Stages of Love – Introduction
In a quiet town where monsoons washed the streets clean and winters wrapped homes in woolen silence, two very different worlds lived just a few kilometers apart. One belonged to Anvi, a girl with big eyes, tangled hair, and a heart that longed to belong. The other belonged to Arjun, a cheerful middle-class boy whose life was full of tiny struggles and silent dreams.
Anvi grew up in the gray walls of Shantiniketan Orphanage. Her earliest memories were of bedtime stories told by the elderly caretaker Amma, and paper butterflies she stuck to the window grills hoping they'd fly one day. She never knew what it felt like to have a family, but she knew how to smile through emptiness.
Arjun, on the other hand, lived in a two-room house that always smelled of masala chai and fresh laundry. His father was a school clerk, his mother a tailor. Money was tight, but laughter was free-flowing in their home. His best childhood memory was playing cricket with neighborhood kids using a broken bat and slippers for wickets.
One rainy afternoon when they were both just nine years old, fate made its first move. The orphanage school was participating in a drawing competition at Arjun's government school. Anvi, shy and unsure, sat beside Arjun in the last row of the classroom. She was drawing a house with a sun smiling above it — a house she never had. Arjun peeked and smiled.