They say a naazhigai—a small measure of time—can pass like a whisper or echo like a storm.
That temple evening, it became both.
Partha didn’t speak. He didn’t dare.
But everything he needed to say lived in three quiet cues:
The soft tap of his ring finger on the puja plate—three times.
His eyes drifting toward Anjali, then away. Directional Cues!
And the way he avoided looking at Nithi directly, like shielding him from a spotlight only they could see.
These are not just gestures.
They are code.
His tap is a held breath. His glance is a dodge. His silence is a storm.
And between him and Nithi, every still moment says more than a hundred spoken ones.
In that naazhigai, I watched him change.
The memory hidden in his bones—the promise he’d once made to Partha, and the danger he had willingly taken into himself—it all came rushing back.
That moment didn’t shout.
It pulsed.
And in its silent beat, everything around us… realigned.
Partha had embedded classified information—coordinates, breach codes, encrypted visuals—deep inside Nithi’s subconscious, back when he knew he was being watched.
It couldn’t live on a drive. It couldn’t survive interrogation.
So it had to live in trust—inside someone who didn’t know he carried it.
He chose Nithi not just because he was loyal—but because he believed something rare:
Even if Nithi forgot… even if Partha was beaten, broken, or killed…
Nithi would remember—when it mattered.
And he would save him.
It was a desperate gamble. But that day in the temple, it paid off.
Because the memory didn't just flood back—it activated him.
Within minutes, Nithi identified the infiltrators.
Two men planted near the entrance, one of them armed.
Another trailing Partha’s wife as she stepped outside.
And with that memory came action.
Nithi stepped in. Swift, precise, quiet.
He disarmed the one near Anjali with a single move.
Blocked the second at the corridor.
Sent the third running without ever being seen all within 24 minutes..
He didn’t just remember the mission.
He fulfilled it—with the kind of clarity that only comes when you know someone trusted you with their life… and you didn’t fail them.
Some moments don’t tick on clocks.
They breathe—like us.
They stretch, pause, tighten, then disappear…
Like that one Naazhigai when everything changed.
The temple’s warmth felt distant.
Partha was in front of us—draped in silence, eyes flitting toward the lamps, then to Anjali, then to no one at all.
But I wasn’t watching him.
I was watching Nithi.
Not because I doubted him.
Because I knew—if anything went wrong, it would be him who’d pay the price.
Even when he didn’t remember why.
And then it happened.
The way his shoulders straightened.
The sudden alert in his eyes.
Like someone switched the light back on inside him.
“You won’t remember what you know—until the moment it matters most.”
Partha’s voice, months ago.
Back then I thought it was metaphor.
Now I knew it was prophecy.
Partha didn’t react.
He just breathed.
Like a storm inside him had finally sat down to rest.
Later, when the crowd thinned and temple shadows softened into quiet gold, I found Nithi behind the sanctum.
His hands were trembling.
“You okay?” I asked, though I wasn’t.
He looked at me like he knew everything I’d never said out loud.
But all he said was, “I remembered it all. He made me forget—on purpose. But I asked him to. Back then.”
I didn’t ask what it was.
I just sat beside him.
He turned his palm upward.
I placed mine over it—gently.
That moment didn’t need a name.
It just… was.
Vicks stood far behind us, out of earshot.
He wasn’t watching the temple.
He was watching me.
And I felt it.
Everything Vicks had done—
—decoding Partha’s signal,
—chasing a lead with Maya into Sriharikota alone,
—risking arrest to break into the event pass system,
—even flying out without telling his parents—
None of it was for Nithi.
Not really.
It was for me.
To keep me from breaking if something happened to Nithi.
To make sure I wouldn't lose him—even if I never admitted what he meant to me.
Some love doesn’t burn loud.
It waits.
And protects… Even when it knows it might never be called upon.
That unshrouded affection he carried like a notebook with no pages written, only bookmarked.
When our eyes met, he smiled like he always did—with too much kindness and not enough claim.
That night, I understood:
Some of us hold silence the way the Earth holds gravity—
unseen, but anchoring everything.
We pull tides, carry weight, bear seasons without protest.Some shine like the Sun—
bright, burning, always a little too far to touch,
but impossible to forget.And some stay like the Moon—
never loud, never seeking,
but always there when darkness falls.
They don’t need to be named.
But we feel them around us.
And we know they orbit us,
in their own time, in their own way.
The Last Frame
Maya found an old camera lying in Partha’s study.
She joked that we should “freeze the story before we all run off to forget it.”
The photo came back in a simple black frame.
We hung it on the wall above Anjali’s books.
In it, Maya’s adjusting her lens.
Vicks is blurred, just behind me—caught mid-smile.
Partha is leaning toward Anjali, peaceful at last.
And Nithi is beside me.
Our hands almost touching.
Not quite.
I didn’t call out. I didn’t scream. I just stood still— the kind of stillness that holds galaxies.
The kind of moment you don’t try to hold onto, but frame quietly in your heart—because you know it will ache…and glow…for a very long time.
No matter how far we go from here, something of us will always remain—
in that one Naazhigai where everything felt possible, even if only for a breath.
And if there’s one thing I’ve come to believe—
And sometimes—Some people are meant to stay in your life.
And some… are meant to stay in your dreams.
dreams are what give you the reason to live,
not just survive.
Because even with all its ache,
Life is beautiful!!
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