Jaadugar Hai Woh

The first time I saw her, she was standing under the old neem tree outside my college, the sunlight dappling her face like an artist had deliberately painted her in golden strokes. She wasn't extraordinary in the usual sense—there were no loud traits, no screaming gestures demanding attention. Yet, people couldn’t look away. Neither could I.

"Kaise kar leti hai yeh?" I once muttered to Rohan, my roommate, as we watched her from the canteen. He shrugged.

"Jaadugar hai woh," he replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

It became her name for me—Jaadugar.

She was magic in the way she spoke, the words soft and careful, but they carved into you, like chisels shaping marble. I thought I had seen all kinds of people—loud ones who echoed in corridors and silent ones who dissolved in shadows. She was neither. She lingered. She filled a room quietly, the way sunlight fills spaces under doors, uninvited yet welcome.

When she entered my life, I was just another young man navigating through empty friendships and sleepless nights. My hostel room had cracks in the walls, just like my heart had cracks I never spoke about. That day, after spotting her for weeks, we finally spoke. She sat on the bench in the college courtyard, scribbling into a diary. I had no courage to speak, but Rohan pushed me forward.

She looked up, her eyes meeting mine—a gaze so steady, I thought she had read me whole.

“Tum likhti ho?” I blurted, regretting the mundanity of my words.

She smiled. It wasn’t a loud smile, but it was enough to quiet everything else.

“Likh leti hoon. Aur tum?”

“Padh leta hoon.”

It wasn’t funny, but she laughed—quietly, softly. “Good combination. Tum padh lo, main likh loon.”

From that day, she would leave her diary on the table when I came to meet her, and I would read. There were ghazals in there, some sad couplets—

"Dhadhkte dil ko pathar banana aata hai,

Usey jaadu aata hai."

Jaadu hi toh tha. She turned my crowded, chaotic heart into a place of silence—like she had woven magic into it. Days became weeks, and the weeks became months. I watched her the way someone watches fire—awed and afraid, knowing it could warm them or burn them alive. I thought I knew her. I thought we shared the same rhythm, but Jaadugars never show you all their tricks, do they?

Days turned into weeks, and still, she remained a mystery to me. I learned the rhythms of her silence, the way her eyes would wander to the sky when she was lost in thought, the way she would pause before speaking, as though measuring each word before letting it fall. I knew her in fragments—the way she loved the rain, how she would hum soft tunes when she thought no one was listening, how she always had a book in her bag, but never the same one twice. Yet, there was so much I didn’t know. So much she didn’t show.

And I never asked.

I didn't need to. The silence between us was enough. It was a language of its own—one that spoke of things that words could never capture. Her presence, like the quiet warmth of the sun on a cold morning, filled the spaces between us.

But then, one day, she didn’t come to the courtyard. I waited for hours, my eyes scanning the benches, the corners where she usually sat. Nothing. I asked Rohan, but he didn’t know either. The day passed, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of something missing.

The next day, she was there again, sitting under the neem tree, as if nothing had happened. But something was different. She was quieter, more distant. Her smile, once warm, now seemed forced, like she was holding something back.

I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I had to know.

I walked up to her, my heart pounding in my chest. She didn’t look up when I approached, and for a moment, I thought maybe I had imagined everything—the connection, the magic. But then she spoke, her voice soft, but carrying a weight I hadn’t heard before.

"Do you ever wonder, if all this is just... smoke and mirrors?"

I didn’t know what she meant. “What do you mean?”

She looked up at me then, her eyes filled with something I couldn’t place—something between sadness and resignation. “We’re all just pretending, aren’t we? Pretending that we have it all figured out. That we’re okay. But we’re not. None of us are.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. I had never seen her like this—vulnerable, uncertain. It was like the walls she had built around herself were finally crumbling, and I didn’t know how to hold her up.

“You’re not pretending,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm brewing inside me. “You’re... you’re real. You’re magic.”

She shook her head, a small, bitter smile curling on her lips. “Magic? Maybe. But magic doesn’t last. Eventually, it fades. And when it does, what’s left?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. The words I had for her—those quiet, unspoken things—felt suddenly inadequate. How could I explain that she had changed me? That in the silence we shared, I had found something more real than anything I had ever known?

I wanted to reach out to her, to tell her that I didn’t need her to be perfect, that I didn’t need her to have all the answers. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

“I don’t want it to fade,” I said instead. “I want to see it, every day. I want to see you.”

She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine, as if weighing my words, testing their truth. Then, with a sigh, she stood up. “Maybe you should. Maybe you should see me before I disappear.”

And just like that, she was gone again. Vanishing into the crowd, leaving me standing there, my heart full of questions I didn’t know how to ask.

The next few days were a blur. I went through the motions—attending classes, meeting friends, pretending that everything was fine. But inside, I was unraveling. The silence between us felt heavier now, like a weight pressing down on my chest. I couldn’t stop thinking about her—about the way she had looked at me, the way she had spoken as though she was saying goodbye.

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if she was pulling away, or if she was just waiting for me to understand. But I knew one thing for sure: I had to see her again.

I didn’t wait for her to come to me. I couldn’t. I went to her. To the old neem tree, the place where everything had started. And there she was, sitting under the shade, her diary open in her lap, as if nothing had changed.

But something had. The air between us was different now, charged with something unspoken, something fragile.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I don’t want to be just another chapter in your book.”

She looked up, her eyes softening. For a moment, I thought she might say something—anything—but then she closed her diary and stood up.

“You won’t,” she said simply. “You won’t lose me. But you have to let me go sometimes. You have to let me be magic, even if it doesn’t make sense.”

And for the first time, I understood.

She wasn’t mine to hold. She was hers, and in her own way, she had already given me everything. Her silence, her words, her magic.

And I would carry it with me, even if she wasn’t there.