Though Lovers Be Lost, Love Shall Not

One of the understated perks of living in a city infamous for its stationary traffic is the unexpected time it grants you to decide how you want to exist in that moment. You can choose to be a furious honker, like the one who idled beside me that day in a Thar. Or you can slip in your earbuds… reach out to someone you’ve been aching to hear from, open a book, glance around, or simply close your eyes for a few seconds and draw in slow, deliberate breaths, coming to terms with the fact that nothing more is demanded of you right now.

For me, it’s usually a blend of the last two. I can’t recall when I first began to find comfort in this fleeting pause… only that, somewhere along the way, it started to feel like a quiet refuge.

I had barely closed my eyes when the cab driver’s voice pulled me back. He said something, half to me, half to the road. When I asked him to repeat himself, he said he was sometimes so done with driving in the city.
“Haan, irritating toh hai. Par itna pareshaan hote hain toh kabhi soche nahi kuch aur karne ka?”
(“Yes, it sure is irritating. But if it troubles you this much, have you ever thought about doing something else?”)
“Yahi karna pasand hai, sir. Yahi karna aata hai.” He smiled faintly, turning his head toward me for a second. “Aur option bhi kya hai mere paas…” He said the last part almost under his breath.
(“I like doing this, sir. This is all I know how to do. And what other option do I really have?”)

When I truly fell in love for the first time, I was too afraid to confront her, so I chose to write instead. I began with a letter… one that felt painfully formal and overly dramatic. Unsatisfied, I pushed it into an even more dramatic territory and decided to take my time with a poem… something I was never particularly good at.
I still remember the restless flutter of butterflies in my stomach, day after day, as I wrote, erased, rewrote… and then erased far more than I kept. Once it was finished, the poem lay hidden in one of my notebooks, tucked away in a drawer in my room, for days. Only then did I realize that writing it had been the easy part… the harder step was walking up to her and placing the choice in her hands.
Looking back, I can still summon the thunder of my heart when I saw her on the school basketball court… playing alongside boys far taller and more conventionally attractive than me, and occasionally outplaying them. I remember starting toward her on unsteady legs… pausing for breath… bracing myself for what she might say, all the while wrestling with the quiet refrain in my head… Why would she ever say yes to someone like me? Surely, she has better people in her life.

Romance, for me, has always felt like a game of tennis, with, of course, some changes in the rules. We do not play it to win or to score a point by beating the person we are playing with. Instead, we hit a shot, throwing the ball into their half of the court, and then patiently wait for them to take their time and hit the ball back to us.
And the wait… oh, that sweet, cruel wait… that’s where the real magic lives.
In that suspended space, we let our minds wander. We imagine them saying yes. We linger in the warmth of imagined embraces. And just as quickly, we pull ourselves back, rehearsing how we might survive the moment they choose not to.

“Not again!” I said to myself, holding the third consecutive “Ajit Agarkar” figurine in my hand. I was a fan, sure… I just didn’t want his figure to keep popping out every single time. The ripped packet of toothpaste, which used to offer a surprise cricket player statuette, had disappointed my four-year-old self… yet again. (Probably my first encounter with heartbreak!)
“It’s okay. Let’s try again,” my brother said, his tongue peeking through his lips as he picked up the next packet.
He hasn’t changed. He often shows me, instead of just telling me, that one’s got to keep trying. He knows I take disappointments much more personally; hence, being the wiser one of the two, he often offers me doses to fuel my instinct to keep putting in the effort while clinging to hope.

Does it work for me? I’ll try to show you instead of just telling you.

Two years ago, I felt the flutter of those wings again. She (different person, btw) often gave me little hints about how much she loved surprises. It had been a while since we’d last met, and I really wanted to see her. The plan was simple enough. I would pick her up from the place I knew she went to every week for her classes, then drop her home, quietly savouring whatever time I managed to steal with her along the way.
I checked my watch and saw that I still had time, so I ordered a coffee and took a seat by the café window that faced the building. She didn’t step out at the time she usually did, so I waited a little longer. Then some more.
Four cups of pour-over later, still clinging to the hope that she would appear any moment now, the café manager walked up to me and asked if I’d like to place my final order for the day, since they were about to close. I glanced at my watch and realised that all I had really done that evening was wait for her… for three straight hours.
The disappointment must have been written all over my face, because the manager followed up softly,
“I’m sorry… were you waiting for someone?”
All I could do was nod.
I went back home. I hadn’t messaged her even once while I waited because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. Looking back now, it almost feels like I shouldn’t have brought it up later that night either. All she had to say was, “Well, that was stupid! 😂” (She said something worse, actually… but let me mellow it down for you.)

I often wonder when the act of putting in effort lost its charm. Loving someone was never meant to be about outcomes. It has always been about the process. About choosing, every single day, to keep showing up… to keep trying, even in small ways… and to make the most of the moments shared with the ones we love, wrapped in the comfort of endless conversations, gently punctuated by long stretches of silence.
The mockery of lovers is deeply saddening. Those who wake up each morning in love, who work on becoming better versions of themselves so they can offer more to the people they care about, are… and always will be… the true romantics. And every time they fail, they are laughed at. They are ridiculed. Because it’s easier that way. Not everyone has the courage to love with that kind of sincerity, and mocking those who do offers a false sense of having conquered the fear of rejection.
Studies suggest that humans have a fundamental need for acceptance, comparable to hunger and safety. That very need becomes the driving force behind effort. It leaves us with a choice… to fake our way to results, or to invest genuine effort and risk a trail of rejections along the way. I’ve always made the same choice. And I intend to keep making it, again and again, until the reservoir within me finally empties… something the people around me, thankfully, make sure to refill to the brim every now and then.

If I could go back in time and sit beside my younger self waiting at that café, I think I’d let the silence sit for a while. I’d watch him stare at the entrance, pretending not to check the time, replaying the same hopeful scenarios in his head. Eventually, the weight of it would spill over.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” he’d say, his face buried in his palms. “I hit the ball to her half… and the ball didn’t come back.”
“She made her choice,” I’d tell him gently. “Now it’s time you make yours.”
He’d look up at me, studying my face. “You’re from the future, right?” A pause. “Does this happen again?”
That would make me laugh. “You’re in for a ride, buddy. You’re really in for a ride.”
He’d sigh, turn his gaze away, and ask, almost irritated, “If it’s got to be this annoying, why do you keep doing it again and again?”
“I know this will sound bizarre,” I’d say, “but almost a year from now, you’ll meet a cab driver who will answer that question for you.” I’d stand up and gesture toward the door. “Come on. Get up. Time to go home.”

She sat down to have some water. I gathered all the courage I could summon and handed her the poem. She wiped the sweat off her brow and unfolded it. I turned around. I didn’t want to risk getting slapped across the face in the playground, in front of the entire class.
After about a minute, when absolutely nothing happened, I turned back. She was smiling at me. And for a brief moment, it felt like I was flying.

So yes, hope does work for me. It makes it easier to take one more step toward the people and things I adore… no matter how difficult the situation feels.

Does it get me results every single time?
Well… we still got another “Ajit Agarkar” figurine when we ripped the fourth packet apart.

And if you’ve made it this far into this little letter of mine, thank you. Truly. Take one more step and tell me what you thought of this article. Whether it’s a single line or a long message… I’d love to know. So yes, your response matters deeply to me. 

Find me on Instagram at @ankeshkprasad or drop me an email at [email protected]. I try to read and respond to every message because your words matter to me more than you know. caf

If you haven’t already, please do check out my debut psychological thriller fiction novel, They Would Die For You!
Available now in both Paperback and Kindle editions.é