The town of Chandravali had a way of making evenings feel like they had lasted forever
The river bent around its Southern edge like an arm around the shoulder. The old Banyan tree in the centre square had been there long that its roots had swollen the original stone pathway. The chai shops opened before sunrise and closed after midnight. The people were warm and Familiar in the way of people who have lived beside each other for generations - they knew each other mother, their arguments, their shames.
And they about the curse.
Most of them pretend they don't.
It was easier that way.
Roshan Tripathi was seventeen years old and has been in love with Divya Sinha for exactly two years, three months and he had counted eleven days.
He knew about the curse. Everyone knew about the curse. But Roshan was seventeen and the curse killed those under sixteen and besides curse were for grandmothers whisper about over evening prayers, note for boys who has just bought a new red notebook to write a letter they had rehearsed forty times in the bathroom mirror.
He found Divya at the river ghat at seven in the evening, exactly as she always was on Tuesday, she was sitting on the lowest step, her feet not quite touching the water, her dupatta pooled around her like something fallen from sky. The evening light made her look like painting that someone has forgotten to finish.
Roshan sat down beside her. He had a letter in his pocket, his hand. His hands were shaking so hard he could hear the paper rustling
"You are doing it again"
"Doing what"
"That thing where you sit next to me and breathe too loudly and pretend you come here by accident"
He almost laughed. He almost stood up and walked away and went home and tore the letter into pieces and forgot everything. But she turned to look at him, and her eyes caught the last of the sunset and turned amber, and something in his chest gave up its war.
"Divya. I have to say something and if I don't say it now, I never will, so please just listen. Please just - let me finish."
She went still. She has never Heard his voice like that - scraped raw, like something wounded.
"Okay"
He took breath
"I love you. I have love since that day you threw chalk at Ramesh sir because had given you a B-plus when u deserve an A. I love when you're arguing and when you're laughing and when you fall asleep in the library and snore and pretend you don't. I love you in every way I know how to love something and i know this terrifying and i know people talk about curse I know, but I can't carry this anymore. I can't. I love you, Divya. That's all . That's the whole truth."
For a moment the world was very quiet
Divya looked at him. Her eyes were bright and wet and full of something enormous
"Roushan I"
The word never came
His hand, which had been reaching towards hers, stopped
His eyes, which was been full form nervous hope, went empty
Not closed. Not asleep, Empty like a candle snuffed by a wind that came from no where
He slid from the step and lay still on the stone and sound he made - a soft breath, barley their exhale - was the most terrifying things Divya had ever Heard in her life.
Because it was not a cry. It was not a scream.
It was just: an end
Divya reached for him with both hands and screamed his name and people came running from the lanes above and there was shouting and weeping and phone calls made to doctors and families. Nobody understood. Nobody had an explanation
And then Divya's hand, which has been in Roshan's face, went still .
And she, too, lay down
As if she had simply followed him.
As if she could not let him be alone in that long dark
The river flowed. The evening light faded, and on the steps of the Chandravali river ghat, two people who had done nothing wrong except love each other stopped being alive.
Among the crowd that wept and wondered , one man only watched.
He stood slightly apart and opened a small black notebook and wrote two more names inside it . He was gone before the police arrived . Nobody noticed him at all.
The whisper started before the funerals.
In the Tea shops and the temple courtyards and over the low walls between neighbours, people leaned into each other and spoke with cupped hands.
The Chandravali curse, it has happened again.
There have been other couples in last decade - pairs of teenagers found dead with no medical cause, always together, always shortly after someone nearby had reported in the early stage of confession.
The police have called it " unexplained cardiac event's".
The doctor has called it "congenital anomaly" .
The older resident called it what it was
A goddess's grief
A punishment for love