Muffled Thoughts of a Drifting Soul

Chapter 2

Slowly coming back to his senses, Kabir realises he is sitting in the middle of Aarav's house with a plate of food in front of him. Someone must have walked him back from the cremation ground, though he cannot recall it. That was not his concern. He has still not come in agreement with his friend's death, but the flames engulfing Aarav's body are too vivid for him to leave any doubt behind. Aarav is gone. What happened to him? Was it a freak accident, an illness, something no one had told him about? His mind is still in disbelief. He cannot eat anything. Across the room, he watches Aarav's mother surrounded by family, people asking her to drink water, to eat one bite. He wonders if he can even comprehend her sorrow. Tears roll down his eyes, and before the lump in his throat can turn into sobbing, he drinks the glass of water in front of him and stands up.

Kabir finds Aarav's cousins strolling outside the house. He hears one of them say, "Aarav bhaiya was so brave." He cannot place the context, but he knows well enough how much mettle Aarav had in him. He thinks of asking the boys what happened, but he doesn't want to interrupt. They carry on remembering old days, and somewhere in between, one of them says his name. "Aarav bhaiya and Kabir bhaiya's friendship stories were so cult. That one time they beat up eight guys together. Crazy."

Kabir almost laughs. What? When did that happen?

The only time he and Aarav had ever gotten into a fight was after school hours, when they ran into four boys from another school. The boys had gone after Aarav, hurling abuses, making fun of his cycle. Kabir and Aarav ignored them and pedalled on. One of the boys came dangerously close, and Kabir, without knowing what he was doing, pressed his foot against the rear wheel of one of the boy’s cycle. The boy toppled straight into the other three, all four of them scrambling over each other on the ground. Kabir and Aarav rode on as hard as they could and hoped never to see those boys again.

That was the whole story. Eight guys beaten up, apparently.

Kabir introduces himself, and the cousins look at him like he's stepped out of a legend. "Bhaiya, we've heard so many stories about you." He doesn't have the heart to downplay the glorified version of his friendship with Aarav, so he only nods along, and lets them go on. One boy claims Kabir once climbed the school boundary wall to sneak out and bring back ice cream for Aarav when he was feeling sad. Another swears they'd once ran a prank on sports teacher by putting frogs inside the sports room. Kabir keeps nodding, wondering how a handful of ordinary, forgettable afternoons had turned into folklore somewhere between Aarav's memory and this cousin's mouth. He wants to correct them, to tell them the truth was smaller and stranger and enough on its own. He says nothing.

Before he can ask what actually happened to Aarav, one of the boys says it plainly, the way children say things without knowing the weight of them. A rare blood cancer. It hadn't given Aarav bhaiya even two months.

Kabir does not have the heart to tell them he hadn't known. He doesn't utter a word. He only nods, or looks past them at the sun settling into the horizon.

After a while, Kabir decides to meet Aarav's parents once more before leaving. Aarav's father studies him for a moment. "Are you Kabir?"

Kabir nods, unsure if he had ever introduced himself.

"I have something for you," the father says, and goes inside. He returns with two envelopes, one with Kabir's name on it, the other addressed to no one at all. "Aarav asked me to give these to you," he says, placing them in Kabir's hands.

Kabir stands there, the envelopes light in his palms, heavier than anything he has held all day. He does not open them. Not yet.

He turns to Aarav's mother and bends to touch her feet. She rests a hand on his head, and says nothing. It is in this moment, under her palm, in that withered touch of a mother’s love for a lost child, that something in him finally loosens. The tears he had held back all day arrive without warning. For the first time since the phone call, he feels something close to peace, as if her hand alone understood everything he had been carrying and had quietly agreed to hold some of it for him.