Threads

Amrita and Kabir had once been everything to each other. They met in college, their connection immediate and effortless, built on shared laughter, whispered dreams, and stolen moments beneath the stars. Their love had been fierce and boundless, a constant they thought would never change. But life has a way of pulling even the closest of people apart.

When Kabir’s father fell ill, he had to move to Delhi to take care of him. Long-distance love fought valiantly, but the pressure of time schedules, missed calls, and unanswered texts eventually pulled them apart. Amrita, nursing her own wounds of a struggling family business in Mumbai, drifted into a new life.

Years passed. Amrita married Raghav, a kind man whose steady nature felt like a balm to her restless heart. Kabir found love with Meera, a woman whose laughter reminded him that joy still existed in life. Both found happiness in their own ways, yet something unspoken lingered—a quiet echo of a love once shared. 

For Amrita, the reminders came in unexpected places. The smell of freshly brewed filter coffee in the morning brought her back to the tiny café where she and Kabir used to share their espresso and their dreams of travelling the world. Once, she stumbled upon Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love  at a roadside bookstall —the same one Kabir had read aloud to her during a rainy afternoon when the monsoon kept them indoors. She ran her fingers over its worn out spine, smiling wistfully, and carried it home, though she knew she would never read it.

Kabir, too, couldn’t escape the shadow of Amrita in his life. Meera loved music, but ever so often, a song would play—especially Tu Tu Hai Wahi, an old Hindi song that had been “their song.” It stopped him in his tracks. One evening, while helping Meera pick out sweets for a family gathering, he saw a bar of dark chocolate—Amrita’s favourite, the one she’d always call “the best in the world.” He bought a piece for himself, telling Meera it was a childhood favourite.

They lived their lives, tending to careers, children, and the predictable rhythms of adulthood, yet the universe seemed to conspire to keep their memories alive. Amrita once overheard a couple laughing about getting lost in a hill station, and she couldn’t help but think of the time she and Kabir had spent hours searching for the trail after a spontaneous hike in Munnar, collapsing in laughter when they finally found it.

For Kabir, it was a stranger’s remark about the constellations during a camping trip with his family. He looked up at the stars and remembered Amrita’s fascination with naming them, how she’d always been better at spotting the Pole Star than he had.

Their lives never crossed again, not even in passing. Neither reached out; neither dared. They had made their choices, and those choices deserved respect. Yet, in their quiet moments, they would find themselves smiling at a memory that surfaced, unwanted and unexpected but welcome.

Amrita would sip her coffee and glance at the book on her shelf, her heart-warming at the thought of Kabir reading to her in his calm, soothing voice. Kabir would hum along to their song when it played, a bittersweet ache tugging at his chest.

They weren’t unhappy—far from it. They loved their families, found joy in their children’s laughter, and cherished the lives they had built. But there was a small corner of their hearts reserved for a love that had once been everything.

And in that space, they lived together still—in the taste of a chocolate, the notes of a song, the pages of a book. A reminder that some loves don’t fade; they simply transform into threads woven quietly into the fabric of who we are.

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