Mirror in the Temple

The temple stones were cool beneath Aarav's bare feet as he climbed the final steps. Tuesday evening. The usual time. The usual route through the marketplace, past the flower vendor who always nodded, through the iron gates that sang their familiar creak.

Inside, the evening aarti hadn't begun yet. The hall held that particular silence. Not empty, but waiting. A few others moved quietly in their orbits: an elderly woman circling the sanctum, a young couple standing hand in hand, a child tracing patterns on the marble with one toe.

Aarav approached the main shrine and stopped.

The deity stood draped in deep blue tonight. The color of evening sky just after sunset, before the stars. He looked down at himself. His kurta. The same blue. He'd bought it months ago, hadn't thought about it this morning when he pulled it from the shelf. His hand moved almost without thought, touching the fabric at his chest, a quiet acknowledgment of something he couldn't name.

He folded his hands. Bowed. The woman arranging flowers near the sanctum smiled at him, and he smiled back. That easy exchange of recognition between people who share a rhythm, a ritual.

Then he looked up again.

Something was different. Or maybe nothing was different, and that was what made him pause. The face before him, painted eyes, eternal half-smile, seemed less settled than usual. Not sad. Not troubled in any dramatic way. Just slightly off-center. The way you yourself feel on days when nothing is wrong, exactly, but nothing is quite right either.

Thirsty, Aarav thought suddenly. Looks thirsty.

The thought arrived complete, without preamble. And in its wake, his own throat contracted. He'd been rushing all day: meetings, calls, the long drive through traffic. When had he last stopped for water? Morning tea, maybe. Nothing since.

He swallowed. His tongue felt thick.

We're both thirsty, he thought, and then immediately felt foolish. But the feeling persisted, undeniable as a stone in his palm. He glanced at the sanctum. Back at his throat. At the blue of his kurta and the blue of the evening drape. At the slight downturn of painted lips and the slight downturn he could feel in his own chest.

Not we.

Not both.

The realization came quietly, the way important things often do. Not in thunder but in the space between breaths.

The thirst I'm feeling isn't mine being reflected in you. It's yours being felt in me. Or,

He stopped. Started again.

There is no 'yours' and 'mine.' There's just thirst. And I'm calling it mine because I'm the one noticing it right now.

The woman with the flowers moved past him, her bangles chiming softly. Somewhere in the back halls, someone was lighting lamps. The smell of ghee drifted through the air. Ordinary things. Holy things. The same things.

Aarav stood very still.

He'd been coming here for years. Since childhood, dragged by his mother. Then as a teenager, reluctant and distracted. Then through college, sporadically. And now, regularly again, because somewhere along the way it had become less about belief and more about showing up. Being in the presence of something. Bowing to something. Even if he wasn't sure what.

But today, looking at that painted face in its evening blue, feeling his own throat cry out for water, today something shifted.

Not toward the divine.

Not even recognizing the divine in himself, the way people always said it at satsangs, nodding sagely while explaining that God lives in every heart.

This was stranger. Simpler.

I'm not standing before you, he thought, eyes on the murti. I'm standing before myself. And you're not separate from me. You never were. You're just the part of me that knows it's thirsty before I do.

His chest felt suddenly full. Not with emotion, or not only with emotion. With air. With presence. With the odd, dizzying sensation of being both the seer and the seen, the worshipper and the worshipped, the question and its answer.

He thought of all the times he'd come here seeking. Asking. Please help me with this exam, this job, this heartbreak, this fear. Please show me a sign. Please tell me what to do.

And every time, every single time, the answer had come. Not from the painted lips but from somewhere deeper. A knowing that surfaced in his chest, his gut, his palms. An instinct that felt both utterly his and utterly beyond him.

Because it was never 'him' and 'me,' Aarav thought. It was always just this. Awareness meeting itself. The infinite folded into the particular, looking into a mirror and forgetting, for a moment, that there's no glass between.

The aarti began. Bells rang. Voices rose in song. People pressed forward for darshan, hands outstretched, faces bright.

Aarav didn't move. He stood in his spot, in his blue kurta that matched the evening drape, his throat dry with a thirst that belonged to no one and everyone, his eyes on a painted face that looked back with his own looking.

Tu hi mai, he thought. Mai hi tu.

Not poetry. Not philosophy. Just fact. The plainest fact in the world.

He bowed once more. This time not to ask, not to seek, not even to surrender. Just to acknowledge. The way you might nod at your reflection in a window as you pass, recognizing yourself in the glass, in the world beyond it, in the very act of seeing.

Then he turned and walked out into the evening, where the flower vendor was packing up his garlands and the iron gates were singing their familiar song, and his throat was still dry but somehow that felt perfect too. A small, human thing, a divine thing, the same thing after all.

He stopped at the water tap outside the temple.

Drank deeply.

And tasted copper, earth, mineral. Tasted relief. Tasted the exact thing that the face in evening blue had been waiting for, the thing he'd known without knowing he knew.

Thirst, he thought, wiping his mouth. Mine. His. Ours. The same.

Behind him, the temple bells continued ringing.

Ahead, the evening stretched open, full of blue light and ordinary grace.

And Aarav walked into it, carrying nothing, seeking nothing, full.

After Midnight

"You must be tired," she said.

I wasn't. My mind was racing at 2 AM, every nerve ending firing. The conversation had taken on that electric quality where everything matters more than it should.

We'd been talking about nothing, her dissertation on urban planning, my half-finished novel that I keep lying about being close to done, and whether Chandigarh actually counts as a planned city or just a grid with pretensions. But underneath the nothing was everything. The way she'd type "haha" instead of sending an emoji. The way she'd wait exactly three minutes before responding, as if she were timing it, or maybe just living her life, and I was the one counting.

I'd told her about the Japanese concept of ma, negative space, the interval between things. "It's not the notes," I'd explained, "it's the silence between them that makes music work."

She'd sent back: "So what are we? Notes or silence?"

That's when my brain short-circuited.

"Come to Chandigarh," I typed before I could think better of it. "We'll play hide and seek in the old sector markets."

What the fuck was I saying? Hide and seek? I'm twenty-seven years old.

But I meant it. I wanted her here, wanted to show her the streets I grew up on, wanted to see if she'd laugh at the absurdity of two adults ducking behind chai stalls and calling it a game. I wanted to know if she was the kind of person who'd say yes to something that stupid and beautiful.

More than that, I wanted to test something. Whether she'd understand that hide and seek wasn't really about hiding. It was about the thrill of being found by someone who actually looked. About making yourself deliberately visible while pretending you weren't. About the chase being more honest than the catch.

My last relationship ended because I couldn't explain this kind of thing. Priya would ask me what I was thinking, and I'd say "nothing" because how do you explain that you're thinking about the quality of afternoon light, or the way her voice changed when she talked to her mother, or whether love was just pattern recognition dressed up as fate? She called me distant. She wasn't wrong.

"You should sleep," she replied.

Translation: This conversation is getting too intense, and I need an exit.

I get it. I'd been circling something all night without saying it directly. Dancing around the fact that I wanted more than I should want from someone I barely know. She could feel it. Of course, she could feel it.

"Maybe someday you'll find both," she'd said earlier, when I'd complained about never meeting anyone who was both sharp enough to spar with and soft enough to sink into.

The problem is, I think I already have. And she just told me to go to bed.

Here's what I didn't say: I've been looking for both my entire adult life. My parents have both. My grandfather had it with my grandmother until she died; he still sets out two chai cups every morning, fills both, and drinks both.

But everyone I meet is either all softness with no spine, or all edges with no give. The soft ones bored me within weeks. The sharp ones cut me, and I spend months bleeding out, wondering if pain is just the price of not being bored.

She's different. She'll spend twenty minutes explaining Le Corbusier's failures in Chandigarh's design, then send me a photo of a stray dog she's named Gerald. She quotes Barthes and watches terrible reality TV. She has opinions about everything and holds none of them so tightly that she can't laugh at herself.

Three weeks ago, she sent me a voice note at 4 a.m. She couldn't sleep, she said, and wanted to know if I thought people were lonelier now than before or just more aware of it. Her voice was rough with insomnia. I listened to it six times.

I haven't told her that. I haven't told her a lot of things.

"Good night," I sent back.

My phone screen went dark. Outside, a dog barked, maybe Gerald's Chandigarh cousin. A motorcycle revved somewhere in the distance. The ceiling fan made its rhythmic click with every rotation, the same click it's made since I was twelve years old and couldn't sleep because I'd just learned what entropy meant and couldn't stop thinking about heat death and the universe's long fade to nothing.

I thought about texting her again. Something light, a meme maybe, to reset the tone. But that felt like cowardice. Like taking back something true because it made someone uncomfortable.

I didn't sleep for another two hours.

Instead, I lay there running scenarios. What if she did come to Chandigarh? What if we played that stupid game and she actually hid and I actually looked, and when I found her behind the water tank in Sector 17, we'd both be laughing, breathless, and the distance between us would collapse into something simple and real?

Or worse, what if it didn't? What if the fantasy was better than the finding? What if I've built her up so much in my head that the real version, standing in front of me in daylight, would just be another person I'd eventually find a reason to leave?

When I finally did sleep, I dreamed about markets and streetlights and a game where the rules kept changing, where finding someone meant losing them, and where she was always just around the next corner, laughing at how seriously I was taking it all.

In the dream, I never caught her. But I never stopped looking either.

I woke up at 7 AM to a text from her, sent an hour earlier: "If I come to Chandigarh, I'm hiding in the Rock Garden. You'll never find me there."

My heart did something stupid and hopeful in my chest.

I typed back: "Challenge accepted."

Then I deleted it. Typed: "Bold of you to assume I'd look."

Deleted that too.

Finally sent: "The Rock Garden is cheating. That place is a labyrinth."

She replied instantly: "Scared?"

No. Terrified. But not of the game.

"Never," I sent back.

And just like that, we were playing again.

Parikrama

The Kinnar Kailash plan died over burnt toast on a Tuesday morning. I'd brought it up, Shiva and Parvati's temple somewhere in the mountains, and she'd looked at me over her coffee like I'd suggested we climb Everest in flip-flops.

"Start smaller," I said. "Vrindavan. Mathura. Flat ground. Temples we can actually reach."

She'd shrugged, scrolling through her phone. "Fine. But I'm not pretending to be athletic about it."

Vrindavan hit us like colour and sound thrown against a wall. The lanes were too narrow, the crowds too thick, cows blocking doorways while bhajans leaked from every courtyard. At Banke Bihari, she gripped my arm as bodies pressed close, her dupatta caught twice in the surge toward the deity. When we finally got out, she was flushed and annoyed.

"That was chaos."

"That was devotion."

"Same thing, apparently."

But at Prem Mandir that evening, she went quiet. The white marble caught the colored lights, and the carved panels showed Radha and Krishna in a dozen scenes of longing. She stood in front of one for a long time, Radha reaching, Krishna turning away, and I didn't interrupt.

At Nidhivan, the guide told us Krishna danced here every night with Radha, that no one could stay past dark or they'd go mad. She rolled her eyes, but I saw her look back at the grove as we left, her expression caught between scepticism and something softer.

We ate kachoris at a stall where the oil was too hot and the chutney burned. She complained about the grease, then ordered jalebis anyway. We sat by the Yamuna for the evening aarti, and she leaned her head on my shoulder without asking if I minded.

"This is working," she said, half to herself.

"What is?"

"Not thinking about work. Not checking email every five minutes." A pause. "Just being here."

I kissed her hair. It smelled like incense and sweat.

On Govardhan Puja, the town swelled with pilgrims preparing for the parikrama, the 21-kilometre walk around the hill Krishna had lifted to shield the villagers from Indra's storm. Most hired cycle-rickshaws. Some took tempos. We stood near Mansi Ganga, watching the crowd gather, and I said it before I thought it through.

"Let's walk."

She turned. "The whole thing?"

"Why not?"

"Because it's 21 kilometres, Pratap. And neither of us has walked 21 meters without complaining in the last six months."

"Scared?"

Her jaw tightened. "Don't."

"What?"

"Don't dare me into stupid things."

"So you're scared."

"Fine. We'll walk. And when I collapse, you're explaining it to my mother."

The first stretch was deceptively easy. Morning air, steady rhythm, her hand in mine. A peacock startled from a wall, and she laughed, sharp, surprised, and I caught it on my phone. At Radha Kund, she wanted to stop and watch the women circling the pond with offerings, but I tugged her along.

"We'll never finish if you stop at every temple."

"You're the one who wanted to do this."

"And you're the one who'll complain if we're still walking at midnight."

She didn't argue, but her silence felt pointed.

By eight kilometres, we'd stopped talking much. The sun was high, unforgiving. She'd tied her dupatta at her waist, and sweat darkened the back of her kurti. A sadhu passed us, barefoot and unbothered, and she muttered something about how we were clearly doing this wrong.

At kilometres, we stopped for chai. She dropped onto a bench and stared at her feet.

"What's wrong?"

"Shoes are rubbing."

I knelt before she could protest, setting the chai cups in the dust. "Let me see."

"It's fine, "

"Let me see."

Her sock was damp near the heel. When I pressed, she flinched. I didn't say anything, just unlaced carefully and slipped the shoe off. The blister was small but angry.

"We'll rest," I said.

"We're already behind."

"We're not racing anyone."

She watched me, something unreadable in her face. "You don't have to fix everything."

"I'm not fixing. I'm just looking."

We made it one more kilometre before she stopped mid-step, her hand clamping onto my arm.

"Cramp."

I guided her to a bench under a neem tree. Pilgrims flowed past, chanting, laughing, indifferent to our small crisis. I went down on one knee and pulled her foot onto my thigh.

"People are watching," she hissed.

"So?"

"So this is embarrassing."

"I'm helping my wife."

"We're not married yet."

"Close enough." I removed her shoe despite her protests, working my fingers along her arch until I found the knot. She bit her lip, half from pain, half from mortification. I stretched each toe, then laced my fingers between hers, making space.

"Better?"

She nodded, face burning.

I leaned down and kissed the top of her foot, quick, light, then tickled her sole.

"Pratap!" She jerked back, her expression caught between fury and laughter. "What is wrong with you?"

"You looked like you were about to cry. Had to reset."

"I'm going to kill you."

"Later." I helped her shoe back on, then scooped her up before she could stand.

"What are you doing? Put me down!"

"No."

"People are staring!"

"They'll survive." I adjusted my grip. My arms were already aching. "You're my better half. I'm taking care of that part."

She buried her face in my neck. "I hate you."

"No, you don't."

Her breath was warm against my skin. After a moment, her arms tightened around my shoulders.

I walked. One kilometre. Two. My lungs burned. My legs shook. At three kilometres, I had to stop.

"Okay," I gasped. "Love remains. Breath does not. You're walking now."

As I set her down, carefully, because I was shaking, she looked up at me, her face unreadable.

"No more paranthas for you. You're joining a gym."

"Deal," I wheezed. "How's your foot?"

"Better." She squeezed my hand. "Let me know if you need me to carry you."

"Hilarious."

We walked the rest in near silence, slower now. The path took us past Kusum Sarovar just as the light turned gold. She leaned against the railing, staring at the water, and I stood behind her, my arms around her waist because I didn't know what else to do with them.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"For what?"

"For..." She hesitated. "For this. For carrying me. For making me feel like, "

"Like you matter?"

"Yeah."

I kissed her forehead. "You do."

She turned in my arms, and for a moment we just stood there, dusty and exhausted and held together by something neither of us had words for yet.

We finished the parikrama as darkness fell, strings of lights marking the path and oil lamps flickering at roadside shrines. When we reached our starting point, she collapsed onto a stone step with exaggerated drama.

"I'm never walking again. My feet have officially retired."

I sat beside her, equally destroyed. "Worth it?"

She looked at me, her eyes tired but soft. "Yeah. Worth it."

Somewhere in the distance, someone was singing about Radha's love, about devotion that looked like madness from the outside.

But when you're in it, I thought, it just feels like this.

She rested her head on my shoulder. I took her hand, lacing our fingers the way I had with her toes.

"When we do Kinnar Kailash," she murmured, "you're definitely hitting the gym first."

"Without question."

"But I'll still expect you to carry me if I need it."

I smiled into her hair. "Always."

The parikrama was complete. But the journey, I knew, was just beginning.

One beat per second

The first thing I remember is the silence.

That heavy, unbreathing kind of silence that only exists at 3:47 a.m. in a city like this, half asleep, half mourning something unnamed. My ceiling fan creaked in rhythm, the tube light blinked like it was tired of being alive, and somewhere beyond my window, a stray dog barked into the night. I was supposed to be asleep. Instead, I woke up like the world had just pulled an invisible alarm inside my chest.

My body knew before I did. This wasn’t just a wake-up. It was one of those panic awakenings. The kind where your heartbeat is too loud, too fast, and your breath chases it like it’s running late. I sat up on the bed, cold sweat sticking to my back, the air sharp with December’s chill. I couldn’t name it, but I could feel it—the same restlessness that had her name written all over it.

I didn’t fight it. I reached for my phone.

4% battery. Enough for one message.

My fingers moved before I could think.

Please forgive me writing this. But it gives 1% smoothness to this tornado heart.

I stared at the words for a long time. They looked stupid. Childish, maybe. But I wasn’t trying to sound poetic. I just needed to breathe.

So I wrote more.

Only you calm me down when I am having a panic attack. Thinking about you gives me one, and not thinking about you gives me more. Yet when I see you, it slows down. One beat per second.

I read that last line twice.

It didn’t sound like something I’d write. It sounded like something my heartbeat would say if it could talk.

And then, impulsively, like a man standing at the edge of his own restraint, I typed another message.

Wake me up with a call if you want to hear my sleepy sexy voice.

I laughed. It wasn’t me. Not really. Maybe that’s why I sent it. Because sometimes when your heart is breaking too quietly, you try to say something that sounds lighter than the truth.

I locked the screen and threw the phone beside me.

And then I waited.

The city outside was a thousand muted sounds—the auto’s distant horn, a train sighing in the distance, someone’s old Bollywood ringtone echoing from a balcony. I thought about her. I always did. Ten years of thinking, quietly, steadily. Loving her had become like breathing. I didn’t know when it started, but I knew I couldn’t stop.

When her reply came, the screen lit up the room like a confession.

I wish I could feel the same for you.

I read it once. Then again. And again, until it didn’t sting anymore—just floated in that numb space between truth and tenderness. She wasn’t cruel. She never was. She knew everything. She just didn’t feel it. And I respected that. Love doesn’t always have to be returned; sometimes it just has to be known.

Still, I replied.

Just keep an open heart. If it sparks, don’t ignore it. That’s all I’m asking for.

No response after that. Just the sound of the fan and my heartbeat, syncing slowly. One beat per second. For the first time that night, I could breathe again.

---

By morning, the panic was gone, replaced by that dull ache of remembering too much. The sun broke through the curtains in weak strips of gold, the city had started moving, and my phone was almost dead. I typed a simple message—Good morning. Sent it. Closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, it was nearly noon.

Her message was there. Just one emoji—a small, sleepy smile. No words. But it was enough to keep the world from collapsing entirely.

---

We met that evening, like we sometimes did, in that tiny café near her office, the one with overcooked pasta and bad jazz. She wore a plain blue kurta, hair tied loosely, eyes unreadable as always. I loved that about her, how her calmness made everyone else fidget.

“You look tired,” she said.

“Didn’t sleep much,” I replied, sipping my coffee. “Woke up in the middle of the night. One of those weird panic things.”

“Again?” she asked, concerned. “You really should talk to someone.”

“I did,” I said. “You.”

She smiled faintly, half amused, half uncomfortable. “That’s not healthy.”

“I know.” I paused. “But it’s honest.”

She looked away. Outside, traffic lights blinked red through the rain. I could see her reflection in the window—soft, indifferent, somewhere between affection and distance. I wanted to tell her that her reflection hurt more than her rejection ever could. But I didn’t.

“You sent me some strange messages last night,” she said after a pause.

“I know.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I did.”

She sighed, not dramatically, just with quiet acceptance. “I respect how you feel. I just… don’t feel that way about you.”

I nodded. “Understandable.”

We sat in silence for a while. The kind of silence that doesn’t need to be filled because both people already know everything that could be said.

After a long time, she asked softly, “What did you mean by ‘one beat per second’?”

I smiled. “That’s what happens when I see you. My panic slows down. Everything does.”

She didn’t say anything. Just kept looking at me, maybe searching for something she could believe in, or something she could ignore.

Finally, she said, “You’ll be fine, you know. You just… feel things too deeply.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe everyone else feels too shallow.”

Her laughter broke the tension, light and brief. For a moment, it was just the sound of two people who used to belong to the same silence. Then she said she had to go. We stood, paid the bill, walked out.

Outside, the air was thick with rain. The sky, dim. She pulled her dupatta close and said, “Take care, okay?”

I nodded. “You too.”

She turned and walked toward the auto stand, her silhouette blurring into the drizzle. I watched until I couldn’t see her anymore, until all that remained was the echo of her steps fading into the city’s hum.

Death of a One-Sided Love

The ceiling fan in my Chandigarh flat rotates with deliberate slowness, a motion I have observed on countless evenings. Outside, the October sun descends, casting the sky in hues of orange and pink that once defined my hour of quiet anticipation, the hour of delay, of fragile hope, of "ek din aur" (one more day).

Today, however, a profound weariness overtakes me. Geet has always known.

Six months ago, after three years of silent affection, shared coffee breaks, lunches, and late-night work discussions, I summoned the resolve to confess. At Café JC, my hands trembled around the cappuccino as I uttered the words rehearsed innumerable times: "Tumse pyaar hai, Geet. I have been in love with you for three years."

Her expression held no surprise, only sorrow and sympathy, the gaze one reserves for an injured creature beyond rescue. "Jimmy, I care deeply for you as one of my closest friends. But I do not share those feelings. I am sorry."

In that moment, I should have withdrawn, accepted the rejection, processed the loss, and proceeded with dignity. Instead, I replied, "It is acceptable. I simply needed you to know." I persisted in our friendship, harboring the desperate illusion that her sentiments might evolve.

Six months have elapsed since then, six months of "ek din aur."

Each evening on this balcony, I renewed the same vow: Tomorrow, I will release her. Tomorrow, I will begin to heal. Tomorrow, I will cease monitoring my phone for her messages or dissecting her words for concealed intent.

Yet dawn arrived, accompanied by the insidious murmur: "Fir lagta ek din aur ruk jau. Kya pata tum bhi karne lago. Sirf ek din aur." Just one more day. What if today marks the shift? What if I stand mere hours from transformation?

Friendships often blossom into romance, do they not? She knows me intimately, trusts me, and finds humor in my jests. Is this not the foundation of enduring love?

Thus, I waited. Nearly a year now of accumulated "one more days."

Geet has remained compassionate, excruciatingly so. She has not severed ties or imposed distance. She still confides in me after difficult days at work, invites me to group gatherings, and shares memes tailored to my tastes. Her behavior mirrors the past, as if my confession altered nothing.

Perhaps she believes normalcy will facilitate my recovery, restoring our prior equilibrium. But equilibrium is impossible. I remain ensnared in this intermediate state, this limbo of prolonged deferral, grasping at an illusory possibility.

Last week, during a team dinner with colleagues, Geet sat beside me, her laughter resonating. For an instant, I envisioned us as a couple, her joy reserved for me, our departure hand in hand.

Then Rahul, our team lead, jested about relationships, prompting Geet to remark casually: "I am finished with dating. I am focusing solely on myself now. No distractions."

No distractions. My affection constitutes a distraction. Three years of unwavering devotion, six months of patient endurance, reduced to an impediment.

That night, I returned home and wept, a release both familiar and transformative in its finality.

Today, her message arrived: "Jimmy, you free? Let's grab coffee?"

My instinct nearly compelled assent, fingers poised to respond affirmatively, as always. But I paused, confronting the question evaded for half a year: What am I awaiting?

Her answer was unequivocal six months prior. In the interim, she has offered no hint of reconsideration, no lingering looks, no recantations, no reflections on my words. Only kindness, friendship, and unspoken pity.

I have misconstrued her benevolence as promise, her companionship as potential, constructing dreams upon the sands of "perhaps tomorrow." Yet tomorrow remains elusive, a deception to evade present sorrow.

Reviewing her message, I drafted responses and discarded them: too dramatic, too ambiguous, too burdensome. Ultimately, I sent: "I cannot make it today. Take care."

It marked the inception of separation, yet insufficient. I recognized my pattern: her next outreach would draw me back, perpetuating the cycle.

Therefore, I enacted what was overdue from the day of her rejection. I blocked her number, not to inflict pain, but to preserve myself. I unfollowed her across social platforms, ceasing the scrutiny of her updates for nonexistent signals. I erased our conversation archives, effacing years of dialogue, a severance that felt like self-amputation.

The grave is prepared. The love ceased vitality long ago. For six months, I lingered at its brink, unwilling to inter the remnants, for even in anguish, a spark of hope endured like a cherished refuge.

But hope has transmuted into venom, imprisoning me, obstructing progress and authentic existence.

"Fir lagta ek din aur ruk jau. Kya pata tum bhi karne lago." What if she reciprocates?

She will not. Six months afforded ample opportunity. I have demonstrated patience, kindness, and presence, yet love cannot be compelled or summoned through vigilance.

My phone vibrates; it is Aman: "Finally blocked her?" He has witnessed this protracted unraveling, urging release. Readiness, however, arrives on its own timeline.

I reply: "Yeah."

"Proud of you, bhai."

Pride eludes me; devastation and grief prevail as I mourn an imagined future. Relief tempers the exhaustion.

For six months, I bore this hope as an unyielding burden, mistaking its weight for value. It was merely oppressive.

The sun has vanished; darkness envelops the sky. The city persists in its cadence, unmoved by my private affliction.

Tomorrow, Geet may contact me indirectly, inquiring after my well-being. I may respond, or not. But I will no longer invoke "ek din aur."

Tomorrow, upon awakening, she will not dominate my thoughts. The process may span months or years, but resolution will arrive.

I have expended 365 days in deferral. Today, I declare sufficiency.

The love is extinguished. I sustained it artificially, denying the evident.

Today, not tomorrow, I terminate the sustenance.

I release her.

Not because my love has faded, but because I have begun to value myself sufficiently to cease.

Mai haar gaya. (I lost / I've been defeated).

What If I Tell You

It must have been raining that day, too. Or maybe I just remember it that way, the blur of headlights, the smell of wet earth mixing with coffee, the way sound softens when the world is soaked through.

Nisha was already inside when I arrived. Through the glass, I saw her scrolling through her phone, and for a moment, I just stood there in the rain, watching her exist without me. Three years in Mumbai, and I still measured time by how long it had been since I’d seen her smile begin at the corner of her mouth before spreading.

“Your coffee’s getting cold,” she said when I finally sat down. Not hello. I missed you. Just the quiet cruelty of how easily we’d learned to pretend.

“Black, no sugar?”

“Haan. You and your refined taste.” She said it like she was remembering something else entirely.

The café smelled of cardamom and old wood. Outside, an autorickshaw splashed through a puddle, and somewhere a Hindi song played, muffled and distant, Tum paas aaye, yun muskuraaye...

“Mumbai’s fine,” I said, though she hadn’t asked yet. “Same. You know.”

She did know. That was the problem. She knew about the promotion I didn’t celebrate, the apartment with too many quiet rooms, the way I still left her side of every restaurant booth empty even when she wasn’t there.

“I’m working on this old haveli in Shivajinagar,” she said, tracing circles on her cup. Eighteenth century, carved pillars, arches. You’d like it. The light comes through differently in the afternoon.”

I wanted to tell her I’d like anything she wanted to show me. I wanted to tell her I’d been carrying that night on the hostel terrace for eight years, the way she’d fallen asleep mid-sentence, her head against my shoulder, and how I’d stayed frozen for hours because moving meant it would end.

But I said, “Sounds beautiful.”

The rain grew heavier. Someone opened the door, and the sound rushed in, the wet breathing of Pune in July.

“I need to tell you something.” The words came out too sharply.

She looked up. “Okay.”

“There’s this woman. At work.” I watched my hands around the cup. “Priya. My parents think we should.”

“Get married?” Her voice had gone careful.

“Haan.”

Silence. In it, all the things we’d never said, three a.m. calls that ended just before meaning, birthday texts at 12:01, the way she cried on my shoulder about everyone except me.

“That’s… good, Manish. Really.” The smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You should be happy.”

“Should I?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Why didn’t we?” I asked quietly. “You and me. Why didn’t we ever?”

“Manish.”

“I’m not asking for anything,” I said. “I just need to know if it was only me. If I made it all up.”

“Don’t.”

“Please, Nisha. Did you ever… almost?”

She was quiet for a long time. Outside, the rain kept falling; that song still played; someone was frying pakoras in the kitchen, the smell of hot oil and possibility.

“Do you remember that night?” she said finally. “Second year. We were on the terrace until sunrise. You were talking about that Ladakh trip, and I was thinking.” She paused. “Take me with you. Take me everywhere. I was thinking about things I shouldn’t think about my best friend.”

Something in me loosened.

“But you never said anything,” she went on. “So I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe you just needed a friend. So I dated other people, called you every Sunday, took this job in Pune even though Delhi paid more because.” She looked at me. “Because you were here.”

“Nisha.”

“Why tell me this now? When there’s someone else?”

The lie sat between us, sharp and small. I could leave it there. Walk away clean.

“There’s no Priya.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I made her up. I needed to know. I couldn’t keep wondering. I couldn’t marry someone someday without knowing if you…” I stopped. “I’m sorry. It was wrong.”

“You lied to me.”

“Yes.”

“To make me feel what? Jealous?”

“To make you feel something.” My voice broke. “Anything other than this careful, friendly nothing.”

She was crying. Not the cinematic kind, just quiet tears running down her face while she sat very still.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hate that you made me think.” Her breath hitched. “I hate that I tried to be happy for you when all I wanted was to tell you to stay. To tell you that I’ve loved you since that awful movie where I pretended to sleep just so you wouldn’t move your arm. That every guy after was me trying to forget how you make my chest hurt. That I’m tired, Manish. Tired of pretending you’re just my friend.”

The café had gone quiet, or maybe I’d stopped hearing anything but her.

“Then don’t,” I said. “Pretend.”

She didn’t move for a long moment. Then she stood up. For a second, I thought she’d leave. Instead, she came around the table, close enough that I could see the tears caught in her lashes.

“This doesn’t fix it,” she said. “You're lying.”

“I know.”

“I’m still angry.”

“Okay.”

“But if you ever.” Her voice cracked. “If you ever make me go through that again.”

I stood, took her face in my hands. “Never.”

When we kissed, it tasted of salt and coffee and eight years of wrong timing finding its way home. Outside, the rain kept falling. Inside, the song had changed to an old ghazal, something about waiting and love that arrives late but still arrives.

We broke apart. She was half-laughing, half-crying.

“My mother will say she told me so.”

“Mine’s probably already planned the engagement.”

“They knew?”

“Everyone knew, Nisha. The hostel, our friends, the chai-wala outside college.”

She leaned her forehead against mine. “Then we were the last to know.”

“Better late.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, pressing a finger to my lips. “Don’t make it tidy.”

So I didn’t. We just stood there while the rain blurred the city outside, and I didn’t promise forever or perfection. I only held her hand and thought of all the nights we’d lost, and the ones still ahead, unfinished, uncertain, ours.

When we finally stepped out, we shared her umbrella, walking slowly through streets that smelled of petrichor and frying samosas. She didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t know.

Maybe that was the point.

A rickshaw passed, splashing water that somehow missed us. The driver sang softly to his radio, an old love song about rain and time that moves too slowly until suddenly it doesn’t.

“Manish?”

“Haan?”

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you completely.”

“I know.”

But her fingers tightened around mine, and in the orange glow of streetlights reflected off wet pavement, she smiled, the real one, the one I’d been carrying for eight years.

We walked on through the rain, two people who’d loved each other in silence so long that speaking it aloud still felt fragile, something that needed darkness and falling water to survive.

Tomorrow, there would be questions, complications, the slow work of turning friendship into something more.

But tonight, there was just the rain, her hand in mine, and the quiet relief of finally, finally not pretending.

Tonight was enough.