Diya

We wrote each other letters. While everyone else sent emails and text messages, Aman wrote beautifully on thick paper. He wanted us to have something that we could hold on to for all our lives. ‘I want this to be forever. I want us to have every minute, always,’ he said.

Passing the letters to each other was a game. Sometimes they reached me under a bench. Sometimes he passed them as he brushed past me in the corridor. Sometimes I followed the direction of his eyes and saw a letter tucked in an unexpected place.

I would fold a letter up tight and tuck it into my hairband. I would casually drop it on his table as I walked past him in the canteen. I would fan myself with it elaborately and then leave it lying around for him to claim.

I would carry his letters all day long, not opening them. Savouring them, waiting till I was alone in bed at night. Then, after reading them, I would breathe the words to myself, repeating them in the darkness. He wrote me poetry. He took all that he felt and put it into words on the page. And I took them and sang them back to him. At the rehearsals, they marvelled at the stuff he was coming up with. And he and I looked at each other and smiled.

Until my father took all the letters. I never saw them again. I think he must have burnt them. Happiness makes us careless. I forgot that my father watched me carefully. Forgot that he notices things.

The last night of the college festival, I asked him for permission to stay over at a girlfriend’s house. It was likely to be late. All the girls had planned this. There would be many of us, and no boys. He agreed. I should have known it was too easy. I was just too happy to realize it.