Sandcastles | A Virat Kohli Fanfiction

21 • the rainbow

Virat's POV

The way I looked at the sun had changed since the day I saw it rising behind Kavya. The memory of that morning would come back to me whenever I found myself trapped amid the walls of self-doubt, on the slippery floor of people's expectations along with the old darkness in me. How the light of the sun made life possible on Earth but at the same time burnt the eyes of those who dared to look down at it.

I poured myself a mug of coffee after our team reached the hotel in Rajkot on the eve of my birthday. Sitting on a red bean bag in the corner of my room balcony, my gaze traced the highway lanes and the trees on the other side of it. The blaze from the vehicles and the street lamps glittered against the black of the road.

"27."

I whispered the number before letting out a sigh; the liquid in the mug shook from my breath. I took another sip and stood up watching the sunset, my elbows resting on the grill. The recent days and milestones flashed through my mind in the reverse order of their occurrence - the change in me through the years - how all my birthdays had a different version of my growth associated with them. And for some reason, this version seemed to be internally the calmest of all.

The wind blew across my face; making me narrow my eyes and almost close them. It felt good.

I kept the emptied mug on the grill and stretched my hands a little as my thoughts continued their retrospection. Nothing complicates the human mind the way being in the spotlight does. Sure, there are million other ways to do that but the lacerations that come from fame are always a bar above.

It wasn't until 2014 that I got the life-changing wake-up call from within, which I feel is the reason behind all that I am today. Failure was like a hot iron rod that not only hit hardest but also burnt everything that it touched, leaving permanent scars called life-lessons.

The hardships were endurable back then but the void in my heart wasn't. Yet my focus was determined on cricket, keeping in abeyance the romance I sought. So I cleaned my heart instead. I fought my demons, became a better person and slowly made space for someone who would knock on my door and find a home where losing ourselves would mean finding the other.

And Kavya knocked it at the most unexpected time; not only filling up the void but introducing me to a whole new world of discoveries and wonderful experiences. I was patiently waiting for what my birthday had in store for me.

Minutes before midnight, the team and staff gathered in the hotel lounge that already had three different cakes placed on the centre table. I blew off the candles, cut a cake, fed pieces to everyone, danced and then got my face smeared into the other cake while they had already finished the third by the time I got my face cleaned.

I went back to my room at around 2 am. I switched on the bedside lamp, its light falling straight onto my copy of The Great Gatsby. I always kept it around me even though I finished it like three months ago.

The most recent message from Kavya was asking me to facetime her on Skype an hour before. So I rushed to my iPad and rustled my hand through my hair in order to fix them and called her with the hope that I wasn't too late.

On the third ring she picked it up. She was sitting on a wooden chair outside a yellow tent, in her hooded black sweater coat with two other women across her. A bonfire lit between the three of them, while the two ladies held hands.