Foolish Heart

The monsoon clouds pressed low over the narrow lanes of old Delhi as Pranav sat on the broken steps of his ancestral haveli, watching Maya vanish around the corner once again. From inside, his grandmother's voice called him for the evening prayers, but his feet remained planted at the threshold where, only moments ago, he had pleaded with his own heart to be still.

Na samajh dil, he whispered, repeating the words his grandmother once used when she caught him writing yet another letter he would never send. "Why do you torment me so?"

For months now, his heart had dragged him down this dangerous path. Maya belonged to another world, the daughter of a wealthy textile merchant in the grand mansion beyond the railway tracks. Each evening, she passed his street on her way to the temple, her silk dupatta catching the last of the sun. Once, she paused to adjust the anklet slipping at her heel, and that single, ordinary gesture had lodged itself in Pranav's mind as if it were a secret meant only for him.

At the tea stall his family ran, his friend Vikram would shake his head over clay cups of chai.

"Yaar, this is madness. Her father has already promised her to that engineer from Mumbai. Why keep walking into walls? What do you think you'll find in this?"

But Pranav's heart refused to listen. It spun its fantasies where caste and class dissolved, where love bridged every divide. It found meaning in small things: the way her smile softened at the beggar children, the faint slowing of her steps as she neared his lane.

"The heart wants what it wants," he told Vikram once, though even as he said it he knew it was only self-deception.

The months blurred like a fever dream. From his rooftop, he would watch the glow of her house lights, so close in the darkness yet unreachable. On the long walk to college, he would take the longer route, hoping to catch a glimpse of her dupatta in the crowd. The smells of frying pakoras at street corners, the incense drifting from temples, the wet stone underfoot after rain, all of it became tangled with the ache of waiting.

The day her engagement was announced, Pranav's world collapsed. The neighborhood hummed with preparations. His grandmother found him in the courtyard, staring at nothing, tears cutting down his face.

"Beta," she said, lowering herself onto the string cot beside him, "I told you, such love only empties your hands. It keeps you awake at night and leaves nothing behind."

She was right. For weeks, sleep abandoned him. He lay on his back, watching the ceiling fan creak through the heavy Delhi air while the sounds of Maya's wedding rose from the distance: the dhol rehearsals, the clang of brass utensils, the laughter of relatives spilling into the street.

One evening, as she set down a plate of food he could not touch, his grandmother spoke softly. "I have warned you. Now it is you who must decide, will you let this ruin you, or will you live?"

But even when the wedding procession passed by their lane, horses prancing, band blaring, even when Pranav caught one last glimpse of Maya in her red lehenga, her face hidden behind a veil of flowers, his heart would not yield. It went on weaving its impossible stories, chasing shadows, insisting that somewhere there must be another ending.

Years later, when people asked why he never married, why he lingered alone in the shrinking, crumbling haveli, Pranav would only smile. "The heart is a stubborn thing," he said. "Sometimes it chooses suffering over wisdom. All we can do is honor its choice."

And on quiet monsoon nights, when the rain drummed against his windows and the lanes of old Delhi blurred with memory, he would still find himself listening for anklets on wet stone. his foolish heart still waiting, still hoping, still refusing to learn that some paths end only in beautiful ruin.