There it was again. The look.

No matter where I go, the look follows me, too.

I am yet to decipher it though; if it is awe, or envy, or amusement, or simply pity.

My ring finger speaks for itself. I am 21 and engaged to be married. Unlike the crowd here that flaunts its tank tops and hot pants, I am dressed in a simple blue suit, covered from head to toe, complete with a dupatta that is hell bent on sweeping the floor behind me, as I walk. I don’t look 21, though. 16, perhaps, if you are meeting me for the first time. 18, on the next few visits. So, the look, is quite suitably, justified!

I sighed as I kept walking to the Principal’s office. Today was the first day of my chapter of post graduation in Delhi and I had mixed feelings. I had fought to be here, even though it was the middle of the academic year already, buying myself time, another year away from the clutches of marriage.

Dr. Jain, the Principal, reassured me over a cup of coffee. An old friend of my uncle, with whom I had been staying for the past 5 years, he is the only man I know in Delhi. I sought his blessings and proceeded to my first lecture for the day, English Literature.

In the class room, I was greeted with furniture scattered haywire, torn pieces of newspapers screaming headlines from a previous life. The green board had been wiped clean, for the day was yet to begin. I was the only one in the class room and a strange eerie feeling swept over me as it had when, orphaned, I had learnt that Ma and Baba wouldn’t be there to hug me anymore, to call out my name as if it were both a prayer and the answer to it, to watch me practice dance in the evenings after school, to love me like nobody ever did and to make me feel like I mattered…in a world of 7 billion souls.

I pushed the thoughts away, and let the wetness from my eyes seep into the dryness of my palms, preparing myself for the class. Suddenly, there was commotion, the sound of laughter, of inside jokes, of legs being pulled, of life! The classroom filled up. Girls and boys of all sizes swarmed the room and I smiled inadvertently.

“Hey, Ankit! Not the front row, please, yaar. It’s Pathak Sir’s lecture, or have you forgotten?” a pretty girl in a crinkled long skirt and a red top called out to the boy, Ankit, I presumed, who was now beside me, in the front row.

“This is my favourite subject, or have you forgotten?” he mocked her, copying her tone, and in the very next breath, extending his hand towards me, “I am Ankit. And you are a new admission!”

“Aisha,” I took his hand and nodded at the statement-cum-question. It was warm, as opposed to mine that always stayed cold. His lips parted in a huge grin, mirrored brilliantly in the golden-brown of his eyes.

I thanked God when Mr. Pathak arrived a moment later, saving me the trouble of further conversation. My relief was short lived. After the lecture, the entire class gathered around the two of us, intrigued by the wonder I was. I sighed, bracing myself for the enquiries. After a few painful minutes, they left me alone.

Ankit stayed, reassuring his gang that he would join them, later. I got up to leave.

“I believe it isn’t all that there is to you,” he said in the direction of my engagement ring. “Are you married?”

He had been so blunt, so blatant about it that I was caught off guard, feeling intruded upon.

“Engaged,” I answered with defiance and anger.

“Woah, I am so sorry for coming across as rude! I did not mean to! It’s just a bit unusual here, you know, and you seemed pretty distracted by all those questions and I was curious,” he apologized.

“It’s okay!” I gathered my stuff and made way for the door.

“Coffee?” he asked. “I promise I will be good.”

I sighed. I needed friends and at least, he seemed cheerful.

“Okay!”

Over coffee, he filled me in on the latest in college, and I got to know that he had been selected to represent the college in the Annual Dance Championship. They were still looking for a girl to complete the team, and nobody seemed to fit the bill, he cringed.

“Wow!” My voice must have given me away.

“So, you dance?” his eyes lit up again. “Brilliant, why don’t you audition?”

Yes, I danced. My heart screamed. But, no words came out. Actually, I wanted to stress on the –ed that came after the verb, dance. Wanted to tell him that dancing had been to me what air was to life; water was to fish and wings meant to birds. The day I stopped dancing, my world ceased to exist, too!

My uncle had been against it. He thought of dance as something that girls belonging to a family as respectable as his weren’t supposed to be doing! And since he had been kind enough to take up the responsibility of my well being, I owed it to him to give up dancing.

“It’s a long story,” I mumbled, breaking eye contact, so he wouldn’t notice that my eyes had filled up. But, he was observant. He changed subjects then, and we shared some coffee, croissants and other conversations.

I couldn’t sleep that night. No, not because of the constant buzz of the mosquitoes and the useless whirring of the dilapidated fan in my room, but, because of Ankit’s voice that kept reverberating in my mind, “Brilliant, why don’t you audition?”

But, I dismissed the longing that had crept up within me, the urge to let my body go, be free of everything and know nothing except the rhythm I was dancing to, to let go of pain, of emptiness and be whole again, if only for as long as the music lasted, to be me, just one last time, before they sent me away, tying me to a man who was as foreign to me as the country he lived in, the U.S. 

The next morning, it was there again. As I brushed my hair and bathed and combed and put on clothes and walked out of the hostel into the classroom, visions of a brightly done stage, of cheering crowds, of Maa and Baba waving proudly in the audience, visions of happiness kept flashing, like a favourite movie, before my eyes. A week later, harangued by the thoughts, I decided to confess to Ankit.

He listened to me and stated in his usual calm manner, “I do not want you to lie at home just because I want a team. It is your call. You would make for a nice partner, if you dance as well as you look capable of doing! But, there is no pressure from my side.”

“I want to give it a shot. Because if I don’t, I will regret it for the rest of my life and that is unacceptable to me.”

Ms. Piya, our choreographer was waiting in the auditorium when we showed up. After a brief introduction, we set down to work. She turned the volume up and the music system filled the hall with a slow beat. I removed my dupatta, kissed the bare stage, sought the blessings of Lord Nataraj, and closed my eyes.

From then on, it was just my feet tapping to the rhythm, my arms opening up, like a flower waking up to the morning light, its petals unfurling, one by one. My back started to sway, sending a wave of motion to my neck and my head, and as my movements gained pace, corresponding to the music, I felt alive. 45 minutes of sheer ecstasy later, the beats died I came to a gradual halt, kneeling on the stage, exhausted, replete.

“Congratulations, Ankit, we just found her!” Ms. Piya’s voice echoed in the now silent hall.

I smiled, tasting my tears on my tongue and feeling the warmth of Ankit’s body as he ran up to me and crushed me in a tight bear hug, right there!

The competition was due in a month and we began training and practicing with a vengeance. Mondays through Saturdays, Ms. Piya choreographed the Tango for us and we danced to her tunes from 9 in the morning till 12 in the noon, pausing to catch our breath every hour or so. We allowed ourselves a break of 2 hours to gain our energy back and then walked back to the auditorium, to practice on our own till 5 in the evening. A week went by, getting used to the music, the stage, and the cheers from Ms. Piya, the excitement and the novelty.

Google had told me that Tango was one of the most complicated of all dance styles. Keeping pace with the count of music was easy, but Tango required Ankit and me to keep close to each other, for most steps in the performance and I felt at a loss, questioning its merits. We had come quite close during the episode, sharing the most intimate of our secrets with each other, letting our guard down, finding inexplicable peace and security in each other. I was surprisingly comfortable with Ankit holding me protectively in the crook of his arm, as if I belonged there; with his hands resting just a tad above the small of my back, as if he were afraid I would slip; with his heart beating against mine and with that look of, that look of care, concern, and….reverence? in his eyes as they gazed into mine, during practice.

When I took off my engagement ring while bathing, I found myself wanting to never put it back on.
When I brewed myself instant coffee in my hostel room every morning, I longed to have him sit opposite me and sip as we talked. When I walked out of the room, into the hall, I hoped to see him waiting…

I was falling for him, ludicrous and insane though the idea was. I missed him on Sundays, when practice was halted, longing for the feeling of his hands clasping mine as we shook hands, pining for the feel of his shoulders beneath my fingers, his breath close to mine, his steadying touch as we curved, covering the stage with our movements.

But I couldn’t allow myself the liberty of falling in love. So when he asked me if I would accompany him for coffee on Saturday night, I declined. I had resolved to keep our relationship professional. He smiled, as if he were already expecting me to say no.

“I love you, Aisha. And I know you are engaged and it is a stupid thing to say and I am sorry, but, I love you.”

He stated it matter of fact, like I should have known it all along, yet with a melancholy so devastating, like he had hurt himself too, when he said those words to me. Surprised by his sudden revelation and forgetting all my resolve, I broke down and buried my head in his chest, letting tears pour, like rains after a cloudburst.

His forehead touched mine as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and I lost all sense of time. A while later, I withdrew abruptly and rushed up to my hostel room, bolting the door tight. Then I threw myself on the creaky bed and let the remnants of my tears stain the unwashed bed sheets.

Two hours of inertia later, I packed my bags as quickly as I had unpacked everything just weeks ago, and booked a cab home.

I left, just like that.

Perhaps I owed the college and the competition some devotion. Perhaps I owed Ankit an explanation, or at least a phone call saying goodbye. Perhaps, I didn’t. Perhaps I wasn’t in love with him, at all. Perhaps, I was.

It has been seven and a half years and still I cannot point out with certainty what had happened when I had reached home. Funny, when you consider that I remember my last day in college so vividly that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, feeling Ankit’s arms draped around me, and crying even in my sleep

Memories are deceptive; the heart chooses to cling on only to those that your mind desperately wants to let go.

Uncle had taken care of the formalities, too happy to marry me off.  And even though Rajat is as good a husband as they come and the US like a dream come true, somehow when my daughter turns on the music system and begins with her dance practice every evening, I cannot shake off the visions of what could be.

And I see an Aisha who listened to her heart and followed her dream and waved back at her parents, sitting in the audience, after having won the Dance Championship and had the courage to love an Ankit who could have loved her in a way she had always hoped for.

I am both sorry and grateful, Ankit, that you believed so much in me. I am sorry for being the coward I was. And wherever you are, today, I just hope you would forgive me, for everything we shared. Because even though some dreams crumble to dust, we shall always have some memories that allow us to go on and reach out for the stars. Thank you for the best kind of memories. Thank you for the paradise that could’ve been.