Bapu Bazaar on Christmas was so crowded that there was barely any network on my phone. It is crowded on most days. It took me around 45 minutes to find him. I was meeting him for the very first time after knowing him for two years. Donning a Christmas red hoodie and letting my hair down was my contrast against his all black, sober look even though we both somehow knew that inside my skeleton, I stood no chance against him.

I am not a hug person. I rarely initiate hugs and when people hug me, I am always worried about hugging them tighter or looser than they do. On one of our monthly calls, he had told me his height and how I might have something called the Napoleon complex. This was the man I had platonically liked for two long years, yet our hug did not feel scandalous. It felt warm and comforting and most of all, accepting. In that hug I found both justification and validation for liking him.

Old Jaipur at night is a thing of beauty. The shops and the Hawa Mahal, exquisitely lit against their pink walls is what aesthetics are made of. On our way to his Airbnb in an e-rickshaw, we talked about how his name attracts women on dating apps and how he was looking forward to Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan. He was most probably disappointed beyond repair. He stopped the rickshaw to buy a cigarette. The guy I had befriended two years ago did not smoke and took a lot of pride in it. Not that I did not. These are things of the past. As most things and people do, we too have evolved.

I have often struggled to feel safe and secure when I am with people. Very few people have been able to make me escape from the insecurities and obnoxious gazes I prepare myself to face every time I step outside. Was it the four year age gap between us? Did I see an elder brother in him?

I had never smoked until he offered me his Marlboro Advance and all my abstinence from things that can trigger my asthma vanished. Passive smoking used to repulse me and there I was, smoking the same cigarette that touched his lips, the closest I will get to them. I wonder if his smell was stronger than the cigarette. For a moment, we were Sahir Ludhianvi and Amrita Pritam: Amrita would smoke Sahir’s leftover cigarettes after he had left to taste his mouth. He taught me how to smoke and that one puff from this really strong cigarette felt like a spark flying through my being. He told me about the date he had gone on with a trans woman and I did not know whether to feel proud or envious. We told each other about our love lives but only one of us was trying to feel better about themself.

We parted our ways with a hug—I had become a hug person for one day. Through the cab window, I could see him take his right hand near his ear and signal me to call him once I get home. I did not merely like this man. I loved him. I have, for the last three years.

In a cafe that flexed a magnificent view of the Hawa Mahal and the Aravalis, he had asked a stranger to click our picture. He never sent me that picture. The lack of it in his Jaipur highlight on Instagram has since stopped me from asking him for that picture.