The Road Back

Arvind, Nikhil and Aditi. Inseparable friends from school, college to present. 

Nikhil had always been the glue that held their trio together. Since childhood, he’d been the peacemaker, the secret-keeper, and the one who never let misunderstandings linger. When Aditi and Arvind began seeing each other during college, it was Nikhil who orchestrated moments of quiet romance—passing notes, arranging surprise meetups, and even coaching Arvind on how to propose. At their wedding, he stood proudly beside Arvind, as though he were giving away a piece of his own heart.

Life had been good to them. The three of them were inseparable, even after Arvind & Aditi’s marriage. Weekends were spent reminiscing about old times, playing board games, and planning vacations they always promised to take together but never did. 

Until that night. The night when everything changed.

Nikhil had been driving, his hands steady on the wheel but his mind scattered after a long day at work. Arvind had insisted on coming along for the ride to Aditi’s parents’ house, where she was spending the week. They had been laughing—talking about some silly incident from college—when the blinding headlights of an oncoming truck veered into their lane. Nikhil swerved, but the impact came too quickly.

Arvind didn’t survive.

For days, Nikhil sat outside the hospital where Aditi had identified Arvind’s body, her face pale, her eyes hollow. She didn’t scream, didn’t cry—she simply walked past him without a word. When he finally gathered the courage to see her, she shut the door in his face.

“You were driving,” she said when she finally spoke to him, weeks later. “You were supposed to keep him safe.” Her words were icy, and Nikhil felt the impact of her blame pierce into him like shards of glass.

Nikhil tried everything to ease her pain. He sent messages she didn’t read, left flowers she didn’t acknowledge, and wrote long letters asking for forgiveness. But she remained unreachable, locked away in her grief and anger. 

He didn’t blame her. He blamed himself too.

Months passed, and Aditi’s pain turned into a quiet numbness. She stopped going to work, stopped meeting friends, and the world outside her apartment faded. Then, one day, she found a small envelope tucked under her door. It was a note from Nikhil.

“Aditi, I know you’ll never forgive me, and I won’t ever stop carrying this guilt. But Arvind loved you more than anything. He wouldn’t want you to lose yourself. Please, for him, take one step forward. If you can’t forgive me, I will understand. But don’t let your love for him drown in anger. I’m here if you need me. Always.”

She read the note over and over again, her anger battling the truth in his words. It wasn’t forgiveness she couldn’t find—it was the strength to face the memories, to live in a world where Arvind no longer existed.

One rainy evening, weeks later, Aditi stood on her balcony, the cool raindrops running down her face. She thought of Arvind’s laughter, his warmth, his unshakable belief that no matter what happened, things would always be okay. For the first time in months, she cried—not out of anger, but out of longing, love, and the aching emptiness he left behind.

The next day, she found herself dialing Nikhil’s number. When he answered, his voice hesitant and careful, she didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t know if I can ever forgive you,” she said softly.

“I’m not asking for that,” Nikhil replied. “I just want to help you heal. For him. For both of us.”

Over the next few weeks, they met cautiously, testing the fragile ground between them. At first, it was awkward, their conversations peppered with silences and broken sentences. But Nikhil never pushed, never asked for more than Aditi was willing to give. Slowly, she began to see his pain too—how he carried the weight of that night every day, how he avoided driving, how he still wore the watch Arvind had gifted him, cracked and scuffed from the crash.

It wasn’t easy, but they began to find a strange solace in their shared grief. They talked about Arvind—his quirks, his dreams, the way he could light up a room. And through these conversations, Aditi realised that Nikhil’s guilt mirrored her own grief.

One afternoon, as they sat by the lake where Arvind used to take her, she said, “He wouldn’t want us to live like this, would he?”

Nikhil shook his head, his voice quiet. “No, he wouldn’t.”

Healing didn’t come all at once. It came in small steps—like the first time Aditi smiled without feeling guilty, or the first time she let Nikhil hug her without flinching. It wasn’t about forgetting, but about finding a way to live with the memories, to honour Arvind by choosing to keep moving forward.

Months later, as Aditi walked past a photo of the three of them on her bookshelf, she realised that the anger had softened. The pain remained, but it no longer felt like a weight she couldn’t carry. She picked up her phone and sent Nikhil a message:

“Let’s meet by the lake tomorrow. I think it’s time we started planning that vacation Arvind always wanted us to take.”

For the first time, she felt a flicker of hope—fragile but real. And that was enough.

Copyright (c) Pratik Majumdar, 2025. Any article, story, write-up cannot be reproduced in its entirety or in part, without permission. URL links can be used