The Last Tuesday With Varsha

Some memories don’t fade—they just wait. Wait for the quiet of night, for the silence between breaths, for the 2 a.m. stillness when the world is asleep and the heart begins to whisper.

Last night, I found myself in that moment. Out of nowhere, a thought rose like mist from a forgotten morning:
How is Varsha doing now?

We were classmates from Class 1 to Class 8. Eight years of shared benches, sharpened pencils, and dreams too innocent to name. She was my first crush. The first person I ever looked at and thought, I hope she’s always happy—even if it’s never because of me.

We were both toppers—quiet, driven, living in the margins of textbooks and between the lines of poetry neither of us ever dared to read aloud. She was the kind of girl who made even silence feel like a language worth learning.

During class tests, we’d steal glances and whisper questions—just one word, maybe two. But somehow, that was always the best part of the day. That soft, secret connection. A thread no one else could see, but one we always held onto.

I don’t know when admiration became affection. It happened slowly—like the monsoon creeping into a summer afternoon. No lightning, no drama. Just rain falling on a heart already drenched.

But I never told her.

Maybe I was afraid. Maybe I believed that some emotions are too sacred to speak.

Then came that day. The Tuesday that still sits heavy in my chest.

It was the last day of our 8th grade. My last exam. My last day at school. I had to change schools after that—life, as it does, had chosen a different route for me.

All morning, I told myself:
Ashok, today you have to tell her. Today you don’t walk away with silence again.

I remember standing outside the exam hall, my heart louder than the school bell. The sky was bright, but my chest felt heavy. And there she was—Varsha—standing beneath the old gulmohar tree, the one that had seen us grow year by year.

She looked nervous. Her fingers played with the ends of her braid. She stepped closer and said,
“Ashok... I like you.”

Those four words. So simple. So pure.

And yet, they shattered me.

Because instead of happiness, I felt an ache. An ache so deep I didn’t know where to place it.

I was leaving.

There would be no more shared tests, no more whispered glances, no more walking side by side down the dusty school paths. Her confession came at the very end—like a beautiful song that starts playing just as the movie ends.

We didn’t cry. We didn’t hug. We just stood there—two kids on the edge of something too big to understand.

I smiled. She smiled back. And then we both looked away.

And just like that, she became a memory.

Years have passed. I’ve walked through cities, met new people, loved, lost, learned. But no one ever held that same quiet space in my heart the way Varsha did.

I still remember the way her eyes lit up when she solved a tough math question.
The way she’d gently correct my spellings with a half-teasing smile.
The way she’d say “hmm” when thinking, like she was talking to herself more than to anyone else.

There was this one school trip, I remember, when it started raining and she spun once in the drizzle and said, “I wish time stopped like this forever.”

And maybe, for her, it did.

Maybe somewhere inside me, that Tuesday never ended.
Maybe we’re still standing under the gulmohar tree in some quiet corner of my heart, 13 years old forever—on the verge of love, on the edge of goodbye.

I don’t know where Varsha is now. Maybe she’s living her dream. Maybe she’s forgotten that Tuesday. Or maybe, some sleepless night, she too wonders where life took the boy who used to whisper answers during tests.

They say first love never dies.
But I think it’s more beautiful than that.

First love becomes a song that never finishes.
It plays quietly in the background of your life, even when you forget the words.

And when the world goes quiet—around 2 a.m.—you hear it again.

Just two school kids. Just a Tuesday.
Just a girl named Varsha saying, "Ashok... I like you."
And everything you never said, echoing forever in the spaces between.

Because some goodbyes are too gentle to hurt... and too deep to ever leave.