How Fate, a Lake, and a Silent Scooter Gave Me My Second Book

The Longing That Started It All

Yash Gadade in front of Faqir Chand

Each and every story has a beginning. Mine began with dissatisfaction and incidents, but importantly, it began.

When I published my eBook "The Building Across My Window", I felt proud internally, but not fulfilled. The book existed, yes. It was downloadable. It had a link, and it was on Google. But it did not have weight. It did not have the quiet authority of paper resting on a shelf like an actual book. 

That longing became louder the day I walked into Faqir Chand & Sons in Delhi while I was going for my Uttarakhand trip. Surrounded by aging paperbacks and hardcovers with handwritten names inside them, I imagined my book sitting there. Not as a file on a device. Not hidden behind a screen. But physically present. Touchable. Real. That moment planted something deeper than ambition. It planted hunger inside me & the desire not just to publish my book, but my book to exist on shelves.

The Old Couple by the Lake

Real inspirational spot for the book: Letters that never crossed Nainital

Then came my trip to Uttarakhand.

In Nainital, I noticed an old couple walking slowly near Nainital Lake as it was not the peak season I had my own time to observe people. They were not trying to be poetic. They were simply walking in sync, in silence, in comfort of their own. There was history between them for the place. Years. Maybe decades, I don't know.

And I kept wondering what their story must have been.

Did they ever fight distance?
Did they ever almost lose each other?
Did they ever write letters that never arrived? like my story thoughts.

That mystery of not knowing the exact things opened the door for various story plots and this book is one of those. Later, when I sat near the lake watching the still water reflect the sky without disturbance and the golden rays of sun reflecting on water surface making it gold, something settled inside me. Lakes do not rush and they can't. They hold reflections patiently. They absorb noise without reacting and just existing.

That stillness felt like enduring love in silence.

Yash Gadade in Nainital

When Silence Speaks Louder Than Words

As I watched the water, I understood something. Not every love story ends in chaos. Some can simply pause and that's natural. Some survive storms quietly. Some wait for time to soften them and that is when the emotional spine of the book began forming.

The Scooter That Stopped Twice

What happened next felt almost cinematic.

My rented scooter stopped abruptly in front of Government Medical College, Haldwani. No dramatic breakdown. No clear reason. It just stopped.

Days later, in a completely different town, it stopped again near Government P.G. College, Ranikhet. Two colleges. Two unexpected pauses.

Coincidence? Possibly.

But in that moment, it felt like vidhilihit, something was written before it actually happened.

Standing there, I imagined young students making promises they believed would last forever. First confessions. Letters written in notebooks. Dreams interrupted by careers, distance, family, timing and many more things.

It felt like the universe forcing me to notice and guess what? I did.

Writing the Couple Into Existence

Later, when I travelled to Char Dukan, Mussoorie in Mussoorie, the warmth of tea stalls and conversations added another layer. I thought about that old couple again. If they once loved in these hills, they must have visited places like this by bunking their college. They must have laughed over chai or anything from their era. They must have argued about small things and on silly points. They must have promised each other permanence but failed to follow up.

So I wrote them as an Author from my perspective.

I wrote their youth.
I wrote their separation.
I wrote the letters that never crossed Nainital.

When Everything Connected

Yash Gadade new book cover: "Letters That Never Crossed Nainital"

Suddenly, everything aligned on my one trip. The bookstore in Delhi, the silent lake, the stalled scooter, the colleges, the old couple, the tea stalls in Mussoorie, everything.

The title revealed itself naturally.

Letters That Never Crossed Nainital.

This story was not born from a single dramatic event. It was born from accumulation of longing, observation, coincidence, silence.

Some letters were not lost.
They were waiting and that's what I wrote about.