Dearest You

On trusting arrival, choosing presence, and believing that love finds its way without force

Dearest YOU,

I wrote against dating apps this morning because somewhere deep inside I already trust the way you will arrive. You will find me organically, the way good stories find their readers. Maybe through LinkedIn when one of my LovedIn letters linger longer than it should. Maybe via Substack because you’re too cautious on LinkedIn. Maybe at the Delhi Book Fair where our hands reach for the same dog-eared copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Maybe at a café in Khan Market where you are reading Baldwin and I am pretending to focus on my notebook. Maybe in Nehru Park during one of my slow morning walks, when the light is still forgiving and the city feels honest.

And when you do, something will settle quietly. We will sail through conversations, and awkward pauses, through the weird beginnings that feel anything but weird once lived. We will grow into a beautiful story, stitched together by everyday choices and efforts. Our perfection will arrive through effort, through showing up, and through remembering the small things that keep love alive.

Sometimes you will catch me lost in thought, drifting into words and let me be. Other times, you will bring me back with a look, a touch, and a smile into the world that expects my presence. Sometimes I will read you a paragraph I just wrote and watch your face change as if it already belonged to you. Sometimes we will disagree, speak too quickly, retreat for a moment, and then return softer, wiser, closer.

We will eat chole bhature on winter mornings, sharing the last piece without keeping count. We will travel with books tucked into our bags, reading on trains, under lamps, in hotel rooms where the outside world fades into background music. We will find intimacy in shared silence, in watching a film with our legs tangled, in falling asleep mid-conversation because comfort arrived early.

Someday, I will write you letters by hand and leave them between your office laptop. You will read them and then read them aloud making fun of my emotions. I’ll walk off in a different room and you’d follow, learning the art of repair with patience.

Oh and do you know I imagine strangers noticing us, the way they do when love moves gently yet confidently. Someone will say, “If Shashank can write letters to the universe and find YOU, then anyone can.” We will smile at that, because we will know the truth lives in the daily work, in choosing each other again and again.

You remind me of a line I once underlined in The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran that feels meant for us: “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”

My world already makes room for you. Ours will unfold gently, honestly, beautifully, one shared moment at a time.