Not in the Script: An Ahaan & Aneet Collection

The Lost Year

On a good day I would braid my hair and sit by the window and try to write line after line describing Krish and the way laughter sat in his mouth like a secret. I would make lists of what the world looked like when he was near: the strumming of the guitar, the hum of his voice when he whispered sweet nothings in my ear, the way he would tilt his head to the sun to protect me. I would tape notes in my catalogue – about him, my family, my life – everything that could help me link myself back to the reality. My fingers would trace the printed words until the letters felt like bones.

Day 38 — Saiyaara
There is a radio in the dining hall that the staff uses for the news. The station plays folk and devotional songs in the afternoons. Today, as I sat trying to recall the name of the company I used to work for, the radio changed and a voice – a voice I had coaxed into being with ink into nights and days – began. It was a man's voice, ragged with something like pleading.

The room folded inwards. The spoon in my hand clattered into the bowl and there was a small, whimpering sound that came out of my throat, a sound I couldn't control.

It was his song. It was our song. "Saiyaara". Not sung for the stage or for applause, but as if he had cut open his chest and let the melody crawl out. The lines were the ones I had written and pressed into the paper with trembling hands. Hearing them from his lips felt like someone pressing hot iron into heart. I wanted to stand and run and press the radio to my skin as if sound could stitch the place where I had been broken.

My chest hurt as if someone had strung a wire tight across my ribs and every beat bumped against it. The acquaintance at the table – a young woman, Nargis – looked at me and asked gently if I was all right. My tongue failed, my hand trembled and I could not say anything other than, "He sang it."

The song did not bring back everything. It brought a filmstrip – a handful of frames: cricket ground dust, his hand closing on mine, a bunglow near the beach, a cigarette stub left behind, the smell of rain and his jacket. It brought a single, searing memory of him standing in the courtyard with the guitar, eyes foused on me, lips pressed to the words I had given him and singing them like a benediction. For a moment I felt whole and for a moment I felt the whole world press against the bruise of being away from him. "You did it", I thought, hearing his voice through the tiny speaker. "You released yourself into sound. It will carry you. It has crossed seas and crowds and reached the hill where I live. It has reached the stars."

There is a different kind of agony that comes from having your words sung by a man who is the meaning of your very existence. I believe he sang it for me and for every possible version of me who could be listening. It was both a bridge and an electric fence.

When the song ended I pressed both palms to my eyes and tried to hold the echo. I wanted to write his name on the dust of the floor as if that would trap him there. Instead I sat and did nothing and felt the room spin like a slow mercy.

Later, Sister Meera brought me tea and asked quietly, "Did you know him?" I lied and said, "No." I am ashamed I lied – not because she deserved the truth in full – but because that hearing his voice after what felt like eterity, gave me the greatest comfort but also burned me like an open wound.

Day 67 — Why I left
There are nights I wake and the room is an accusation. I do not know what I have done. The sheets are white, but the world is gray. I read the small entries I left myself and try to trace the shape of the woman who wrote them. Sometimes the words are of a stranger with a soft handwriting that could belong to anybody. Sometimes the handwriting is mine.

I read aloud the scraps at the back of the notebook – little mottos, a line I thought was clever once, and it becomes an exercise in reassembling a life. I put on the radio and listen to static until his voice slips through, and when it does I hold to it like a raft.