Kabir

I woke up to the sound of something clattering in the kitchen. Aman was making us breakfast. There weren’t any vegetables left. We were living on dal and chapattis. He fried the chapattis and sprinkled them with salt. We ate them with pickle, and they were delicious.

We were entirely cut off from the world. I would later learn that across those six days Kashmir got the heaviest snowfall it had seen in sixty years. Even the little radio I had was dead. The batteries were gone, and I didn’t have any extra ones. The electricity had gone on the first day, when wires snapped under the weight of snow. I had been unable to charge my mobile. A curtain of snow had descended between us and the rest of the world. There was just Aman and me. It was actually the happiest time I had spent in the last five years.

We spent the morning playing antakshari. He beat me completely. He knew about a million songs more than me. Then I tried to get the topic back to him and her. I needed to know. I really needed to know.

‘So, what happened, Amanbhai? Why is she in Mumbai and you in Kashmir? What happened? Why aren’t you together?’

‘Real life isn’t a film. Girl meets boy. Comedy. Tragedy. Remedy. Happy ending.’ He shook his head.

‘You didn’t have a happy ending?’

He grinned, ‘Picture abhi baaki hai, yaar. We got to the bit where the families object.’