Can I really leave you?—such a thought…to you it's merely overthinking; so I won't speak of it anymore; but knowing the answer to this question matters terribly to me.
I thought—surely I could do it, you're not essential to me, and I'm not the one you love either.
You know, I can't write, never wanted to master such things, it's too difficult—I'm not equal to it. But when you're very close to me…someone inside my mind hums and speaks so much that it becomes unbearable—I begin to write, only for you, thinking only of you—it feels like magic; I hate it, you know!
Most of the time, I can't bear this. I could go very far away from you—I have a habit of vanishing from people's sight; but this time it seems I'm utterly powerless!
I agreed—you should leave of your own accord this time, I can't do it; I've wanted to go away several times, even tried—but someone stops me, every time, constantly. Tell me, is that person unwell?
Do you know who I'm talking about...? You must know them; you once held me so tightly, remember? You don't; because you've held me that tightly so many times in this life—perhaps that's when you first knew them.
Have you ever seen tears in my eyes for you? No, you haven't? But I see them, every moment—I cannot silence the terrible commotion of the person within me—as if I have no say in this at all, which goes against my very nature.
Though I've accepted the physical distance from you, I cannot accept the distance of the mind. I've heard—the soul knows no distance. I don't believe in past lives, rebirth…such things; if reincarnation is false, then this will be—our last meeting.
In some other universe we must have been intimately close to each other; when you love someone too much, this is what happens! You give away everything for them, it seems…you'd say all this, wouldn't you?—truthfully, none of it is that; it's not exactly love in the romantic sense, you understand? I mean—if you begin to give someone pieces of your soul, and it's possible…you become desperate in this game of giving!
External beauty, behavior, meeting needs—none of this is related to what I'm describing—I'm speaking of those hidden dimensions that one ordinarily doesn't share with anyone—something that isn't external to you, but is you yourself. This is the most difficult reality, in my view; do you understand?
I'm gravely ill, I don't think I can recover—I've lost faith; I'm so angry with myself…I often want to strangle the person inside me to death, I scold them, yet they won't be silent; so stubborn, causing me such pain, testing my limits—how many more times must I lose before…they'll rest?
Yet, after one night of restraint…I stay awake waiting for them, and the moment I'm in the presence of that being within me, slowly I return to myself—this is how our friendship grows, as life moves near the threshold of death our gaze fixes there, at the beginning…in long sighs, a trusted companion holds me with utmost care, silently; binding my soul in peace's fragrance…tightly in their grasp—and this feeling multiplies a thousand times in your embrace.
# The Departure That Never Was The ticket lay on the table, printed in that bureaucratic shade of grey that all railway tickets seem to share, regardless of the country or century. Raju picked it up again, his thumb running over the raised letters of his name—RAJU KUMAR—as if the friction might warm the paper into something more real, more substantial. Train 7834, Howrah to Trivandrum, departing 10:47 p.m. from platform 9. A date that was now three days in the past. His mother had made his favorite—*luchi* and *aloo-dom*—the morning he was supposed to leave. She'd fried the bread the way he loved it, each puff golden and fat with ghee, the potato curry redolent with whole mustard seeds that crackled between his teeth. His younger sister had packed his clothes with a ceremony that seemed designed to delay the inevitable—folding each shirt twice, holding them up to the light as if checking them for stains only she could see. "You'll need warm clothes," she'd said, though he was traveling south, toward the heat. At the station, his father had gripped his shoulder the way he did when words seemed too small for what needed to be said. His mother had cried a little, then pulled herself up straight and adjusted his collar. The platform had been crowded with the usual chaos—families claiming seats, vendors calling out their wares, the smell of diesel and urgency hanging in the humid air. He had stood with his bag, watching the crowd, and then— And then nothing. He had simply turned around. Not decisively, as if seized by a sudden revelation, but as if his body had made a decision his mind hadn't quite caught up with yet. Like a river changing course not because of any grand geological event, but because a stone had shifted, slightly, infinitesimally, and the water had followed. His father had been more puzzled than angry. "Raju?" "I can't," he'd said. And then nothing else, because there was nothing else to say that would make sense, nothing that would explain the feeling in his chest—not quite fear, not quite regret, but something closer to recognition. As if the platform and the train and the life he was supposed to begin in Trivandrum were all correct and real, and yet somehow belonging to someone else. Someone who looked like him but was not him. Three days had passed. He hadn't left his room. His mother brought him meals, which he ate mechanically. His sister had stopped coming after the second day. His father worked at his small accounting firm and returned in the evenings to a household that had learned not to ask questions, or at least to ask them very quietly. The railway had sent a single letter, formal and pink, explaining in English that no refund was possible. Raju had read it and felt an odd kinship with its indifference. The ticket was his. The journey was not. On the fourth evening, he sat at his small desk by the window, the city darkening outside—the street vendors beginning to light their lamps, the sound of children calling to each other before being summoned home. He thought of Trivandrum, where he was supposed to be starting a job in an import-export firm, a job his uncle had arranged, a job that was supposed to be the beginning of something. Instead, he remained. The ticket was still on his desk. He picked it up once more, and this time he did something different. He didn't run his thumb over his name. He simply looked at it—at this small rectangle of paper with a date that had already passed, carrying a man who had never boarded. There was a strange kind of freedom in that impossibility. In having failed at something before even beginning. In having become, in the eyes of the railway, a ghost—someone for whom a seat had been reserved, whose name had been called, who would never come. He folded the ticket carefully and placed it in his drawer, beneath a pile of old letters and forgotten photographs. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would think about what came next. Tonight, he simply sat in his room, in his house, in the city he had never left, and felt something like relief. Outside, the train schedule changed. New dates appeared on the board at Howrah station. New passengers gathered on platform 9, with their own bags and their own reasons for leaving, their own silent prayers that they would, unlike him, find the courage to actually go. And Raju, in his small room, with his small life expanding very slowly around him like ink in water, closed his eyes and waited.
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