A SIGH LEFT his lips. The hustle and buzzing house seem to be fading the background.

He fixes his panjabi and dhuthi, (traditional Bengali wear) for the zillionth of time. The night is droning, the sky covered with stars blessing with their presence. The whole house is adorned with yellow fairy light, bloomed with orange flowers and gleaming with happiness.

Happiness that found its way back to them after years.

And suddenly his black eyes move towards the photo frame on the left side. The photograph of three, faces that resemble happiness, his hers theirs.

Asthami 2014.

(8th day of the festival)

The date was there on the side of the photo. They were happy.

He remembers the night, a few hours before sandhi puja, (a ritual) she wore the red saree as he asked her to match with his red panjabi. Their smiles scream happiness, and for once he found his eyes blurred.

He blinks once, twice and put a curtain back to the memories.

It is gone now.

The people in the photograph and so are the hope of being together. What is still there is hope, his one last hope and maybe she will come.

Maybe.

But even the universe knows the truth.

A love is theirs was once in a lifetime affair.

Now when their infinities don't exist anymore, she won't come, she couldn't perhaps.

'I wish you were here Sheuli. Maa was missing you so much. I was missing you'

Sent. Seen.

Seen, just like those previous texts. And that's how it's been for the past few years. She mostly left him on seen, rarely replying with two words. So much has changed, so much was lost. And they don't have anyone to blame. That's the worst part.

A ring on his phone brings him back from his thoughts.

Sheuli calling.

He licks his lips and clears his throat before sliding the green button-up.

"Sheuli" He was greeted with silence, heavy silence that was enough for him to move out of his room and step towards the terrace.

"Rupak" Her voice was heavy, tired and ... and everything he don't want to be tonight.

"I thought you will come," He said with a dejected voice.

The silence that engulfs them again made him hold the bannister of their terrace tight. His eyes move around and halt at the last residence of their para. The vast premises of the Bakshi's.

The memory of a girl sitting on the wet balcony floors, singing the saga of heartbreak and him walking away from her fading in the rain comes to his vision.

That monsoon they lost their life to death.

A love story was ceased even before it was bloomed.

He gulps when he heard her clear her voice.

"I wish you all the happiness Rupak. All the stars the universe offers and may you and Sumona get a forever together. You are getting married to a good girl but.. but I want to tell you that...That you are a pure soul Rupak and above that a strong... the bravest among us. A great ... a son." Her voice halts abruptly, he closes his eyes feeling her tears burning his soul.

"Sheuli" He calls her name and she continues.

"I am proud of you and enjoy the day. I may not be there with y'all but my wishes are. Tell Kakimaa... I will visit her, someday."

Someday.

A smile appears on his face when he thought of that. Her someday is still not here, even after years, maybe it will never be.

"I wish to meet you soon"

"I wish to meet you and Sumona soon." And he can bet she is smiling for him.

"I miss my best friend you know?" He said looking at those gleaming stars.

"You are getting married. And everyone is happy for you, they are smiling again for that. Don't... don't miss anyone."

"Is that the reason you didn't come? Because you thought it will..."

"I couldn't come Rupak and I don't want to give a reason for that. I just called you to tell you that so far you are good at everything you did. From engineering to your job to be a support to your family. Now it's time to be a good husband too, mostly a good companion."

"I will try to"

"Bye Rupak. Have a happy married life."

"Sheuli."

"Yes?"

"Sumona is going to be my wife but she can never be the daughter of this house."

_____

The call ended. And she let her stars fall.

Rupak is getting married and she couldn't even make herself go there.

What has it been?

Years?

Eons perhaps she had crossed the lanes of Bidhan Sarani.

Her home was lost.

But still, people are asking for her, they are still looking for a Sheuli smiling ear to ear with happiness and her laughter echoing through that house.

She should have gone there, if not for herself then at least for Rima Kakimaa, Rupak's mother who had been a mother to her as well.

More than anyone else she needed her daughter tonight.

But she couldn't.

A drop of pearl touches the ground and she blinks back her tears.

Monsoon came early this year.

She made her way inside the hallway. The chesslike flooring welcomes her and she sits with her sitar.

Her eyes close and her finger tunes the strings.

The chords echo through the house, grief lingering in those.

Tark-e-taluqat pe roya na tu na main,

Lekin ye kya ke chain se soya na tu na main.

Woh humsafar tha magar us say humnawaayi na thi ,

Keh dhoop chayon ka alam raha, judaayi na thi.

(When we parted ways,

Neither you cried nor I,

But a peaceful sleep since, has that touched our eyes?

He was my companion, but not in harmony were we,

Like the clouds and sunlight,

Together but as apart as can be.)

The monsoons bring back memories and with grief.

Sebanti is living there on the thread of grief. A sweet voice of Sheuli singing Naseer Turabi embraces her in the lanes of memories.

With the sitar and the raw tones of her emotions, Sheuli is surely like a fresh flower of late-night hours of a gloomy sky covered with clouds and mists decorating the dawn with its serene redolence mirroring her name.

Her voice holds the emotions of grief. Something Sebanti can relate to. But the reasons were not known till now, it's not needed too.

Sometimes words are not needed, sometimes reasons ain't too.

Sebanti slowly makes her way towards the stairs walking towards the open Balcony where the girl with open black waves and closed eyes is lost singing the verses.

The song of grief.

A grief rather a cry of a lover, a lost love.

Sebanti's mind wanders to the day when she asked Rishab never to meet her again. The day her alliance with Shekhar was fixed.

That day Sebanti closed the doors of heart that was just opening a bit slowly for her love. She bid her farewell without even looking at the broken heart of the man who loved her despite all those promises she broke with a simple goodbye.

Suddenly she thinks about Shekar.

It wasn't a love for them, but he was her husband. The family they made together was built upon the bricks of sacrifices and graveyard of broken dreams.

A marriage of convenience.

When Rishab left, she cried for months but when all of that is over, grief was lingering behind.

That's a kind of grief she feels in Sheuli's voice as she completes the last verse.

Bicharte waqt un ankhon mein thi hamari ghazal

Ghazal bhi wo jo kisi ko kabhi sunai na thi

Ghazal bhi wo jo kisi ko kabhi sunai na thi

(At the time of parting his eyes had my song

And it was the song that I had never sung aloud

And it was the song that I had never sung aloud)

"On a sudden monsoon, when Shekar once told me about Laboni," She starts slowly looking into the rain covering the lawn. Sheuli looks at her as if asking her to continue.

"His lover wishing to come back to him, I decided to leave him. He was drunk that night but I got her senses back. An intoxication caused me consciousness." She gulps.

Life with Shekhar was not bad but different. She was his wife, not his companion and never his lover.

"After my separation, people called me by names and what not but no one said a word to Shekhar, the bitter truth of society, it always points towards the woman. And Shekhar, he never came to clear my name and I was glad that he didn't." She said looking at the distant alleys of her memory lanes.

"Why?" Sheuli asked still looking at her face maybe trying to find something there.

At this Sebanti smiles a little as she continues, "I was just a wife to him nothing more. Maybe we never wanted to be anything more. I tried to be a good housewife, something I never wanted to be. In that relationship, we both were just forcing each other to be someone we were not. It was a mirage of happiness. His heart was already filled with love for Laboni. And how can I take someone else's place."

The silence engulfs them only the sound of rain remains and a question that lingers behind.

How can one take someone else's place?

They can't.

That'll be cheating on ourselves, a life that'll be nothing but a lie.

"When I shifted to Delhi, I was already four months pregnant. I did inform him, he didn't respond, that time Rishab was already in my life, as a friend."

"Why?"

"I don't know. And I never bothered to. I never looked back for him. I moved on with Rishab and Abeer. Maybe that's something I can never explain why I did."

Old love bloom again and they got married after a few years of companionship.

This time it was a marriage of love where she hopes for the stars and wished for happiness.

That's why she took her time, she wanted to leave her past behind and then start a new life with Rishab.

"Rishab loved monsoons." Sebanti starts with a smile on her face and stars on her eyes. As the clouds pour her memories.

"It was raining that day when he left us, from that day I never enjoyed monsoons like before. Never recite a Tagore on monsoon nights." Sheuli looks at her, a sad smile covers her lips as she keeps on looking at the drops of tears the sky is pouring upon them.

"The sky is mourning" She whispers and Sebanti looks at her.

Monsoons are the mournings of grief, the yearnings of the sky.

It's the season of lovers and lost love.

"Sheuli?" She calls her softly not wanting to break the silence, not wanting to disturb the rainfall din that surrounds them.

"I lost someone a few years back, on a certain monsoon." She said while keeping her gaze fixed on the raindrops as if looking for someone on the haziness of the heavy shower.

"Lover?"

"A known stranger. A person who was so close to me yet so afar." And she stops there.

A thing Sebanti knows about her, she talks about everything and everyone but this person.

"Grief is a strange thing you know, when you are mourning for a loss you cry and get over it. But grief, it's not something you can ever get over. It stays somewhere in the depth of seas of memories with you. And suddenly out of nowhere it comes to the ashore and you lost yourself there, again." She says looking at the girl sitting next to her lost in grief.

"And it hurts more when you don't know why are you grieving, for what?" She gulps as silence follows them.

No one speaks again, they just let the silence of grief embrace them with rain witnessing them.

_____

"I am dropping you" Siddharths voice brings her back and she looks at him.

The cream coloured panjabi is paired with a white churidar. The little gold buttons on it, the ring on his finger and the watch on his left wrist. The watch she had gifted him once. The ring they had brought and custom made, the gold buttons his mother had shown her on his twentieth birthday.

She closes her eyes and looks away. The man before her is too known to her yet too unknown.

"No. I will" She started but he cut her off midway.

"I am dropping you because Kakimaa asked me and also because I want to. I am not here for an argument not at least now." His voice tells her he is tired, he is so done here.

" And you were looking beautiful," He said and she just felt her poor her losing a beat.

Damn him.

As if you didn't pick up this cream coloured kanjivarum for him only and not to mention the customised watch and earrings his mother gifted you.

Damn her inner voice.

She nods and follows his lead. For some reason, she knows he won't be leaving her alone here.

"I am sorry" The silence in the car was broken by him first, she was not excepting this.

"For what exactly?"

"Kuhu." His voice was tired and she is surely pushing the limits but then again that's something she had done always.

"No sorry. But there's a lot of things you should be sorry about so this one is for?"

"There may be. But right now I am sorry for what happened today"

"And what is that?"

"The ladies, especially Chotomaa. I never thought that you know"

"That's the problem you know Sidharth. You never thought that there might come a time when they'll start questioning us, me. Because you might be someone afar from the norms of society, I am not."

The night was serious a lot heavy for them. All the friends, family keep on asking her about them, about their supposed alliance. The irony.

"But they shouldn't."

And then it clicked her. He is indeed tired today. Tired of all the talks regarding Them. He is worried about it, about her.

"They shouldn't but they would. That's the truth. They'll keep on asking, keep on asking us when we are getting married or why we aren't married until now. And you don't have to be sorry, they're not asking you about it anyway"

"They shouldn't be asking you either."

"And why not?" She asked with a raised brow and he closes his eyes. The familiar lanes for Syed Ahmed street greet them as he drives past the science college

"Kuhu, I think you should get married." He said after some time and a look at her way, he regrets. Her eyes turned red and she gulps. He started saying something but she cuts him.

"And anything else you want from me Sidharth, maybe my life in a silver plater?"

"Kuhu listen"

"No, you listen. And listen to me carefully. I never asked you for reasons, never asked you for a closure or anything. I keep on waiting and that's my choice, my wish and I believe I have that much of right in my life. So stop telling me what you think or believe will be good for me. I know it better than you" She said and he didn't dare to say anything.

It's already enough for the day. He parked his car at the main gate of her residence and waits for some time.

"Waiting for a ship that will never come to shore is never an option Kuhu. The thing is you are just wasting your time" He said looking at her.

"Exactly the point Sidharth, I am wasting my time, not yours. and The ship you are talking about is not even sailed."

"Kuhu"

"Let me be Sidharth. It's a mess when people ask me about ...us. It pains me when I can't even tell them that there's no us. But whatever it is, broken, shattered maybe even lost but still mine. The heart, the hope and the closed book. And I am happy with it."

"You won't be getting married?"

"For me getting married comes with the condition of falling in love. And the person I am in love with doesn't love me back. So no, I won't be getting married."

"Kuhu" He sighed.

"I think I will take leave now," She said then get off his car and take two steps back towards her home.

"Kuhu" She turns at him and he smiles.

"Maybe someday I will give you a closure you seek, but I want you to be strong enough and promise me something," He said with hope.

"Promise you what?"

"That with the truth you won't hate me, that when I open my heart to you, you won't leave me alone"

And with that, he is gone, his car fading in the rain.

And she keeps on standing there, like always.

_____

The following days came with usual normality and Sheuli was done with her second-semester exams. Her dissertation project is almost done.

During this break she didn't go to Kolkata, she was preparing for her Job, that's her reason this time.

On one such sleepless night with she just got done with her notes she heard a loud noise. And a scream that follows it.

A fear engulfs her as she makes her way downstairs and there Sebanti was lying with blood flowing out of her forehead. She must have slipped. Sheuli somehow managed herself and get her to the hospital.

While sitting on the cold steel bench outside of the ER, Sheuli's mind wanders back to that particular night.

That night on a similar monsoon light she got a call.

A call and she rushed to there where she waited for hours, prayed for hours but that all was kept unseen, unheard.

He left her without even a goodbye. A yearning for closure she never got.

And it pains.

Not always but sometimes.

The next day Sebanti was discharged. Sheuli became her full-time nurse. Sebanti smiles, in such a span short of time she had become a family to her, a daughter she always wished for.

Maybe this is what destiny had planned for them.

Maybe.