Vows before Wedding

The room was supposed to be hers, but she’d left the window open, like an invitation. The wind had already made itself comfortable, curtains tangled around the chair, a corner of her dupatta swaying off the hook like it wanted to go back outside.

I wasn’t meant to be here. It was her evening. Her mirror was cluttered with tiny things, lipsticks without caps, cotton balls soaked in rosewater, a note from her younger sister stuck to the frame in messy writing: “Don’t cry tomorrow. You’ll ruin the photos.”

She didn’t hear me enter. She was sitting on the floor, legs folded to one side, braiding her hair slowly, like the act itself was grounding her. She didn’t have her makeup on yet. Her skin looked washed in candlelight, soft, warm, unfinished. The way I always remembered her best.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, without turning.

“I already am,” I replied.

That made her pause. Not laugh. Just pause. She turned a little. Her face had that stillness I knew too well. Where she wanted to smile but wasn’t sure if the moment would allow it.

I sat down on the opposite end of the room, back against the wall. Far, but not distant.

“I kept thinking…” I began, then stopped. She waited.

“…this is the last night where we’re technically not husband and wife. The last night before the names change.”

She looked at me. “You worried it’ll feel different?”

I shook my head. “I’m hoping it won’t.”

There was silence for a while. Not heavy. Just… there. She tied off the end of her braid and looked at her hands. The mehndi had darkened. Not just the surface, the way it sinks into skin overnight. Her bangles were kept aside, her earrings still lying in a dish of talcum powder.

She stood up, walked to her dresser, and picked up a pair of kajal pencils. One new, one old. Then turned to me.

“Will you do it?” she asked, holding it out.

I blinked. “Kajal?”

She nodded.

I got up, slowly, as if I’d entered a temple. Walked to her. She tilted her chin up. I held her face, so lightly that it felt like a question. Drew the line gently, from the outer edge inward, watching her eyes stay steady. Then the other side. Her breath hitched once, but not because of the kajal.

When I was done, she didn’t step back.

Instead, she looked at me. Not the way brides look at grooms. The way people look when they’ve run out of ways to say they love someone, and now they just want to be seen. Understood. Named.

“You’re going to forget all this, na?” she asked.

“Never,” I said.

“No. Not the big things. Everyone remembers those. I mean this. This kajal. This yellow towel on the chair. This wind.”

I reached out and touched the braid I didn’t get to make. “I’ll remember the sound your bangles didn’t make.”

She smiled now. A small one. She turned away, picked up her bangles, slid them on one by one. The clinking was sharper than expected in the quiet.

“You know,” I said, “I kept sixteen Mondays for you.”

She looked up, surprised. “That’s for girls.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t even believe in all that.”

“I know.”

She came closer now. Close enough to smell the jasmine in her hair. Close enough to make me forget we weren’t married yet.

She held my hand for the first time that evening. Looked down at our fingers, then back at me.

“No one will believe you did that.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

She was quiet for a few more seconds, then whispered, “You’re insane.”

I laughed. “Only in love.”

And then no cue, no hesitation, she leaned in, wrapped her arms around me, and rested her cheek against mine. A still hug. No movement. No urgency. Just her breath against my shoulder, the warmth of skin meeting skin where nothing needed to be spoken anymore.

Outside, someone was calling her name. Loudly. It was time.

But she didn’t move yet.

Neither did I.

There were no vows spoken. No flowers, no witnesses.

Just the weight of her in my arms, and the quiet knowing that we had already said everything we ever needed to.

Ishq aur Haldi

Her hands still carried the colour. Not the bright yellow from earlier, but the faded warmth it leaves behind, like a memory pressed into skin. She was sitting on a low bench in the verandah, behind a curtain of drying clothes. Someone had left wet footprints nearby. The marigold garlands were still fresh, scattered on the floor like they had rolled off someone’s hair mid-dance. Her hair was tied back loosely. She looked up when she saw me, no surprise, no scolding, just that quiet smile she had kept only for me, even before there was a reason.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, without moving. Her voice wasn’t serious.

I shrugged. “You think I care?”

She laughed, leaned back, head tilted just enough to let the sunlight touch her cheek. The music from the courtyard was louder now, someone had started singing offbeat, cousins were cheering, the dhol kept missing a beat, but it all felt too far away. I crouched next to her, not even pretending to hide. My kurta still had turmeric on the sleeves. Her dupatta had pink patches where someone must’ve smeared her with rose water. She didn’t bother adjusting it. She looked… real. Like this moment had peeled off everything staged, and now it was just us.

She touched her cheek, then looked at her fingers. “Still yellow,” she said. I nodded. “Let it stay. Looks like sunlight is sitting on your skin.”

She turned to me slowly, eyes narrowed like she was trying not to smile. “Shaadi ke pehle, you’ve become poetic?”

I leaned in slightly. “Shaadi ke pehle, I’ve lost it completely.”

Her laugh this time was softer. Almost like she didn’t want to let it out fully. A strand of hair stuck to her temple. I wanted to brush it aside, but didn’t.

I took out a tiny bottle from my pocket. Eucalyptus oil. Handed it to her without saying anything. She held it in her palm for a few seconds before looking at me. “You remembered?”

I just nodded. I remembered too many things about her, how she always said she loved the smell of mehndi but hated how long it stayed, how eucalyptus reminded her of childhood winters, how she’d once said, half-asleep on a phone call, that she wished someone would steal time for her. So I did.

“They’re going to look for you,” she said, glancing toward the curtain. Her voice dropped a little. “Someone might walk in.”

“Let them,” I said, “they’ll see what they already know.”

She didn’t answer. Just shifted a little, closer. Her hand was on the bench beside mine. Our fingers didn’t touch, but they were close enough to feel the warmth. I could see where her bangles had left faint red marks on her wrist. There was a yellow petal stuck in her braid, and I didn’t tell her.

“Kal se everything changes,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” I said. “But it already feels like you’re mine. There's nothing left to change.”

She tilted her head to one side, eyes not quite on mine, lips half-parted like she was going to say something but left it there. She turned her hand slightly so our fingers brushed, just once, then stayed. She didn’t hold mine. Just let them rest next to each other, enough for the air between them to become something real.

“You’ll cry,” she said, not as a tease but like a fact.

“Only if you do first,” I replied.

Someone whistled loudly from outside. Her cousin’s voice echoed through the hall, calling my name. She sighed, but didn’t rush. Just picked up the oil bottle and tucked it inside her dupatta.

“Go,” she said, after a moment. “They’ll start asking.”

I stood up slowly, dusting my kurta, not ready. But I bent forward, just once, and let my forehead touch hers lightly. No words. No drama. Just that second. Her eyes closed. I don’t know if she was memorising the moment or giving it to me. Maybe both.

And then I walked back, through the corridor full of lights, into the noise, into the rituals. Her handprint was still drying on the wall. My palms were still stained.

But something between us had already taken its vows.

Fraying threads

She loved the smell of mehndi. Said it reminded her of long summer evenings in her nani’s courtyard, where time moved slower, and everything felt like waiting. I remembered that. Not because it mattered to me, but because it mattered to her. The way her eyes softened at something so ordinary, it stayed with me longer than it should have.

I once stood in line behind three teenage girls just to get a cone. Pretended it was for my niece. The woman selling it didn’t care. She looked tired. I wondered if she remembered the names she helped people hide.

Back then, I wasn’t trying to impress her anymore. That phase had passed. What I was doing… I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to believe that if I could just write her name deep enough, dark enough, somewhere it wouldn’t wash off, she might come back.

Not to me. Not even to the city. Just... to that version of the world where we hadn’t stopped talking yet.

---

A week before she left, we sat on opposite ends of my bed. She had taken off her earrings, placed them on the bedside table like always. One small silver hoop rolled and stopped near my phone.

“You think we’re too different?” she had asked.

I didn’t answer. Just picked up the earring, handed it to her, careful not to touch her fingers. She took it slowly, as if that pause between our hands might answer her better than words ever could.

“Do you believe in Kundli compatibility?” she asked, voice lower this time.

“No,” I said. “But I believe in you.”

She looked away. Not out of shame. Not guilt. Just... tiredness. Like she was already halfway gone, and holding on was taking too much energy.

---

I started reading about astrology. Properly. I bought a book from a footpath seller near Dashashwamedh Ghat in Banaras. The pages smelled of wet dust and jasmine agarbattis from a nearby temple.

It didn’t make sense at first, none of it did—but I kept reading. I even learned how to cast charts. Learned about nakshatras and planetary periods. Hers were ruled by the moon. Mine were ruled by waiting.

I once faked her date of birth on a matrimonial site to check matches.

We were 33% compatible.

That site didn’t know what I knew.

---

I also kept the sixteen Mondays fast. Solah Somvaar.

People said it was for unmarried girls, that men didn’t need to do it. But I did it anyway. Woke up early, didn’t eat till sunset. Walked barefoot to the same Shiv temple every Monday, said her name softly before offering the belpatra.

Nobody told me if it worked.

That wasn’t the point.

---

A friend once asked me why I hadn’t moved on.

I told him, “I’m not waiting for her. I’m just not done being in love.”

He didn’t understand the difference. Most people don’t.

---

One evening, I drew her name on my palm. Carefully. Letter by letter. Not in cursive. In my own writing—the way I had written it in the corner of notebooks, near margins, just to feel it near me.

I let it dry. Didn’t touch water that night.

And when the color came out deeper than I’d ever seen, I didn’t smile. I just stared at it until the letters began to blur, until my skin didn’t feel like mine.

That night, I slept with my hand curled inwards. As if the warmth might keep it from fading.

As if some part of her might still want to stay.

Tracing Ceiling Constellations

It was late September, and the fan creaked above us like it had grown tired of spinning. The mattress on the floor still smelled faintly of her sunscreen, her sweat, and that strange lavender talc she’d once called “a cheat code for not showering.” The bulb flickered once, then died with a soft pop. I didn’t bother fixing it. She liked the dark.

We weren't supposed to meet tonight. Her parents thought she was studying at Anchal’s place. Mine didn’t ask anymore. I think they had made peace with the fact that I didn’t bring friends home—just one girl, again and again, with the kind of familiarity that unsettles older people.

She lay beside me now, not asleep, not awake. Just breathing. Eyes closed, lashes twitching. The curve of her bare shoulder caught the streetlight bleeding through the torn curtain.

“Are you thinking?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

She turned on her side, rested her chin on my chest. “Thinking ruins everything. You know that, right?”

I could feel her fingers tracing circles on my ribs, lazy, distracted. Her touch didn’t carry urgency anymore—it carried memory. Like she’d done it before and would do it again. I wasn’t sure if that was comforting or cruel.

“You remember that day on the bridge?” she whispered, lips brushing my collarbone.

“Which one?”

“The one where I said—‘let’s never lie to each other’—and you said—‘then let’s never talk too much.’”

I smiled faintly. “You hated that answer.”

“I still do,” she said, but her voice had laughter inside it. Not joy, but something gentler. Familiarity. We were only nineteen, but we’d already outgrown a hundred versions of ourselves.

There was this thing she did—whenever it got too real, too close to something that might stay, she pulled away like smoke. Not dramatically. Just... softly. With grace.

Tonight felt like one of those nights.

I looked at her, really looked, and it hit me how much of her I had memorized. The two tiny scars on her knee. The way she blinked twice fast when pretending to listen. Her obsession with tracing constellations on the ceiling, even when there weren’t any stars.

“I want to sleep,” she said.

“You’re tired?”

“No,” she replied, brushing her lips against my neck, “I just want to see if you’ll visit me there.”

“In your dreams?”

She didn’t say yes. She didn’t have to.

Later, after the talking stopped and her breaths turned soft, I stayed awake. Watching. Counting. One, two, three...

Her hand was still on my stomach, fingers curled like she was holding onto something. Maybe a promise. Maybe nothing.

I whispered something then, something she didn’t hear but maybe would find in sleep.

“If we meet there, don’t walk away this time.”

In the morning, she left without waking me.

There was no note. No message. Just her body heat fading from the sheet and the quiet echo of her voice from the night before, layered beneath my skin.

She had once said, “We’re not in love. We’re just... rehearsing.”

But dreams don't rehearse. They replay. And in mine, she’s always there.

Resting her head on my chest, eyes closed. Saying things without saying them.

Waiting for me to fall asleep. So she can meet me.

Where the sky isn’t blue. Where nothing makes sense. Where nothing needs to.

Playlist of questions.

The rain came down in sheets, a relentless roar against the warped shingles of the old house. I sat by the window, forehead pressed to the cool glass, watching the world dissolve into streaks of gray. The sky was gone, swallowed by the storm, and I envied its absence. Out there, nothing had to face itself. In here, I couldn’t escape the churn in my chest, the tight coil in my shoulders, the dull throb behind my eyes from too many nights of bad sleep. The ache wasn’t just hers anymore—it was mine, threaded with guilt and questions I didn’t want to answer. Thunder growled, low and impatient, like it knew I was hiding.

I hadn’t checked my phone in weeks. No feeds, no stories, no glimpses of lives I wasn’t part of. I told myself it was discipline—a clean break from the noise. But the truth was uglier. I was running—not from her smile or the way her laugh used to light me up, but from what might be waiting if I looked too close. Her hand in someone else’s, her days spilling into moments I’d never touch. Ten years I’d carried her in me, every hope and hurt tied to her name. I could still see her handwriting on the sticky notes she used to leave on my mirror—half reminders, half love letters. I still had one folded in a book somewhere, its corners soft from being thumbed through when I couldn’t sleep.

The thought of her moving on wasn’t just pain—it was a blade, sharp enough to cut me open.

But the guilt – it was the real weight. Not just for loving her too long, too fiercely, but for what I didn’t say when it mattered. For the silences I let grow between us like vines until they choked the light. For still not knowing if it ended because she stopped needing me, or because I made it too hard for her to stay. And for what I was doing to myself now—shutting out the present, slamming the door on what could be. Good or bad, I didn’t know. That was the problem. I was too scared to find out. What if I peeked and saw her happy, her life bright without me? It’d break me, I knew it—leave me sifting through shards of who I used to be. But what if I was wrong? What if there was something out there—a chance, a shift—and I was too spineless to face it?

The room felt too small, the air thick with damp and memory. I stood, pacing toward the kitchen, my feet numb from sitting too long. My roommate, Venkateshwar, was sprawled at the table, sketching something jagged on a napkin. He looked up, one eyebrow raised.

“You look like you’re haunting the place,” he said, pencil pausing. “What’s with the ghost routine?”

I shrugged, pouring water into the kettle. My hands shook just slightly, so I gripped the counter. “Just the rain. Makes everything heavy.”

He snorted, leaning back. “Bullshit. You’ve been off-grid forever. What’s eating you? Her again?”

Venky had a way of cutting through my deflections, and I hated it. The kettle hissed like it was judging me. I stirred my tea, the spoon clinking too loud. “Not just her. It’s… I don’t know. The idea of her. What she might be doing.”

He tilted his head, studying me. “So you’re avoiding your phone ‘cause you’re scared she’s shacked up with some dude? That’s your plan? Hide forever?”

“It’s not hiding,” I snapped, too fast. My voice cracked on the edges. “It’s self-preservation. You don’t get it.”

“Maybe I don’t,” he said, tossing the pencil down. “But you’re not preserving anything. You’re just stuck. What if she’s not with anyone? What if she’s waiting for you to stop moping and say something?”

I laughed, bitter. “Waiting? After ten years? Come on, Venky. I poured everything into her. She moved on ages ago.”

“Did she?” he pressed. “Or are you just assuming so you don’t have to deal?”

I froze, the cup halfway to my mouth. His words landed hard, clean and sharp.

“I’m not scared of her being with someone,” I muttered, setting the mug down. “I’m scared I mattered less to her than she did to me.”

He didn’t say anything for a beat. Just looked at me like he saw more than I wanted him to. Then he said, quieter this time, “Yeah. That’s a shitty place to be. But pretending you don’t care won’t fix it. Not looking won’t stop the story from moving on without you.”

I turned away, staring out the kitchen window at the rain pelting the glass. “What if I look and it’s worse than I think? Her with someone, happy, like I never mattered. I don’t know what I’d do with that.”

“Then you’ll hurt,” he said simply. “But at least it’ll be real. Right now? You’re just living in the ache without even knowing if you need to.”

His words hung there, heavy as the storm. I wanted to argue, to tell him it wasn’t that simple. But my throat tightened. He was right about the pausing. I was caught, suspended between what was and what might be, too afraid to step either way. The guilt surged again—not just for dodging her, but for dodging myself. For letting fear call the shots.

What was I so afraid of? The truth? Or what it’d make me feel?

I wandered back to the front room, tea forgotten on the counter. The window called to me again, and I leaned against the frame. The rain hadn’t let up, but it felt different now—less like a shield, more like a dare. I thought of her—her quick grin, the way she used to hum off-key when she thought no one was listening. The time she’d cried on my chest after her dog died, saying she didn’t want to be brave anymore. I held that moment like it was mine alone. Ten years of that, of wanting her, and here I was, too scared to even glance at the world she might be in. Not because I didn’t love her—I did, God help me—but because I didn’t trust myself to survive the answer.

Across the street, a figure moved under an umbrella, blurred by the downpour. For a second, my heart lurched—could it be her? But no, just a stranger, hurrying through the wet. I exhaled, shaky, my body oddly still. The quiet pressed in.

Venky’s voice echoed in my head: You’re not living.

Maybe he was right. Maybe this wasn’t about her at all, not anymore. Maybe it was about me—about why I was still clinging to a purgatory I built myself.

I pulled my phone from the drawer where I’d buried it weeks ago. The screen was dark, lifeless, but it felt like a loaded gun in my hand. I didn’t turn it on—not yet. But I held it, letting the weight of it ground me.

Outside, the rain had started to shift. Softer now. Not quite stopping, but easing—like even the sky was tired of pretending nothing changed.

And maybe that was enough, for now. May be just admitting it makes me less of a coward? However, at the same time resonating myself with every single sad song in my playlist makes me a coward again. It’s true we cant keep everyone happy, but can we keep ourselves happy? My questions were rising, slowly as the rain outside my window made less of a noise.