—
was a woman.
She turned slowly toward us.
She looked completely normal.
Tired, maybe. Quiet.
But real.
Not transparent. Not shadow-like.
Just… real.
Meher smiled immediately.
“Mama.”
The woman smiled softly and touched her daughter’s hair.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
My mind struggled to rearrange everything I thought I understood.
Then finally I managed to say,
“Your mother… your dadi said…”
The woman frowned slightly.
“My dadi?” Meher repeated quietly.
I looked between them, confused.
“Downstairs. She said after your mother left, Meher started hearing things.”
The room became silent.
The woman’s expression slowly changed into confusion.
Then she said softly,
“My mother died seven years ago.”
I felt my stomach drop.
No one spoke.
Somewhere downstairs, the wooden chair near the fireplace creaked quietly on its own.
I turned immediately toward the hallway.
The singing had stopped.
The entire house below had gone silent.
“My mother died seven years ago,” she repeated.
I remember laughing nervously after that. Not because anything was funny, but because sometimes the brain laughs when it refuses to understand something.
“That’s not possible,” I said quietly. “I was just talking to her downstairs.”
Neither of them answered.
Then, very gently, Meher took my hand.
“Come,” she whispered.
She led me back downstairs.
The fireplace still burned softly.
Three steel cups of tea still rested on the wooden table.
Half-finished knitting wool lay beside the chair.
But the chair itself was empty.
Completely empty.
The house no longer felt warm.
It felt old.
Very old.
Like something inside it had quietly stayed behind for too long.
“She sits there every evening,” Meher said softly behind me. “Sometimes she forgets she’s dead.”
I slowly looked back toward the chair.
And that was when I noticed it.
The knitting needles were still moving slightly.
As if someone had only just stood up.
A cold breeze moved through the room even though every window was closed.
Then, somewhere upstairs—
very faintly—
the folk song began again.