The Search

The Search

When I loved him,
that was the moment he disappeared.
And when I went searching for him,
I realized—
I had been searching for myself all my life.
Every evening, I sat on the last bench of the platform at the old city station,
watching with thirsty eyes.
Trains arrived, people stepped down,
and in every unfamiliar face, I searched for him.
But he was nowhere.
He had already left—
without a sound,
without a farewell,
without a single complaint.
Only his fragrance remained behind
in the station’s waiting room,
as if it still breathed
through the cracks of the wooden bench.
I searched for him in books at the newsstand.
The pages we once read together
were still there before me.
Yet their stories lay silent,
like lifeless bodies.
The words remained,
but their meanings had vanished.
I searched for him in the rain.
Every drop that touched my tears
tasted salty.
My restless body kept asking—
could it be that he, too,
was crying somewhere…
for me?
But the rain was brief.
The road dried once again,
and I was alone.
One day, unexpectedly,
I reached the place
where we had met for the first time.
The same bench.
The same Gulmohar tree.
But we were missing.
Not just him—
I wasn’t there either.
That was when I understood:
some memories remain forever young.
They do not age with time,
no matter how many seasons pass.
Time, in the end,
ages only us.
Exhausted and defeated,
I finally stopped searching for him.
And that was when I found him—
in the one place
where he had always been.
Within me.
In my silence,
in my helpless calm,
in every incomplete breath I took.
He is no longer with me—
that is the truth.
But this separation itself
has become my identity of my falling tears.
Because some beloved loves
are not meant to be possessed.
They exist
only to be searched for
through an entire lifetime.
From the station’s bookstall,
a radio song drifted through the air:

“कभी किसी को मुकम्मल सा जहाँ नहीं मिलता।”

No one ever finds a complete world.

At last, my search was successful.
I had found him.
Memories remain eternally young.
They never grow old with time.
They defeat time itself—
and stay alive forever.