The rain had stopped, but the city still wore the scent of wet earth and nostalgia. The skies had opened up like a heart confessing its secrets, and now everything was calm. For Tushar and Amrita, something had softened too—an invisible veil lifted, a sense of clarity returned. Yet, the silence between them still held something unspoken, not of resentment, but of vulnerability.
It was Amrita who broke it first.
"You remember the lake behind the school?" she asked as they sat in a taxi heading back from the hospital two days later.
Tushar glanced at her. "The one with the broken swing and the banyan tree?"
She smiled faintly. "You pushed me into it in class six. I almost drowned, or so I believed. You tried to pull me out and slipped in with me. That was the first time I ever laughed so hard I cried."
He laughed at the memory. "We both came back home stinking of algae. I got a scolding from my mother and a sandwich from yours."
"Ma always liked you," Amrita said, her tone quieter now. "Even yesterday, when she was slipping in and out of sleep, she said your name. She remembered."
Tushar looked out the window, swallowing the tightness in his throat. "She's strong. She'll be okay."
"I hope so," she whispered. "You know, after everything, I'm not afraid of being alone. But losing her…" She stopped mid-sentence. "It would be like losing my first home."
He turned to her, eyes steady. "You're not alone. And you never will be."
Their eyes met, and for once, no defense mechanisms rose. No sarcasm. No jokes. Just truth.
---
That weekend, Amrita insisted they go back—to where it all began.
"Our school," she said.
Tushar hesitated. "You think we'll be allowed in?"
She grinned. "I already called. Mrs. Gomes still remembers us. She's retired now, but she promised she'd meet us at the gate."
The journey took over an hour. The city slowly gave way to narrower lanes, crumbling footpaths, and the familiar walls of their childhood. The school stood there like a guardian of their past—paint peeling, windows cracked, but still with that unmistakable aura of memories lingering in the air.
Mrs. Gomes was waiting at the gate, her hair now fully silver but her sari still crisp and her eyes still sharp.
"My troublemakers," she said, arms open. "I thought the city had swallowed you both whole."
Amrita hugged her tightly. Tushar folded his hands respectfully, but Mrs. Gomes pulled him into an embrace anyway.
"Still so stiff," she chuckled. "Come in. I've kept the key to the music room."
The campus was eerily quiet. No children's laughter, no bell ringing, just the occasional chirp of birds nesting in old walls.
They walked through corridors echoing with old footsteps. Classrooms still bore faded chalk marks. The library smelled of paper and dust, and the music room—when they finally entered it—was exactly as they remembered.
"Well, almost," Amrita said, pointing to the piano. "That wasn't broken before."
"It's only a key or two," Tushar said, tapping it and hearing the flat clink of silence. "Still has a voice, even if it's cracked."
Amrita sat on the bench and tried a few notes. Her fingers hesitated at first, then remembered their old rhythm. A broken tune emerged—some old school prayer, part lullaby, part promise.
"I used to think this place was magic," she said. "Every room held a story. Every bench, every window."
"It was magic," Tushar said. "We were just too young to realize it."
Mrs. Gomes had quietly stepped out, leaving them alone with the ghosts of their youth.
---
Later, they wandered to the back field. The banyan tree was still there, larger, older, its roots thicker and more defiant. The lake was overgrown now, water stagnant, the swing gone. But it didn't matter.
Amrita picked up a stone and skipped it across the water. "Do you believe in full circles, Tush?"
He looked at her, puzzled. "Like karma?"
"No, like returning—not to where you started, but to the person you were supposed to be before life got in the way."
He thought for a moment. "I think we spend our whole lives trying to remember who we were, don't we?"
She nodded. "I think I'm starting to remember. Or maybe I'm just learning to forgive the parts of me that forgot."
He didn't reply right away. Instead, he walked up to the tree and touched its bark, fingers tracing old carvings. There, half-faded, was a heart. Inside it, the initials "A & T."
"You remember carving this?" he asked.
"No," she lied. "Must've been some other foolish girl."
He laughed. "I think she was quite smart, actually."
Amrita smiled, but her eyes misted.
"You ever think we drifted because we got scared?" she asked. "Of what we meant to each other?"
"All the time," he admitted. "It's easier to be a friend than to face what you might really feel. That way, you don't risk losing anything."
"But you also don't gain anything real."
Silence hung between them again, heavier this time, but not oppressive. More like a pause before something honest.
Amrita stepped closer.
"Tushar," she said, voice trembling slightly. "What do you want from me? From us?"
He looked into her eyes—eyes that had seen his worst, eyes that had held him in silent understanding more times than he could count.
"I want what we had, and what we never had the courage to ask for. I want a friendship that grows with us. I want the freedom to fail and still be held. I want… you."
She didn't smile. She didn't cry. She just wrapped her arms around him, and for the first time in years, they stood beneath the banyan tree—not as children hiding from teachers, but as adults trying to reclaim something that had never truly left.
---
As they walked back, dusk had fallen. The school lights flickered on one by one, shadows stretching across the hallway.
Mrs. Gomes stood at the gate, arms crossed.
"Done reliving your past?" she asked, a knowing smirk on her face.
Amrita nodded. "We were just making peace with it."
"Good. Now go write your future," she said. "But don't forget where you learned how to begin."
---
In the taxi, Amrita rested her head against the window, eyes distant.
"You know what I realized today?" she said.
"What?"
"That the best friendships aren't the ones that stay constant—they're the ones that evolve. The ones that survive the storms, the silence, the years."
Tushar reached for her hand.
"And the ones that bring you back home—even if that home is just a banyan tree and a broken swing."
---
Moral: Some friendships don't just withstand time—they grow through it, turning memories into foundations and pain into poetry.