Some Dreams are Drafts

The tide of time

June, 2016
Mumbai.

Bhavika had been staring at her Instagram feed for quite some time. She wasn't scrolling. A reel had showed up where two friends were meeting each other after two years of separation. One of them had been studying abroad, as the caption suggested, and had decided that it the best way to reunite with her bestfriend was to surprise her. Bhavika blinked back tears as she saw the reel.

She knew that in a few months, Nehal would go abroad. She hadn't received an acceptance letter but Bhavika believed in Nehal. She had seen her work hard. And when Nehal Desai spoke about money, markets and capitalism, anyone could hear the confidence in her voice that had a touch of hunger. Nehal knew she was competent but she was aware that there were things she did not know. There were areas of improvement. Theories waiting to be read and understood. And that was what made Nehal a huge asset.

In fact, after the two had discovered their shared admiration for the 2012 u-19 campaign, they also went on to see that they were similar in terms of sincerity with respect to academics.

Nehal hadn't always been studious. When she was young, she had a phase where she wanted to be exactly like Anant, her elder brother. And at that point in time, Anant thought not caring about academics was cool. And so Nehal mirrored his lack of interest in academics by focusing on sports. Immediately after this, there came a phase where the two started disagreeing on things just for the sake of getting a rise out of the other sibling.

Anant stuck to putting in minimal efforts for studying while continuing his football training. And Nehal changed. She chose to focus on academics while playing basketball to show her brother that none of the two needed to be sacrificed.

With time, Nehal found that she enjoyed studying. She found out that all this time, a curious nerd had been living within her that she had suppressed just because she wanted to please Anant by being like him.

When the two girls became friends, it felt like two pieces of a puzzle that had been waiting to find each other, waiting fruitfully because when they met, they just clicked.

Bhavika's hand double tapped the screen that had gone blank. She sighed and saved the reel to a folder that had the waves emoji as a title, where Bhavika saved stuff that she had stirred something within her.

When she hit the button that'd take her back to the home screen she was prepared to press back once more so that the app is pushed to the background.

Instead, she found herself looking at a post that had been put up a few minutes ago. A post of a boy she had started following two weeks ago on Instagram. But all this while, her brain had followed the trail of his memories without her knowledge.

Jack had posted a picture with a friend whom Bhavika had paid one glance before returning her attention to him.

There he was smiling widely at the camera. His happiness making it's way to Bhavika even though he was miles away.

Bhavika wasn't thinking. Clearly. She felt a strange sense of comfort seeing him from the screen. The lanky boy she knew had transformed into a muscular man. Of course he had, Bhavika thought as she mentally rolled her eyes.

But more than his figure what grabbed her attention was his smile. It had remained the same. The same slant smile she had forgotten about.

Bhavika looked up from her phone for a second, deep in thought. Her eyes found the window and she walked towards it. It was evening. Rain had just bid Mumbai goodbye. After having made an impact on everything living and non living, it had chosen to leave the city alone for a while, promising to return.

Just like Jack.

Before Bhavika knew it, she was looking at her phone again, grinning like an idiot as she liked the photo and made a silly little comment.

It shouldn't even be called a comment for there were only two emojis. The angel face emoji that signified his smile (ironically Bhavika had thought of this emoji when she knew his smile gave off devilish vibes but it was the warmth in his eyes that had made her choose this emoji) and a sparkle emoji.

Two emojis.

"😇✨️"

Two emojis that would come together as a comment, delivering themselves in a different country as symbols of goodwill, that would make Jack smile. And so he would go on to like her comment.

Which would make Bhavika gasp.

And make her narrow her eyes as she'd see that he'd go on to like every comment made under that post. Even the ones with singular fire emoji.

Bhavika would then find herself sighing multiple times in the day as she spent her time looking through his photographs and reading the comments. Comments that in no way felt like they belonged to someone famous. There'd be friendly banters in them. His comment section was evidently filled with his friends and family members. There were hardly any fans.

But there were trolls.

There are always trolls.

Bhavika would then end up reporting a lot of them as hate speech before she would realise that she's getting way too involved than she would like.

A rational decision of hers would be to lock her phone and go get some snacks. But as raindrops began descending from above, Bhavika remembered Jack's email from a few weeks where he had told herhow rains made him feel lively and bold.

She knew what he meant now. She knew it with every fibre in her being because even though her mind warned her she couldn't stop herself from sliding into his dms.

_bhavika.goradia_
I have a theory. Either you are way too nice. Or your Instagram is handled by your sister. Or your manager who likes all the comments on your behalf.

She had promised herself that she would unsend the message. She would let it sit there for some time so that it could die it's death, peacefully, having exposed her thoughts but not being read.

As she disappeared into her kitchen, wondering when was the last time she had eaten maggi, her phone would receive a response.

A response that'd make her choke on water as she laughed.

jackparsons03
What is it with you and your belief that either I'm a female or I have a female to handle my email and Instagram? 😂

To which she'd smirk as she typed,

_bhavika.goradia_
Precisely this. You trust too easily. You didn't even ask me if I was the same Bhavika from the mailmates.com but trusted my username. Don't tell me you don't have a sister. I'm placing my bet that you've had strong female influence while growing up.🤔

jackparsons03
On the contrary, I'm finding it rather difficult to trust that you deduced that I have a sister just from the interactions we had and not from looking me up on Google. One Google search and you would have found your answer :p

_bhavika.goradia_
Hah. So you do have a sister!! Elder even. Knew it!!🙃

Jack would shake his head, as if trying to shake his smile off his face.

That day, the two of them would drift off to a peaceful sleep.

One, who had been distracted by an Instagram post that had prevented melancholy from embracing her.

And the other, who had received a dm that had made him feel hopeful. Not just about his future in cricket. But hopeul about life.