# Destiny The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning, slipped beneath the door like a secret. Anirban didn't notice it at first—he was too busy searching for his glasses, which had a habit of vanishing the moment he needed them most. When he finally found them perched on top of the refrigerator (where he never put them), he nearly stepped on the envelope. The handwriting was unfamiliar. Neat. Almost ceremonial. His name—*Anirban Das*—written in blue ink on a cream-colored envelope. No return address. He opened it standing by the kitchen counter, still in his pajamas, his tea growing cold beside him. *Dear Anirban,* *You don't know me, but I know you. Or rather, I know what you don't know about yourself. There is something in your past that demands to be remembered. Something that has shaped everything you are, everything you've chosen, everything you've forgotten.* *If you wish to understand your own life, meet me at the Mohanpur Station on Friday at noon. Come alone.* *A friend.* Anirban read it three times. His first instinct was to laugh. A prank, surely. Someone playing games. But as he stood there in the morning light, watching dust particles drift through the window, something shifted inside him. A tremor. The kind of tremor a man feels when a door he didn't know was locked suddenly begins to rattle from the other side. He had always been a careful man. Methodical. The kind of person who filled out forms in black ink and filed them alphabetically. He had a decent job at an insurance office. A modest flat in North Calcutta. A sister in Delhi he spoke to once a month. A life that, while unremarkable, was orderly and comprehensible. Yet there had always been gaps. Silences in his own memory that he'd learned not to question. For instance, he could never quite remember his mother's face clearly, though he knew she had died when he was young. He had no photographs of her—or rather, he'd never looked for any. He also realized, with a peculiar shock, that he didn't know his father's name. It was as if that information had been filed away in a drawer he'd never opened. Friday came slowly. Anirban spent the days in a state of anxious distraction. He made mistakes at work. He forgot to pay the milkman. On Thursday night, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he should even go. What if it was dangerous? What if it was simply madness—his own madness bleeding into the real world? But he went. Mohanpur Station was quieter than he remembered from a trip he'd taken years ago—or had he? The past felt slippery, unreliable. He arrived early, at half past eleven, and stood on the platform watching the railway tracks gleam in the noon heat. At exactly twelve o'clock, a woman approached him. She was perhaps sixty, with silver hair pinned back severely. Her sari was the color of old paper. She had kind eyes, the kind that had seen sorrow and survived it. "You came," she said. Not a question. "Who are you?" Anirban asked. "My name is Malini Devi. I was your mother's sister. Your aunt." She paused, watching his face. "You don't remember me because they made sure you wouldn't. They made sure you wouldn't remember anything." The platform tilted slightly. Anirban sat down on a wooden bench. "I don't understand." Malini Devi sat beside him, not too close, but close enough that he could smell jasmine in her hair. "Your mother didn't die when you were young, Anirban. She chose to leave. And they—your father, your grandmother, the family elders—they chose to erase her. And they chose to erase you, in a way. They told you she was dead because the truth was too complicated for a child. Because the truth involved shame, scandal, the kind of things families don't speak about." "Where is she?" His voice sounded strange to him, like it was coming from very far away. "In Shillong. She's been there for forty-two years. She made a life. She's a teacher. She married again—a good man. She has two children, your siblings." Malini Devi's eyes glistened. "She asked about you every year. Every single year, on your birthday, she would ask me if I'd been able to find you, to tell you the truth." "Why are you telling me this now?" "Because she's dying, Anirban. Cancer. She has perhaps three months left. And she doesn't want to die with this secret. She doesn't want you to live the rest of your life in ignorance." Anirban sat very still. A train passed, moving away from them. The platform seemed to vibrate with its departure. "She wanted to meet you?" he asked. "She wants nothing more in this world than to see your face. To tell you that leaving wasn't about you. That it was about her own survival. That she's loved you every moment of every day, even when you didn't know she existed." The afternoon was bright and ordinary. People moved around them going about their business. A vendor called out the price of tea. Somewhere, a child laughed. It seemed impossible that the world should remain so indifferent, so unchanged, when everything inside Anirban was reorganizing itself like the shifting of continental plates. "I don't know what to do," he said finally. Malini Devi placed a piece of paper in his hand. An address. A phone number. "You have time to decide. You always have a choice, Anirban. That's what they couldn't take from you, though they tried. The ability to choose your own destiny." She stood to leave. Before she did, she touched his shoulder lightly, the way one might touch a fragile thing. "Your mother," she said, "has your father's eyes. Your father was a good man, though he was weak. But you—you have something of your mother in you too. A kind of stubborn grace. She saw it even in photographs, even in the rare letters I could send her. She knew you would survive what they did." After she left, Anirban sat on the bench for a long time. The address seemed to burn in his palm. He thought about his life up until this moment—the careful, ordered existence, the silences he'd learned to live with, the questions he'd learned not to ask. He thought about choice. How much of what we call our destiny is chosen, and how much is simply the accumulated weight of other people's choices, pressing down on us like earth on a grave. He looked at the address again. *Shillong.* And then, very slowly, Anirban Das stood up. He folded the paper carefully and placed it in his wallet. He walked to the station telephone and made a call. "Hello," he said when a woman answered. "My name is Anirban. I believe... I believe you're expecting to hear from me." There was a silence on the other end of the line. A long, trembling silence. And then, a sound like weeping—the sound of forty-two years of held breath finally released. "Beta," a voice said. *Son.* "Oh, my son. You called." And in that moment, standing in the noise and bustle of the railway station, Anirban understood that destiny is not what happens to us. It is what we do when we discover the truth about what has already happened. It is the choice we make to step toward the people who have been waiting for us in the dark, hoping against hope that we might finally find our way home. The sun was beginning to set. The platform grew quieter. And Anirban, who had been lost all his life without knowing it, began, at last, to find his way.

# What Does This Life Mean to Me?

I’ve never truly asked myself this question! A whole beautiful day lived through, a touch of self-satisfaction in the loneliness of night, a measure of solitary joy, a little knowing of myself alongside nature—once, I thought that was life itself. When I’d see the fireflies’ dim, wavering glow in the darkness, it would seem to me they’d lit their small flames just to catch a glimpse of me! When the moon poured its light upon the sleeping leaves, I’d think it spilled so lavishly because I was there to gather it into my skin. When the garden’s newborn buds crossed into their first bloom, I’d imagine they’d been born anew simply to perfume my world. When the morning star stood solitary beside the moon, a lone wanderer of the sky, I’d gaze at it thinking it must be sad that it couldn’t be my companion. When the cuckoo’s voice rang out in that arrival-song of spring, surely it was meant only to whisper spring’s address into my ear!

To put it simply: I was genuinely, thoroughly selfish. I wanted all of nature’s riches for myself alone—no one else had any claim, any share in them. I wouldn’t allow it. It always seemed to me that being first in class, becoming an obedient daughter, a responsible sister, a faithful student, a selfless friend—I’d been all these for everyone else. But this one small thing I wanted for myself, purely my own—how could I ever permit anyone else a share in it?

There weren’t many people in my life, and I needed no motivation from anyone. You might think: in these mere twenty years of my small life, how much could I possibly know of this mysterious world? But let me tell you this—the experiences I’ve had in these twenty years, the way I’ve watched life up close, what I’ve been given—perhaps many haven’t received as much by the time they’re forty. In this short span of mine, I’ve encountered certain moments, certain personalities, whose company perhaps no one is fortunate enough to find in a whole lifetime. In this regard, my twenty years are blessed with an enviable fortune indeed! But you know what? I never imagined I’d receive something so precious, so rare. The scales of my life have always tipped heavier on the side of receiving than asking. Almost everything I’ve gotten came to me as a gift from above, so I remain eternally grateful to the Creator for it all. There’s a question gnawing at me, isn’t there? Was there truly nothing—nothing I wished for even in silence, even in my heart alone? Ha ha ha ha…

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Let me tell you something curious. I didn’t know much about my own life, never walked very deep into those waters. But I discovered something—I’ve had proof of it each time—that certain things existed such that once I received them, I was so terrified they wouldn’t happen again that I tried everything to prevent it! Yet still it came to pass, as if it were written for me. It had to come, it must come, something quite definite. My fear, my dread, my not wanting it—none of that mattered there! It happened that my longing would fill an entire morning, a vibrant afternoon would unfold, and I’d gaze with hungry eyes at the solitary beauty of night I wanted to savor—right there, where my selfishness stood so sharp and clear, from that very place I tore myself away and fled far! I thought that awful happiness, that unbearable joy, its weight—I’d never have to bear it again. What a fool I was, wasn’t I?

#

What kind of fool would indulge in such senseless thinking? I didn’t understand then—this small world turns and turns, and in time it will surely face you with some ultimate truth, and I am no exception to this law. You may wonder what thing, what moment could be so dreadful that I’ve struggled so hard to prevent its repetition? Perhaps it seems to you that truth itself—why fear it? Truth is only truth! And if liberation dwells within it, why did I try to flee from that truth? Is there really liberation in every truth?

Yet because I loved that truth so deeply, fear pursued me like a law—the fear of losing what I hadn’t even asked to lose. This truth held infinite happiness within it, but I feared I couldn’t bear so much joy. With such fears, I could neither accept the truth nor renounce it. To live suspended between two poles is unbearable—much like the life of the middle class! Unable to swallow, unable to spit out; yes, life can be this too. Even with a hand to hold, even desperate to share one’s sorrows in the language of trust, one cannot—that was my condition then. It seemed to me that if I went far away, infinitely far, perhaps I could live some kind of life.

Life takes roughly four forms.

In the first, life is a companion to happiness, where joy tips the scale heavier.

In the second, life is a companion to sorrow, where tears and sighs make their constant home.

In the third, life is a blend of happiness and sorrow, where joy and suffering alternate and mingle.

In the fourth kind—there, life finds neither happiness nor sorrow, nor does happiness and sorrow truly coexist in any significant way. Call this the life of ambivalence, the life of anxiety, the middle-class life—define it as you wish.

So I’ll say this: be either very rich or very poor in life. Don’t surrender your life into the hands of mediocrity. It is terribly hard to live that way. To whatever I’ve longed for, even if only in silence, let me return to that subject now.

To be honest, before I knew my first and only love, I never harbored any real desire, even in my secret heart. Well—except for one thing: crossing ninety in my exams was an inborn wish of mine! Ha ha ha… isn’t it strange, this odd quirk in an otherwise ordinary person?

Before that, I never once dreamed that someone would love me, that I would love someone, that my mornings would begin with thoughts of another, that my evenings would be spent in playful banter with someone dear, that I would live as a dream in another’s eyes. What was that like, let me tell you…

No matter what anyone did for me, I always accepted it as perfectly natural. I never saw it as their weakness toward me. The first condition of love is to feel weakness in the other person’s eyes, to sense that they are vulnerable because of you. I never did that! My way of reckoning was always simple and straightforward. Why did he do that? For what reason? Of all the girls in the world, why me alone? Why speak that way? Why look at me like that? Why such sweetness in that gaze?—such questions had no place in my world of thought. Truly, none at all! It seemed to me: yes, of course he could, it’s natural; if someone else were in my place, the same thing might happen to them too. There was no reason to complicate the arithmetic so much.—That was my principle.

# The Life I Wanted

Marriage, a husband, a household, children—none of these ever crossed my mind; truthfully, I never wanted them. All I craved was books and nature. That was the entire world of my longing. I would study endlessly, carve out a distinct place for myself in the world, be the first to mend every incompleteness in my family, to fill every gap—that was the dream! And there was another desire burning in me: to do something for destitute children and the elderly. My heart pulled toward these two groups of people with an almost unbearable force. Children and the old—they are the most defenseless of all—and I desperately wanted to grow up and do something meaningful for them. And I loved, passionately loved, to write.

I didn’t want to speak my feelings aloud. Instead, I would pour them carefully onto the pages of my beloved diary, in my own way. Poetry, prose, stories, bits of my own philosophy, nonsense, madness—everything went in there! Sometimes I’d sit down to write a poem, scribble four lines, and then not add another word for ten whole days. Other times I’d dash off four complete poems in a single day—though I wrote terribly, mind you!

What could I do? A life of my own desires—but who listens to desire? I loved my own mind deeply, never confined it with rigid rules and regulations. Every hour of my day was stuffed with madness. There was no kind of foolishness, no mischief I wouldn’t attempt. The funny thing was, the biggest victims of my pranks were my college teachers! While I watched other students tremble at the very thought of speaking to a sir, I did the opposite—I subjected those poor teachers to endless torment.

Let me give you a couple of examples. When a teacher would come to class and cover five lines of material, I’d ask fifteen questions. Until I got a satisfactory answer, until it truly lodged in my head, I’d just keep firing questions, one after another, driving those unfortunate sirs to absolute exasperation! But I was never foolish in my questioning—I never asked just to ask, or pretended not to understand. During exams, I could predict exactly how many marks I’d get in each subject. I was that confident, and rarely was I far off! But my answer sheets—oh, the teachers would check them six or seven times at least before awarding marks, because they knew full well that I’d wage an actual battle over even a single point! They had to explain to me, in exhausting detail, why I lost that one mark. I was absolutely insufferable!

One of my teachers was stingy beyond measure. He had orchards bursting with fruit, yet he’d cut a single guava into six pieces and distribute it among six of us students. Looking at those pathetic slivers would make us want to cry! You can imagine what a perfect heir to miserliness he was! And I was no saint myself. Once, I plucked mangoes from his tree and fed them to him without his knowledge! Haha! The sir was absolutely delighted that I had given him mangoes! It wasn’t until the next day that he realized what divine fruit he’d tasted the evening before! We’d stripped nearly thirty mangoes from that tree! The sheer trouble we caused those teachers! And yet—here’s the strange part—it was precisely these antics of mine that they loved. They’d often say that my madness was such that no one could help but adore it!

# The Golden Years

The golden years of my life—every moment of them—belonged to my college, which four years ago was the only place my heart called home! My first brush with love, my first stirring of emotion, my first acquaintance with what love truly means—everything began there, within those college walls. I had loved someone with whom any kind of relationship seemed impossible. And yet the most impossible thing of all somehow became possible—when that very person fell for me with a fierceness that took my breath away! It was September 2017. I can’t recall the exact date; I’ve never been good with dates and times and such details. But in 2017, our love finally declared itself openly. Before that, the two of us had simply been engaged in a futile effort to hide our infinite weakness for each other. It was in late August of that year when our college was planning an educational tour. I was then just entering Class Eleven, science stream.

The preparations for this tour were in full swing. Everyone was preoccupied with where we’d go, what we’d do—lost in the planning of it all. After much deliberation, we settled on Shimla, that famous hill station. Shimla enchanted me—endless stretches of white, snow-clad peaks like cotton wool, rows of deodar trees, kingdoms of pine and rhododendron! Though many students objected, I had my heart set on Shimla. And when I mentioned it to him, he made the final decision: Shimla it was! I hadn’t even told him my preference, yet somehow he understood. How, I still don’t know! The dates, the transport—everything was organized and moving according to plan.

At that time, I was living with my grandmother. My parents and younger sister were in Darjeeling. I had studied under my grandmother’s roof from Class Eight through Twelve. Her home was everything to me—a family wrapped in love! I had hardly any connection with our paternal grandparents’ house. Never mind that, though. I won’t dwell on it. Among my nine cousins from my mother’s side, I was the only girl, so I was everyone’s darling. From childhood, they raised me with such affection and care that I didn’t even know what scolding meant!

When my parents shifted to Bangladesh, Grandpa and Aunties all wept inconsolably. They wouldn’t let me go to Dhaka for anything. So for the next five years, I stayed with them. They watched me constantly, growing uneasy the moment I was out of sight. And I was an obedient child—not because they’d imposed any strictness on me, but because I found peace and comfort in their shadow. I wouldn’t walk even ten minutes alone; I didn’t want to. So there was no way they would let me go away for an entire day and half a night.

They were mad with worry—would I eat properly? How would I manage? Who would look after me? Everyone was anxious. But there was one person they trusted implicitly, one person not just my family but the entire village depended on with eyes closed. He was that kind of man—irreplaceable, truly. Anyway, relying on his word, they finally let me go without worry.

I don’t know why I’d told him the day before we left that I would sit beside him in the car, and I hadn’t expected that he’d agree so readily, so willingly. The awaited day arrived, and we set out as planned. The car was parked in our vast field; it left at six in the morning, and the seat next to me had been empty, waiting for him. After we’d gone some distance, he climbed in with the other teachers and came to sit beside me. What I felt in that moment—my pen hasn’t matured enough yet to capture that sensation, to set it down and make it live on the page! I truly don’t know what that celestial joy was like!

In the car, we all had such a wonderful time together… We went first to Christ Church, a specimen of ‘Neo-Gothic’ architecture. We wandered through the entire church, and on our way out, we lit candles and sat before Jesus Christ in prayer. Leaving the church, we passed by the Tourist Office near the Ridge and climbed to Jakhu Hills, the highest point in Shimla—a steep, sheer two kilometres from the Ridge! It was a sloping mountain, and after climbing partway up, I couldn’t go any further. Everyone was having a tremendous time, but I’d fallen behind. That day, a hand came from behind and grasped my palm firmly, so tenderly, and with silent laughter rippling between us, drew me forward. Oh, that person I’d longed for a thousand times, the one I loved! That day, our first touch—walking the path together, hand in hand, leaning on each other! As if the two of us were sketching a different contour of life!

We walked through that entire spot with our hands entwined. Yes, we became witnesses to such a thrilling sensation, the two of us! Meanwhile, the other teachers and students kept glancing over with an expression of utter bewilderment, over and over, seized each time by profound doubt! They thought and yet couldn’t think—could something so impossible actually be possible? Some wanted to think but couldn’t; others thought for a moment then stopped—what could this be? Their entire journey was wrapped in a kind of daze! From Jakhu Hills, we went to Jorney’s Wax Museum, famous for its wax figures. Four kilometres from the city, through the dense forest of deodars, pines, and poplars, through which a mountain stream carved its way! High ground, low ground, sloping paths and the deep solitude of the forest. Why would I be afraid then, when he was the one who was more afraid! He’d grip my hands tightly! He was naturally timid, and any place too remote would frighten him. He’d ride his bike at the slowest speed because high speeds terrified him! Hee hee hee… my dear little cowardly thing!

# The Allure of Simplicity

There was such an artless quality to him, a childlike innocence that drew me irresistibly! He hadn’t wanted to come into these deep woods at all—it was only because I asked, only because I said I wished to walk the mountain paths through that sea of green with him. At just my one request, he cast aside all his fears, stepped beyond his careful boundaries, and agreed to come! What more could my brief life have asked for? After that, we all went boating together. It was a brilliant, sunlit day—sweet in every way. Through Shimla’s valley, along those small, gentle streams, we drifted—like two peacocks, a pair, at the very threshold of paradise, in the throes of love’s gentle play! What love truly means, I felt that day in every vein, every fiber of my being! We ate together as the afternoon waned. I still remember—we shared a raw mango, just the two of us, though I had my own. That single raw mango, touched by both our lips! What paradise, what paradise! That day I understood what a thrill is, how an unknown, extraordinary joy flows through every pore of one’s skin!

When evening descended, I rested my head on his shoulder, and he kept softly touching the back of his right hand, again and again, to my cheek on the other side. What was happening then, I still cannot fully comprehend! I only felt as though I was being born again, in that very moment! I understood then that the touch of love can breathe life even into a dead body. Toward the end of the afternoon, we traveled two kilometers north of Summer Hill station to the famous Chadwick Falls. We all changed into fresh clothes, dressed ourselves up beautifully—to bathe not just our bodies but our very souls in the waterfall! It was that day, for the first time, that he saw me at the waterfall at twilight hour, bedecked and radiant! He brought his face close to my ear, out of sight of the others, and whispered, ‘You look so lovely, my mischievous old dear!’ I turned to him and made myself sound as appealing as I could, saying, ‘And you…you…you are my old one!’ I should mention—we both had our roots in Bangladesh.

Then we both burst into laughter, and he captured every moment of mine by the waterfall in his camera’s frame. There on those broad, water-smoothed stones, we all splashed and tumbled about! But that timid soul of his—he didn’t want to go into the water at all. Everyone kept urging him to come and witness our waterfall bath. In that moment, I said nothing in front of the others, but he looked once into my eyes! I don’t know what I said to him silently in my heart, but somehow he understood it! I quickly looked away in embarrassment.

He went into the water, and meanwhile, I was cutting capers like a monkey! He kept reciting prayers lest his foot slip and he fall through the gaps in the stones! Watching his frightened, flushed face, I couldn’t help but laugh. Even in his fear, his eyes held the promise of sweet revenge! Hi hi hi…a thousand lifetimes, a thousand times over, I would gladly be the victim of such revenge!

# The Journey Home

It was nearly half past one when we finally got home. During the drive, we’d played all sorts of games in the car, squabbled over song lyrics, everyone brimming with joy. After a while, exhaustion settled into our bones, and one by one we surrendered to sleep, bodies slumped against the seats however they fell. I dozed off with my arm linked through his, as I always did. In that moment, the entire darkness of the night became a mirror to me—a perfect, clear mirror! I felt as though I could see myself reflected in the eyes of the darkness itself, my whole self made visible in that blindness. How strange, that I’d never understood before that night how darkness too could become a mirror! That was the most beautiful journey of my entire life. I had never imagined that the beginning of my love would be so thrilling, so unprecedented, so drenched in color! I hadn’t dared to dream even a fraction of it. I had risen to heights far beyond what I’d wished for or expected. If I’d been asked to wish for anything, I could never have asked for even the smallest part of what I received unbidden!

For the days that followed, both he and I moved as though entranced. It felt unreal—what had happened? Had it truly happened? How was it even possible? What force had conjured such a miraculous beginning? I had no answers to these questions, none at all. After that, each day of ours was a season of spring unto itself. He was twenty-eight years older than me. We came from different faiths. But you know what? Love doesn’t match age to age; it matches heart to heart. When two hearts become one, the rest of the world falls away—age, circumstance, religion, none of it matters anymore, none of it truly touches what has become sacred.

Laughing for no reason at all, talking to myself alone, feeling my whole body and being tremble at the mere thought of someone, waiting for dawn to break, counting the hours until morning came and I could go to college, standing at the edge of that vast field and watching him arrive, filling my eyes with the sight of him! The way he moved, the grace in his gesture, the beauty in his speech, the tenderness in his gaze, the light in his laughter—I had never seen anyone move through the world quite like that until him. And yet there was a time when I spent my days waiting for nightfall! Now I spend my nights waiting for dawn. Love somehow seized hold of every part of me, every fiber of who I am.

The moment he saw my face as I entered college, he would look down with a shy, sweet smile. Oh, the tenderness that would flood through me then—I’d want nothing more than to press a kiss to his flushed cheek! That feeling of leaving my most precious self in someone else’s keeping, the ache during class breaks just to catch a glimpse of him, the hunger to hear the sound of his voice—all of it, everything that made me who I was, began and ended with him. And it still does. It always will.

He was my sight, my heartbeat, my teacher, my guardian, my inspiration, my courage, my obsession, the turning point of my life, the sole subject of my imagination, my guide, the architect of my dreams, my fear of loss, my greatest gift, my only truth, the keeper of all my grievances, my entire day, my entire night, my moon’s thin crescent at full tide, the North Star at dawn, the pages of my diary, the first bird spreading its wings across my sky, my…my…my everything—I mean, simply, everything!

# When I Write of Him

My words run dry when I try to write about him, my pen becomes damp with tears, the pages of my diary grow so thin and brittle they can no longer bear the weight of language! The morning glories drooping over the window grille lose their will to bloom, no longer wanting to scatter their blue radiance, the fragrant flowers wither into scent­lessness, as if someone has crept in and stolen all their honey!

My pen falls still again, yet the unspoken words seem only to multiply, endless and relentless! My pen remains helpless even now before his love for me—his love was unconditional, uncompromising, abundant, pure, stretching beyond every boundary, transcending all logic, surpassing every measure of gain and loss, erasing every trace of selfishness, dwelling far beyond all narrowness—an innocent, boundless love from a vast and tender heart…forever and ever! He would always tell me, ‘You are first, you are last. Even if you should ever be lost, remember this: someone will sit alone in their courtyard waiting, knowing you will come. You will come.’

He would often sing to me, and tell me, ‘These are not merely songs—they are messages of my love for you.’ There was one song, a song that was the thread binding us together! I won’t speak of its words, only that it was crafted for me alone! How can I share that with you, tell me?

One day I gave him a song too, as a message—though I didn’t sing it, I wrote it and sent it. That day was when our HSC mock exam results were announced. No matter how deeply I was drowning in his love, he never allowed it to touch my studies even a little. He told me I had to come first even in those mock exams, or else he would stop talking to me for two whole minutes! Hehe…to think of how completely he had wrapped me in his affection, it still sends a tremor of joy through me! Just as always, I came first that time too. Before our results came out, my math teacher had said that Shimu would be first this time, and I would be second.

Envy worked in the hearts of every other student because of me, though none showed it openly—but I’ve always been able to read the language of eyes! The real source of that envy was that he was my greatest strength, and even a couple of teachers couldn’t bear it, so there was constant competition with me. He had said back then that no one in this college had yet been made with a face worthy of pushing me to second place!

In any case, the day the results came out, I was terrified. Never before had I felt fear about results, let alone worry! But all my fear was rooted in that trust, that faith in his eyes that I had seen directed toward me—what if something went wrong? The suffocating moment of result day arrived as it always did. He assigned responsibility for announcing the results to that math teacher of mine, and the teacher said only one thing: ‘I have lost!’ There was no need to wait to hear the results—he came with the smile of a victor, took his result card in hand, and wrapped me in his embrace, and gave me a pen as a gift. I felt then as though I had conquered the whole world!

# Unspoken

Not a word was ever said. He never proposed to me, and I never proposed to him either. There was no arrangement, no planning between us. We never even tried to impress each other. We did nothing of the sort that might make someone specially attracted. We didn’t know this impossible love would become possible! How he understood my love, I still don’t know. How he saw in my eyes that by some ghat of an endless, sharply-edged reservoir of affection, someone was waiting for him! Truly, I am still amazed—how did I, of all people, actually knock at the door of his secret love?

He once answered this question, saying, ‘Only an eye that can decipher another eye holds such vision. One who cannot read the language of the eye knows nothing of love. One who cannot be touched by silent longing has no power to enter the depths.’

Ah! What varied shades of darkness love wears! I have seen love often, and after a time, love carries a particular message—breakup. Our love never had room for the word ‘breakup’; what existed, what exists, and what will exist is only one thing—a hurt, a wounded kind of love! But to be honest, I was the one who would sulk with him, he rarely sulked with me. I would rage and not speak for six or seven hours, but he couldn’t stay silent even for six or seven minutes!

We understood each other so deeply, felt each other in every moment! From a thousand miles away, we could tell exactly what the other was doing, where they were sitting, what they were thinking, what words would come next—everything! He could do the same for me!

But today, four years later, nobody says anything anymore. I don’t sulk with anyone now. Why don’t I? Why doesn’t he? He didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t hurt him. Then why? Today, sitting alone, I’m flooding these diary pages with a torrent of words! But why?

Where is my kingdom of joy today? Where is my ‘him’, and where is his ‘me’? The weight of hurt grew so heavy that neither of us got the chance to even express it! I sit nursing my hurt—why doesn’t he say something? He sits nursing his—why don’t I speak? Tell me truly, why don’t I run to him and hold him and say, ‘I love you so much’? What is this obstacle? Someone tell me, what is this invisible wall I cannot break through?

So many things were never said to him, and his stories—all that emotional wandering, all that disorientation—were never heard. Today we sit oceans apart, perhaps standing at opposite ends of some boundary. But love walks the same parallel path still! What was, is, and shall remain. The thread of faith between two people at the border’s edge—it’s impossibly strong.

Just as I sit alone writing endlessly about him, he sits alone in his quiet courtyard, endlessly feeling me. Perhaps this is what fate is. Two hearts full of love, yet separated by opposite ends—we must keep ourselves alive in different rooms. I think and think and think, but in the end, all my thinking comes to nothing but more thinking…

He was the one—the one who grew restless when I slept for four hours, who texted me in desperation, “Four whole years have passed without a word between us, how can you forget me like this?” And now, standing here in this moment, he is that same man, yet four years have slipped away without complaint, and not once has he turned to me with hurt and asked, “Why haven’t you spoken to me in four hours?”

When I wandered alone through moonlit nights, he would sigh with the weight of his failure and say, “My curse—I could never become the star that watches over someone’s sleepless dark.”

Ah, what cruel fate this is! Now when countless moons drown in the new moon’s darkness in my sky, when each solitary night I keep company with nothing but a diary and a pen, he sits in silence, voiceless, like a witness robbed of sight. How he has become a traveler in this blessed land of slumber!

And I? Who am I? I was not always this person. It pains me now to recognize myself. There was a time when I dwelt in his sleep, his dreams, his waking hours—and now that same I am powerless, helpless to rouse him.

Today the gates of dreams seem somehow veiled in clouds. We sit on opposite sides, waiting only for rain. Who knows—perhaps this rain will touch his soul before it ever reaches his eyes. Yet even through it all, even now, a spirit reaching upward will still say, “You were there. You are here. You will remain.”