RAABTA

HUMSAFAR (1)

I am Rehan Malik and this is the story of my tragedy.

Literally.

They say love doesn't knock before entering your heart. Love doesn't see whether it's the right or wrong person before it makes you fall. Love doesn't warrant its expiration, because once in, it never leaves; only multiplies, from one to a thousand, from an infinity to the extent of one's being and more.

Like every other guy, I fell in love with a girl. Not any passerby, not a love-at-first-sight situation, and neither a highschool whirlwind romance fueled by hormones. It hasn't been any of those, rather she has been in my life ever since I came to know of my existence.

My best friend. She is or so she thinks herself to be.

Only I know that it is otherwise.

I know, I do realize my mistake—more than a hundred times a day, in every waking moment spent with her, hiding efficiently the fluttering of my heart whenever she laughs with the dimples turned on, the curving of her cheeks proving the reality of God's being, how beautifully had he structured, carved that curve to embark on her earthen skin.

The flapping of butterflies whenever she calls me as the first person for any help, let's me know the deepest of her secrets, fills me in about all the things that happen in her life, gets uncontrollable when I think I am the only special person in her life.

The thought brings forth fear more than joy.

Fear because Kinza's world revolves around only two people, her mother and me.

I am the one who lights up her smile when her mood is off, I am the one who pushes the burden on her shoulders to fall on mine, I am the one who brings to her autumn evenings filled with masala chai and poray, who takes spring walks on the shores of Mumbai bay, give the summer warmth and shield her from the winter cold with half-hearted lies and unkind words masked with love.

Inseparable is what we are, have been, but now the future seems bleak.

Having completed the best time of life in college, from bunking classes to watching first show movies on the front seats because the tickets had been sold out, belittling the professors to exchanging papers in the exams, late nights studies skipped with banters of whether Marvel is good enough than DC, we had done it all in a go.

And now that I have been offered a job in the States, I must give up the last string of hope.

With this thought in mind, I walked out of the double doors of the building complex of the company I had an interview with just a while back.

Blazing horns of Mumbai traffic greet me as the sun decides to dip down, faraway to the sight that stretches through the waves-filled ocean.

Unbuttoning the first few buttons, I cross the road, holding the file of my accomplishments in one hand while the other loosen my checkered tie.

On crossing the road safely, I jump on the concrete parchment of the Marine Drive overlooking the funnel-shaped triploids obscuring the mighty waves from wetting the pathway.

My eyes fixed on Kinza—dressed on her usual sailor pants with her go-to crewneck sweater, arms folded up, and her u-shaped shoulder-length hair open, the Auburn bangs flapping her face just as the waves that kissed the shore, each time—stronger than before.

She turns to me and looks at my face, her eyebrows furrow and she takes a step towards me. "You have lost it, don't you?"

Her hands fly to her mouth and she lets out a wail, "Woah! I won the bet," she screeches, letting her boots make her jump up and down, "I knew it, I told ya."