Half Conversations: Stories of Almosts and Afterglows
by Rajiv Gopinath

Some relationships don’t end.
They simply stop mid-sentence.

Half Conversations is a collection of quietly observed short stories about what remains after connection fades — the unsent text, the borrowed jacket, the room that no longer feels like home. Set largely in Bangalore and other familiar urban spaces, these stories trace modern relationships not through grand declarations, but through small, intimate moments where meaning lingers.

Across five thematic sections, the book moves through beginnings that never fully begin, fault lines that form without warning, departures that echo long after they happen, and the slow, careful work of learning how to live around what’s missing. These are stories of people who almost say the right thing, who stay a little too long, or leave without ceremony — and who discover that closure is rarely a single moment.
Written with restraint and emotional clarity, Half Conversations draws attention to the unnoticed details of everyday life: a phone battery running low, a metro ride taken one last time, a grocery list that still remembers two people. The tone is contemporary and intimate, influenced by literary realism rather than plot-driven drama.

This collection will resonate with readers who enjoy reflective, character-driven fiction — stories that sit quietly with emotional truth instead of rushing toward resolution. It is for those who know that unfinished things tend to resemble one another, and that after love, what often remains is not heartbreak, but habit, memory, and the gradual return to self.

Half Conversations is not about romance in the traditional sense.

It is about proximity, absence, and the calm that sometimes arrives only after the ache has softened.