Story

Mitti Di Khusboo

We have few memories of having tea together. I wonder if we will stop doing that, stop sharing greetings and gestures of bonding, our intimacy.

It was evening; I was alone on the balcony counting the stars in the sky, but there were none. The clouds hinted at soft showers. Soothing music was running at the back of my engrossed mind.

There are things I will never tire of, like his voice. It is lively, a breath of love. In his shadow, I see you.

The tune of his song, ‘Mitti di Khushboo,’ touches my ears silently and calls me to worship. I lie on one side of my bed, by the screen, witnessing his confused face. In the first verse, I am as lost as he is.

There are flashbacks. I go back to when I was close to you, but I’d had no courage to let you feel the warmth I carried.

Outside, the cloud changes its course and the evening breeze touches my shirtless body. I get lost in the song and the memory of my misery.

The unfamiliar words from the lyrics make every sense to me. The pain in their tune matches with mine. It hits me then; I realize I am not just missing you, but every part of our life together. The sheer power of giving in to love moves me.

The classroom of our school is a dreamland. I want to revisit it to see you one last time. I could walk miles–no, I could walk the circumference of the earth–to find you again in the pitiful crowd.

I am not saying you are far off, but I feel the longing and the distance between us. I am unsure how I’ll react to your final departure.

We have few memories of having tea together. I wonder if we will stop doing that, stop sharing greetings and gestures of bonding, our intimacy.

What will it do to me?

The song comes to the verse where everything is falling apart. The rain that brought them together also parts them. The connection that can get them closer together, being merely ink, wipes off his courage to run on, to endlessly run after the love of his life.

But years later, one cloudy morning, their halted lives resume in the same shower.

The song ends, and outside my window, I see it has started drizzling. I feel the urge to see you that evening. We were just a call apart, but the silence took me nowhere.

So, I don’t go anywhere. The ray of hope instead becomes a chore of waiting for love to come to me.

But it never knocks on my door. Not when the cloud is weeping, nor when I am.

This story was about: Identities Sexuality

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