Prologue
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
It was just another sunny day in the eastern region of India. Well, it was autumn to be exact. There were no red leaves falling on the street though, no smell of fresh bakery and freshly brewed cappuccinos in the air in the morning; there were no couples holding hands and walking closely cherishing their newly blossomed romance. Well, maybe a few rare instances! It was nonetheless, autumn. The beginning of everything fresh!
Arav woke up a little early that morning, which was quite unusual from his daily routine! The puja holidays were about to start. But he wasn’t too excited about it this year. The pressure of his family for him to get a job after college was getting worse every day. He still tried to put up a straight face and continued what was expected of him. But studying wasn’t Arav’s thing. His dusty old black guitar (the only one he had), used to stare at him from the corner. Sometimes he just felt clueless. He went up to wash his face, check his emails and Facebook as usual. As he was scrolling through his news feed on his favorite little black text phone, a sudden thought occurred to him. Oh! Right! Smart phones were a still a technology of the future then. Anyway, Arav’s mind was wandering around a movie he had just watched the previous day. He couldn’t contain the thoughts within him anymore; he had to share it with the world. And so he did. Feeling very content with his little achievement he kept staring at the screen for sometimes and then got bored. His mom was calling for him to do some chores. Arav signed off.
Little did he know that something very exciting was about to happen to his apparently peaceful, mundane, boring, middle class life..
Abha was getting tired with her parent’s over ambitious expectations from her. Her dad was hell bent on making her become a doctor. All her friends had already joined college but she had to spend the days alone in her room dreading over books. Don’t get the wrong idea though! She loved books. But being a literature lover that she was from an early age, she was forced to opt for science instead. Abha never could come to terms with that. A teenage girl, full of life and positivity, little Abha longed to breathe sometimes. Her only solace was her little world of books which she adored and her little secret that she had kept from everyone in her family, but her grandfather. An ordinary teenage girl whose beauty was yet to be blossomed, she attracted anyone who came across her like a lonely candle lighting up the dark. The way her eyes lit up at the sight of a new book, the way she spoke of positivity and spirituality, the way she was kind to everyone she met was poetry in motion in itself. With a heavy sigh she looked at those ugly medical entrance books. The clock was ticking. She sat down and opened her Facebook before going back to studies.
Destiny had something beyond mundane for her in mind that was about to change her utterly boring world for once and maybe… forever.