The walk back to their rented apartment was a parade of conflicting energies. The evening air in Indore was cooling, carrying the scent of dust and evening flowers. The city's sounds—scooter horns, the distant call of a street vendor, the rustle of peepal leaves—formed a familiar soundtrack to their daily life. But within their group, the atmosphere was split.
Gangesh moved like a ghost among them. His body walked the familiar route, his feet avoiding cracks in the pavement out of pure habit, but his mind was miles away, trapped in the philosophy classroom. The humiliation had begun to curdle into something else, something far more profound and unsettling: a deep, personal shame.
He had always admired Anya Chauhan. From the first week of their first year, he saw her as a force of nature. Her intelligence was a sharp, clean blade, her confidence a radiant sun. He watched her command rooms with a quiet authority that he, with all his impulsive principles, could never muster. This admiration, he now realized, had been a form of blindness. He put her on a pedestal so high he never truly saw the person standing on it, never understood the foundation of her convictions. His attempt to mediate, to play the hero, was a clumsy, arrogant gesture that showed her—showed everyone—how little he actually understood the very things he claimed to champion. He used a point she would make, a truth she embodied, and twisted it into a weapon against her.
He sighed, a heavy, soul-deep sound that was lost under his friends' chatter. He looked up at the sky, where the fading sun painted the horizon in shades of orange and purple. A lone hand, a kite perhaps, soared high, a black silhouette straining towards the dying light. The image resonated with a painful clarity. His desire for one more chance, a chance to speak without ignorance, to truly understand and be understood by her, felt exactly that impossible. Like reaching up with bare hands to catch the sun itself.
"If I can gain one more chance," he murmured, the words escaping his lips on a breath, a private prayer to the evening sky.
The universe, in the form of his four best friends, responded with the grace of a falling anvil.
The chatter stopped. Dead.
Aditya, who had been in the middle of a dramatic retelling of his near-miss with a canteen samosa, froze. His eyes widened, then crinkled with unholy delight. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face.
"What was that?" Aditya asked, his voice dropping into a mock-serious tone. "What did our great philosopher just say?"
Karan stopped walking, his brain whirring with this new data. Sagar, who had been half-asleep on his feet, perked up with sudden interest. Even Sagar's laziness was no match for the scent of fresh, high-quality teasing.
Gangesh winced, realizing his mistake. "Nothing. I said nothing."
"Oh, you said something!" Aditya crowed, jumping in front of him and walking backward, his eyes locked on Gangesh's flushing face. "I heard it! A whisper from the heart! 'If I can gain one more chance…'" He fluttered his eyelashes and placed a hand over his own heart, his voice becoming a high-pitched, swooning parody.
The dam broke. The group's collective focus, which had been a diffuse cloud of support and nonsense, sharpened into a laser of merciless mockery.
"A chance for what, Romeo?" Aditya yelled, laughing loudly enough that a woman on a nearby balcony turned to look. "A chance to hold her books? A chance to write her a sonnet? 'O, Anya, my Anya, your logic sets my heart on fire!'"
Karan seized the opportunity, his strategist's mind kicking into gear. "This changes everything! My previous plans are obsolete. This is a new operational theater. The objective is not reconciliation. The objective is… romance!" He said the word with the gravity of a general planning a siege. "We need a new strategy. Phase one: the accidental meeting. Phase two: the meaningful glance. Phase three: the offering of a library book—"
"—which she will probably use to hit you over the head," Sagar finished, yawning. "Too much effort. Just give her your dessert. That always works."
Gangesh buried his face in his hands, but a grin was fighting its way through his misery. This was their way. Their love was a relentless, chaotic, and often physically expressive thing.
"It's not like that!" he protested, his voice muffled by his palms. "You're completely missing the point!"
"The point is your heart, you fool!" Aditya laughed, launching a playful kick at Gangesh's shin. "You admire her from a-far! You sigh at the sky! You want a chaaaaance!" He drew out the word, making it sound like the most dramatic thing in the world.
Another kick, this one from Karan, landed softly on his backside. "Admit it! All that principle and morality talk was just a cover! You saw her, with her fierce eyes and her sharp wit, and your brain turned to mush!"
"My brain did not turn to mush!" Gangesh said, finally dropping his hands and laughing in spite of himself. The sheer absurdity of their interpretation was a welcome distraction from his own dark thoughts.
"It did!" Aditya insisted, now mimicking Gangesh's classroom stance, standing overly straight and stroking an imaginary beard. "Hmm, yes, a fascinating philosophical dichotomy. I shall intervene to impress the lady with my superior understanding of justice." He then broke character and swooned again. "But oh! She saw right through my fragile male ego!"
Sagar, summoning a surprising amount of energy, joined in the kicking, a gentle nudge with his foot. "Just ask her out, yaar. All this drama is exhausting. I need to save my energy for the important things."
"Like what?" Gangesh asked, dodging another mock-attack from Aditya.
"Like sleep. And Garba."
The word landed like a key in a lock. The teasing paused.
"Garba!" Aditya shouted, as if he'd discovered a new fundamental force. "He's right! Navratri is almost here! This is the perfect solution!"
The mood shifted instantly. The focus on Gangesh's imaginary love life was fun, but the prospect of the Garba festival was a magnetic pull that none of them could resist. For nine nights, the city would transform. The air would thrum with dandiya beats, the streets would overflow with color and light, and their devotion to Maa Durga would fill every corner of their lives with a joyful, electric energy.
"Yes! No more moping!" Karan declared, his mind already building a new, grand plan. "My strategy is clear. We throw ourselves into the festivities. We dance until our feet fall off. We seek the blessings of the Goddess. This will lighten any mood! It is the ultimate reset button."
"Remember last year?" Sagar said, a genuine smile on his face for the first time since the walk began. "When Aditya got so dizzy from spinning he walked into a pole?"
"It was a spiritual experience!" Aditya retorted, puffing out his chest. "Maa Durga was testing my devotion. And I passed. My head is very hard."
They all laughed, the image of a dazed Aditya bowing to a lamppost vivid in their minds.
"And you, Gangesh," Aditya said, slinging an arm around his shoulder again, this time with genuine warmth. "You forget all this classroom nonsense. You pray to Maa Durga. You dance. You enjoy. This is our time. Forget the sun, brother. We have the goddess to look after us."
They reached the gate of their modest, slightly crumbling rented house. The teasing had burned away the worst of his gloom, and the anticipation of Garba had lit a new, warmer light inside him. His friends, in their own absurd, relentless way, had pulled him back from the edge.
As they tumbled through the front door, arguing immediately about what to order for dinner, Gangesh felt a fraction of his weight lift. Anya's words still sat in his heart, a truth he needed to confront. The image of reaching for the sun was still there. But maybe, just maybe, the vibrant, collective joy of Garba, the devotion to a powerful, divine feminine energy, was a place to start. Not to win a chance with her, but to better understand the world she so fiercely opened his eyes to.
He looked at his friends—Aditya already wrestling with Karan over the menu, Sagar having already collapsed onto the sofa—and a real smile finally broke through. The path was unclear, but he wouldn't have to walk it alone. And for now, that was enough.