"What if?" She questioned herself, for the umpteenth time and was unsuccessful, like always. The question mark kept bogging her down, making her struggle, making her breath as if it were her last. Only now was she realizing how much power questions contained within them, probably just waiting to catch hold of the right person, whilst feeding off their sleep and peace.
She had lost him. Krish. Her junior in school, but her best friend devoid the hues of light and navy blue.
To her initially, he was just another attention seeking wannabe, who bloomed way too early than any average teenager was supposed to. "Typical showoff, not our league." She had told this to herself, so many times, that it created that invisible wall, built on the bricks of assumptions and glued with pretensions.
She heaved a huge sigh of relief, as soon as she stepped out of the rutty school bus, knowing that the never ending school life had finally drawn to a close, and she was free to chase whatever she desired for, to finally listen to her heart, to start doing things that mattered to the soul, all along with a dose of college admissions and entrance exams. Finally finding time to dabble around on Facebook, she started off with some "useful investigation" of people she knew back in school. And that was when she tripped onto Krish's profile. And she stalked, for an hour, before sending a friend request. Without knowing what she was in for.
Saachi knew that her cousin, Arnav, though her age, had been pretty close with Krish for a long time now and she only assumed because he hoped that one day, a bit of the limelight Krish was enjoying would spill, with time and efforts. But after that single click, she took interest in knowing more about Krish. Something seemed genuine about him, something was so striking about him, yet unexplainable. And there, her quest for answers began.
She still remembers the first few awkward encounters with Krish over social platforms, their small talks which ranged from how bad a lab session went to the plastics that ruled the school that year. He was in his final schooling year and she had just stepped into her university life. She kept quizzing herself on the oddities of this friendship but put them to rest telling that relationships never saw reasons or needs, it would happen if it had to.
She also learnt that beneath all that glitz Krish carried around in school, there was an introvert, a real shy person who would still blush if he talked to girls, even for the slightest of things, when all the while, the opposite sex was just building castles in the air, with Krish being the king. She was no less an introvert herself, so she understood the difficulties. These two were such introverts that even when they saw each other on the road, they'd not wave, just exchange a hasty smile, half to each other and half to the dusty roads. And they'd continue from where they dropped, over messages.
There came a point where they knew that nothing will break the bond that they had fostered, come shine or rain. He'd always be there to tell her how she shouldn't be so innocent about the people around her and she'll always catch his back when he had any issue at all in school, be it academics or friends. Probably, the forces ruling this Earth thought that there had to be a certain limit to this lovely friendship.
And then, one day, he was gone, forever. And again, she questioned, on the why of it, to which she did find answers or probably she didn't, she didn't know.
To her, part of her time cycle hit a standstill the day he was gone. It took her four long months to come out of her denials, her questions, her unpredictable emotional splatters. She knew she had to resume life knowing that, at the same time, she will be on her own now.
Arnav and Saachi happened to meet one day, in between their blurs called life. She learnt that Arnav had Ishika who saw him through his sorrows and post this trauma, he knew she was the one for him and that they both have started seeing each other. I realized at that point of time, that I have been the only one who tided through this whole episode, alone and couldn't help, but feel proud on how strong I had been. Krish would have loved it, had it been there.
"So listen, Saachi," Arnav jolted her back to the harsh reality. "I wanted to tell this to you. But I could not. Because I never found the right time to. Now that you are back, you should know. Krish loved you." The last three words put her back to square one, from where she started, 4 months ago. She just froze, unable to whimper even the slightest of the human language. She just thought, "What fuckery is this?"
She asked Arnav to drop her back home. When she went into her room, she curled into a ball, hid herself under layers of blankets and just screamed her heart out, venting out her anger, crying out her sadness, all at once, only muffled by a pillow. She was ripped apart, she was at her rawest. Anything small could have just killed her, after that news. But once again she questioned, "Why me? Why Krish? Did he have to go?"
Him departing from this Earth was in itself was more than what she could handle. And this just had to come in, just at that point of time when she thought she'd go back to almost normal living ways.
It has been close to a year now. Since everything. Very recently, I happened to meet Saachi at Crosswords. The Saachi whom I saw, was no where close to the one I knew a while back, not even a cell close. The pink cheeked, chubby, curly haired introvert was gone and in her place was a sleek, short haired (complete, with pink streaks), bespectacled female. The nice girl had evaporated from her orifices and in place of that was a strong woman.
She identified me, way quickly than I did and gave me a bear hug, which directly sent that magical warmth that hit right at the core of my heart. I immediately felt that I just had to talk to her, for old times sake and thus planned out on an impromptu lunch. I gushed out, as soon as we settled down, "what is this I am seeing, Saachi?" and she just smiled. And that smile was new, something that she never did often previously. Something that made me probe further.
Then Saachi spoke. "You know, everything has changed. I just did what Krish would have told me to do if he had been here. The initial outbreaks of emotion happened. It was like my life just took a hurtle back to the dumps, from where I had painstakingly released it. But if things had to happen, it will happen, like how everything happened with Krish."
"Just one thing struck me and probably this was the only thing that I never questioned. I took it up just as it came to me. That as long as the love was true, then that would be more than enough to see you through life, no matter what, even if the one is there or not. In this one year, I started discovering myself, I understood myself through Krish's words. When he was around, we would communicate mostly through words, not many phone calls. All that probably for this only, maybe. That night, after talking to Arnav, I sat up like a mad woman, going to the start of our conversation and started re reading. This time, not from my point of view, but from his."
"He very obviously has wanted me to read in between the lines whereas I had very conveniently turned a blind eye towards it then. But the more and more I read, all I saw was how much Krish wanted me to become someone much better, far more superior, far more impressive and a free soul than how I was before. He had envisioned my bigger picture while I was bathing in short time happiness filled with obliviousness, in my own little world. And from then on, I started this journey of self discovery, which only seems to expand by the day."
I was already in a trance, because what she told me was just another completely different take on life's two most important emotions. "Over the year, I took up bharathanatiyam classes, completed my arangetram, because Krish felt that I was a star on stage, though I never found the confidence. I am one week away from my carnatic music exams because he once told me 'You have a brilliant voice, you need a bit of shaping up.' which I had just ignored. I started writing, I cook a lot, I travel whenever I feel like it. I love the silence within, though you are surrounded by so many things and people. You know that this silence won't be disturbed. I have lived life on the edge, believe me or not. I have done so many things Krish just dropped, along the way. And I've done things he has not asked me to, because he only said that i should believe in me and only me and I was way stronger than I seemed on the outside."
"I ain't a Superwoman or an Ironlady. I have my days. I do cry whenever I feel that life has been unfair to me. But the only thing that has kept me moving forward is that love that Krish had for me, pure, undying and always believing. Just remember Srishti, this one very small lesson in life, that true feelings will always fuel you, and it does not matter if he'she is around or not. They live through that invisible cloud of love, always, through the sands of times, unerased."
As Saachi grabbed her bags to leave home, I just kept reminding myself to go give a call to Akhil, my boyfriend of six months, with whom I was in loggerheads with, as I had thrown up a huge fuss owing to the fact that I thought he wasn't spending time with me.
I made a promise to myself, that I would forever enjoy the memories and won't be afraid to make a few more. I'd love hard till it hurt and I would never, ever doubt the power of what true love could do.
Most importantly, I promised that I'd not give space for myself to question on the 'what ifs', ever.