I woke up in Rudrapur today. With a crabbed neck peered out of the tattered Blue Tourism bus and counted the pine trees that unwanting-ly laced the newly repaired roads from Haldwani to Nainital. I last visited the town in 2012. With law school batchmates. I was madly in love with this boy then. I listened to “yeh haseen vaadiyan” on my HTC then. Network went off even today in all the places it went off back then. The sky was clear. Blue like the lake.

My chair broken, my back pained, lower back breaking into jagged bits, I remembered the first time papa drove us to this cosy little town. It was warmer then. I had fake-taken photos from papa’s Yashika then. Mama had put socks on my warm feet. Bhai had pressed his nose on the other window of the back seat of our Zen. Today I listened to Hota Hai, and Suzanne and Kaun Mera. An odd concoction of vivid sepia toned enquiries acknowledged the footsteps of my mind.