Diya

He vanished.

I went away, and when I came back, he was gone.

A week after Aman was beaten up, I got into the car waiting for me outside the college and found my mother sitting there, waiting for me. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

She tried to smile. ‘We are going to see your grandmother. She is not well.’

Lies. I knew what was happening. I was being taken away from him. They didn’t know how to stop us loving each other. My minders must have reported to my father. And this was his solution: send her to jail.

The village my father came from was a remote one in the middle of Maharashtra. It made for a perfect jail without bars. My phone was taken away. There was no question of an Internet connection. I was watched day and night. In the other room, my grandmother muttered endlessly in her dementia that got worse every day. My mother talked to me, trying to convince me that I was wrong to go against my father. I told her to be quiet. It was my life to waste. I would not do what she had done and give my life to a man to whom it meant nothing.

Every day I wept, I argued, I fought. A month later, when I was allowed to come back, Aman was gone. His father had been transferred to Kashmir. He had gone with him.

When I logged in to my email account, there was a mail from him for every day we had been apart. He had sent me a poem every single day. The last mail was sent three days before I returned. His phone was now switched off. There was no reply to the endless mails I sent him. None of his friends knew where he had gone. None of them could help me contact him. He was gone from my life. I only had his words.

We can never be apart

No matter the distance

I go away closer

My breath goes into the world

And calls your name

When I count the stars

Each one

Is you and you and

You

Are always there.