#achyut

By again I mean after 2.5 years,

kabhi kismat mein bhi dikhte the tum.

अतिसय प्रिय करुनानिधान की ॥

ताके जुग पद कमल मनावउँ।

जासु कृपाँ निरमल मति पावउँ॥

अतिसय प्रिय?

प्रिय, अति प्रिय, अतिसय प्रिय।

Yes.

Dear was Sita, but dearer were his people.

And perhaps, Sita too, wished to be born as an Ayodhyawasi instead of his wife in one of these kalpas.

But I'm Sita, I will never be the shopkeepers, or the passer-bys on the street, or his family, or his friends, or his teachers, or the drivers in his city;

तुम्हारे बाद ये मौसम बड़ा सताएगा।

For the first time since he left, I remembered his face exactly.

Square jaw peppered with stubble, thick eyebrows so sharp you could swear they were drawn with a ruler, wheatish skin like the warmth of dusk, thin lips with a fine mustache above, and his eyes...

Oh, Rama. His eyes.

Black, not onyx black, not the black of soot, or the black of ink-

Like the Saryu on a new moon had been captured in a cup, except there was no Ayodhya on the banks, waiting for it's shores to be kissed.

That black.

He was unreadable, unreadable in the way he looked down while walking, his posture stooping from his height, a contradiction to his overly-confident stance of a puffed out chest and shoulders squared, yet with an air of non-chalance, of ease, of a power he wasn't aware of yet.

He was unreadable in the way he flung his tie over his shoulder before washing his face, unreadable in the way he proceeded to wipe it, or the way he always sat on the back of a bicycle he was too tall for, his feet in the air as he rode in those alleys and streets, always taking the longer route home.

He was unreadable in the way his gaze so often met mine, in the way it sometimes stayed even after I looked away, then looked back, then looked away, then looked back again and-