Understanding Ansh (LGBTQ Fiction)✔

Ansh Isn't Normal

Chapter 2// Ansh Is Not Normal

Ansh remembers his father's words, "The only constant in this universe, is change." He told him everything in life was a one day guest, at some point, they always leave, and if not, we stop noticing the permanence. So, in effect, everything disappears. These words he told Ansh were engraved in his mind. Of the many things he'd told him about, what remained was this vastness he felt every time he looked at the oceans, he remembered those words. Everything transcends. But not the oceans. At least, not to him. Many things his father used to tell him, had now started to loose relevance. Was he finally grasping the impermanence of his father's in his life?

The early morning walks along the coast, the breeze and smell of air that carried with it a scent that was so exclusive to itself: an uneven thrust of the smells of sand, salt, fish and people.

An all too familiar scene of things and just as anomalous, in that, there were new faces of people each day and different quantities of the catch the fishermen made each day. Ansh stopped, engaging in airy talks with the fishermen and asked them about whether the catch would be profitable to them or not.

Any normal day, he would've thought, had it not been for the view before him. Vinodh was teaching a few ten year olds how to do push-ups. Of course, the features of his face were heaved into their usual synthesis of the vacant and yet, of mindfulness. His dark eyes were always a presentation of observance but it was all so remote to note.

The convexity of Vinodh's biceps didn't go unheeded by Ansh. He stared at him. Had it been any normal day, he thought, Ansh would've walked to him and smiled only to have him gnarl at Ansh in annoyance. But today, was not any normal day, so Ansh found himself wishing to become a part of the perimetric, the centre point of which was Vinodh.

Vinodh noticed Ansh and their eyes met, any normal day, Ansh thought. Any normal day, he would've stared back in defiance. But not today. Something had changed, a minority report he couldn't place. Perhaps, it was that Vinodh was, maybe inherently kind? "He draped the quilt on you, didn't he?" He had always been kind, just never to him. The thought made Ansh look away timidly and his heart felt heavy from the realization that Vinodh hates him.

Would he ever come to tolerate him, if not like him?

A fractured self-esteem has its demands. It asks you to grouch in your insecurities.

Here he was questioning himself as he almost ever did, and Vinodh will just never ever find out. A sad revelation in his mind, until he saw Vinodh leave, almost immediately after Vinodh noticed him there.

Ansh wanted to follow him and ask him out for breakfast, but he knew that any gesture like that would be met with an immediate disaster of a response.

Ansh couldn't help but follow him out of the beach, he decided he was never the one with a strong resolve.

"Vinodh! Hey! Stop! Give a minute!" Ansh was panting as he called out to Vinodh, but Vinodh formed part of the head strong youth in the country.

He bumped into Vinodh's sky-vast back. For a second he just wanted to lean on it and catch his breath. Unknown to his conscious, he rested his face on Vinodh's back and even drew up his hands and placed each of them on his shoulders.

Any normal day, thought Ansh, as he was for at least the hundredth time, Vinodh would've aggressively shrugged off his weight from him. But it never happened. Vinodh let Ansh touch him. And that was a feat in itself.

After recovering from his depressedly faltering lungs, he turned Vinodh around.

"Breakfast with me?" Ansh asked, his eyes had reached meridian hopefulness.

"No", was Vinodh's curt reply as he dashed out from Ansh's view.

Indeed, a fractured self-esteem has its demands.

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