Swara slammed the brakes with all the force she could muster and hoped it was enough as the car screeched to a halt. The freight truck simply careened on, missing her car by a mere couple of inches and her thundering heartbeats drowned out the roar of that truck. She jerked forward, hitting her head to the steering wheel, as the bike behind her crashed into her car, unable to completely stop in time.

She did not respond to the kind passerby who helped her out of her car and gently led her to the small clinic nearby. Another young man parked her car a little distance away and gave the keys to the doctor who was examining her. Swara did not have any major injuries, she had a bruise on her forehead due to hitting the steering wheel and could have some aches due to the jerks but she was otherwise unscathed. Her unresponsiveness was to do with the shock and the doctor reassured the concerned passersby that she would be fine in a couple of hours. The nurse took her mobile phone and tried to find out whom she could contact and inform about Swara.

It is said that when one has such a close encounter with death, your entire life flashes before you; as Swara sat frozen, she too was witness to snatches of her life.

Her first clear memory was of herself in Sanskaar's t-shirts. For the life of her, she could not understand why that childhood self of hers had been so fascinated with Sanskaar. She remembered how she had followed him where ever he went and it would leave her angry and embarrassed, she was a kid alright, but her parents were adults, how was it that they never stopped her?

She recalled those chocolates that she would always take from his bag; she had often wondered why he kept the chocolates in the same place every day, when he must have known that she would simply take them away. And the goofy smile he would give when she shared a piece of his chocolate with him, that smile would light up his face and leave her in splits of joyous giggles.

She remembered how she been so possessive about his things, as though they had to be treasured and she was the guardian. As long as she stood guard, nobody was allowed to touch his things.

Even now, after so many years, ice creams reminded her of how she would insist on having Sanskaar's ice cream only, it made no difference how many cones or scoops she was given, she only wanted eat from his ice cream. It was strange, she now thought, after she grew distant from him; ice cream had lost its appeal.

Till she was ten years old her world had revolved around Sanskaar. Her disenchantment with him started soon hereafter. And only increased when she stepped into the teenage years and Sanskaar stood poised to step out into adulthood. Her friends had started to discover boys, so to say, and the perpetual teasing she had to put up on account of Sanskaar drove her crazy. Though there was a divided opinion as to whether she was a tomboy or not, it was a unanimous verdict that she 'belonged' to Sanskaar. For reasons best known to her, it maddened her. And the situation at their homes was no better; Sujju Aunty already seemed to be planning their wedding. Swara was aghast, she was not yet forteen and what galled her was that her Maa would simply smile indulgently rather than protest. She agreed, quite reluctantly, that Sanskaar was a nice person and she liked him, but that did not mean it was a foregone conclusion that she would end up with him.

As she had grown older, she had tried to reason with that heart of hers, that stupid organ which seemed to beat only for Sanskaar. Finally, on her sixteenth birthday, her heart lost the battle to her mind. As always, Sanskaar was the first to come to wish her, apart from her parents and her sister, Ragini. She was getting dressed to go to school, in the new anarkali suit that her mother had got for her, as usual in a shade of blue, cerulean this time, because he loved blue. A part of her, that dumb heart of hers, whispered that she looked beautiful, that she always looked lovely in blue and the mirror seemed to agree, but her mind was rebellious.

She sensed him even before he reached her room and she looked up to see that he had stopped in his tracks as though enthralled. She had never seen him look at her like that and she felt heat flood her and her throat grow dry. Under that ardent gaze of his, she simply could not say a word and instead held onto his gaze, even as he slowly walked into the room and stood before her. He raised a finger to her cheek, gently caressed it and whispered, "I love you." When Swara heard him she was so shocked that she could neither move nor could she tear her gaze from his, even as he bent down and kissed her, fully, on her lips. It was the precise moment that her mind snapped out from the hold her heart had on it.

She pulled herself back and slapped Sanskaar, not hard but enough to slightly startle him. She was furious; she knew she would never hear the end of it. The fact that there was no way anyone would know unless she told them completely escaped her mind. She was tired of being teased by all the girls and the wariness with which the guys in her school treated her. She hated it and at that moment she had none to vent her frustration on but Sanskaar. They stood frozen for a minute, before Sanskaar smiled and said, "Why are you so angry, it is only a kiss?"

"Only a kiss! I do not want it" she had almost screamed out.

Then he had given one of those devastating smiles that he alone was capable of and whispered, "Fine, then consider that I have borrowed a kiss from you. And whenever you want it back, just ask for it. I promise, I shall give it back." That was the last time Swara had properly spoken to him. She gave him a shove and stomped out of her room.

When she came back home later that day, she had found him gone, which was obvious; no person would have waited under normal circumstances and considering that she had literally pushed him away, his absence was expected. If she felt a twinge of regret, she suppressed it. When she reached her room, her eyes fell on a small gift wrapped box lying on her dresser table. 'Sanskaar's gift,' she thought, as she rolled her eyes, still unable to forgive him. She picked up the box and was about to throw it away when something stopped her; she shrugged and pushed the box deep into her cupboard and where it lay forgotten and unopened till this day. As had all the gifts he had given for her birthdays since then.

But though she refused to talk to him and he did not make any attempt to convince her otherwise, he continued to be very much a part of her life. He was the one who would pick her up or drop her off, from wherever she was or needed to be, the one whose notes she took, the one her eyes would search for whenever she was at his house or at common functions, the one whose presence she needed to reassure herself that everything was fine. He never ever said those words again, but deep down she knew that he did live by them, even though he would never admit that to anyone.

When she was twenty she met Sahil Sengupta, who soon swept her off her feet. His mother and hers had been neighbours and had lost contact with each other after their respective marriages as his father had been based in Mumbai. When they were transferred to Kolkata, his mother had taken this opportunity to renew their old acquaintances.

Sahil was an only child who had been born after his mother had suffered a few miscarriages and was hence a much pampered child. But despite being such an indulged child he had grown up to be a balanced individual. He was a young man of twenty two years, tall, dark and well-built with a perpetual smile on his face. 'Unlike Sanskaar,' she thought, who was tall, fair and rarely smiled; but when he did, he could simply bedazzle you and none knew it better than Swara.

Sahil wrote poetry for her (well, they were absolutely cheesy and almost all had been copied down from the internet but it was the thought that counts, does it not? Sanskaar never wrote anything for her unless you counted the numerous study notes he made for her). Sahil would play all her favourite songs on his guitar and at times sang along, (he did have a nice voice but whenever he sang, her heart would conjure up images of Sanskaar). Sahil would tell tales and make her laugh at his jokes (Sanskaar had always silently listened to her chatter, nineteen to a dozen, irrespective of the time of the day or however busy he was). He took her on dates for movies and long drives (which Sanskaar never did but then she had never spoken properly to Sanskaar after that day and he would be occupied with work).

For Swara, Sahil's allure lay in the fact that, even as a friend, he met with varying degrees of universal disapproval from her family, Sujju Aunty and Uttara. Ram Uncle, as usual, was noncommittal and Sanskaar appeared unfazed by Swara being in Sahil's constant company. Sahil, on the other hand, did not seem threatened by the perpetual presence of Sanskaar in her life and after three years had confessed his love for her. That had caught her off guard, though she should have seen the signs. She had been flustered and Sahil, though slightly miffed, did not press the matter further. In the ensuing months Swara was convinced that Sahil was the man for her but had hardly been upset when he had not proposed to her on her birthday as she had anticipated. What was disconcerting was that, by some strange coincidence, she had not seen Sanskaar either, since her birthday.

It was around three weeks later that she found out what she presumed was the reason for the non-materialization of the proposal. She was coming down to breakfast that morning when she heard her parents talk about how Sahil had come to visit her parents a week before her birthday and that the conversation had veered towards the topic of possessive fathers and unwanted suitors. Her Baba was recounting how he had told Sahil what his stance was and Swara started fuming, it was unthinkable, her Baba was quite a mild mannered man and absolutely incapable of violence; he even shirked from killing mosquitoes.

When confronted, her Baba had laughed, "I did not threaten him, Swara, I just said that most fathers hate losing their daughters and I, for one would simply hack off such a guy's legs and hand them over to him. If he thinks I meant him, then I am not to blame. Though I think that even he realizes that you...."

Swara was now livid, "me, what Baba? That I would only listen to you and have no say in the matter? So that is why he has not proposed to me yet, you threaten him and now wish to prove that I will do whatever you want. I hate you, Baba!"

And she had stormed out of the house without bothering to let her father complete what he had been saying. If she had done an honest introspection she would have realized that it was a relief Sahil had not proposed to her, there was no way she would have accepted wholeheartedly and her family would have opposed it tooth and nail. But then she was apprehensive at what truths such introspection would have revealed and so allowed anger to flood her.

It was in this state of anger that she sat in her car and took off. She drove with different thoughts swirling in her head, anger wiping out all rational thinking and it was this foul mood that had clouded her judgment when the light turned green at the crossroads.

Swara sat shaken as her random thoughts flitted in and around her head, always stopping at Sanskaar. This surprised her; and she slowly came to that reluctant conclusion that for the past three weeks, it was Sanskaar's absence that irked her far more than Sahil's failure to propose. Unable to find any answers as to why her thoughts were now only of Sanskaar, she wearily thought, "And what does Sanskaar do?"

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