‘What do we do?’ I asked. I didn’t have a clue what the protocol was for a drunk girl lying in a camping ground.

‘We can’t leave her here,’ Sakshi answered. ‘Do you think Rishi will be back tonight?’ I shook my head. I highly doubted Rishi would find his way back to our tent before the sun rose.

‘Here, help me get her into my tent.’ I picked the girl up and did my best to get her into Sakshi’s bright green, domed tent without dropping her.

Sakshi asked me to leave the room while she undressed the woman and turned her on her side. I rummaged through her bag, trying to find some identification. Her phone was on, but it was password-protected, and I had no chance of guessing the code. The only other thing in her bag was some cash. Remembering what Rishi had told me about pickpockets, I rolled her money up and stuck it deep inside her boots, which I then placed at the entrance of the tent behind Sakshi’s towels. When Sakshi was satisfied that the woman wouldn’t choke if she got sick again, we walked hand in hand back to Rishi’s and my tent. Sakshi would sleep on my side of the tent tonight, and I would take Rishi’s spot.

‘In the orphanage, I was bullied pretty badly. Always the sullen child who thought too deeply and felt too strongly,’ I said as we settled in our sleeping bags.

‘Really?’ she said, propping herself up on her elbow.

‘I don’t know why. To this day, I feel deeply about things I am passionate about, you know? My career and aspirations, my Maa and now …’ I trailed off, scared that she would reject me, terrified of what it would mean if she saw me as something less than what I saw her.

‘And now, Ashray?’

I took the leap, remembering that, if I didn’t tell her, she would never know. ‘And now you.’ The tent seemed to fill with tension, a thick silence that, for me, seemed never-ending.

‘I feel deeply for you as well, Ashray. I can’t describe it.’ She paused for a moment, holding her breath seemingly at the same time as I held mine. ‘The moment I saw you on the train, I had this feeling that I needed to know you. That you may change my life. I was so angry with myself for not getting your number. But fate intervened, didn’t it?’ I couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but I felt the warmth of her smile.

We lay there for almost two hours, speaking of our childhood and how we had changed as the responsibilities of being an adult took over. In that short period of time, hunkered down in a canvas dome, in a place I didn’t know, I gave my heart to her and she gave hers to me. It was too early to say the words we felt, ridiculous to even contemplate uttering them into the darkness, but for me the emotions were overwhelmingly real. I wanted to crawl across the short section of ground that separated us. I wanted to hold her tightly in my arms and drift off into a dream where we could live in bliss, but it was too soon.