True Love

It didn't start with a ''Once upon a time...''. It's not going to end with a ''...and they lived happily ever after''.
I don't know what true love is.


But I do know, of that time when you had organized and pulled off your first national level debate, and the contestants were on the stage, and the judges in the front row, and your family in the crowded hall, you, in a sari, leaped from the stage to hug me, as I stood in the aisle.


And there was that time when we were sitting in silence in the cafe, and, without saying anything to me, you reached over the table and took my half-used sugar sachet and poured it over your own coffee.


You stay up till 4.00 a.m., studying, long after I've gone to sleep. You're tired, and you have college tomorrow. But without being asked, or told, you take out the suit I have to wear at tomorrow's presentation and iron it. And before switching off the lights you murmur "Sweet dreams...", even though I can't hear you. You know that sometimes I have nightmares.


Of that time when you hadn't seen me in months, and you were walking up the driveway to my house, and I was standing at the end of the drive and smiling. And you were smiling back, with that look on your face as if the only thing that mattered in the world that I was standing at the end of the drive.


Sometimes I study late at night in the living room outside so that I don't disturb the grandfather and the small brother. And you are used to the comfort of the warm bed and the blanket and the pillow, but you drag yourself to the living room to sit beside me anyway.


And of course, that time, when you told me and the rest of the world, whoever was interested, that I was the one person you couldn't go for a day without.


We didn't start off with a "Once upon a time..." and I know there's no "...and they lived happily ever after." in store for us. But if this isn't True Love, I don't know what is.