(POV of Armaan from chapter 05||friends||)

February, Kolkata.

THE SPRING IS HERE.

I smile as I look out of the floor-length glass sky-high. The sky is slowly turning into different hues of orange and pink. And I keep on staring at it.

The bustling of the city always keeps my chaotic mind busy with one thing or another. This city had been my place for the last thirty-two summers and still, I know, I have yearned for something which was long lost, gone, and all for good.

My mind drifted to the thoughts of those old times.

Old times?

Nostalgia or a life I was happy in, perhaps we were happy in. I chuckle, a decade it had been.

And that time the definition of happiness was so simple, so easy.

Now, I don't even know what is it. I am happy, at least content. And that's the only thing I keep on saying, we keep on saying.

A few years back, when it was just suffocating here, I did shift to Hyderabad, but then again I have to come back here. Ammi said, "Yeh seher toh tera ghar hai, aur koi ghar chor key jata hai kya"

That time I didn't say anything, but my silence was screaming in agony. But Simran did and her words pierced through my heart bleeding my soul, "Humara toh ghar kabhi tha hi nahi, hume kisi aur ka ghar cheena hai,".

She spoke the truth right on our face with a smile that killed me a little more that winter night.

Our home was lost, it was broken, it was a house of cards maybe.

But to say the truth it wasn't our home, to begin with.

I and Simran were never meant to be. It was someone's else home, which I ruined and snatched the pieces away and give to Simran as a burden. Something so heavy for her to carry. Your one wrong step can ruin it all for you, and I did that.

My phone notification shows a miss call, only one. Simran. And it had been the same for years, either no calls or just a single. She never tried twice, and neither I did. We understand each other and we made a peace out of it.

Home.

Maybe no maybe that will never be here again, but then again, I never knew what a home is, I never tried to.

Spring brings hope. 

But my hope has lost its way long back.

Back when she left without even a goodbye.

I never deserve that anyway, but still, it hurts. And it will always be hurting. As Simran would say, a love like ours was painful to watch, and we lived that.

Sometimes love is never enough.
Sometimes we just learn to love someone from afar.

And maybe that's better for us, that's enough for us. 

For lovers are just vagabonds, beloveds their home, and often the latter is lost.

But lovers are fools, they keep on walking, alone, along with the memories, with a neverending heartache and a fragile hope, fading, losing, that perhaps someday beloveds will find their way back and make a home for them, someday they'll find their way back to them, love them too.

Sometimes they know that's not gonna happen, not now, not ever, perhaps lovers are actually fools they hold on to it that hope even after that, that's pretty much the only thing they have left with.

-----

The decorated maidan brings all her thoughts back to me.

Like she never left anyway.

She is a part of me and when she left she took a larger one with her.

The dhols, the colours the people dancing around. All the same here, just not us.

But there was once. 

Once we danced in this spring fest like crazy lovers madly in love. It was the hue of our love painting us.

The way she twirls around with no worries about the world. She was the sunshine or gloomy monsoons and my spring after the frigid winters.

She was mine.

She was.

And now she wasn't anymore.

It hurts.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

We have lost our lovers and beloveds but love wasn't lost. And I don't think it will ever.

For Wahish and Maan can never bid goodbye to the love they had.

A soft smile plays on my lips as I spot some people dancing in the middle, just the way she used to do. My legs move that way and stand there by the side.

And suddenly it happened.

My eyes wander off to a girl dancing right in the middle, right in the centre of my view. The girl clad in her white sleeveless long dress paired up with white churidar and multicoloured heavy embodied dupatta. Her hands dancing in the air, breezes kissing her, her face tainted with the pink colour.

And in that moment, what felt like an eon, I find myself lost there.

My breath paused, and so did my heart, for what was before me was so serene that I wanted to capture it in the curtains of my eyes for an eternity and beyond, and I did that. I keep on looking, admiring that very scene, the scene of the smile, her smile.

As pretty as before.

And it was the most peaceful sight for me in all those five summers.

The most beautiful scene.

For I am just witnessing Wahish smiling, a smile that reaches her eyes.

I am seeing my love alive there.

And that put a smile on my lips, and tears in my eyes.

And then suddenly she twirls, she turns around, her eyes met mine.

My charcoal eyes collided against her brown ones.

The sky roared as if witnessing the pain there, the pain that shouldn't be there in the first place.

I gulp slowly, averting my eyes first, even though I didn't want to.

For all, I know this can be the last time I am seeing her, but I had to because of the pain in her eyes, the pearls that refused to fall off there, that's stabbing me, killing me even more.

For the guilt, I had in me, of having everything once and still losing it all.

For the pain I caused us.

And we didn't deserve that.

Not me, never her.

So with a heavy heart, and clouded mind, I walked away.

I walked away.

Something I had done so many times before yet it hurts a bit more this time.

Perhaps all other time, the old Armaan had never thought of Khwahish.

But this time around, Maan has only one person in mind, that's Wahish, his Wahish.