A Kiss Across the Years

A Kiss Across the Years

Ashok was a little surprised when the phone rang late one night. The house was steeped in the kind of silence that comes only after midnight—when even the ticking clock sounded louder, when shadows stretched lazily across the walls. The caller ID displayed no name—only a string of digits with an unfamiliar ISD code. His eyelids still heavy with sleep, he hesitated a moment before answering.

“Am I speaking to Ashok Pradhan?” a woman’s voice asked. Her tone was soft, calm, and oddly familiar, though he couldn’t place it.

“Yes, I am,” he said cautiously, rubbing his forehead.

She greeted him with an easy familiarity, the kind that made his mind stir uneasily.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, “but I can’t recall who you are.”

“Can’t you recognise my voice?” she teased, a gentle lilt in her words.

“I’m afraid not, ma’am… and yours is not an Indian number.”

She chuckled, a warm, light laugh that seemed to float down the line. “Yes… I’m calling from London. Jog your memory a little. We met in Dehradun, and you once said my voice was unforgettable.”

“Are you Kanta?” Ashok ventured, the name surfacing from the distant past like an old postcard from a forgotten drawer.

“No,” she laughed again, richer this time. “But who is Kanta—someone close to you once upon a time?”

“There are too many fake calls these days,” Ashok said warily, though a flicker of curiosity was already awake inside him. “Please, reveal your identity.”

“Not so fast,” she said, her tone playful now, like someone dangling a key just out of reach. “You are the younger brother of Prerna, who studied at DAV College. Your elder brother worked in the forest department, didn’t he?”

Ashok’s curiosity sharpened further. “You’re right… My sister did study there, and my brother Vinod was with the Forest Research Institute. Now I know—you must be Saroj!”

“No,” she replied, still amused. “But I got your number from Saroj.”

Ashok frowned, racking his brain as if sifting through a chest of faded letters and photographs.

She offered another hint: “We met only once… and never again.”

His fingers tapped the armrest of his chair unconsciously. He began counting the years—it had to be more than fifty.

“Were you from Dehradun?” he asked finally.

“No. But I met you there. You lived at 22/2 East Canal Road—your ‘Triple Two’ house, remember?”

“Yes,” Ashok said, a spark of memory flashing briefly. “Then you must be Ravi’s sister—he was my friend.”

“Wrong again,” she said, her laughter ringing like a bell through the static. “I don’t know any Ravi. One last hint: across the road from your house was a lychee orchard. A retired army officer caught you stealing fruit from it… Now guess. If you can’t, wait till Friday evening.”

Before he could say another word, she hung up, leaving Ashok staring into the darkness, the quiet of the room now thick with questions.

The days passed, but the mysterious call lingered in his mind like a stubborn echo. Each night, as he sat reading or watching television, his thoughts strayed back to that voice—light, teasing, strangely familiar. Faces from his youth began to blur into one another: summer afternoons in Dehradun, the rustle of lychee leaves, the laughter of friends long gone.

On Friday evening, as the monsoon clouds gathered beyond his window and the scent of damp earth drifted in, he sat watching the news with his wife Sumita. The phone rang again.

“So,” the woman said as soon as he picked up, “you couldn’t place me. Never mind. After all, it’s been so many years.”

Ashok stayed silent, listening to her voice as if it were a song half-remembered.

“My daughter is flying to Delhi tomorrow,” she continued. “She has admission in the institute you once dreamed of joining.”

“You mean IIMC?” His voice was steady, but his mind reeled at how precisely she remembered.

“Yes. She’ll go straight to her hostel, but may I request you meet her at the airport? It’s her first solo trip. As a mother, I worry.”

Ashok hesitated, the weight of the unknown pressing upon him. Then, after a pause, he said, “Of course. But how will I recognise her?”

“Hold a placard with your name. She’ll find you. As for me… you’ll know tomorrow.”

She laughed again—soft yet mischievous—and hung up.

Sumita, sitting beside him, raised her eyebrows. “It’s a scam. Don’t go.”

But Ashok, stirred by a mix of caution and something deeper—perhaps a trace of forgotten affection—insisted. After much persuasion, Sumita agreed, but only on one condition: she would accompany him.

Early the next morning, the couple drove to the airport, the dawn still heavy with dew. A placard bearing his name rested in his hands. The airport was alive with its usual bustle—announcements crackling, luggage trolleys rattling, the mingled aromas of coffee and jet fuel hanging in the cool air.

The flight was on time. Passengers streamed out, one by one—businessmen glued to their phones, children clinging to mothers, travellers craning their necks for familiar faces.

Then he saw her: a young girl in a blue dress, pushing a trolley with a composed grace that seemed older than her years. Her hair was neatly coiffed, her gait unhurried yet purposeful. Something about her face—those almond-shaped eyes, that curve of a smile—stirred a long-buried memory.

Ashok’s heart jolted as though struck by a sudden wind. Without thinking, almost under his breath, he called out, “Usha!”

The girl looked up, startled for a heartbeat, then broke into a warm, knowing smile.

“Hello, Ashok Uncle,” she said, walking toward him with easy confidence. “I’m not Usha—she’s, my mother. I’m Nisha.”

Ashok blinked, the past and present colliding in that instant with a quiet, aching clarity. The resemblance was uncanny, like a sepia photograph brought to life.

They wheeled her luggage out, Sumita striking up a gentle conversation with the girl while Ashok, still dazed, slipped his phone from his pocket and called the mysterious woman.

Her laughter rang out on the line, bright as ever.

“I knew that would be your reaction. My mother says Nisha is my carbon copy.”

And suddenly, the memory rushed back with startling force—Usha, the girl with short tresses, who had once stayed at his Dehradun home with her brother for medical tests. Those four days had passed like a fleeting summer: walks to the diagnostic lab, quiet evenings on the terrace overlooking the litchi orchards and the faraway Mussoorie hills, the scent of rain mingling with young dreams.

That evening, so many decades ago, he had whispered to her shyly, “Your voice is unforgettable… and this haircut suits you.”

And then, with a rush of boyish impulse, he kissed her. His first kiss. A moment so brief it could have been lost in the turning of a page, and yet here it was—alive again, across the years.

On the drive home from the airport, Nisha chatted brightly about her plans—her course at IIMC, her dreams of becoming a media professional, the little things she had heard from her mother about India. Sumita listened with polite interest, while Ashok stole glances at her reflection in the rear-view mirror, as if hoping the past might speak through her.

When they dropped her off at her hostel, Nisha handed him a folded note.

“Mama asked me to give this to you,” she said, smiling.

Ashok took it with a strangely pounding heart.

That night, when the house was quiet, he opened the note beneath the soft yellow glow of his study lamp. The handwriting was neat, slightly slanted, and instantly familiar though he hadn’t seen it in half a century.

Dear Ashok,

You finally remembered me, didn’t you? I am Usha. That summer in Dehradun, my brother had gone for medical tests, and I, a timid girl with short hair and borrowed courage, stayed at your house. Four days that felt like a season unto themselves. You, with your restless laughter and the boyish certainty that the hills would keep our secrets, made me feel alive.

That evening, when the sky turned copper and the smell of litchis filled the air, you said my voice was unforgettable. And then, quite suddenly, you kissed me. It was my first kiss too. We never met again, but I carried that memory—untarnished, innocent—through all the seasons that followed.

Life moved on. I married, I had children, I built a world far from the canals and orchards of our youth. But some memories are not meant to fade; they live quietly in a corner of the heart, waiting for a reason to be remembered.

When my daughter got admission in Delhi, I thought of you—not with longing, but with affection. I wanted her to meet the boy who once stole a fruit and a kiss, and perhaps, unknowingly, a piece of my youth.

Thank you for going to the airport. I will not call again. Some chapters are best kept closed, their edges soft, their colours warm. But tonight, across the years, I send you a smile.

—Usha

Ashok sat still for a long while after reading the letter. Outside, the monsoon rain fell again, tapping against the windows like soft, insistent fingers. He thought of the litchi orchard, the terrace in twilight, the girl with the short hair who had once looked at him with a gaze that held both wonder and trust.

There was no regret—only a tender ache, like the faint perfume of a flower long pressed between diary pages.

Sumita entered the room quietly. “Who was she?” she asked, seeing the letter in his hand.

He turned to Sumita and, with a quiet reverence, placed the letter in her hands. “An old friend,” he said softly. “From a very long time ago.”

She read it slowly, her eyes tracing the delicate script, and then opened the window, letting the rain-scented breeze drift in. A silent, wistful smile curved her lips, as if she were remembering her own story of first love—fleeting, luminous, and gone.

The rain continued its soft insistence outside, and in that gentle, endless rhythm, past and present whispered together, aching and beautiful, in the spaces between heartbeats.