Chapter Text
Rahul Khanna has never experienced loss.
It's true that his father passed away when Rahul was barely four, but he was far too young to hold on to any memories they must’ve shared in their all-too-fleeting time together. He’s seen pictures, of course. He’s heard stories. His mother has never stopped singing his father praises, even as she lives more years as his widow than his wife. Still, the loss has never felt visceral. Never felt like the earth was falling beneath his feet, or as if his heart was crumpling in his chest. If he’s being honest, he sometimes forgets he’s ever had a father in the first place.
But the very act of losing, the sharp reality that someone can just disappear from your life sinking in like a blade to the chest, love slipping through his fingers personified— Rahul had never experienced that for himself.
Until today.
Here, in a crowded station in Mumbai, the train horn ringing in his ears as the cars rip away from the platform, carrying with it some five hundred people, including the one Rajul had never once imagined he would lose like this.
He starts running, even though he doesn’t know what it is exactly he means to do. Does he jump on the train and beg Anjali for forgiveness, even though he can’t fully spell out the reasons why she would be so furious with him as to leave? Does he beg her to stay and spend yet another carefree year with him in the college, trading insults coated with honey? Or does he plead her to take him wherever she goes, and spare him from spending even a single day without her?
The last thought catches him by surprise, and it’s enough to freeze him in his tracks. In slow motion, he sees Anjali’s hunched figure grow smaller with each passing second that he remains unmoving, until the horizon swallows her up and he can no longer see the devastation in her tear-streaked face.
It’s only when Tina comes and gently touches his shoulder that he springs back into movement. The first thing Rahul realizes is that his own cheeks are wet, and the first move he makes is to wipe away his own tears, tears that mirror Anjali’s deep hurt and heartbreak.
It is here, standing in the middle of the uproarious crowd, the sky darkening overhead and rumbling its warning for rain, that for the first time in his young life, Rahul Khanna finally understands what it means to lose someone you love.
Anjali Sharma has just walked out of his life.