#Desi romantic story

[ji-jii-visha]

CHOOSE YOUR LOVESTORY

This is a little choice based fun game that I wanted to try. All you have to do is to choose the picture, make your choice and go on with the story. Tell me the results that you get in the end. ❤️

The stories are from the perspective of a heterosexual female who lives in North India.

Choose a home.

Home 1 Home 2 Home 3

(Please keep in mind that I'm nothing but a science student who loves desi aesthetic and please find it in yourself to pardon my historical inaccuracies if you find them, or text me in my inbox to share what i got wrong and what i can get right.)

I'll be sharing this story in a few parts scheduled at different days so hopefully you'll follow through and will like it. ❤️

[letterstoyourlove]

[thatstolenpayal]

"le toh chalu main, tujhko waha pe

lekin waha pe sardi badi hai

kab main lagaaunga tujhko gale

khuda ki kasam, mujhe jaldi badi hai"

"odhungi aise main tujhko piya

sardi mujhko sataayegi kaise?

tujhko lagaaungi aise gale

koi gum ho jaata hai jaise"

"kis baat ki der phir tu lagaaye hai

khud ko ab roku main kaise?"

kashmir

[khwxbeeda]

The Almost Wedding: Ch. III

Ch 1 || Ch 2

.

Arjun stared out the window as the car raced down the road, deliberately keeping his eyes off of Tanishka, whose fingers were gripping the steering wheel tightly in the periphery of his vision. The night was no longer young— it was well past midnight, and the lights gleaming in the windows of the high-rise buildings almost looked like stars against the pitch black sky.

In the back seat, Chaitanya was lying down, headphones in and eyes closed. Arjun had no idea if he was awake or not, and he did not particularly care at the moment. Right now, he was focused on making sure his attention was focused anywhere but Tanishka.

“Arjun.”

His lip twitched, but he did not move his gaze from the window.

“Arjun, look at me.”

He scoffed and flicked his wrist in a dismissive gesture, suppressing a wince when the back of his fingers smacked against the door handle. “I don’t really want to do that, right now.”

Tanishka exhaled through her nose in a way that she had been doing since they were kids, like she was exhausted and annoyed at the same time, and Arjun bit his tongue, pushing down the irrational wave of his own annoyance that rose up in his throat. “Arjun, just listen to me, please.”

He raised his eyebrows, then folded his arms across his chest and turned around to face her with the most mulish expression he could muster. “Fine. Talk.”

Tanishka huffed and looked back at the road, letting a car overtake before she spoke. “What was that, back there?”

Arjun furrowed his brow, even though he had a feeling that he knew where this conversation was going, and that he was not going to like it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Tai.”

Tanishka scoffed, and the car lurched forward before slowing down a little, like she had accidentally pressed the accelerator. “What was the…” she smacked her lips together in contemplation— “motivation, shall we say, behind asking Mahajan to flirt with my boyfriend?”

Arjun blinked. "I didn’t ask him to flirt with Chaitanya.”

Tanishka raised an eyebrow, but did not turn to look at him. When she spoke, her soft voice was dripping with disdain. “Ah, so you’re saying he did it of his own volition.”

He rolled his eyes and relaxed into his seat, turning back to stare out the window. Some of the buildings really were ridiculously tall, he thought absently. “No,” he said, tone heavily implying exactly how stupid he thought she was being, and relished in the narrow-eyed glare that was sent his way. “I’m saying that he wasn’t flirting at all.”

Tanishka’s head whipped around. Arjun could feel her incredulous stare burning into the side of his head, and bit the inside of his cheek to hide his smile.

“… You're fucking with me right now.”

He shook his head, lips twitching. “No, I’m not.”

Hilariously, he really was not.

“Bullshit.”

“No, I swear I’m not,” he said, losing the battle against his mirth and aiming a grin at his sister. She did not smile back. “Krushna is just like that. Almost everything he says comes off as flirty, when he’s just trying to make a good impression. He doesn’t even realise that he’s coming off as flirty half the time.”

“Well then,” she said curtly, turning back to the road and gripping the steering wheel tighter as a car overtook them, “tell him he can stop trying to make a good impression on Chaitanya.”

Arjun blinked, his smile becoming wooden around the edges. He stared at Tanishka for a few seconds. “… what?”

“He’s made a fabulous enough impression, I think,” she replied, consonants becoming firmer and more clipped as her Indian accent slipped out between her pseudo-American drawl, tone covered in icy irritation. “Chaitanya was properly charmed. He doesn’t need to try anymore.”

Arjun could not stop staring. His stomach churned, and a sour taste filled his mouth, seeping into his taste buds till his disgust was the only thing he could feel. “I can’t believe this.”

“What?” She sounded so… so blasé. Like she did not care about what she was implying or what she came across as.

“What— what are you—“ he scrambled for the proper words for a few moments, disgust quickly beginning to bleed into outrage. He turned a harsh glare onto her, feeling the tiny spark of his outrage blaze into a proper angry fire when she did not even bother to give him the courtesy of her full attention, and scoffed. “Do you think— do you think Krushna’s gonna try to steal Chaitanya from you or something?”

Tanishka jerked, and the car swerved, making Arjun slam into the door before they got back onto course. “That is not—”

“Oh my God, it is!”

Tanishka whipped around and glared at him, hazel eyes identical to his flashing angrily in the glow of the headlights from the vehicles driving on the opposite side. “It is not—”

“You’re unbelievable!” Arjun threw his hands up and turned away, the sudden childish urge of not wanting to see Tanishka’s face winning before he even had the chance to fight against it. “I cannot believe you right now.”

“Arjun, it’s not what you—”

He whipped back around, hair flicking against the headrest of his seat. “Think?” he hissed, venom dripping from his words. "Please tell me, oh dear sister, what this actually is, ‘cause it sounds like you’re trying to say something really fucking rude about my best friend.”

Tanishka let out a groan between gritted teeth, but did not look away from the road, half her focus on overtaking a car in front of them. “I just don’t want Mahajan near my fiancé, alright?”

Arjun snorted. “Why, cause you think he’s gonna turn Chaitanya gay or something?”

Tanishka turned to him, a half-offended, half-incredulous expression on her face. He scoffed; as if she had the right to be outraged. “Are you serious— I do not think that!”

“Then what do you think, Tanu Tai?” he said, voice rising in volume. God, he was sick of this conversation. “M.S in Neurosurgery doesn't have courses on mind reading.”

Tanishka looked at him blankly, then turned back to the road with a harsh exhale. Her fingers flexed around the steering wheel as she took a turn into the deeper part of the city. Immediately, the traffic around them doubled, and she changed gears. “I don’t have the time for your sarcasm right now.”

“Then bloody well make time for it,” Arjun snapped, “and explain to me exactly what you’ve got against my best friend.”

Tanishka ground her teeth together, braking when a bike suddenly swerved into a U-turn in front of them. Arjun’s hand shot out to press against the dashboard so he would not slam his head into it. He glared pointedly at the side of Tanishka’s head, and she growled.

“Fine,” she snapped back. “Fine. You wanna hear what I’ve got against him?”

“Yes,” he said stubbornly.

“He’s arrogant, condescending, malicious, and straight up hateful,” she spat out. The line of her shoulders had risen, and frustration was etched into every inch of her makeup covered face. Arjun opened his mouth to interfere, but she kept on speaking, growing louder and louder with every word. “He’s hated me since the day you’ve been friends with him, and I don’t want him in my wedding simply because I dislike him. This has nothing to do with anyone’s sexual preference—”

He scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s not!” Her head shook firmly, sending carefully curled brown hair flying. Arjun sat back and raised an eyebrow, and she huffed, upper lip curling into an expression filled with loathing. “I don’t care that he’s— what, bi or pan, I don’t know, and I don’t care enough about him to find out. This isn’t about his romantic affairs, it’s about me not wanting to have someone I can’t tolerate for more than five seconds at my wedding.”

“I don’t believe you, funnily enough,” Arjun said coolly.

Tanishka breathed out through her nose and twisted the steering wheel, taking a U-turn. “You’re impossible.”

Arjun blinked and raised both eyebrows, tilting his chin down to stare her down even as his throat ached with how hard he was clenching his jaw. “I’m not the one who has a history of hating people like me and Krushna, Tanu Tai.”

Tanishka sucked in a sharp breath, hazel eyes flashing like she was about to say something equally hurtful in retaliation, but she bit down on the inside of her cheek and twisted her lips into a grimace.

“And,” Arjun continued, voice strained with something he was not in the mood for identifying, “Krushna is a lot of things, but he is not a homewrecker. He has a lot of flaws like every other person, but he hates cheating in relationships no matter who’s doing it, and I’d appreciate it if you did not insult him by even thinking of him like that.”

He turned away, pressing his forehead to the cool glass of the window, swallowing around the red-hot ball of anger in his throat. Just fifteen more minutes, he told himself, and he would be in his room, away from her. Just fifteen more minutes.

In the backseat of the car, Chaitanya slowly opened his eyes, teeth digging into his bottom lip and rolling it around.

He stared at the back of Tanishka’s seat, a tornado of thoughts swirling in his mind as he ran through the argument he had just overheard. A sick sort of feeling was starting to grow in his guts, and his skin itched, like it was an uncomfortable fit over his flesh. He swallowed, then forced himself to relax his shoulders, and pressed play on his phone.

The violin intro of a familiar song filled his ears, and he closed his eyes, trying not to think about everything that Arjun had said.

— — — — — —

It was ridiculously cold, as was expected of a winter day.

Arjun sat on the driver’s seat of his car with his knees pulled up to his chest, brown hair clipped back with hot pink barrettes that clashed horribly with the violently bright orange Camp Half Blood T-shirt he was wearing, the air conditioner turned up to twenty-seven degree Celsius and aimed right at his face. He was flipping the pages of the thick textbook he had open against the steering wheel, muttering ominously under his breath as he pushed up the wire-rimmed round glasses that had slid down his nose.

Krushna sat in the front passenger’s seat, legs folded into Swastikasana and face covered with a sheet mask, fiddling with his laptop and camera. His hair was knotted into a messy bun on top of his head, and he was dressed in a pastel blue hoodie with grey sweatpants covered in splatters of ink and paint from his many experiments in art and craft.

It had been half an hour since they had arrived at the Pune International Airport. Outside, the sky was a bleak grey and dotted with clouds, and the entrance to the airport was packed with even more people than it usually was— courtesy of the winter holidays. Children ran around, bags were dragged and trolleys were moved, yells and airport announcements came muffled through the closed windows of their car.

Krushna sighed and set the camera down, already sick of staring at the screen of his laptop. He looked up and checked the clock on the dashboard— twenty minutes past five. Fifteen minutes since Rukmini’s flight had landed, and yet he could see neither hide nor hair of his elder sister.

Beside him, Arjun let out a frustrated sound and repeatedly banged his head back against the headrest of his seat till one of the barrettes slid out of his hair and onto his shoulder. He picked it up and put it back in place with a huff, eyebrows pinched together.

“Rao,” he sighed, and Krushna raised his eyebrows in a silent question. “How much longer till she’s here? I have a test sakali, and I’m not done with my studies.”

As if on cue, the back door of the car opened, and a white tote bag was thrown onto the seat. Amid the increased volume of the people, a familiar voice rang out. “Yo, losers! Get the dikki open— I have a lot of luggage here.”

Krushna and Arjun exchanged a look and turned around with matching wide grins aimed at the woman who had poked her head in through the door, her sunglasses pushed up into her short, wavy hair to expose bright silver eyes identical to Krushna’s. A dark red smirk curved up her full lips and a pashmina scarf was wrapped around her neck, the soft cream colour matching her woollen sweater and contrasting beautifully against her dark skin.

“Hi, Ruku Tai,” the boys chorused, and the woman’s smirk widened. “Hola, mi hermanos. Arjunie, open the damn dikki. I have like, three bags here and they’re all fucking heavy.”

Ah yes, the infamous potty mouth of the infamous Rukmini Mahajan— public figure, your standard cool girl, fashion influencer, and twenty-six year old heiress of Mahajan Enterprises. Krushna sniggered, reaching behind him to slap her wrist, and yelped when he received a smack upside the head in retaliation. Arjun flicked the lock for the car boot, and Rukmini quickly piled her bags in before sliding into the back seat and slamming the door shut.

“Where’s Aai?” she asked, and Krushna simply rolled his eyes in lieu of an answer. Rukmini sighed and copied the gesture, pulling off her sunnies and sticking them to the belt loop of her trousers. “Right. Forget I asked. Which apartment are we staying at?”

Krushna shook his head. “Nope. We’re staying at the Wada.”

“Sweet. Also,” she paused to make sure that she had both their attention, then grinned. It was an extremely familiar grin, and Krushna immediately sat up straight and exchanged an anticipatory look with Arjun, who knew all too well what could ensue if Rukmini followed whatever train of thought was running through her brain.

“You didn’t tell me you made a new friend.”

Krushna groaned at the teasing waggle of her eyebrows, the frustration already building between his eyes. Gods fuck, he should have known the first thing out of his older sister’s mouth would be a teasing comment. He should have known. It was not like she was going to magically switch personalities over the two months she had spent in Spain. Really, why had he expected anything else?

“Ae bai, shanta bas ki,” he said, and both Rukmini and Arjun sniggered. Krushna pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, trying to convey as much frustration as he could in that gesture. The idiots only laughed louder, and he exhaled, lips reluctantly curling into an annoyed smile. “I’ve met Chaitanya a total of one—“ he held up the corresponding number of fingers— ”time. One. Une fois, c'est tout. You can barely call that an acquaintance, let alone a friend, Ruku Tai.”

She opened her mouth, no doubt ready to say something instigating, going off the shit-eating gleam in her eyes, but he shot her a sharp look and she subsided with a put-upon sigh.

“Ugh, you’re no fun, Krush,” she sighed. Arjun nodded and hummed sympathetically from where he was busy starting up the car, and Krushna gave both of them the most betrayed look he could muster up. A second later, they all giggled, and Arjun changed the gear, reversing out of the parking spot and heading towards the airport gates.

A second of silence, and Rukmini patted the boys on the head, one more smirk growing on her sharp features. “So,” she said, “How much trouble are we giving Tanishka?”

The boys blinked blankly at her for a second. Then, Arjun cackled, and a slow grin crept up on Krushna’s face.

.

Taglist: @orgasming-caterpillar @budugu @musaafir-hun-yaaron @natures-marvel @girlatreus @kanha-sakhi @krisnosura @h0bg0blin-meat @hum-suffer (lmk if you want to be added/removed)

[desifleabag]

Today, as I was cleaning my drawers and study table, I stumbled upon my wooden box filled with memories and tiny treasures given to me by people I cherish, along with items that reminded me of loved ones. I found a neatly folded paper inside the box, which turned out to be a heartfelt poem I had written for someone I loved deeply, or perhaps still love dearly? I'm not entirely sure.

I recall writing this poem and later performing it at a grand open mic event. He was supposed to attend, but I urged him not to, fearing it might be too obvious a proposal. However, after receiving overwhelming love and support from the audience, we were both elated. A few days later, I mustered the courage to share the poem with him, and his reaction was beyond my expectations. I never imagined myself confessing my love through poetry, let alone sharing it with him, but I did, bravely. What was his reaction? Did he like it? Did he love me in return? Let's not delve into the complexities of my peculiar life.

[innocentlymacabre]

Batter Up

“You came!” Raj called out as Sahir stepped onto the bridge. A river coursed strongly beneath, and the full moon cast a serene glow over them. The single streetlight that lit the small structure was dulled, washing a yellowed hue over the evening. Under different circumstances, Sahir might have even found the whole thing romantic.

Most importantly, less angry circumstances. Raj had requested Sahir’s presence at the bridge via an egregious note slipped into his pocket in place of his wallet. When he stole it.

Sahir was ready to give the self-assured jerk a piece of his mind, but decided he would pick his moment. Calmness – for now – was the way forward.

“You stole my wallet,” he replied, keeping a level cadence.

“True, true. But you could have just as easily sent someone else,” Raj replied, dancing around Sahir. Literally. It was like the slick bugger couldn’t stay still for a single moment. He bounded across the cobbled pathway, covering the distance between them with a few strides, then continued to irritatingly circle Sahir.

“Your little note said you would only give it to me.”

Staying calm was getting harder by the second.

“Alright, you got me there. Still though, there’s something else going on here.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Admit it.”

“Give me my damn wallet, will you? And you better not have taken a single penny.”

“I like the way you say that word.”

Sahir didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. If he was going to tease him about barely swearing, he would have to do it unprompted.

Raj continued anyway. “Penny. Drips off your tongue.”

Sahir glared at him, the heathen finally having come to a halt in front of him. “You just about done with this whole dance?” He punctuated the last word with a little extra sting.

“Fine, fine, I’ll give you your wallet.” Raj could tell he was losing him, and he wasn’t sure how much longer the big shot would care about the paltry sum encased in what was trying very hard to look like rich leather. “If - ”

“I will murder you,” Sahir said, cutting him off before he could continue his inane little game.

He glanced at his watch to mark the time of death on his decision of calmness. He suspected it pointed to a little impatience which would probably work to his advantage here. As luck would have it, the wallet Raj had stolen was a tattered old piece and he hated carrying cash. There were maybe a couple of tenners in there, his cards were all loaded on his phone so he didn’t carry the physical ones, and the wallet itself was worth less than the cash sum. The perceived impatience had some measure of truth to it.

“Alright, alright, ease up,” Raj chuckled, tossing him the wallet.

Sahir pulled a face. “Hyperbole. You’re the criminal.”

“Thief, not murderer. Big difference.”

“Potato-potahto.”

“Come now, don’t be like that. You have to admit it – this whole thing impressed you. Just a little. The delicate switch, the romantic secret rendezvous, just me and you. You can’t tell me it did nothing for you.”

“You’ll have to do better than that to impress me.”

“Implying that I’m getting another chance to try?”

“Implying I’m so far out of your league, your silhouette has dissolved into the horizon.”

Sahir turned to leave in a huff, not wanting to spend a single extra minute around Raj. Something about him made his skin crawl – and it wasn’t just that he had stolen from him. They way he danced around, as if he was too good to stand. That permanently cocked grin on his face, so completely sure of himself. He acted like he owned the ground he walked on. Sahir hated him.

Not to mention the fact that he could actually buy the ground they were on. Sahir resented the snooty thought the moment it passed through his mind, but he it did help tip the balance of power to a more even position. In his mind, at least. Raj probably saw that attitude when he picked him as a mark.

“See you soon, Sahir!” Raj called out, one arm waving high over his head and the other bent behind his back.

He watched Sahir walk away – with no small amount of satisfaction – and brought his arm out from behind his back to reveal the latest lift’s spoils. He turned his newly acquired pendant around in his hand. It was missing a string, but the ornament itself was unscathed. It had a swirling pattern engraved into the black wood, with a smiley face set into the foreground. Raj couldn’t tell if the design unsettled him or calmed him. Bits of both, he finally settled on.

Imagining Sahir’s reaction to the new note brought a smile to his face. He was going to be supremely irked. And hopefully a little impressed when he finally shows up. Raj had something even more romantic planned for their second tete-a-tete.

↝✧↝

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[fandomjunker]

a love for the ages

this is just a very vague idea i had. it's sort of a series of connected drabbles that eventually lead up to a romance (maybe?). anyways. here's the first part? the drabbles kind of speed-run through the initial stuff before we plunge into the good stuff in 2023-2024. it'll

>>>>>

They said love makes fools of us all. I used to roll my eyes at the very thought. 

Until he made a fool of me.

>>>>>

September 2020

It’s the month of September in the year of the lockdown: 2020. I hummed to myself as I scrolled through the contacts on my phone. The task given to me was a mundane one: recruit interested volunteers for the Teacher’s Day event to be held shortly. I muttered to myself with a tinge of frustration, “Maybe they should’ve given this task to someone who has actually met the people in this school.”

Being fresh out of Mumbai and joining my new school in the lockdown, I’d never actually met any of my classmates. All they were to me were white names on a black screen in an Arial font. I didn’t particularly want to go through the trouble of reaching out and making new friends. Again. I had already done that song and dance twice in Mumbai, and in my four years there, I’d only picked up one worthwhile friend, Lakshanna "Shanna" Shetty. She was more than enough for me. I didn’t see the need to put myself through the unnecessary torture of awkward social interaction. Still, I dutifully scrolled through the contacts of the numbers I’d guessingly saved the names of.

Malika

Roshini

Gokul

Amina

Kai

I stopped for a moment at the last name, Kai. My finger hovered over the profile pic for a moment before I clicked on it. It was the Ikigai venn diagram of life. An intrigued smile tugged at my lips as I remembered Dad and my discussion on it a few days ago. They always say not to judge a book by its cover, but I already had a feeling that this person would be a kindred soul. I had to reach out to someone at some point. Why shouldn’t he be the first?

So instead of merely forwarding the generic text I’d copy-pasted for everyone, I typed out another message first.

[enigmasandepiphanies]

you'll realize life can be so lovely when you can share a bowl of maggi with your loved ones

[ashryyy]

ज़िन्दगी के रास्ते अजीब हैं

इनमें इस तरह चला न कीजिये

खैर है इसी में आपकी हुज़ूर

अपना कोई साथी ढूँढ लीजिये

सुनके दिल की बात ना मुस्कुराइये

आपको हमारी कसम लौट आइये

बेक़रार करके हमें यूँ न जाइये

आपको हमारी कसम लौट आइये!

🎵- bekarar karke hume yun na jaaiye

[ji-jii-visha]

Home 3

(1991, Uttar Pradesh)

You've been waiting for your brother since last one hour, your rose gold watch has struck 3 and yet your brother hasn't come back home from his boasting spree. You're frustrated enough that you'd need to ask your brother for permission to travel and now he's going to make you wait for it too.

He went to meet his friends from abroad, whom you never got a chance to meet and whose advices made it difficult for you to even go abroad and study like your brother did. Not only did you loathe these guys, but also wanted to get rid of them at the earliest possible and that's why you were here. Because you learnt that these guys were to stay at your palace tonight and you wanted to run away at the earliest convenience.

And that is when one of the workers came rushing in, saying that you need to read the letter, it's been delivered in emergency.

Which one is the letter?

Letter 1 Letter 2 Letter 3

[desisea]

listening to rahat fateh ali khan on a date ♡

[hindishowscrolls]

Join "Zuber Ki Mazedaar Duniya." Get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey filled with laughter, where Bangkok trips, love on Juhu chaupati, suhaag raat tips, and much more are transformed into comedic gold. Zuber proves why he is one of the most sought-after comedians in the industry.

[dogboyrevenge]

i have got to continue reading in hindi its good for my mental health

[innocentlymacabre]

They were walking again. It was raining but Kavi had wanted a change of scenery – and Ravi just wanted Kavi – so they were walking again.

Ravi listened to her talk attentively. About The Midnight Library, about Camus, about the farm she worked at and the animals there she liked. Ravi happily listened to it all and related his own stories to hers, honestly surprised by the fact that he hadn’t already said something unbelievably stupid. He had no idea where this sudden stroke of luck had come from but he wasn’t going to question his newfound ability to impress this incredibly pretty girl.

They’d started the evening by going to a restaurant she’d reluctantly picked. “If you don’t like it, just lie and say that you did,” Kavi had said.

“Oh, don’t worry, I am a fantastic liar.”

“Are you really?”

“No,” Ravi immediately confessed, “I am awful.”

“Thanks for trying,” she laughed. “The effort is appreciated.”

That was the first time Ravi had heard her laugh and had instantly fallen in love with it.

“I’m sure I’ll love it,” he asserted.

He didn’t remember what he thought of the food.

He was sure it was great, but present company had been far too engaging for him to care about the plates set in front of them or the wines they had picked out. Their waitress even had to jump in and ask if they’d wanted any recommendations on what to order after they’d asked her to come back for the fourth time because they both kept forgetting to go over the menu.

They’d continued on to a bar Ravi liked where he proceeded to lose at a long, drawn-out game of pool (neither of them were very good players), underscored by conversations about dragons, comfort shows, and bad dancing. And throughout it all, one incessant thought kept surfacing in the swamp that was his brain. The exact same thought he had now.

Kiss her.

It was raining.

They were walking.

The sun had set and the moon had them awash in a silver tinge.

It was all too much for Ravi’s cheesy, sappy, gooey heart. 

But he didn’t say anything. Not yet. They were having far too good a time to risk it by making the wrong move. So they kept walking.

They kept walking until they found a park with a bench and enough green around to make Kavi happy. They both simultaneously sat on the backrest instead of the actual seat and Ravi couldn’t help but notice how close they were. An errant wind could have probably pushed them close enough to touch.

Their hands gripped their bench for stability side by side and a spark flew through Ravi’s. It lit up in his palm and quickly spread through the rest, a travelling flash taking over the entire hand within moments. They were talking about Mamma Mia, Heartstopper, and tattoos, but Ravi was imagining how it would feel to hold her hand in his. The hand closest to hers had three rings, while hers was bare. He thought they might not feel too nice and considered moving them to the other hand, but didn’t want to move away from that position. What if she decided to take his hand at that moment? Moving it away might tell her he didn’t want that. No, he thought. Best to keep it where it was and risk his chances on that roll.

His fingers twitched and he found himself wanting to fiddle with his rings again – that was half the reason he wore them at all – but he resisted the urge. He wanted to keep the hand free just in case. He tuned back into the conversation and turned his head to face her, and soon forgot all about his rings while they talked some more about colours they liked, saxophones and base guitars, and flowers. He made a note to pick out some orange and purple ones for next time.

Next time.

They had already decided there was going to be a next time.

“I really want to kiss you,” Ravi muttered, his voice dropping. All semblance of suaveness he had miraculously managed to scrap together over the evening had all but evaporated and each hand was thumbing its respective rings.

Kavi kept fiddling with her cycle’s lock in a pause that felt far too long to Ravi.

He was suddenly very aware of his surroundings but found it all but impossible to take in anything except the girl he had just spent the most wonderful evening with. The light from the giant neon lettering beside them seemed to fall on Kavi and Kavi only, making her outline glow. The only sound he could hear was the pistons in her cycle lock clicking in place; the rest of the world had dulled. He was certain there had been a breeze blowing just before but even that had seemingly halted, as if to grant them this pocket of solidarity.

Finally, she looked up at Ravi with determined eyes and a slight smile. “Good,” she said, stepping a little closer. “I want to too.”

She took another step towards him and Ravi found himself mirroring her actions. She raised her arms over his shoulders and pulled him in closer, while he did the same around her waist. He noticed how different this felt to when he had hugged her earlier, but didn’t have enough time to wonder why; Kavi had already drawn his face forwards and upwards, bringing it towards hers. Their heads tilted sideways and their lips met.

And the whole world fell away.

When they stepped back into time and the world rematerialised, Ravi’s hand was in Kavi’s. She didn’t seem to mind the rings.

~~ The Slightly Edited, Partly Fictionalised, and Occasionally Completely Imagined Kavi and Ravi Photo Album [1/]

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[itzvanya]

नारी प्रीत मैं राधा बने, गृहस्ती मैं बने

जानकी, काली बनके शीश काटे, जब बात हो

सम्मान की,..

I became Radha in the love of a woman, I became a householder Janaki cut her head as black, when it comes to Respected..

[musiquesduciel]

One day, I'll visit your paths, your arms and your shelter to lose myself in. One day, I'll finally become yours. But this heart of mine wasn't able to tell you these things. This heart of mine couldn't tell you.

Ek Din Teri Raahon Mein, Naqaab