Brown. Earth brown. Jaggery brown. Her eyes were a shade of brown I could never identify. My eyes too were brown. The usual. Eyes brown. I have a bad sense of mixing colours.

Then one fine day I carried the years carelessly in my pocket, and stood there rickety legs.

It was more a pang at that time – a compulsion. The compulsion of not letting things end the usual way. Tamely.

Seventeen is a good time to have dreams. One can rely on a glorious academic career, and all his poems to try and achieve. It had to end this way. Even if I had built a physique like Arnold. Seventeen is a good time to have dreams. But not commitments. And she knew it all too well.

A poet fumbling for words should be a sad sight. That too when he’s risking a friendship of five years on them. All gestures, all signals, all silences; and all that they don’t mean. I dumped all prefaces and took the final leap. As late as it could get, I took the final leap. I think I love you. Five words. Half of them extraneous. Five words to sum up two diaries, two hundred similes, a thousand No’s from the Rama Charita Manas, and half a decade.

Her face was the usual sheen in the sunlight. I knew she was sad.

I had but one regret. I hadn’t combed my hair well that morning.

Hair. Brown hair.