The conversation with her best friend had run on for over an hour. At the end of it, Preeti was in a reflective mood. She walked around, putting away things in the small room she had as a paying guest in the busy metro, letting the details of the romantic crisis afflicting her friend run through her head. Feeling philosophical, she decided to send one last sms. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired…” she wrote. “You don’t know it, but you are loved in a thousand ways, even if it isn’t in the way you want…good night, get some sleep.” As she punched in the familiar numbers, she was yawning, feeling sleepy herself. It was past midnight.

Drishya’s footsteps picked up speed as she walked the last few metres of platform to where her train waited. Even as she hurried, she could see the strangeness of her departure. “Please don’t worry – I will manage,” she had said, to not one but two sets of anxious parents – hers and Pradeep’s. With both of them wanting to see her off, she had been keen to avoid a tug-of-war farewell. “Better this lonely setting off than the tension of keeping each of them away from the others’ throats,” she was thinking to herself.

She had barely settled in with her luggage into the compartment when the train began to move on its night-long journey to Hyderabad – the city where she was moving – to a new assignment, a new life. As she watched images of Chennai slide slowly past, Drishya could not help the prickle of tears behind her eyelids, tears she thought had dried forever in the months following the accident that changed her life forever.

Shweta:

‘Just couldn’t find the green earrings that are an exact match for this salwar suit. Must find a better way to store my daily stuff. I wonder whether he notices? Whether I’m wearing green or blue with this green dress? I wonder whether he’ll even be there…’

Sandeep:

‘Almost killed myself getting into that runaway bus the last time. Must start at least five minutes earlier each morning. Does she always need to be there at the same time? Or is she getting used to seeing me on the same bus…’

It was 4 a.m. Noting the time through sleepy eyes, Mona was relieved that she had another hour and a half of sleep at least before getting up. But woken up her husband Anoop, sleeping next to her. In twenty minutes, she heard him quietly change his clothes in the dark. “Taking him to the hospital?” she asked.

“Yes, he needs the nebulizer at least,” said Anoop. “I want to have him seen by the doctor before I leave for the day.” Then he was gone, and the bed seemed as bereft as her own heart. Another day, just like so many others, and this one hurt more because it had started a whole hour early.

Mona and Anoop had been married only two years, and her pain had nothing to do with her love for him growing less, or his love for her, either. It was just that living in a joint family with her mother and father-in-law, their baby son and Anoop’s brother Arun was such a taxing life – they hardly had a moment to spare for each other.

She was browsing the clothes shelves when she heard a male voice say, “I can’t stand synthetics. The merest mix makes me break out into a rash. Don’t you have this in pure cotton?” She didn’t look around, just thought to herself, ‘What a fussy guy! I can’t stand fussy types. My dream guy has to be someone easy-going, good-natured, not at all the picky pumpkin type.’

Later, as she stood in line to pay for what she had bought, she noticed a man with slightly long hair, attractive face and beard, standing before her in the queue. ‘His looks are quite wasted on him because he is so short,’ she thought to herself. ‘I can’t stand short guys – they have to try harder to impress, be more aggressive. My dream guy must be at least six feet tall.’