THE BUZZING campus of Calcutta School Of Tropical Medicine and hospital is nothing new to Dr Sidharth Bakshi, rather it is something he had seen all since a long time. A long time? Yeah, a decade can be considered as that.

His phone pings with a text and that left a smile on his lips. A smile on the face his grad students were afraid to say, they have never seen. But then again it was from Sheuli after all.

Sheuli: Dadabhai remember to take sweets on your way back and I'll call you back at night?

He sent a quick reply and gets back to the last set of reports he had been looking at.

His brows furrowed and the creases on his white shirt were evident enough. So much for being an Oncologist with a specialization in breast and endocrine surgical oncology. And he is the best in his field. Not much into research but yeah he is planning to, but not right now.

He closes his file and leans back a little before looking at his phone screen once again, it's 3 PM right now. His shift ended at 2 PM but he is here still, maybe he should just walk out of his cabin and pass the next two buildings and find himself a seat on the back row in the academic building and that's what he did.

The arrival of summer brings a new rush along with the line of last seminars for the end of spring. The clear sky is with the slow winds, warm but soothing.

In STEM, October to March are considered the ideal for seminars, at least, he likes to believe that. Now living in a country where you are sweating half of the year and other in the festive season you need to get your priorities set, he has his done back years ago.

And today is the last one he would be attending, for him the most important one too.

Indeed important one.

Soon he finds himself sitting on one of the middle rows, in the corner. With his students, grads, post-grads, trainees and a few postdocs sitting around him. The room is filled mostly with known faces, a colleague passed him a warm smile which he returned with a nod, it's not, after all, every day you see the notorious Dr Bakshi in the Academic building.

But then again it is not every day you get such a seminar as right now.

An alumni who had left the country and went to Stanford some two years back and now returned with the Postdoc and got sponsors and funds for her further research. Someone he always knew would do great in the research field.

He looks at the stage, at the particular figure standing right towards his left clad in the six yards of black saree. The black waves made into a low bun and a professional smile on her lips.

The smooth yet strong voice echoed through the room, "Pancreatic cancer is detected late, spreads rapidly and has a poor prognosis. There are no symptoms in the early stages."

In the hall of dim lights, the screen behind the stage shows slides and a spotlight falling upon the left side, on the podium where she stands in her glory.

It's her domain.

It's her work, her findings she spent years after.

"...There are tests already present but with these biomarkers, it would be easy, cost-effective and time-saving. This way we can save lives and that's what we are trying to in STEM"

Her voice holds powers, the way she always had been, confident about her doings. He kept on looking at her, trying to engulf her image in his eyes.

Then suddenly it happened, she turned on her heels and he felt the wind halting.

She abruptly stopped.

Her lips are sealed in a straight line and she gulps.

Her eyes fixed upon him, in a room full of scholars it was him.

She had seen him.

And if he hadn't been this engrossed in her he would have missed, he should have, her finger fidgeting. His heartbeat rises and he was just about to walk out the hall but he just closed his eyes regretfully, it was important for her.

The silence in the hall makes everyone think about the closure of the lecture but then she turns back and started again. A sigh left his lips and for the rest of the lecture he didn't look at her, he was more interested in those trembling lips he saw, even for a flash of seconds.

For all he knows, Dr Kuheli Ghosh doesn't tremble, she was not someone getting a panic attack in the middle of her speech. He had known this for years.

Soon enough, the speech concluded, the room echoes with claps. And he saw the HOD walking towards her, upon the stage and getting started with the vote of thanks.

Then he saw students, Doctors, Scholars almost everyone walking towards her for a chat. It will take her a while to end them all. He would rather not wait until them.

A sane part of his mind told him that and he did that. He walks out the hall silently just the way he happens to enter.

What he missed was the yearning eyes fixed upon his back, a heart beating erratically and soul longing for something, anything.

For Kuheli can settle with anything as long as it was from him.

_________

An hour later she walks out of the premises CSTM and walks towards the parking. A sigh left her lips as soon as she spotted her Toyota.

It was quite a day for her. The jet lag was surely not helping and with that she came given her speech in a place she once sitting on the other side than today.

She for once look back at the building, all the same, the way it was when she graduated all those years ago. But things were changed, she was one of those.

She is no longer the twenty-two-year-old Kuheli madly in love. For once she wants to be that but damn heartbreaks, she would never want to walk on that alley ever.

Well, not when you are still somewhere stuck around.

A sigh left her lips as she shakes her head off, she surely needs to sleep. She takes another two-step and her feet halts a gust of wind pass and she swears she felt time halting then and there.

Her eyes linger upon his broad figure capturing his handsome face on the curtains of her eyelids. Her mind resisting yet the heart keeps on beating.

He was there.

He hadn't left yet.

He stood there with his back leaning towards his black Sedan.

He was waiting for someone, for her.

Maybe.

Maybe?

And even the thought was enough to bring bile her mouth and leave her heart flutter. She gulps when he looks up from his phone and fixes his eyes on her, and he smiles.

She gulps.

That smile.

He nods in her way and takes a step back towards his car, then another, then she whispers, "Sidharth".

She saw his back stiffen his head tilting a little and then she heard him, "It was a good speech, you did really well Kuhu,"

She keeps on standing there looking at his back, and he gets into his car without even looking at her.

Not even for once.

She sits inside her car and takes deep breaths calming her stupid heart.

She puts the radio on and it plays the song she surely was not hoping for. She smiles as a lone pearl falls from her left eye, it's the same.

Amaro porano jaha chay Tumi tai, tumi tai go Toma chara ar e jogote

mor keho nai kichuu nai go

Amaro porano.

(All That My Heart Wishes For

You Are The One, That You Are.

In This World, Apart From You

I Have None, Nothing I Have.)

The Tagore verses recite her tale, a tale of unrequited love and a saga of broken friendships.

Of heartbreaks and of the pieces still asking for happiness, the beloveds' happiness.

His happiness.

And that's all Kuheli hope for Sidharth, for him to find happiness. Perhaps she knows, Sidharth never gave himself the chance of happiness, of love.

He had broken her heart and his as well, he has ripped her soul and killed his as well.

He had snatched their right to be happy, to be loved.

Why?

She doesn't know, he didn't let her.

"I wish...you could at least tell me the truth. At least a reason why you... you couldn't love me" She whispers looking at the clouds of dust of the fading car.

She shakes her head and started her car. Her questions were never going to be answered, not anytime soon.

Neither was her love.

________

THE SUMMER brings her a desire to go back to her city. And why not the weekend is near and so is the Pôhela Boishakh (Bengali new year) but she buried those deep somewhere in her heart. But Sheuli doesn't want to, not anymore.

Kolkata is her home but her heart is lost now. And she is trying to find that here and so far it's not bad.

Her last semester results came, she did well. Her preparation for Gate has begun too and is almost done with her lab work for the dissertation. Her guide is quite a nice one, well as nice as she could ask for.

At the moment, life seems moving the breezes playing their own song and she smiles looking ahead at those bougainvillaeas from her open balcony. She surely started liking this residence more with each passing day.

Her phone ping with a WhatsApp message, a photo of a sweet box quoting, 'Delived'.

She smiles as she swipes her phone screen and dials his number. He picks up the call after the third ring.

"You know it's quite late. You should be sleeping." A sullen voice greets her.

"Dadabhai it's only ten and I am no longer a kid." She with a pout and heard a distant laugh.

"You will forever be a kid to me"

"I know" She smiles at that. Surely Sheuli is a pampered child, mostly because of her brother Sidharth.

"I visited them," He said from the other side in a cautious voice. Too afraid to open old scars.

She numbs.

Them. Her home.

Lost home and broken dreams.

The distant memory of her laughing through that residence and voice echoing through their hallways and him following her comes to life.

She closes her eyes trying to bury all those memories back.

"You did?" She asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Yeah, I thought it would be better. Chotomaa and others were mostly there though." A smile appears on her lips.

Of course, they would be there, that's what it should be.

"How...how are they?" She asked while the hold against the bannister tightens.

"They are good, far better than before. They were asking for you"

Of course, they would be, that's how it should be.

"I couldn't come you know with my..."

"Sheuli" She is cut by him and she closes her eyes.

"Don't lie to me Baccha, I get you. You can't come here and I respect your choices but that doesn't mean you should lie. Remember the book you read and told about? What is the biggest sin?"

She remembers, she did by heart.

"To lie to someone" And here she had been lying to herself.

"It will be fine Baccha." His voice was tender yet strong enough.

Even in all the chaos her mind was in, Sidharth was her confidant. Her pillar.

"How was your day?" She askes in the hope to change the topic.

"It was busy"

"You should take care of yourself you know you are not getting younger. Maa called she said you had flu last week, and I was the last one to know, just perfect."

"That's because you fret too much about me, and that was not anything serious and I am not that old"

"You are turning thirty-two this year Dadabhai"

"And your point is?"

"I saw something today on Facebook."

Something rather someone and she want to ask him about it but she couldn't. That's a line she and Sidharth had drawn without any words, no one talks about heartaches.

"I met Kuhu today" The next few seconds were followed by silence until she spoke next.

"You met Kuhu Di? And? Did you two talk? Did she come to meet Maa?" Did you..."

"Sheuli, it was nothing like that"

"Then?"

"She was here for a seminar on"

"Her recent paper on pancreatic cancer biomarkers?

"You know about it?"

"Of course I read it, send her some queries too she replied"

"You two were in touch?"

"Not really but yeah sometimes"

"You didn't tell me"

"And why should I?" She asks. But didn't get any reply, it was like this always. Him going silent whenever Kuheli Ghosh is the topic.

"She has changed a bit you know. She is more confidant now."

"That's good right?"

"Yeah."

"Dadabhai?" She calls hoping for him to say something.

He was not open with everyone. It was only a few. And he needs to speak sometimes for his own good.

"She keeps on standing when I left."His voice sounded painful, he was regretting something. Maybe something that sounds like a heartbreak.

The silence was thick, it screams guilt and pain. The sky is slowly covered with dark clouds, and she recalls the last time she talked to Kuhu Di.

It was everything normal just the fact she didn't say anything about her Dadabhai. Sheuli had seen the love in her eyes, but then she had a second-hand experience of her pain. It was clear in her voice yet she concealed it.

It was something she had learnt from Kuhu, to conceal the pain.

After a few minutes, she finally said, "Some people are like that. They keep yearning for things they thought they deserve. Sometimes for someone to open the book, their heart sometimes just a closure."

"Sheuli?" His voice was troubled.

"And you shouldn't stop her for doing so, not until you can give her either. And surely not when she has the right to do that to herself. You can't stop her from waiting for something she wants, maybe a closure."

"I am just ruining lives," He said

"You are maybe." But she didn't voice it.

"I think we should call it a night," She said looking at the fallen petals of our favourite bougainvillaeas

"Sheuli"

"Yes?"

"Next time you talk to Kuhu, tell her maybe I'll give it to her someday"

She smiles, maybe anyone of them will get closure, maybe.

_____

THE SUMMER nights were peaceful. Not choking silently like winter ones it's warm and serene.

Sebanti sits on her easy chair looking at the green lawn. Her mind goes back to the days she lived with Rishab.

They were good. They were her most cherished memories.

She closes her eyes and suddenly it happened. The figure comes back to life and she opens it.

She gasped for air.

It shouldn't be here.

But it is.

And it will be.

The past is not going to leave her, never.