Will my existence forever dissolve into you like this, tell me? Will anyone ever know—that I too existed within your shadow?
I am not well.
Why such sorrow in your eyes? Your melancholy darkens everything within me.
Life is fleeting—you hold everything in the palm of your hand, live a little each day. The other day I saw someone in your image, you know? Wherever my gaze reaches, it searches only for you. My silent languages, my lifeless glances—do you feel them? The echo of their muted weeping is what troubles you, I think.
My life force has reached its depths. And yet I will see you, won't I?—I must turn myself around, prepare. Don't harbor grudges between us like this. If I fall silent, understand—it is only because there are no words upon my lips, for no other reason.
I cannot even imagine in dreams the thought of neglecting you. If only you knew how much you mean to me. One may harbor grievances against God, even anger—but the thought of neglecting God never crosses the mind. I have only one prayer before you—stay well, stay happy. I too must heal.
If fate does not bring us face to face, then we shall seek each other out ourselves. Just give me a little more time—let me gather myself.
The day I first knew you, it was as if someone whispered in my ear—we two were made for each other. After that, weighed down by my own inadequacy, I never found the courage to step forward. I only watched from afar—yet could not sever myself either.
Now, after all this time, it seems the measures by which I judged worthiness were perhaps wrong. Nothing is worthier than the heart—it never has been.
I never told you how beautiful you are in my eyes. When I see the sky, mountains, clouds, earth, colors—the joy they kindle pales beside what I feel for you. A whole lifetime could pass, I think, simply in looking. This beauty knows no end. Is breathing in this beauty not itself what love is?
Outside, a fierce storm rages. Everything tosses and whirls in the wind—how wonderful it feels, oh! Even at this twilight hour, I long to be drenched. Why is nature so beautiful, tell me?
I wish to be struck by raindrops as large as tears falling upon someone's skin. We grow old—yet the heart remains a child! I have nowhere to go. Like raindrops, it is my fate to dissolve into the earth and vanish. No one has the power to hold me back.
A wisp of cloud can never touch the sun—there is no future in that...a cloud exists only to weep.
Some things I truly cannot understand. I only fear. This much I sense—something deep and silent unfolds within. I have so many failings—teach me. Everything is shrouded in mist, all scattered.
Sunlight, in your vagrant life I shall be a servant.
# In Shishir's Language, to the Sun The morning sky holds its breath. I stand at the window of our flat on the third floor, watching the light break through the haze like a child's hand pushing through cobwebs. Shishir has not yet woken. I've been married to him for seven years—seven years that have passed like a single exhalation, long and without punctuation. We met in a library, appropriately enough. He was looking for a book on Tagore's philosophy. I was shelving returns. When our hands brushed near the spine of *Sadhana*, I felt nothing. Or perhaps I felt everything, but in a language I didn't yet speak. This morning, like most mornings, I think about the sun in the way Shishir taught me to think about it. "The sun," he said once, over weak tea and yesterday's bread, "doesn't ask permission to rise. It simply does. And we—we spend our whole lives trying to explain why it's beautiful instead of just letting it set us on fire." He was quoting someone, probably. Shishir quotes people the way other men breathe—without thinking, without apology. But when he says these things, they sound like they're being born for the first time. I think I loved him at that moment. Not gradually, the way the books suggest love should arrive—like dawn. But suddenly, the way noon arrives. A theft of shadow. A surrender. The kettle whistles in the kitchen, and I don't move. Shishir will sleep another hour. He works late at the newspaper office, comes home with ink stains on his fingers and a kind of gorgeous exhaustion in his eyes. He writes about things that don't matter—city politics, municipal corruption, the price of rice—but he writes about them as though they are the beating heart of the world. And because he writes this way, they become so. I pour the tea myself. Our apartment is small, cluttered with his books and my silences. We've arranged ourselves around each other like furniture that has found its place. Not passionate—we don't touch much anymore—but settled. Comfortable in the way that feels like slow death some mornings, and like grace on others. Today is a grace morning. I watch the sun continue its indifferent climb. Shishir would say something about indifference being the greatest honesty. The sun doesn't care if we're watching. Doesn't care if we love it, hate it, worship it, or ignore it. It simply *is*. And in that being, without condition, without performance, lies a kind of purity we spend our entire lives trying to manufacture and failing. He's taught me to read the world this way. Before him, I saw things. Now I see them *through* him, which means I see them differently—more sharply, more kindly, more truly. The bedroom door opens. Shishir emerges in his old kurta, hair standing up on one side like a child's, eyes still wrapped in sleep. He doesn't see me at first. He moves to the window where I stand, and his presence beside me is a warmth I've stopped noticing—which is to say, a warmth that's become bone-deep, indistinguishable from my own body. "You're awake," he says. Not a question. "The sun woke me." He smiles. Slowly, as though smiling requires all his concentration. "Good. The sun should wake you. It's the only honest thing in this city." I hand him the tea. Our fingers don't touch, but they almost do. In that almost-space, I feel something—a history, a future, a present that is asking nothing of us except that we remain here, exactly like this, for one more moment. "Do you remember," I say, "when you told me the sun doesn't ask permission?" He drinks his tea. The steam rises between us like a small prayer. "No," he says finally. "But it sounds like something I'd say." I laugh. It's the laugh of someone who has learned to love a man not for his consistency, but for the lovely inconsistency of his being—the way he can forget his own philosophy and still embody it perfectly, simply by standing here, unshaven and kind and real. The sun climbs higher. It's going to be a hot day. The city below us will complain about it, struggle against it, try to shade itself from its intensity. But up here, on our small balcony, in this small life, we let it fall on our faces without resistance. Shishir sets down his empty cup. He places his hand on the railing, and I place mine beside his. We don't speak. The sun speaks for us. In his language, which is now mine, it says: *I am here. I am burning. I am enough.*
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