Light Enough 4

The corridor was still echoing with remnants of the day—half-dried splashes of colour, a few broken water balloons, the faintest hum of someone’s Bluetooth speaker playing old Holi songs in a loop. Most people had already gone back to their rooms, drunk on bhang or exhaustion or both. Tara hadn’t said much after we came back. She had walked into my room like she belonged there, like the day had already claimed us both and now the night was just a place to land.

She stood by the mirror, wiping her face with the corner of a towel. Her skin was flushed from too much sun, too much colour. Streaks of pink and purple lingered at her hairline. The side of her neck still held a stubborn smear of red—my gulaal, my handprint from earlier.

She didn’t try to remove it.

"You're quiet," I said, from where I sat cross-legged on the bed, my damp hair leaving faint marks on the sheet.

She glanced at me through the mirror. “So are you.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I opened my arms just slightly—an unspoken invitation, one we both understood.

She walked over and sank into me, without hesitation, without ceremony. Like this was the end of a long journey and I was the bed she was returning to.

I wrapped my arms around her fully. Not lightly. Fully.

A long hug.

The kind that says I remember you. The kind that says I see the version of you that’s quieter, slower, not for the world. Just for me.

She rested her cheek against my shoulder. I pressed a slow kiss into her hair. We stayed that way. Minutes passed. Maybe more.

"You okay?" I murmured.

She nodded. "Just... full."

“Full of?”

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Light Enough 3

The campus was quieter than usual that morning, the kind of quiet that only Holi mornings have—where the silence is just colour waiting to erupt. Somewhere, speakers had already begun playing muffled Bollywood remixes. Someone yelled “Bura na maano Holi hai” for the fifth time in five minutes. But none of it reached the old staircase behind the library.

Sandhya sat there, cross-legged, in her faded jeans and a plain white kurta that hadn’t seen detergent in weeks. Her fingers toyed with a packet of red gulaal.

Just red.

That was intentional.

She didn’t want a rainbow. She just wanted a memory to hold still.

Behind her, Tara’s laugh echoed faintly through the corridor.

Sandhya didn’t turn.

She knew that voice too well now—warm, reckless, a little too loud for how small the college corridors were. Tara had that way of entering spaces like she belonged there more than anyone else.

“Tu yahin chhupi hai, haan?” Tara’s voice came closer, accompanied by the unmistakable crunch of her boots on dry leaves. “While the rest of the world becomes a madhouse?”

“I don’t like Holi,” Sandhya replied, not looking up.

Tara walked around and sat beside her. She had already been coloured—blue streaks in her hair, yellow on her cheek, and a small smear of purple on the side of her neck that Sandhya couldn’t stop noticing.

“Tumhare jaise logon ko Holi pasand aani chahiye,” Tara said, tugging at the red packet in Sandhya’s hand. “Introverts with hidden rage. This is the one day you get to throw things at people and not apologise.”

Sandhya smiled faintly. “I’m not angry.”

“That’s the saddest thing you’ve said all week.”

There was silence again. This time, Tara didn’t try to fill it.

Sandhya stared at her fingers, still holding the packet of red.

“Do you know,” she began, voice soft, “in some places they only play with red on Holi?”

Tara raised an eyebrow. “Bas laal?”

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Light Enough 2

It had been nearly a week. No café, no library, no accidental hallways. Tara had simply disappeared back into whatever corner of the world she came from. I told myself I was fine with it. I wasn’t.

I tried focusing on assignments, tried laughing louder in the common room, even sat through a full reading of Wings of Fire just to feel anchored again. But something in me had shifted. I wasn’t sure if I missed her presence or just the version of myself that only existed around her.

Then Thursday evening, post-rain, everything changed again.

She was at the back of the campus auditorium, leaning against the far wall where the cracked cement met patches of peeled posters. She didn’t wave. Just looked at me as I stepped out with a cup of cutting chai, my fingers still damp from the handle.

“Lost?” she asked.

“You were gone,” I replied.

Her lips curved—softly, not in amusement. In understanding. “I wasn’t sure if you needed space or if you were building a wall.”

“Maybe both,” I said.

She pushed herself off the wall and walked toward me, slow, unhurried. She always moved like she had nowhere urgent to be, but always ended up exactly where I was.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I feel... full,” I admitted. “Like I’ve been carrying around a question too long.”

“What question?”

I hesitated, looking at her hair tied up again, the same pencil holding it all in place. She noticed me looking, smiled, and pulled it free. Her hair fell. Familiar now. Still dangerous.

“What are we doing?” I asked. “You and I.”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t fumble.

“We’re waiting for each other to say something we both already know.”

“Which is?”

She stepped closer, eyes level with mine.

“Kahin na kahin is baat se tum bhi waaqif ho,” she said slowly, like a secret being released into the air, “Jo ishq mujhe hua hai...”

I finished the line without thinking. “Vo tumhe bhi hua hai.”

Silence wrapped around us again. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy with everything we had left unsaid until now. The streetlights buzzed faintly in the background. A scooter passed, its headlights briefly lighting up her face.

I exhaled. “You always knew?”

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Light Enough

Hi, I’m Sandhya. Sandhya Thakur.

A small-city girl from a modern-enough family, the kind that lets you fly but still asks you to text when you land. First year in college, first time living away from home. The girls’ hostel felt less like freedom and more like a test at first. Not the shifting of luggage, that part was easy. It was the shifting of culture that took time.

Everyone around me seemed so sure of themselves. Like they’d been rehearsing for this their whole life. Laughing in corridors, wearing oversized hoodies like armour, talking about films I hadn’t seen and heartbreaks I hadn’t had. I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t know how to belong to it.

But now, four months in, something’s changed. Maybe not on the outside. But inside, I’ve started to feel... part of it. Not entirely, not yet. But enough to walk a little slower, look a little longer, and maybe, just maybe, stay a little later in the library than I need to.

The library wasn’t loud in its beauty.

It just was, tall, quiet, assured. The kind of place that didn’t need to try. Portrait windows stretched up the eastern wall, letting in light without temperature. Warm to look at, cool to sit inside. Like sunlight being polite.

I hadn’t meant to stay long. Slipped in between classes, hoping to borrow thirty minutes of silence. Something about the smell of old wood and paper felt more stable than anything outside. Like nothing in here could rot or fall apart. Just age, gracefully.

There were a few students scattered around, scribbling, reading, and avoiding. And her.

Behind the oak desk, where the return slips were filed, she was bent over a thick hardcover. Not reading. Annotating. Hair tied in a casual bun, held together by a pencil. The kind of knot people make without a mirror, but with years of practice.

I was about to look away when she pulled the pencil free.

Her hair fell, not dramatically, not like the movies. Just a slow, natural undoing. A small storm of strands collapsing over her shoulders. I wasn’t ready for the sight of her nape in the sun. Pale, almost glowing. And her shoulders, sharp, self-contained, like the edges of pressed flower petals.

I stared too long.

She didn’t smile at first. Just noticed. Tucked her hair behind her ear and tilted her head slightly, like she was trying to decide if I was worth speaking to.

“First year?” she asked.

“Is it that obvious?” I said.

“Only to people who remember what that felt like.”

I laughed under my breath. “You a psychic, or just judgmental?”

“Just observant,” she replied, walking toward me with her book still in hand. “And I’ve seen enough of you wandering in, pretending to read Derrida.”

She leaned over my table and glanced at the title I’d picked, some dense philosophy text with a cracked spine. She winced.

“This’ll hurt,” she said.

I shrugged. “Maybe I like a little pain.”

She looked at me properly now. Her gaze wasn’t flirty. It was worse, it was curious. Dangerous. Like she’d started cataloguing me alongside the rest of her books.

“You don’t strike me as someone who needs to prove anything.”

“Not to anyone,” I said. And added, a second too late, “Except maybe myself.”

She raised an eyebrow. Then handed me a different book from under her arm.

“This one’s softer,” she said. “But it still leaves a mark.”

I turned to a random page, pretending to read, but mostly trying not to stare at the line of her collarbone.

“You always match books to people?”

“Only when they look like they’re hiding behind the wrong one.”

She sat across from me then, elbows on the table. Her fingers toyed with the pencil that had just been in her hair.

I asked her name.

“Tara.”

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