“He got up slowly, not bothering to curse himself for forgetting the stop where he had to disembark. He was not used to leaving things behind; he wondered how the bus stop escaped.”

“Not watching the path where his legs took him, he walked on because he knew he had to walk ahead, leaving his past behind.”

“He noticed that she threw away the crumbled bus ticket on the street as soon as she got down. He picked it up and put it in his pocket along with his own a memorabilia of their first date together, just like a strand of her hair he would find later on his shirt and the broken pen cap that she would go on to search in the laboratory and so many other such small things which he would collect.”

“Love?' he asked himself, giving no sense of recognition for that word in the dictionary of his mind. It was the only battle he had lost in life, the only thing that had been snatched away from him, before he could even claim it.”

“He did not have anything on him except her thoughts, except the good times he had once shared and the bad times he so desperately wanted to forget.”

“He stopped his act to take a snapshot of that instant he would so treasure- her delightful laughter that could make him do anything, anything at all, in the world and beyond!”

“Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.”