Saigal Blues

“Don't you have any other friends?”

Deva knew the kid didn't mean it that way; he was just angry at the older man for not having his head in the game. He knew the kid didn't know about what happened in that place. But the words were a little…striking.

It was just a quarter past one o'clock right now. The whole neighbourhood seemed to be silent, except the one drunken old man stumbling back home, having forgotten he doesn't have one to return to.

Deva tried closing his tired eyes, and felt the burn under his eyelids that comes when you forget to blink for too long. He felt lighter when things were dark around him; the near-constant thrumming under his skin receded in the din of the night, and the softer memories would return. His mother coaxing him to go to sleep with a lullaby, sneaking out to cause mischief somewhere, or coming home from said rendezvous and finding a puppy hiding under a box to pet.

Who would he sneak out with, again?

Deva opened his eyes and got out of the rickety bed, feeling the rusted metal creak under his bed. He had never gotten used to how large he became, always the shorter one between his old friend and him. Even the kids seemed to not mind his imposing stature as long as he agreed to take a part in fielding and let them bat. Heavy footsteps padding across the floor, Deva put his shoes on haphazardly, ankles sticking out of the back (he’d get blisters in the morning, but it’d be fine) and walked out of the house.

It was a warm night. The sky was clear. A playful breeze was skittering around, dragging along pieces of plastic and motes of dust with it. Mindlessly walking, Deva looked up and saw the stars jeweled across the velvety night sky. Or something like that. It sounded like a line from those books Varadha would read.

Varadha.

Shit.

To Deva, it was clear that he would never return to Varadha again. And he had made a point to expunge any memories of the man from his mind. That didn't seem to work. He never had as good of control over his mind as Varadha did. It was so late at night, and no one was awake anyway. Deva assumed he could amuse himself. Far away, somewhere, the drunken man had fallen from the stairs and found himself at the bottom with a bleeding head.

He had heard the older teenagers blast songs about forgetting their lovers on their new-fangled phone. Songs about how to get over a lover. Songs about how to move on from a past love. But how do you forget a friend? Is there anything that can replace an old friend? Even now, Deva would see a book from an author Varadha liked, and get the urge to buy it for him; even now he'd say something stupidly cheesy and get the urge to repeat it to Varadha, just to see him roll his eyes in annoyance.

But the maw of a wolf separated them. The same souls in two different worlds. Varadha was the Karta of Khansaar, and Deva was pacified into paralysis in Tinsukhia.

It wasn't an open wound, sure, but it was a bruise that hurt when he pressed too hard. It was the blackened veins protruding out of his left arm, cramping when it was too cold until he felt like he needed to chop it off clean.

Deva stopped under an amber streetlight, looking down to see the colour bathe him. There was a faint heat coming from it. There was a massive hum-buzz of thousands of insects, stuck in their perpetual panopticon behind the cheap glass of the streetlight, burning away for their gravity towards the bulb.

In the distance, a blue-green light flickered. A lone figure crossed its path—a silhouette obstructing the eerie glow. Deva’s heart suddenly started to skip a few beats here and there. The silhouette grew. Closer. Closer.

The figure stepped into the streetlight. The light flickered. A familiar tingle of electricity sped up Deva's left arm, turning the blood in his veins to static. The figure raised his hand, clad in thick iron bangles clinking, all hesitant. Familiar.

Time stopped.

The only indication of movement was the amber light flickering against his outstretched fingers, clad, too, in similar rings. The flickering light was in rhythm with the pounding of Deva's heart.

A voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Deva.”

Have you ever heard of a ghost feeling warmth before? Giving up on understanding, Deva laughed. Understanding was overrated. He touched his friend’s hand. The flickering stopped.

Ghosts are blue-green. Deva's heart is amber.

Deva woke up to the sound of his mother berating him for sleeping in, followed along with the clamor of children whom he'd promised to play cricket with. The sun was out. Blinking through the splotches in his eyes, he came to the realisation that streetlights weren’t blue-green.