The Cinnamon You Added to Your Coffee

You tell them you’ve applied for a masters in Finland. You’ve been accepted. You’re leaving in three months. The laughter doesn’t stop, but it changes shape, becoming something spiky and uncertain before it dies. You get three questions: why Finland, what will you study, won’t you freeze. You answer them over the clatter of the café’s kitchen hatch. The evening ends with handshakes that are a little too firm. On the metro home, you feel lighter than you have in years.

What you don’t know is that one of them, Rohan, was going to ask you to co-found his logistics startup. The pitch deck was finished. He’d planned to bring it up next week over bad filter coffee at his usual spot in Dadar. Your announcement means he never asks. He finds another partner, a cousin from Surat who is aggressive with clients and terrible with spreadsheets. The company secures its first major contract eighteen months later, servicing e-commerce warehouses in Bhiwandi. You read about the funding round in an online business digest while sitting in a library in Tampere, the sky already dark at 3:45 PM. The article mentions the co-founders by name. Neither is yours.

Your life in Finland is made of different textures. You learn to layer clothing, to appreciate the stark silence of snow, to bake pulla because the cardamom smells like home. Your flatmate is a taciturn Finnish forestry student who teaches you to identify five different types of pine. You miss monsoon rains with a physical ache. You video-call your parents every Sunday. They ask about the cold. You send pictures of the frozen lake.

Two years pass. You take a job with a Finnish design firm, helping local companies adapt their packaging for the Indian market. It’s a good job. It pays your bills. You develop a taste for salty licorice. You date a woman named Liisa who works in municipal planning and never laughs at your jokes, but always remembers to buy the oat milk you prefer.

One Tuesday, you are reviewing a client’s product line: a series of artisanal jams. The logo is familiar. It’s the startup. Rohan’s company has diversified. You write the market analysis report. You recommend they use more sustainable ink. You add the project file to your desktop, between a grocery list and your tax documents.

You still take your coffee with cinnamon. It’s a habit you started that night at the café, stirring it in while you talked, just to give your hands something to do.