उसके घर से दूर नहीं है मेरा घर, पर रस्ते में ज़माना पड़ता है! <br /><br />Her house isn’t far from mine; the birds could glide the distance between our terraces in a single slow wing-beat. Yet on the road a whole era unrolls—rickshaw bells, gossiping chai-stalls, mango trees and monsoon clouds arguing in bass thunder. <br /><br />Each evening I traverse that corridor with the impatience of a lover and the devotion of a pilgrim, carrying the small lamp of our love cupped inside both palms. <br /><br />Traffic lights blink like arrhythmic heartbeats, aunties whisper their editorials, and the universe adds extra seconds to test the stamina of romance, but I collect them like pearls for your necklace. <br /><br />We are two pages of the same diary separated by a thumb-worn bookmark called society, yet ink keeps seeping across the crease, spelling a relationship written in defiant whispers. <br /><br />What is a mile to romance when the soul has already arrived? <br />Between your veranda and my balcony lies an invisible gulmohar avenue where promises bloom out of thin air, scattering petals onto auto-rickshaw roofs below. <br /><br />Some evenings the distance shrinks to a sigh when the wind carries the coriander scent of your kitchen; other nights it stretches to mythology, yet our longing threads the constellations like fairy lights refusing to switch off. <br /><br />And when at last you open the gate, the clocks surrender, the crowd fades, and the city bows out, leaving only us—love, relationship, romance—and the sweet knowledge that I would cross a thousand eternities just to hear you say my name, again and again, no pause.