1

The July sky is sombre. Rain-heavy clouds with grey crowns cast a grim shadow over the town. Fahad sighs, looking at the crowd swelling on the road leading to Maharaja Agrasen Chowk. Young girls and boys stroll lazily, chattering among themselves, while older folks rush to reach their destinations before the impending thunderstorm lashes. Motorbikes slither between the throng of people, most of whom walk on the roads instead of the pavements that the peddlers occupy. Cars honk, adding to the cacophony.

Two boys in school uniform swoosh past Fahad on a motorbike, howling, their middle fingers up in the air. Losing the race he never agreed to be a part of brings Fahad’s attention back to the car. The roads may have widened in recent years, but the worsening traffic of Dehradun sucks the pleasure out of the drive. He swears at two scooter riders and a pedestrian and almost runs into a car before turning left to enter the Rajiv Gandhi parking lot of the Gandhi Complex near the clock tower.

A blurry glimpse of a familiar face catches Fahad’s eye.

Impossible. He shouts in his mind.

Impossible. He shakes his head.

“Impossible,” he cries out loud, screeching the car to a halt in the middle of the way.

The car behind him honks angrily. A series of colourful words from the driver follows. But Fahad’s gaze remains fixated on the three-dimensional space where the apparition of that familiar stranger had appeared and disappeared within an interval of a few seconds. A young boy, hardly twenty, knocks at his car window and motions for him to move ahead. Heart drumming like an out-of-control hammer, Fahad finds the closest empty spot, parks his car, hops out of it, and looks hopefully in every direction.

Gone!!

Exactly like the old days!!

Sheryl Andrews has been in Fahad’s thoughts for the past seventeen years. Some days, he misses her like childhood, something one would spend everything to relive; on others, she lingers quietly at the back of his mind, at rest. Her presence in his memories is similar to a peculiar piece of a Lego puzzle whose shape cannot be defined—neither round nor square, rectangular, triangular, or hexagonal—yet essential to complete the structure.

Fahad walks to the exact spot and scans the surroundings.

The possibility of finding someone he had met as a teenager, and that too in a distant land, is far-fetched, but his heart prods him to launch an open-ended investigation.

Frankly speaking, met is the wrong word. Fahad never talked to Sheryl; her existence graced his life only from afar.

Loitering on the school premises, he had waited impatiently every day for her to emerge from one of the classes, or walk through the hallway, or just appear before him for no reason. Needless to say, disappointment greeted him more than he admitted.

Pushing through the crowd, Fahad makes his way inside the market. The scent of the soil, freshly bathed in rainwater, is welcoming, and so is the prospect that he might accidentally run into Sheryl.

Dehradun’s Paltan Bazar is like every other city market in the country, packed with shops of all shapes and sizes, brimming with people constantly haggling with the shopkeepers to lower the prices. Salespeople call out to passersby, imploring them to check the latest arrivals. Buyers inspect the items on display, their eyes narrowed, weighing their options, deterring themselves from spending money on impulse. Thelas laden with boiled chickpea chaat, roasted corn, seasonal fruits and vegetables add to the colourful canvas.

Walking as fast as he can, trying not to step into a ditch filled with murky rainwater, Fahad hopes to catch up with whatever or whoever appeared in the parking lot. The sensible part of his brain, one that is good at reasoning and also at downgrading one’s morale several notches with logic, warns him that it’s a false chase. Why would Sheryl Andrews visit India? Why would she visit Dehradun? If by any strange coincidence, she did turn up in the city where he spent his childhood, why would she remember who he was? They were not friends. If anything, she might call the police to charge him with stalking.

I am not going to harm her. I just want to make sure that I saw correctly. Fahad tells the killjoy part of his brain.

No, you are being stubborn, chasing after a figment of your imagination. It chastises him.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to cross-check. Coincidences do occur. He reasons, but his brain sends the demoralising signal again—do you even remember what she looked like?

No, I don’t. Fahad snaps at his overthinking brain as his non-sensible, dreamer heart ignores all the calls to reality and encourages him to peek around. He might not recall her features clearly, but he remembers her shadowy silhouette, her usually knitted eyebrows, the hurried steps with which she scuttled through the corridors, the way her arms swung at her sides, and her charcoal, black eyes that never searched for Fahad. He still reminisces about how his heart hammered against his ribcage when she appeared, the desperation with which he rehearsed every day to introduce himself to her, and the cloud nine he lived on whenever he saw her.

Life is too short to give up on what one is looking for. Who knows? She might be Sheryl, after all. Fahad encourages himself, and if I mention her that I am an ex-student of Cairo English School, she might talk to me with a smile, extending her hand for a shake. She might agree to drink a cup of coffee and then share her number or just talk about the old days and give me another memory to cherish for the next seventeen years.

Hope truly is immeasurable.

Risking being labelled a pervert, Fahad looks at every woman in her late twenties with black hair and a dark brown skin tone. Having caught only a cursory glance in the parking lot, he fails to remember the colour of her clothes. Every dissimilar face makes the logical part of his brain throw an “I told you so” his way. But he was taught perseverance, so he keeps inspecting the crowd. The humid wind ruffles his hair, and his shirt flutters. He knows he must look like a lunatic to anyone who pays the slightest attention to him, but it is not the time to care for such trifles. All he wants is to catch hold of Sheryl, if she is indeed Sheryl.

A phone call from his boss, Arvind Jethmalani, brings Fahad back to reality. He ignores the call at first, but Arvind keeps calling and pinging him on WhatsApp. Exasperated, Fahad touches the bobbing green circle and swipes it upwards with his thumb.

Arvind speaks as soon as the call is received. “Did you read the email I sent this morning?”

“No,” Fahad responds dryly, angry at the interruption.

“You really take your vacations seriously,” Arvind comments.

“The way you make us work. . . .”

“Fine, fine.” If Arvind weren’t Fahad’s senior from college, the conversation might have sparked a debate.

Instead he just laughs and says, “Then let me remind you that vacations are over this Saturday. You are to report to the Kolkata office on Monday.”