Every time it rains in Delhi, the city begins again.
The horns quiet down. The streets shine with reflected light. Even the dust, usually restless, finds a place to settle. The air smells like possibility. Like something just broke open.
The Metro slows just a little. Chai stalls swell with stories. Shopkeepers pull blue plastic across their stalls, but smiles still slip through. Traffic moves like syrup and everything feels unrushed. Everyone has seen this movie before. Everyone has loved in this city once.
And I start thinking of her again.
The woman who hasn’t entered my life, but lives in my sentences already.
She walks through the rain like it belongs to her. Hair damp, expression soft, always a little too late, always exactly on time. She’s arguing with me in the middle of a flower market at 6 am, holding lilies in one hand and my wrist in the other. She believes roses mean drama and marigolds mean home. I let her win. Every time.
She steals my Diet Coke just to watch me protest. She calls it habit. I call it affection. We sit across each other at a window table while it pours outside, and she dips her bhature into the chole like it’s sacred. I offer her the last bite. She takes it without asking. She smiles like she’s always belonged in the places I thought were only mine.
She believes in SRK logic. In trains and last chances and rooftop reunions. She makes me dance in the middle of the living room, music too loud for the time of day. She hums old songs while folding laundry and sings new ones when she thinks I’m not listening. I hear her anyway. I always do.
She moves through bookstores like she’s navigating her own memory. Picks up something I’ve never read and says this will wreck you. Trust me. I do. Every word she hands me becomes a part of my spine.
On quiet afternoons, we cook together. She hates my obsession with precision. I hate the way she leaves the kitchen mid-task and never returns. Still, we find a rhythm in that mess. We eat off each other’s plates. We forget which one was whose. She talks about a city she misses. I talk about a life I never imagined until now.
She reaches for me in the middle of chaos. Always. Mid-argument. Mid-silence. Mid-storm. Her hand finds mine. Her leg brushes mine under the blanket. Her presence fills the space between words. I learn her like a language. I speak her like a poem I never want to finish.
And Delhi, in the rain, feels like her. Familiar and unruly. Loud and tender. A place that breaks and holds in the same breath.
Every time it rains, the city slows just enough to imagine her stepping in. Soaked. Certain. Already home.
So when the sky breaks open, stay where you are. Let it soak through. Let the city breathe.
Love sometimes enters like weather. Unexpected. Immediate. Undeniable.
It arrives holding flowers. Stealing your drink. Choosing your silence.
And in that moment, everything fits. Even the rain.