# Today I Come The morning light fell slant across the courtyard, catching dust motes that hung like tiny planets in the air. I watched them drift—purposeless, eternal—while the neighbor's radio crackled some forgotten song from decades past. I had promised to come today. That much was certain. The promise lived in me the way promises do: with the weight of obligation, the lightness of habit, both at once. The lane was narrower than I remembered. The tamarind tree had grown, its branches reaching toward the opposite wall as if trying to bridge something that couldn't be bridged. Children were playing beneath it, their voices high and thin, a sound that seemed to belong to a time before I was born, and would continue long after I was gone. I climbed the stairs slowly. Each step was a small negotiation with myself. The door was the same color—that particular shade of red-brown that suggests age without quite admitting it. I raised my hand to knock, then stopped. My knuckles hovered in the air like a question. Inside, I could hear the shuffle of movement. The sound of someone who had been waiting, who had heard my footsteps on the stairs, who was now deciding whether to open the door or pretend not to have heard. I knocked. The silence that followed seemed deliberate, almost kind—as if the person inside was giving me a chance to reconsider, to turn and leave, to pretend I had never come at all. But I had promised. And so I stood there, waiting for the door to open, feeling the weight of years settle on my shoulders like dust, like benediction, like the only honest thing I knew how to carry.

My name is Tari. I was sixteen when I fell in love with a man of twenty-nine. His name was Dhruv. Yes, thirteen years my senior—or twelve, depending on how you counted it, though he always said thirteen. I had just started college, and he taught English at a private college. The way he spoke Bengali was extraordinary. Recitation-like, you might say. At that age, I couldn't fathom how someone who taught English could speak Bengali with such grace! I couldn't help but wonder how beautiful his English must sound.

When my girlfriends would tease me about my "old lover," calling him "grandpa" this and "grandpa" that, my infatuation only grew fiercer. Because I was younger, he never made me feel small—he loved me deeply, and I loved him back. No matter how absurd or foolish the things I said, he would gather all his attention and listen as if I were telling him the most important story in the world.

I always addressed him formally, using "you." Through him, I learned and discovered so much. We spent beautiful times together. While my girlfriends were learning love from boys their own age, debating whether Sunil or Shirshendu was better, straightening their boyfriends' shirt collars, secretly practicing at home how to tie a tie for the freshman boys they fancied, skipping classes for gossip sessions and cracking jokes about our age difference—Dhruv was teaching me how to learn, how to begin learning. He would tell me that before criticizing Sunil or Shirshendu, I should remember that they wrote differently. Weighing them on the same scale was foolishness itself.

I could never skip class to meet him like my other girlfriends did with their boys—he would never allow such a thing. And I never saw him bothered by what people said about us. He would sing me Lalon's songs, recite English poetry to me. It was through him I came to understand what English literature truly was. I can't recall him ever giving me a gift that wasn't a book. Our room would fill with them. Later, he'd ask how much I'd read, what I'd understood. But there was no teacher-like air to his teaching—only love. Yes, truly, I saw it clearly. My girlfriends couldn't grasp such things. Though he himself wasn't above his moments of madness. Sometimes he'd summon me urgently, and after I'd arrive, he'd say, "I just wanted to see you, so I called. You can go now if you'd like."

Then he'd hold my hand and say, "Hey Taru!" (to get a rise out of me).

I'd pull my hand away and say, "My name is Tari."

"Isn't it the same thing?"

"No, not at all. How can they be the same?"

It was love in its simplest form. Our days passed like this. In great comfort and peace. Every day brought new feelings, new thoughts, new understanding. Three years went by like that. I was nineteen then, and he was thirty-two.

I got admitted to university to study mathematics. One day, coming back from class, my phone rang. It was him. I'd only just bought a mobile phone—before that, I'd been communicating secretly through others' phones. He told me... said there was something urgent, that we needed to meet. I smiled to myself. This had happened many times before.

He called me on “urgent grounds,” announcing, “Something catastrophic has happened.” I’d ask anxiously, “What is it?” He’d say, “I just wanted to see you so badly.” Yes, that was his great catastrophe!

Anyway, when he called that day, I went again, thinking to myself that surely I’d hear something similar to before. I went. He pushed a chair toward me and said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’ve arranged my daughter’s marriage. She’s finished her studies, and like me, she wants to teach in college. Look, you’re only nineteen, still a teenager really. You’re so young, and so emotional too. How could we possibly make a life together? Forgive me. Forget everything that happened between us. Be well.”

He said many more things like this. The truth is, most of it never reached my ears. I wasn’t in a state to hear any of it. I only said, “Before you go, won’t you tell me what my fault is?” He said, “Your age is your only fault—in the eyes of my family.”

That day I wanted to say, “Isn’t your age a fault too? The very thing I’ve listened to the whole world talk about all this time, and yet I’ve dismissed it all with a breath, standing by you all these years?”

I couldn’t say anything. When could I have ever spoken such things to his face! How I got home that day, I still can’t remember. I went straight to bed. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t eat, couldn’t speak, couldn’t bear anyone’s words. I fell to pieces entirely.

After that, I slowly finished my teens. I began the journey toward womanhood. With time, many feelings began to change. Now I sometimes wear a sari—and I can manage it myself. I didn’t keep my hair in that bob cut; I’ve carefully grown it long, so long it passes my waist. I wear a small bindi on my forehead now, either red or black. Depending on the occasion, I wear a medium or larger one.

When I recite poetry, I don’t feel like I’m really reciting unless I’m wearing a large bindi. When I go out, I apply powder as a matter of routine; I always have either kohl or mascara with me. A watch on my right wrist, silk bangles on my left that match my sari. I sing a bit of Tagore. I read Hemingway in English, and James Bond too; and of course I have Bengali books! I cook a little here and there, and I’ve learned to make pickles. Mother says, “Whoever can make pickles can make any dish with ease.” I listen and smile.

Time went on this way, according to its law. It’s not that I forgot Dhruv. First love doesn’t fade. At first I thought of him constantly. I cried a lot then. Gradually it became once every three days, then once a week. Then once every six months, or once a year! You can’t cry the same way about the same thing every single day. So many new things come up, and the tears find their way to those instead. On new pages of a diary, in some new film, in other events—the salt of tears leaves its mark elsewhere.

Then, roughly three and a half years later, I ran into Dhruv at the bus stand one day. My hands and feet trembled. But I kept myself composed. He said, “I’ve been looking for you. For a long time!”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure exactly. I can’t quite say.”

(As Dhruv spoke, he studied me intently, taking in every detail.)

“So, how’s life treating you?”

“Very well. And how’s married life for you?” (The word slipped out unbidden—I hadn’t meant to bring that up at all.)

“My wedding with Arati never happened, in the end.”

“Oh! Right then, I should go. My bus is due.”

And with that, I left. When I got home, I found a message from Dhruv. “I don’t quite have the courage to say this, but I want to anyway. Would you come to Blue Sky Café someday? Do you still love coffee? Their cold brew here is really excellent. Will you come?”

I couldn’t figure out where Dhruv had gotten my new number from. I replied: “I’ll think about it.”

Four days later. Another text from Dhruv.

“Have you thought about it?”

“I’ll be there tomorrow around five, after class ends.”

I went. When I arrived, there he was, already waiting—wearing a light rose-pink Punjabi. We sat down. Again. Face to face.

“Tori, my mother mentions you quite often at home.”

“You were right! The coffee here really is excellent. I don’t know why I didn’t come here sooner.”

“The other day, Mother herself asked about you out of the blue.”

“I’ll have to come here with my friends for coffee sometime.”

Dhruv placed his hand gently on my left arm. My whole body trembled.

“Why are you avoiding this, Tori?”

“What am I supposed to say!”

“Won’t you? Won’t you see Mother?”

“I feel like I’ve suddenly aged!”

“Are you still angry?”

“You can’t just get angry on a whim. I’ve aged, just like you have!”

With that, I stood up. I started walking ahead, and Dhruv walked alongside me, saying, “I know what happened isn’t something you can just forgive. But I’m asking for your forgiveness anyway—asking with all my heart. I was truly helpless back then. I couldn’t disobey Mother, and…”

Without letting him finish, I said, “I’m not a teenager anymore. So I can’t just forgive someone for a mistake on impulse now. I need reasons to forgive, and then I have to examine those reasons with my mind. I’m twenty-two now, you know?” I quickened my pace.

He said, “Wait a moment. Listen…”

But I didn’t stop. As I walked away, I said, “I write these days. I wrote a poem yesterday. Want to hear two lines of it?”

“Yes, absolutely! Please…!”

Dear one, why does it still come to mind today…
In that boat of emotion…do I still drift?
The age of play…it lives no more, it seems!
Stop now, then. Perhaps I’ll come today…