and what’s harder still is that you’re left with all the words you didn’t get to say.
all the softness you still carried in your chest.
all the wondering.

what do you do with that?

📖 today’s book: “goodbye, again” by jonny sun

this book doesn’t try to be wise.
it’s not trying to heal you. it just sits with you.

a collection of gentle essays, thoughts, and sketches- this is the kind of book you read when you’re not looking for answers, but for presence.
it explores burnout. loneliness. missing people who are still alive.
and the quiet sadness that comes from needing rest but feeling guilty for taking it.

there’s one line that feels like a soft truth:

“sometimes i am not sad, and i still want to cry. and that is okay.”

what a relief it is, right?
that some feelings don’t need stories or justifications.
they just want to be felt and then let go of, like steam.

🎥 today’s film: “after yang” (2021) by kogonada

not enough people talk about this film. but it’s tender in a way that stays with you.

it’s set in a near future but what matters is not the science or the plot.
what matters is the grief. the slow, scattered, unglamorous kind.
the grief of losing someone you didn’t expect to lose.
the grief of not knowing how to mourn someone who was never fully yours.

it lingers on memory.
on silence.
on the way we keep trying to understand people even after they’re gone.

there’s a scene where the father is just sitting. remembering.
and nothing happens but your heart feels full and hollow at once.

🍂 the truth about closure

closure is romanticised.
we want it to come clean to give us peace, to untie the knot.
but often, it doesn’t arrive.

and we’re forced to move on without a final scene.
no curtain call. no clarity. just the slow realisation that they’re not coming back and maybe, deep down, you’re okay with that.

not because you stopped caring.
but because you’ve grown tired of waiting for something that doesn’t want to be offered.

🌾 what remains, and what doesn’t

if you’re in that space where something ended without an ending, i hope you know this:

you don’t need their permission to heal.
you don’t need their explanation to move forward.
you don’t need to understand the ending to walk into your next chapter.

some stories stop mid-sentence.
some fade out instead of wrapping up.
and still you get to begin again.

you’re allowed to carry a little softness.
to still think of them when a song plays.
to smile at the memory and feel no bitterness.

you’re allowed to outgrow the need for a final word.

we think healing needs to be loud. dramatic.
but maybe it just looks like this:

getting through your day without checking your phone for their name.
putting away the sweater you used to wear around them.
realising one morning that your coffee doesn’t remind you of them anymore.

and maybe that’s all the closure you ever needed.

shivani
📖 @readingmurkami

like folding laundry at dusk.
or making tea the exact same way every evening, even when your day has been nothing like the last.
like checking if the door’s locked twice not out of fear, but out of habit. like the hum of the fan you can’t sleep without.
or lighting a small lamp before dinner, even if you’re eating alone.

these are not the rituals you write about in journals.
they’re not performed, not optimized, not aesthetic.
they simply are soft repetitions that make the days feel held. known. a little more yours.

📖 today’s book: “before the coffee gets cold” by toshikazu kawaguchi

this book is set in a tiny café in tokyo.
it’s quiet. understated. and full of longing.
but what makes it beautiful isn’t the time travel or the emotional goodbyes- it’s the rhythm of the place.

people come in. they order coffee. the staff prepares it the same way every day.
there’s a rule about where you can sit.
there’s a process. a pace. a way.

and in the middle of all this routine, something shifts.
people forgive. remember. understand.
not because of drama, but because of stillness.

“no matter what difficulties people face, they’ll always have the strength to overcome them. it just takes heart.”

it’s a reminder that repetition isn’t boring.
it’s stabilizing. it’s holy. it’s a backdrop for change to arrive slowly, softly.

🎥 today’s film: “paterson” (2016) by jim jarmusch

if you’ve ever felt guilty for not doing more,
watch this.

paterson is about a man named paterson, who lives in paterson, new jersey. he drives a bus. he writes poems in his notebook. he walks his dog. he has dinner with his wife.
every day, more or less the same.

and yet there’s something profound in that sameness.
not because his life is extraordinary, but because he sees it.
he notices it.
he listens.

the film doesn’t rush. it doesn’t build toward a climax.
it simply sits with him. with the rhythm of his life. and in doing that, it gently makes us reflect on our own.

“there’s an endless amount of things to say about everything. but nothing to say about the way a bus turns left at the same stop every day and somehow, that’s enough.”

🌿 why we need these little loops

sometimes we crave big changes, reinventions, dramatic shifts.
and those have their place.

but most of life is lived in loops.

you wake up. you brush your teeth. you go out. you come back. you eat. you sleep.
and in between all this: you live.

the clothes get folded.
the rice boils.
the cat naps.
the socks disappear and reappear.

and somehow, this rhythm even when it feels invisible becomes you.

it’s your anchor.
your quiet way of saying: i’m still here.

🌙 a kind of everyday grace

today, maybe you didn’t do something new.
maybe you just did the same thing again watered your plant, replied to a text, made your bed.

but what if that was enough?

what if these small, faithful things were not evidence of a boring life
but proof of a cared-for one?

you don’t have to be constantly blooming.
you can just keep showing up for the things that matter.

like folding the laundry at dusk.
or making your tea just the way you like it again, and again, and again.

i’ll meet you here again tomorrow.
we’ll talk about the tender space between endings how sometimes closure doesn’t arrive, and yet, we move on anyway.

until then
fold your blanket just the way you like it.
boil the water.
light that lamp.

shivani
📖 @readingmurkami

i’ve always been drawn to the quiet ones.

they don’t text every day.
they don’t ask for updates.
they don’t flood you with advice or fill silences with noise.
but when you look up, they’re still there. somehow, always right where they were meant to be.

these friendships are like the second cup of tea. not the urgent, waking-up kind but the one you sip slowly, when the world has already softened a little.

they don’t always come with grand stories. they’re built in borrowed sweaters, shared playlists, sudden phone calls at 11pm that begin with, “i don’t really have anything to say.”

they know that sometimes, the best way to love someone is to let them be.

📖 today’s book: “the housekeeper and the professor” by yōko ogawa

this book feels like a quiet act of kindness.
it tells the story of a brilliant professor with short-term memory loss, a housekeeper assigned to him, and her young son and how, over time, they form something that isn't quite family, but feels just as warm.

there’s no drama. no tension. just an unfolding as gentle as math equations, bent lunchboxes, and afternoon light through a kitchen window.

“my memory lasts only eighty minutes… but in that moment, i can live with you fully.”

friendships like that don’t ask for much. but they offer a kind of stillness the world rarely gives.

🎥 today’s film: “still walking” by hirokazu kore-eda

if books like ogawa’s are a whisper, kore-eda’s films are breath itself.
still walking is a film where not much happens but everything moves.

it’s about a family gathering for a quiet remembrance, and how love and grief sit side by side, often in silence. the film moves like real time, full of glances, gestures, small kitchen tasks that carry entire histories between people.

what’s beautiful is how unremarkable everything is.
and yet, you feel changed by the end.

“life is long… why do we rush through it?”

friendships don’t have to be constant to be real.
some people stay in our lives the way light stays in a room after someone leaves- soft, present, waiting.

💌 a letter from me to you

hi you,

it’s quiet as i write this.
and i think that’s the right mood for today’s thought- the kind of friendship that asks for nothing but offers so much.

i know not every friendship in our lives makes it to the finish line. not all of them are meant to. some are seasonal, some are accidental, and some just drift quietly out of orbit.

but then there are the ones that stay- even when they’re not around. they show up in the smallest ways. they remember your old favourite food. they text you about a book because “it felt like something you’d underline.” they know when to give you space, and when to gently pull you back into the world.

you don’t owe them performance. or productivity.
you just owe them your presence when you can offer it.

and the rest? they already understand.

i think we all need at least one friendship like that.
and if you’ve been lucky enough to have one, i hope today brings you a quiet reminder of it.

even if nothing is said.

with softness,
shivani
📖 @readingmurkami

tomorrow’s letter:

we’ll talk about rituals and rhythms- not the grand morning routines, but the small things that keep us going. like folding laundry at dusk. or making tea the exact same way every evening.

for now- may this letter land gently wherever you are.
no need to reply.
just read and breathe.

until tomorrow.
🌷

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not in grand, cinematic ways but in quiet shifts:
- where we once waited.
- where we once decided something.
- where a conversation changed the rhythm of our day.

these places don’t forget us. even if the world repaints them, renames them, repurposes them, they still echo a soft memory when we pass by.

📖 today’s book: “strange weather in tokyo” by hiromi kawakami

this book is soft and strange in all the right ways.
it's about two people who quietly start showing up in the same space again and again. no declarations. no intensity. just the slow, steady warmth of familiarity growing into something more.

tsukiko and her former teacher “sensei” cross paths at a bar. they eat mushrooms. they drink sake. they talk, sometimes not at all. but somehow, something starts blooming in the silence.

“it was the kind of moment that only the two of us could share, slipping quietly into the crevices of time.”

this book reminds me that not every relationship begins with a spark. some begin in the pauses. in the ordinary.

🎥 today’s film: “columbus” (2017)

i don’t think “columbus” is meant to be watched casually. it asks you to slow down- really slow down and pay attention. it’s one of those films where you feel like the air shifts around the characters. nothing dramatic happens, and yet everything does.

it's about a woman who stayed behind in her small town because she wasn't ready to leave, and a man who arrives there because he has no choice. they walk. they talk. they look at buildings. and somehow, through all of that, they start to see themselves more clearly.

“the buildings don’t move. we do.”

some films echo like memory. this one does.

💌 a letter from me to you

hi you,

thank you for being here. really.
i know these letters are slow, quiet things but i’m learning that some of us need slow, quiet things to return to. places where there’s no pressure to feel anything other than what you’re already feeling.

today, i just wanted to talk about those places. the ones you don’t post on instagram. the ones that only make sense to you.

maybe it’s a place that still has your favourite version of yourself stored away. or maybe it’s where you stopped being someone you didn’t want to be anymore.
either way, isn’t it strange how memory builds houses in corners of the world?

i don’t think we ever really say goodbye to those places.
they just shift from physical to emotional, from places we stand to places we carry.

so if your day feels ordinary or messy or a little off, maybe think of a place that once made you feel okay or even just a little more you.
you don’t have to go back to it. just remember how it held you.

that’s enough.

with love,
shivani

🕯️ quote of the day

“there are places that never ask for us again, but still make space if we do return.”

tomorrow’s letter...

will be about quiet friendships.
the ones that held you without fanfare.
the ones that are still with you, even when you don’t talk every day.
the ones that feel like a soft place to land.

i hope you’ll meet me here again, in the quiet.

until then, take care of your gentleness.
it’s your softest strength.

- s verma
📖 @readingmurkami

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there are people we meet for a few hours, a week, maybe a season.
they don’t ask for forever. they just exist beside us for a brief stretch of the road and then they’re gone. but somehow, we keep carrying them. not in our arms, not even in our mind, but in the way our breath catches when a certain song plays, or how we suddenly crave a cup of coffee at 4 p.m. because that’s when they used to text us.

i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately- how some people enter our lives not to stay, but to show something.
they don’t complete our stories, but they colour a chapter. and when they leave, they take nothing and yet, we’re never the same again.

today’s letter is for those people- the ones who felt like a dream, a poem, a short film.
and the art that holds their softness.

📖 today’s book: “kitchen” by banana yoshimoto

i read this book on a rainy pune evening, the kind where the light turns a little grey-blue and your thoughts become a little louder.

mikage’s grief is quiet. and her healing is quieter.
she doesn’t explain much. she simply finds comfort in the sound of a refrigerator, the shape of a kitchen, and the strange, tender friendship of a boy and his beautiful mother.

“when i’m dead, i want to be a kitchen.”
- banana yoshimoto

it’s one of those books where not much happens, but you feel a shift by the last page- like you understand your own loneliness better.

some books are not read. they are kept close.
this is one of them.

🎥 today’s film: “before sunrise” (1995)

if you’ve ever looked at a stranger and wondered if your soul knew them before your body did- this film is your mirror.

jesse and céline meet on a train and spend just one night together in vienna. they talk, they walk, they get a little lost. nothing happens and yet, everything does.

the magic of this film is its ordinariness. no dramatic music, no grand endings.
just two people paying attention to each other with their whole selves.

“if there’s any kind of magic in this world... it must be in the attempt of understanding someone.”
- jesse

that’s it, really. that’s what connection feels like being understood for a moment in time, and remembering it forever.

💌 a letter from me to you

some people teach you how to laugh softer.
how to text “home?” and mean “are you okay?”
how to sit on a bench in silence and still feel like you’re being listened to.

these are not the people we tell everyone about.
sometimes, no one even knows they existed.

but they live in the way we pour our coffee.
in the playlists we don’t delete.
in the cities we now avoid because everything there smells like them.

you don’t need closure for people like that.
you just need to thank them silently, softly for the way they opened something inside you.

and then you write them into your life through art.

🎧 playlist: people who pass through us

you can listen to this as a background hum for journaling, walking, or just lying in bed wondering why things felt so intense when they barely lasted.

playlist title on Spotify: the people who pass through us – @readingmurkami

1. the girl – city and colour

2. lover is a day – cuco

3. tokyo – joji

4. clementine – halsey

5. the night we met – lord huron

soft, cinematic, and quietly aching.

🕯️ quote of the day

“i wonder how many people i’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
- john steinbeck

and then sometimes, someone looks back.
and you feel seen.
even if just for a moment.

tomorrow’s letter...

will be about places that remember us.
certain cafés, bookstores, benches- not because they’re special, but because we once felt something important there.
when we walk past them again, it’s like time folds. and we remember who we were when we first sat there.

subscribe if you’d like to find a quiet corner in your day, every day.
no pressure. no noise. just stories that feel like sitting beside a friend who knows when not to speak.

with warmth and wonder,
s verma
📖 @readingmurkami

✨ps: if this reminded you of someone, send it to them.
sometimes, a letter is the only goodbye we ever get to say.

Subscribe now

there’s a stillness in the world that only some people notice.

not the kind that comes with silence, but the kind that arrives when a character in a book pauses mid-sentence, when a movie lingers a few seconds too long on an empty train platform, or when you're walking alone and realise your heart is feeling something it doesn’t know how to name yet.

if you’ve felt this, welcome. you belong here.

i’ve always read books like i’m listening for secrets. and i watch films the way i think people must have watched the rain fall before cellphones- with full attention, and a little ache.
i created this space for all of us who find pieces of ourselves in stories, in unsaid things, in long walks after films that end too softly, too beautifully.

here, we’ll talk about the kind of art that leaves you a little lonelier and a lot more whole.
- books that make you want to underline every second line.
- movies that make your room feel warmer.
and quotes that stay in your notes app for months because you can’t quite let them go.

📚 what we’ll be reading and watching

this isn’t a place for the latest bestsellers or blockbuster hits, unless they whisper something real.
we’ll follow the trails of authors like yoko ogawa, han kang, banana yoshimoto, and of course, murakami.
we’ll sit with directors like wong kar-wai, makoto shinkai, and kore-eda.
we’ll visit slow places. moody cafés. books where not much happens- but you finish them feeling changed.

think themes like:

– falling in love with someone or no one
– learning to be alone, without being lonely
– healing quietly
– unspoken friendships
– the comfort of routines and rituals
– moments that pass like dreams

and in between, i’ll share notes from my own life too- favourite lines i’ve underlined, thoughts i scribbled in margins, moments when a scene or sentence reminded me of someone i once loved.

🍃 a quote to begin with

“i dream. sometimes i think that’s the only right thing to do.”
- haruki murakami

or this, from japanese poet kenji miyazawa:

“we must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”

these words will be our compass. for all the seasons we’ll move through together- whether you’re in love, heartbroken, lost, or just tired- i hope you find a friend in this space.

✨ what’s coming next

every week (or sometimes bi-weekly, when life slows down), i’ll share:

– a book & film pairing for the weekend
– a short letter from me to you
– quotes to keep (and maybe turn into phone wallpapers?)
– sometimes, a playlist
– and always, a warm ending

if that sounds like a rhythm you’d like to fall into, subscribe. bring a cup of coffee. wear soft socks. and meet me here, in the quiet between pages.

with love,
s verma
📖 @readingmurkami

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