Strictly Professional

"Watch a movie with me." I said it the way people say “I need water” after a long walk. No build-up, no performance. Just thrown into the middle of her neatly arranged day like a badly timed email. Not a request. Not a command. Definitely not a romantic gesture. Who was I to command her, anyway? We were “just friends,” right? Well, according to her, at least.

Her eyes didn’t blink. Not immediately. She sat back in her chair, like she was rewinding my sentence in her head. “I’m trying damn hard to find an answer in your big jazel eyes that you’ve supposedly enlarged. However, we both speak the same language. Wouldn’t it be easier that way?”

“Are you calling my sentence grammatically vague?”

“I’m calling your intention vague.”

I leaned on the edge of her desk. “Housefull 5 " was released last Friday. I heard it’s not completely awful. New city, going alone feels sad. I figured my boss might be generous enough to keep me company.”

“Are you sure you want to ask your boss to the movies?” she said, one eyebrow up. “Do you plan to complete your report proposal in tomorrow’s movie?”

“Not a bad idea,” I said with mock seriousness. “Why should proposals be boring? Imagine—Akshay Kumar screaming Q2 deliverables in a chase sequence.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am, actually. HR training said I could talk to my manager about anything. I took that as divine permission.”

“You misunderstood corporate policy.”

“Probably. But since that day, we’ve been talking more. Laughing, even. Our bond is becoming… friendship-y. Stress on the ‘relationship’ part.”

She leaned back, crossed her arms. “What’s on the screen?”

“Housefull 5.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“It has comedy. Quirk. Nonsense. Basically, like our Monday standups. But funnier.”

“Please say yes,” I added before she could speak. “I’ll work on the report tonight too.”

She sighed — that soft, unmistakable sigh of reluctant surrender. “Fine. But I’m choosing the seats. I’m not sitting near the speaker again.”

“I already booked.”

Her eyebrow arched again. “You booked before asking?”

“I booked one. But I knew you’d say yes.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I’m hopeful.”

We reached five minutes late. She hates being late. She didn't say anything, but I could feel it in the way her steps hit the floor with the rhythm of mild disapproval. I handed her the popcorn like an apology.

“This is mixed,” she said.

“I thought a blend of cheese and caramel represented us.”

“You just didn’t want to pay for two tubs.”

“That too.”

She took her seat like a queen accepting the worst throne in the kingdom. Middle row, dead centre. Prime real estate. I let her steal the armrest. I wasn’t going to argue about boundaries with someone who had access to my leave approvals.

“You excited?” I asked.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Say that with a little less regret.”

“I’ll try.”

The movie started. Within five minutes, she laughed — the small kind, nose-silent, shoulders-hiccup. She tried to hide it by taking a loud sip of Coke. I let her pretend.

“You laughed,” I whispered.

“No, I exhaled aggressively.”

“Same thing.”

“Shh. Don’t ruin the only tolerable scene.”

Halfway through, she dropped popcorn on herself. Twice. I didn’t mention it. She did.

“I hate you for making me laugh at this.”

“You don’t hate me. You hate your standards lowering.”

“Shut up.”

“Say it nicely.”

“Shut Up.”

After the movie, we lingered outside the theatre. The mall lights were soft now, like even the building wanted to go to sleep.

“Thanks,” I said, walking beside her toward the exit.

She didn’t respond at first, just kept walking. Slower now. Like she wanted to say something, but hadn’t decided how yet.

“You know this doesn’t mean anything, right?” she said eventually.

“Of course.”

“We’re still boss and employee.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you still have that report due by Monday.”

“Already started.”

“But…”

That “but” hung in the air like a thread that hadn’t snapped yet.

“You’re not like the others,” she said, quieter this time.

“Because I watch trash cinema?”

“No. Because you don’t treat me like I’m in my position.”

I didn’t respond. Some compliments you don’t reply to. You just hold them for later.

“Don’t fall for me,” she added. “I’m not stable.”

“Who said anything about falling?”

She smiled — the kind you only see in reflection.

“You hungry?” I asked.

She gave me a look. “Are you always this persistent?”

“Only when I feel like the night owes me five more minutes.”

She didn’t argue.

We found a chai tapri tucked behind an old stationery shop. Faded chairs, uneven floor, dim tubelight buzzing like a tired fly. She didn’t complain. That felt rare.

“Cutting ya full?” the chaiwala asked.

We looked at each other.

“Full,” she said. “It’s been a long week.”

I nodded. “Full. For both of us.”

We sat on opposite ends of a wobbly table. She placed her phone face down. I did the same.

“This is so off-brand for you,” I said.

“What is?”

“Sitting with me. At a tapri. After watching a brain-dead movie.”

“Is that your idea of a compliment?”

“I think it might be my version of a confession.”

She smiled faintly. “This doesn’t leave tonight.”

“Which part?”

“The fact that I didn’t hate this.”

“Understood.”

We sipped our chai. Silence between us now felt like shared language.

“I wasn’t going to say yes,” she said suddenly. “To the movie.”

“I figured.”

“But you didn’t flinch when I brushed you off.”

“I’ve been brushed off by people with less power than you.”

She laughed into her cup.

“I don’t do well with people who want something from me,” she said. “Promotions. Approvals. Favors. They always have a script.”

“I don’t have a script,” I said. “I have a sense of timing. And a badly formatted report due Sunday.”

She took another sip and looked away. “You look at me like I’m a person.”

“You are a person.”

“Not at work.”

“Well, outside the office, you’re someone who doesn’t hate caramel popcorn, laughs at bad cinema, and can finish a full glass of chai without scalding your tongue. That’s enough for tonight.”

“Don’t be sweet,” she said, almost involuntarily.

“I’m not. I’m observant.”

We walked back slowly to the street. Her heels quieter now. She stopped before getting into the cab.

“You’re not misreading this, right?”

“I’m not reading it. I’m just... noticing.”

She nodded. Opened the door. Paused.

“I’ll see you Monday.”

“Completely professional.”

“Good.”

“I might send you virtual popcorn on Teams.”

She shook her head. “Go home, you idiot.”

Obsession

“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked, not looking up from her notebook.

“Like what?”

“Like you know something I don’t.”

“I do,” I said.

She raised her eyes then, slow, as if the day hadn’t been heavy enough. “And what’s that?”

“That this moment,  you sitting there, that yellow light on your face, that silver ring you keep spinning on your finger, I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.”

She laughed. “You’re so weird.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I just watched her return to her notes, hair falling across her cheek. It was true. I was weird. For her.

Every day started with her.

Before toothpaste. Before water. Before the sun had properly arrived.

My brain had made a ritual out of her. Is she awake yet? Has she worn that navy kurta again? Is she still skipping breakfast?

I didn’t need to check. I just knew.

The brain does that when it starts orbiting someone. Forms patterns. Links sights, sounds, feelings to that one person. And I loved it. I didn’t want a way out.

There was joy in it. In remembering her voice between songs. In smiling alone when I walked past the tea stall she once mentioned she liked,  “not because of the chai, but because of the old man who never remembers my name.”

“I think about you a lot,” I told her once.

She didn’t laugh that time. She didn’t call me weird.

She just said, “I know.”

That was the thing. She never led me on. Never flirted carelessly. But she let me stay. In her orbit. In her periphery.

And that was enough. More than enough.

I noticed everything. I noticed she carried two pens,  one black, one green. That she had a small scar on her left knuckle. That she only wore kajal on Tuesdays, and even then, only lightly. That she always paused two seconds before answering a question in class,  like she was mentally checking the words, measuring their softness.

It wasn’t an obsession in the way movies show it,  with crazy eyes and dangerous silence.

This was... rhythm.

I started sitting near the windows because she liked sitting near the windows. I listened to classical fusion because she once said, “I like songs that start slow and then break into something.”

I became fluent in her language.

“You remember too much,” she told me one evening, as we walked back from a seminar.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. It’s just... strange. Most people forget even the important stuff. You remember small things.”

“I think the small things are the important stuff,” I replied.

She looked at me then,  the way someone looks when they suddenly realise the person beside them is not temporary.

That look. I’ll never forget that.

My friends teased me. “Yaar, tu pagal ho gaya hai.”

“She’s just a classmate.”

“Find someone who actually likes you back.”

But they didn’t understand.

This wasn’t about being liked back. This wasn’t even about being with her. This was about the feeling. The way she made me feel.

Alive. Awake. Aware.

Like suddenly the world had a centre again, and it was her.

I didn’t follow her around. I didn’t force closeness.

But every moment I spent with her,  or even near her, I preserved it like pressed flowers between pages. I’d open them at night, before sleeping. Replay the conversations.

“Do you ever think about the future?” she once asked.

“All the time,” I said.

“What do you see?”

“You.”

She didn’t respond. Just smiled a soft, sad smile.

I didn’t ask why it was sad. I just held it. Like the rest of her,  gently, without demand.

One morning, I woke up late. Missed the first class.

And I panicked. Not because of attendance. Not because of grades.

Because I hadn’t seen her.

My chest was too tight. The hours too slow.

It hit me how much I had built my day around her. How she was the rhythm underneath everything.

But I didn’t feel ashamed of it.

There was nothing wrong with loving someone so much that they became your measure of time.

Weeks passed. She changed her hairstyle. I noticed. She started sitting farther away in class. I noticed. Her replies to my texts got shorter. I noticed.

But I didn’t stop loving her.

Love, the real kind, doesn’t panic. It aches sometimes, yes. But it doesn’t panic.

Because even when her voice got rarer, even when her attention turned away ,  I still loved her. Not because of what she gave me. But because of what she was.

I saw her one last time before graduation. A function. She was laughing with someone else.

I didn’t interrupt.

I just watched.

She looked the same, yet different. More confident. More distant. Like a flame that had become wind.

She saw me.

We didn’t say anything. But she gave me that smile. Not the sad one. The real one. The one that always made my ribs feel too small for my heart.

People ask me sometimes, “Were you two ever a thing?”

And I always answer honestly.

“No. But I was hers.”

Not in the way stories end. But in the way stories begin.

With a name you never forget. With a laugh, you hear even when the world is silent. With memories that don’t hurt,  they warm you. Still.

It wasn’t madness.

It was meaning.

And I’m still grateful. Still full.

Because in some corner of my life, there will always be a soft glow. A name like a hymn. A time when love wasn’t returned,  but it didn’t need to be.

She once said, “You’re different.”

And I wanted to reply, “You made me that way.”

But I didn’t.

Some things don’t need to be said.

Some love isn’t declared.

It’s remembered.

It’s relived.

It’s an obsession, yes,  but the kind that saves you.

The Mountain and the Mirror

Be Happy. Be Content. But Never Satisfied.

A few years ago, I met a man while trekking in the Himalayas. He wasn’t a guide, nor a fellow traveler. Just an old shepherd, living in a stone hut high above the tree line, alone with his goats and a view most of us only see on postcards.

After a steep climb, I sat down outside his hut, exhausted. He offered me chai—simple, strong, full of ginger—and we began to talk. His Hindi was slow and poetic, as if shaped more by silence than speech.

I asked him, “Don’t you ever want more? A house in the city? Something bigger?”

He smiled, not offended—amused.
“Zyada chahiye toh har waqt bhaagna padega. Sukoon chahiye toh yahin kaafi hai,” he said.
(If you want more, you’ll always be running. If you want peace, this is enough.)

At that moment, I thought he had it all figured out. Contentment. Peace. A view of the sky worth a million dollars.

But just before I left, I asked him if he ever felt bored.

He laughed and pointed to a small hand-carved mirror hung beside his door.
“Roz subah dekhta hoon. Sochta hoon, aaj apne aap ko thoda aur behtar kaise banaun.”
(Every morning I look into it and ask—how can I become just a little better today?)

That hit me.

Here was a man with no Wi-Fi, no office, no LinkedIn profile—and yet, he lived the mindset most of us strive for. He was happy. He was content. But he was never satisfied.

That mirror wasn’t about vanity. It was about growth. Quiet, personal, undramatic growth.

We often think ambition and gratitude are opposites. They’re not. Gratitude grounds you. Ambition expands you. The two together? That’s balance.

The goal isn’t to chase endlessly or to settle too soon.
The goal is to wake up each day, look into your own mirror, and ask:
"How can I be a little better today?"

Stay grateful. Stay grounded. But always stay hungry for growth.

A Simple Ring Please

The bell above the shop door emitted a faint, almost apologetic chime as I entered. The store was an unfamiliar world—too many lights, too much glass, and an array of items whose value eluded me. I nodded at the man behind the counter, and he returned a polite nod, one that seemed to say, You're not the usual customer, but let's see where this leads.

My hands fidgeted in my pockets, fingers curling and uncurling around nothing. The display cases loomed like a silent challenge, filled with diamonds that gleamed excessively and bands that screamed their price.

"Simple rings?" I asked, my voice quieter than intended.

The man opened a small section of the counter and slid forward a tray. "Plain gold. Some with curves, some with patterns. No stones. Minimal."

I looked down at the selection. In that moment, it struck me—this wasn’t about picking something she might like. It was about finding a ring that could hold what I felt: not loud proclamations or poetic gestures, but the steady, grounding presence she brought to my life every day. Anchored. Quiet. Seen.

My eyes settled on a thin gold band with a subtle, imperfect curve. Not symmetrical. Not flawless. But steady.

"This one," I said, then hesitated. "Wait."

I picked it up, turning it in my fingers. It felt right. "This feels… like her."

The man smiled. "You sure?"

I nodded, more to myself than to him.

---

That evening, I didn’t go home. I went straight to her.

She sat on the steps outside her building, wearing her old green kurta with the frayed thread near the collar. Her phone was in hand, thumb scrolling through a reel in that familiar, distracted rhythm. When she saw me, her face softened—not with surprise, but with a quiet certainty, as if she’d known I’d come.

"Tu theek hai?" she asked.

I sat beside her, letting the city hum around us—a car honking, a dog barking as if debating the streetlight.

"I bought you something," I said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Is it food?"

"No."

I pulled the small velvet box from my pocket but didn’t open it, holding it in my palm.

"I know you don’t care for grand gestures," I said, eyes fixed on the box. "And I know rings don’t define love for you. But I stood in front of a hundred of them today. And this one…"

I opened the box.

"This one felt like your hand already knew it."

She stared at the ring, then at me, saying nothing. My nerves crept in—maybe I should’ve written something, said something cleverer. Maybe this wasn’t right.

"Put it on me?" she said, her voice steady, almost amused, as if she could see my panic from a safe distance.

I reached for her hand. The ring slid on effortlessly, like it had been waiting—not just today, but for years.

She turned her palm, flexed her fingers, and studied the ring. Then she looked at me.

"This is nice," she said. "You’re still shaking, though."

I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

"I think I’ve been in love with you since you offered me the last French fry in the hostel canteen," I muttered.

She laughed. "That was three years ago."

"I’m a slow processor."

Her fingers tightened around mine.

"So… what now?" she asked.

I looked at our hands, the ring catching the streetlight’s glow.

"Now we keep walking," I said. "But together. Properly this time."

Her smile wasn’t earth-shattering—it was the kind that felt like the world had settled into its rightful shape.

“Chalein?” she said.

I nodded.

For the first time in years, I wasn’t choosing a future. I had finally caught up to it.

Before You

Before her, the world was quiet—not peaceful quiet, just... hollow.

Mornings came like routines dressed up as purpose. The same alarm tone. The same walk to the bathroom. Brushing teeth while staring blankly into the mirror, as if waiting for the reflection to flinch first. Evenings were worse. They didn’t end; they just faded out. No one texted goodnight. No one waited on the other side of silence.

I wouldn’t say I was broken. Just misplaced. Like a book in the wrong section. Intact, but unread.

Then, one afternoon that smelled like rain and chai, I met her.

Not in some cinematic way. She didn’t walk in slow motion, and violins didn’t start playing. She was sitting on the last bench in the library—knees drawn up, sleeves rolled past her elbows, completely immersed in a book I had never even heard of. Her hair was tied in a way that didn’t care what anyone thought, and she smiled at the pages like she was in on a joke the world had missed.

I don't know what changed in me in that moment. Maybe nothing did. Maybe everything did.

We didn’t talk that day. Just a glance. That kind where the world doesn't stop, but your heart does—just for a second. Long enough to know you’ll remember it.

Days after that, it was all her.

She became the one my thoughts leaned towards. The reason I reached for better music. The reason tea tasted less bitter. The reason I didn’t avoid mirrors anymore.

She didn’t fix me—she just made me forget I was ever broken.

She listened, not like people do when they're waiting to reply, but like she was memorising every word. She had this way of making you feel seen, like your pain wasn’t something to hide but something worth holding.

Once, I told her I hated my birthday. Too many years of it being just another day. That year, she found me outside my flat with balloons tied to a packet of chips and a scribbled note that read, “Happy You Day.”

It wasn’t the celebration. It was her presence. The way she remembered what the world forgot.

Nights became bearable. Then beautiful.

We’d sit on the terrace sometimes, not talking, just letting silence stretch comfortably between us. She’d point out stars and name them after things she loved—one of them she named after me.

“Why that one?” I asked.

“Because it doesn’t shine the brightest, but I keep finding it anyway.”

She never knew how much that line stayed with me.

I started laughing more. Smiling in photographs. Even writing again.

She never asked me to change.

But somehow, because of her, I began wanting to be more than what I was.

And for the first time, life didn’t feel like something to survive.

It felt like something to live.

Sometimes, I look back at the version of me before her and feel sorry for him.

Not because he was weak, but because he didn’t know what love could feel like.

She didn’t arrive with fireworks.

She was the lamp in a dark room—soft, constant, and enough.

I never told her everything she saved me from.

But maybe that’s the point.

Some people don’t need to know the weight they carry for you.

They just need to know they made you lighter.

And she did.

Every single day.

Last Time

It was the kind of evening that made you believe the city was finally tired of itself. Even the wind moved slower, brushing past my face like an afterthought. I was standing at the edge of the terrace—not in any dramatic sense, just… standing. The old steel railing was cold under my fingers, the kind of cold that doesn't ask for attention, just reminds you it's still here.

Below, the city kept going. Horns. Voices. Lights flickering like broken promises. And above me, a half-hearted moon, as unsure as I was.

I hadn’t come here to think. Thinking had become muscle memory by now. I came here to stop. To put something down, maybe. A weight I’d carried too long, too quietly.

Her name wasn’t written anywhere here, but it echoed in everything.

Not in the romantic way people talk about lost love. This wasn’t poetry. This was old plastic wrappers in a drawer you never cleaned. This was a voice in the head that didn't even sound like hers anymore. Just… an impression. Of what I thought was love. Of what I thought was her.

We hadn’t spoken in two years.

No fights. No final goodbye. Just silence, like a song that forgets its next line and never recovers. She left the way some people do—not loudly, not tragically—just… in the spaces between texts, in the casual delays that turn into days, and the days that never find their way back.

But I never left. Not really.

I built rooms for her in my head. Kept rearranging furniture she never sat on. Played songs on loop that once made her smile. Wrote long messages I never sent. Replied to her silence with more silence, as if I owed her that.

And through all this, I called it healing.

Funny, isn’t it?

People around me believed I was moving on. And maybe I was. But only in public. Privately, I still set an extra plate. Still looked for her in strangers’ playlists. Still flinched when someone said her name, even if they meant someone else.

But today… something felt different.

Not dramatic. Not movie-ending different. Just a tiredness that sank deeper than usual.

I didn't want to carry it anymore.

Not because I stopped loving her—maybe that part never ends—but because the love had turned into something else. Something heavy. Something that took more than it gave. And I was done paying.

I pulled out my phone. Scrolled to our last chat.

“Online 678 days ago.”

No blue ticks. No goodbye. Just an empty screen and a blinking cursor where my closure should’ve been.

I typed:

“Aakhri baar tumse baat kar raha hoon… sirf apne liye.”

Deleted it.

Typed again:

“You don’t have to reply. Just needed to say goodbye out loud.”

Deleted that too.

Finally, I just wrote:

“Shukriya.”

Sent it.

It didn’t change anything.

She didn’t come back. The past didn’t rearrange itself. But something inside me… exhaled.

I stood there a while longer. No background score. No tears. Just the city breathing, and me with it.

The phone screen faded to black. I slipped it back into my pocket.

And for the first time in a long time, I walked away.

Not from her.

From the version of me that didn’t know how to let go.