Chapter-4: The Unanswered Question.

11th January, 2015

After the class, Aadhira returns to her hostel room but stops in her tracks as she hears Amara laughing loudly in the room. Every day, the girl finds a new reason to go crazy. Aadhira enters the room to find her roommate lying on her stomach, talking to someone on the phone. Aadhira goes ahead to arrange her books on her desk as Amara hangs up. In the first semester, they had chosen their desks, and Aadhira got the one close to the window just as she liked it. Amara was willing to give up the window desk because the other one is closer to her bed, and Amara finds it convenient to go to bed right after her one-hour study session every day. People may not be able to see it, but Amara is quite studious. She is also the laziest person Aadhira has ever met. It reminds Aadhira of a lot of their memories from the previous semester, when they first met. They bonded over their interest in old classical music, which was believed to be out of character for both. With each passing day, they got to know a lot about each other and started accommodating each other in more ways than one. While Amara is lazy and Aadhira is active. There were times when Amara used to hang her dresses over the bedpost just so she could reach for them faster in the morning in case she woke up late. Aadhira smiles at the memory.

"Are you done with your classes?" Amara asks, pulling her out of her stupor.

"Yes. And you seemed to be quite involved in the conversation there." Aadhira replies, referring to her phone call just now.

"Aah! He is someone I met in the cafeteria. Nothing important." She says this even as she blushes, and it was so rare to see her blush that Aadhira immediately takes out her phone to capture the moment Amara Chakrabarti flushes like a tomato. Amara takes off to grab her phone, but she is quick to slip it into her back pocket and hold Amara at arm's length.

"You're blushing. What have you been up to, Amara? You look like a red carpet."

"That's such a sadistic comparison. And delete that photo right now." She says as fake anger etches her face, and she reaches for Aadhira’s back pocket from the front, only to end up holding her like a boa constrictor.

"I am sorry, but I don't take orders from you, girl." Aadhira smiles gently as they untangle themselves. "Also, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch your blush on a camera. You will thank me later when you show your children these pictures of your youth."

After a while, even though she's still unhappy about the picture, Amara drops the topic. Then Aadhira takes a seat by her side on the bed and tells her all about the weird conversation she had with Keshav this morning. As soon as she finishes, Amara fumes about the situation, ready to defend her best friend.

"Look, I understand that you like him, but don't you think he's being a little too rude?" Amara says. Aadhira knows Amara has a point, but she’s trying to think from his perspective, which is getting harder by the day. He looks close to every girl he talks to, but Aadhira can tell the difference in how he treats her. She just doesn't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. The closer she got to him, the more she could see his fear, but what exactly he’s afraid of, she doesn’t know. If it is possible, she wants to see him as someone brave.

She doesn't know to what extent she can tolerate him being distant from her. Every time she thinks she should give up, he gets closer, leaving her with hope. Aadhira wonders if not giving up on him is probably what he needs.

"I think he needs more time," she says, like a record. It's what she told her last week and the week before.

"Whatever you say."

Then she fell into deep thought about how right it is to clutch onto someone, like an obsessive person. Is love obsessive? Is she in love with Keshav?

Do I love Keshav Harshvardhan?

The question was hard to answer, so she left it unanswered. What she was sure of was that Keshav had become an important part of her youth, and she wanted to cherish it. With the heavy question weighing on her, she starts pulling away and hopes he will push forward, but it is all false hope on her part. She started doubting if she was too presumptuous in thinking the interest was mutual. The glint in his eyes whenever their hands touched and whenever they looked into each other’s eyes said otherwise.

Aadhira was lost in her thoughts as Amara kept talking about something she was going to do.

"What?" Aadhira asks, sounding annoyed. Amara gave her a disapproving look but didn’t call her out on it, as she understood the annoyance was directed elsewhere.

"To the tech fest, are you coming?" Aadhira almost forgot about the festival in her desperate attempts at understanding her complicated feelings towards a hard-hearted guy.

"Ah. Do I have to?" There was something like a freshmen's party in the first semester that Aadhira didn't attend. So, if she decides to go, this will be the first event she will be attending here in SRM.

"Come on, please; we can have fun." Amara says this with hopeful eyes. Aadhira tries not to get swayed by her cute act, but she can’t help but indulge.

"I'll think about it," she says to buy herself more time.

Amara's face breaks into an expression of glee, and then she goes on with the different competitions taking place in the festival.

Later that day, Aadhira slips into the music room, climbs up to the stage, and pulls out a chair to settle into. She looks around to make sure nobody is here before she takes a deep breath and tries out her voice. She always found singing liberating. Whenever she feels mentally tired, she finds refuge in a soulful song. Despite having a great voice, she rarely sings in front of anyone, not even her family. Even when she was alone, she was not alone. She prepares herself to sing as she closes her eyes and imagines a huge crowd sitting in front of her, encouraging her to sing. She doesn’t have her guitar with her, so she imagines the music playing and starts singing ‘Apna Bana le Piya, sung by Arijit Singh.

As the music played in her head, her heart started beating with the rhythm, and only then did she realize just how much she missed her own voice.

"Sometimes, the answers to the toughest questions are found in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected time." His voice rings in her ears, silencing the doubts that are building. He said this when they were sitting in the garden in front of the tech park. She likes so many things about him, one of which is his ability to see outside the situation. Between their million interactions, there were these rare moments where he looked at her like she was the only one in his line of vision. He is good at making people feel special, and Aadhira can feel that she is the only one he does that with.

She slowly opens her eyes as the song ends, and her heart speeds up at the boy sitting in front of her. Her breath hitches as she realizes he just heard her sing. A blush makes its way to her cheeks as she wonders how long he has been there. She looks down, unable to hide her embarrassment, and looks back up when she hears him take a deep breath to find him looking back at her. His eyes were trained on her lips as a shiver ran down her back. There is a glint in his eyes that makes her heart race, and she takes a deep breath herself.

They look at each other for a moment before Aadhira breaks eye contact, but he's still looking at her like he can't figure out something. She stands up and walks down the stage to stand in front of him. Looking down at him, she still doesn't find her answer in his eyes; she still doesn’t know why it is so hard to just look into his eyes.

"Can I sit here?" she asks.

He tilts his head before patting the seat beside him. She takes a seat and asks him. "What are you doing here?"

"I was just passing by and heard you sing in here. Your voice was..." he trails off in deep thought, searching for words.

"Was it bad?" Aadhira asks, hoping he will deny it. She is oddly protective of what people think about her singing, which is why she never sings in front of people because she wants to spare her singing from everyone’s judgment.

"No, it wasn't bad at all. I just couldn't believe the way your voice sounded. I didn't know you could sing." He smiles as he lifts his hand up to her face, tucking a strand of hair between her face and the back of her right ear, and slowly trails his fingers down her cheeks, only to stop at her jawline, cupping her face with his palm. "I don't think I have ever seen someone sing so beautifully in person."

She blushes at the compliment, and it only deepens as he lightly rubs his thump on her cheek. Keshav was lost and is desperately clinging to the illusion of this perfect moment. Aadhira was no better as she looked at him with cavernous care as she leant forward to wrap her arms around him, surrendering any pretense they ever had.

The moment they did, they didn’t know how to go back. They both believed this moment would be remembered in the future and that there was a future for them waiting ahead. She got the answer, and it was love. Somehow, she fell for him. She kept falling, with their memories as her coast and their future as her destination. She hoped he would cushion her fall and hold her in his arms.

***

If only she knew that day that he was her fall and that when the time came, she was already on the ground, breaking like a vase made of glass, what's left of her as a mess, with the hope of being attached back together someday.