It was the first Tuesday of monsoon. The rain came down hard in Delhi, knocking on the rooftops with knuckles of thunder. I was alone in my flat, a mug of chai cooling on the windowsill, trying to drown out the storm outside and the quieter, more persistent one in my mind.
That’s when the doorbell rang.
I wasn’t expecting anyone.
I checked my phone: no messages, no delivery notifications. I waited a moment, half hoping it was just a mistake, a neighbour’s visitor confused by identical doors. But the bell rang again, longer this time.
When I opened the door, a man stood there soaked to the bone, wearing a beige trench coat darkened by the rain, eyes wide like he’d seen a ghost.
Except he looked more like he’d found one.
“You’re… Naina?” he asked, voice trembling.
“Yes,” I said cautiously. “Who are you?”
“I’m… I don’t know if you’ll believe me.” He ran his hand through wet hair. “But I remember you. From another life.”
I didn’t shut the door right then, though a saner person might’ve.
“Come inside,” I said instead. “You look like you’ll catch a fever.”
He introduced himself as Aaryan. Late twenties. Architect. That much he remembered clearly. But then, the story turned surreal.
“We were together,” he said, fingers curled around the warmth of the chai I gave him. “Not in this life, maybe. But… in another one. It sounds crazy, but I remember the sound of your laughter. The curve of your handwriting. The scar on your left ankle.”
My blood ran cold.
“How do you know about my ankle?”
He looked down, ashamed. “I remember pulling you out of a lake. You almost drowned. We were young, maybe seventeen. And later you slipped on rocks and cut your ankle.”
I didn’t say anything. The scar existed—but the story didn’t.
My scar came from a childhood fall in the bathroom. No lake. No drowning. No him.
Yet the way he looked at me—it was like someone who had loved me once, long and hard.On our six-month anniversary, he took me to Udaipur.
We stayed at a quiet haveli by the lake.
“Déjà vu?” I teased.
“More like a full circle,” he said.
That night, he gave me a ring—silver, antique, with an emerald stone. My breath hitched.
“I saw this in a dream,” I whispered.
“I found it in an old box in my father’s attic,” he said. “Something told me it was yours.”
He slipped it on my finger. Perfect fit.
We kissed under the moonlight, the air thick with the scent of jasmine.
For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t just living my story—
I was continuing it.
“I started dreaming about you a month ago,” he said. “And every night the dreams became more vivid. You reading poetry on a windowsill, wearing anklets. You calling me ‘Aaru’ with that half-annoyed tone you used when I forgot things. I… I thought I was losing my mind.”
“And you just decided to find me?”
“I saw your face in a newspaper article last week. Something about your short story being shortlisted for a literary prize.”
That was true. I had made it to the top ten.
“And the address?” I asked.
“I asked the publishing house. Said I wanted to send a fan letter. I’m sorry—I know that’s not right. But something told me… I had to find you.”
I should’ve called him a lunatic and sent him away.
Instead, I told him to stay the night.
Not because I believed his story—but because something in me wanted to.
That night, I dreamt of a boy pulling me out of a lake, his hands trembling as he said, “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
I woke up sweating.
The next day, Aaryan was already making tea. My tea—ginger-heavy, less sugar, a pinch of crushed cardamom. I never told him how I liked it.
“You okay?” he asked.
“You pulled me out of a lake,” I whispered.
He nodded, relief spreading across his face like sunlight breaking fog.
“You remember?”
“I dreamt it,” I said. “Just like you did.”
Over the next week, strange things began to happen.
I found an old notebook I never remembered owning, but it had my handwriting and poetry I’d never written before—about a boy with charcoal eyes and a rain-drenched coat.
My old Spotify playlists suddenly had songs I never added. One of them was titled “For Aaru.”
Our dreams became more vivid. Shared. We’d wake up describing the same moment—feeding ducks by a lake, kissing beneath a gulmohar tree, arguing about who gets the last momo.
We decided to test it.
One night, he dreamt of a hidden photograph behind the loose floorboard of his mother’s old house in Dehradun. The next morning, he drove there.
He called me an hour later, breathless.
“It’s there,” he said. “The photo. Us. Young. Wet hair. Anklets. It’s real.”
They call it cryptomnesia, when the brain recalls something and mistakes it for new memory.
Or perhaps it was something older. A love so old it refused to fade.
I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my friends. What could I say?
“Oh, by the way, I’m dating a man from another lifetime.”
But I knew.
I knew when he tucked my hair behind my ears with the same gentleness I remembered in my dream.
I knew when he asked me if I still wrote sad poetry at 2 AM.
And I knew when he said, “If you ask me to leave, I will. But I’ve waited too many lifetimes for this.”
On our six-month anniversary, he took me to Udaipur.
We stayed at a quiet haveli by the lake.
“Déjà vu?” I teased.
“More like a full circle,” he said.
That night, he gave me a ring—silver, antique, with an emerald stone. My breath hitched.
“I saw this in a dream,” I whispered.
“I found it in an old box in my father’s attic,” he said. “Something told me it was yours.”
He slipped it on my finger. Perfect fit.
We kissed under the moonlight, the air thick with the scent of jasmine.
For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t just living my story—
I was continuing it.
And maybe that’s the truth about love:
Some strangers are just stories you’ve forgotten to finish.
And when they come knocking—
you open the door.
React
