❝ 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔'𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒂𝒓𝒅 - 𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒍 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒘𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒂 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒈𝒍𝒚. ❞
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Sometimes love doesn't knock on the right door. Sometimes it slips in through a misdial, a l...
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Author's POV-
It was an early Kanpur afternoon—the kind that carries the dry sting of summer in the air but still lets the wind flirt with the edges of your collar. Cycles whirred by, horns honked in the distance, and an old man swept dry leaves that kept coming back like forgotten memories.
The sunlight poured like molten gold over everything it touched—the dusty pavements, the blackened trunks of old neem trees lining the road, and the roofs of shops that hadn't changed since Arjun was a boy riding shotgun beside his father in their battered old WagonR.
Now, years later, he was in the backseat of a sleek, matte-grey Innova Crysta, but the road looked the same. Maybe that's the thing about coming back home—it doesn't matter how much you've changed, the place holds your memories hostage, preserved in amber.
Inside the car, the air was cooler—courtesy of the slightly too-cold AC that hummed with an impatient persistence. The engine thudded softly beneath them, the tires rolling forward on roads Arjun once knew like the back of his hand.
He sat on the left, window seat—if you can call it that in a car. His duffle bag rested beside him, though his cricket kit bag had been dumped in the boot along with three suitcases were jammed—one overpacked by his mother and two by him, though both held much more than clothes.
They carried weight. Of dreams, disappointments, and now, the cautious hope of a second chance.
Beside the driver, humming to himself in a voice that was as offbeat as it was enthusiastic, was Vatsal—Arjun's manager and friend, and in moments like these, his accidental therapist. The song he was humming was from some classic 80s Bollywood film. His long fingers drumming gently on his thighs to the beat he was humming under his breath.
"वो शाम कुछ अजीब थी, ये शाम भी अजीब है...."
("There was something strange about that evening, Just as this evening feels strange....")
He let the lyrics float through the chilled air of the car, like smoke from a fading fire.
The houses passed by like flickering memories on a reel. Mango trees he used to steal from. That corner shop where his Papa and him once bought toffees. That broken pavement I tripped over when I got my first cycle. Nostalgia wasn't gentle—it was a dagger dressed in lace.
The words hung heavy in the silence.
Arjun didn't speak. His eyes were on the road, but his mind was a mess of memories.
