Until we unite again

Until we unite again

The annual festival of that small town was filled with the fragrance of saffron and the light of diyas. Rohan, whose fingers were always stained with aquarelle, was standing in a corner of the fair, busy capturing the moonlight on his canvas. As his brush was touching the sky with blue and white colours, a voice echoed from the stage—*"Chal base kisi aise gaon, jahan dhoop bhi tere naam se aaye..."* The voice was so soft that Rohan's brush stopped in the air. Anaya, wrapped in a white churidaar kurta, was sitting on the stage, playing the strings of the sitar. Her eyes were closed, but there was a restless smile on her lips... as if she was waiting for someone in the lyrics of the song.

Rohan made a sketch at that very moment—a girl who was holding not a sitar, but the rays of the moon. By the time the evening fell, that sketch was in Anaya's hands. "Is it me?" she asked, with a sparkle in her eyes. "No, it's the voice that speaks to my colours," Rohan said. From that night, their hearts were tied together.

After marriage, the glitz of Mumbai consumed them. Rohan's art made a splash in galleries, while Anaya's voices filled the radio stations with colour. But their real world was that small flat, where they would sit on a broken sofa at night and give wings to their dreams while sipping tea. Anaya would splash paint on Rohan's canvas and Rohan would find rhythm in her songs. *"Tere sapno ki udaan ko mere suron ka saath chahiye,"* Anaya would hum, and Rohan would spread colours on her rhythm.

With time, the pace of success pushed them on different tracks. When Rohan received an invitation for an exhibition in Paris, he left on the same day when Anaya's first album was being released. "Do you know how much this means to me?" Anaya asked in a trembling voice over the phone. "How do I celebrate without you?" Rohan said, flashing her the morning flight ticket, "This won't happen again." That night, Anaya tried to smile alone at the album launch, while her colleague Aditya put his hand on her shoulder and said, "There's pain in your voice... maybe that's what makes it special." Paparazzi clicks captured the moment on the front pages of newspapers.

When Rohan saw the picture, he slammed his phone against the wall. "You don't care about me at all!" he shouted at Anaya. Tears rolled down her cheeks, "Your unnecessary doubts are killing our love!"

One day, Anaya saw Rohan throw her diary—which contained all her unfinished songs—into the dustbin. "It's lifeless, just like you!" she screamed, tearing the pages in anger. Rohan broke his brushes in response. Their dreams, which were once each other's strength, had now become wounds.
When Anaya closed the suitcase, it also contained her old sitar—the same one that Rohan had gifted her on their first anniversary. Rohan's studio was now filled with silence. The red color in his paintings had disappeared, as if the blood had dried up. Anaya's songs now had only notes—there was emptiness in place of words.

Two years passed. One cold night, Rohan got a call—Anaya was in the hospital with pneumonia. She was gasping for breath. When Rohan stepped into the hospital corridor, his hands were shaking. Anaya was lying on the bed in the room, an oxygen mask on her face and needles connected to veins in her hand. Rohan held her hand—cold, but the same soft fingers. "I... was lost without you," she whispered. A teardrop fell from Anaya's eyes... perhaps that was the answer.

After recovering, Anaya invited Rohan to her new home. The same broken sitar lay in the room, its strings now scattered. "Can you mend it?" Anaya asked. Rohan sat quietly next to her and began to tune the strings. "I ignored your dreams... I'm sorry," he said. Anaya looked at him, "We both put our egos above love. But now..."

That night, Rohan made a painting—a sitar with its broken strings lovingly mended by rose vines. Anaya sat beside him and sang: *"Toote taaron ki awaz mein, naya sangeet khodj lenge... jism ki darron se, roshni bah niklegi."* Even today, Anaya's smile is stuck in Rohan's studio—in every painting of his. And Anaya's songs now include the melody of Rohan's breath. But now they know that love is not a canvas, but a shared journey. Sometimes the paths are crooked, sometimes thorns prick the feet, but the promise of walking together is the real destination.

Love is never easy... it is nurtured by those tears which bloom again after being washed in the rain of forgiveness.