Jhumka of Chandni Chowk
A Tale of Glances, Veils, and the Price of Illusion
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
Delhi, Somewhere Between Timelessness and Today
In the beating heart of Chandni Chowk, where hawkers cry and honking rickshaws compose a daily symphony, a modest cart sat under the same neem tree for fifteen years.
On it hung earrings—jhumkas, oxidized silver and bright glass bangles, handmade trinkets, and dreams for ₹80 apiece.
The cart’s owner was Bilal, a quiet man with the patience of a poet and the gaze of someone who had stopped expecting miracles.
Until she arrived.
The Girl in the Niqab
Every Friday after Jummah prayers, she came.
Veiled in black, her hands ivory white. Her eyes? Kohl-rimmed secrets.
She pointed only. Never spoke. Never bargained.
Every week, a pair of jhumkas.
One day red. One day green. One day peacock blue.
Bilal began to live between Fridays.
He polished the cart. Learnt the names of stones. Invented reasons to rearrange the earrings just so she’d linger half a second longer.
The whole bazaar watched. And smiled.
Because every bazaar loves a love story—especially one where the lovers never speak.
The Confession of a Jhumka Seller
Bilal wrote a note one Thursday night. Just a slip of honesty.
“I don’t know your name. But I wait for your footsteps. I do not ask who you are, only that you exist again next Friday.”
He folded it inside a tiny silver jhumka and placed it in a velvet pouch.
She came. She chose.
He handed the pouch—heart pounding like a dhol.
She paused.
And for the first time in months… she spoke.
“You should stop waiting for people like me.”
She turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Her voice was kind, but final.
The Following Friday
She didn’t come.
Nor the next.
Nor ever again.
Years Later…
A journalist writing a piece on old Delhi bazaars interviewed Bilal. He still sat under the same neem tree.
Greyed now. Softer.
When asked about his best memory in Chandni Chowk, he smiled.
“A woman once bought jhumkas from me for a year. Said only one sentence. But it taught me everything about longing that Rumi couldn’t.”
The journalist asked what he did with the jhumka he never sold—the one with the note.
He opened a tin box.
Inside: a single earring, wrapped in velvet, and a folded slip.
Some stories are never completed.
They are lived in pauses, in weekly visits, in eyes that never met but spoke.
The veiled girl never returned.
But her absence never left.
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
📚 For more bittersweet fables of the heart, untold connections, and stories that echo long after the bazaar has emptied, visit:
🌐 farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Because sometimes, the jhumka is all that’s left behind.
