I tried to help him pick up the pieces of his broken heart. I thought we had glued them back together quite well, until the night his Maa passed away. Like a freshly mended vase that is knocked too hard, his heart shattered once more. I could understand his pain; losing either one of my parents would, I imagine, devastate me to a point where I didn’t know if I would recover. I watched my best friend fall apart, become a shell of the human being I once knew. I did everything I could. Everything I knew that would ease my pain, but Ashray spoke a different love language from me. Things didn’t matter to him, I realised. What he wanted, needed from me were the words I found so difficult to express.

Latika, of course, berated me often for it, telling me that he needed me to be emotionally available, and I wanted to be. Really I did, but when his emotions overwhelmed him; when panic rose and anxiety forced the air from his lungs, I too would panic.

And then there was Jhanvi, a woman he met at his psychiatrist’s office. I admit to being incredibly wary of her to begin with. Women like that didn’t date men like Ashray and me. I recalled meeting her at the Goa Music Festival, and realised that our lives were intrinsically interwoven before we had ever fully known it. Jhanvi? Well, she was broken too. Broken in a different way, a way that Ashray found his purpose in, much in the same way I had found my purpose in him. I worried, though. Worried that he would invest all his time and effort in her only to be discarded when the next famous person flashed a smile her way.

Boy, was I wrong!

As their meetings became more frequent and I became more comfortable being around Ashray in his new and healing state, I saw something in him, something that was undeniable but that I would not pressure him about. His connection with Jhanvi gave way to something else. Something deeper. He looked at her in the same way that my father had spent his whole life looking at my mother. The way that I hoped I would one day look at Latika. And wouldn’t you know it; she looked at him in the same way. But I also knew that, at this moment in life, they were on a different train, a different war waging within themselves, which I could never completely understand. Still, I couldn’t help but be protective of him. I think I always will be, knowing what he has gone through. Experiencing the fragility of human life first-hand and understanding the consequences for those left behind.