Sins of our skin

People imagine love begins with a spark, with magic, with the universe suddenly deciding that two lives must collide. Mine didn’t begin like that. Mine began quietly.

I am an old man now—old enough to know the difference. My hands shake sometimes and my hair has turned grey, but when I speak of Naina, my memories do not move slowly like an old man’s memories should. They run. They laugh. They sound like the voice of a young man in his twenties who still believed life would be simple.

I met her at work. Not in a way worth telling at dinner tables. There was no dramatic moment, no sudden collision in a hallway, no moment that demanded attention. She was simply there—another colleague, another face among many. One afternoon our manager introduced us. We exchanged polite smiles, shook hands, and returned to our work as if nothing important had happened.

And maybe nothing had. Not then.

Days passed in the ordinary rhythm of office life—emails, meetings, deadlines, and the quiet hum of people working at their desks. Slowly, without either of us noticing when it started, we began talking more. At first it was only about work. Small questions. Short conversations. But those conversations started lasting a little longer than they needed to.

Somewhere along the way, we became friends.

There was something strange about how easy it felt. When she spoke to me, I didn’t feel the need to impress her or search for clever words. When she stood beside me, silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. We could simply stand there, working side by side, without rushing to fill the quiet space between us.

I didn’t check my phone at night thinking of her. But somehow, mornings felt incomplete until I saw her. No racing heartbeat, no restless thoughts that kept me awake at night. What I felt was quieter than that. It was a kind of comfort—like sitting in a familiar room you didn’t even realize you had missed.

Soon we began working together more often. Shared tasks turned into shared conversations. Small smiles appeared between long hours of work. And somehow, the days felt shorter when she was around. Work felt lighter.

I didn’t think of her as love. I didn’t think of her as destiny. I only thought of her as someone I could be completely myself with—and at that age, I didn’t yet understand how rare that was.

But I still remember the first time our hands touched. We went out that day with a few colleagues. It wasn’t anything special—just one of those casual outings people plan after a long week at work. There was laughter, shared food, tired smiles, and the simple joy of being outside the routine of office walls. Yet time behaved strangely that evening. It seemed to move faster than usual, as if it already knew the memory it was quietly creating for me.

By the time night had settled over the city, everyone began heading home. One by one, our colleagues disappeared into different streets, different rides, different directions. Soon it was just the two of us standing, realizing we were heading the same way. The same metro line. The same direction home.

It was already late—close to eleven. The metro station was still crowded, filled with the restless noise of a city that never truly sleeps. When the train arrived, we stepped inside with the others and managed to find two seats next to each other. She sat beside me.

She looked tired.

Somewhere between two stations, it happened quietly—so quietly that neither of us noticed the exact moment. Slowly, without realizing it, she leaned against my shoulder. There was no intention behind it, no awareness. Just exhaustion finding a place to rest.

I froze.

For a moment I forgot how to breathe properly. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I didn’t even dare to think too loudly. I just sat there, still and careful, afraid that the smallest movement might wake her or pull her away. So I stayed exactly as I was and let her rest. And that moment Woh meri kandhe par halki si thehar gayi…,

jaise thak chand raat ki baahon mein so jata hai…

itni halka sa, ehsaas tha uska wazan,

par mere andar jo mehsoos hua… woh behad gehra tha.

That was the first moment I fell in love—without knowing that I was falling. The first moment my heart understood something my mind had not yet learned.

Even now, years later, whenever I think about that night, I don’t remember the crowd in the metro or the noise of the city rushing past the windows. I don’t remember the stations or how long the journey lasted.

I remember only this—

Her beside me.

The next morning, everything was the same.

The office smelled the same. The desks stood where they always had. People spoke in the same tired voices about deadlines and meetings. And she arrived the way she always did—quietly, normally, as if the night before had meant nothing at all.

She greeted me the same way she always had. A small smile. A simple nod.

Nothing more.

She didn’t mention the metro.

And neither did I.

Yet something inside me had shifted.

Even without looking, I knew when her chair was empty. I noticed where she sat without looking in that direction. I noticed the soft sound of her laughter when something on her screen amused her. When she stood up from her desk, I would know. When she stepped away for a while, the space around me felt strangely emptier.

Nothing dramatic had changed between us.

Our friendship slowly grew more comfortable. Conversations stretched longer without effort, and silences between us no longer felt awkward or incomplete. One day, without either of us really deciding it, my chair shifted closer to hers. No one mentioned it. No one questioned it. And somehow, it simply stayed there.

Comfort settled between us as if it had always known the way.

Whenever boredom found me during long work hours, I would lean toward her desk and say something silly—some pointless joke just to see her smile. And her smile… it stayed with me longer than it should have. Our jokes were small and foolish, things no one else would have found funny. But they were ours, and in those little moments our comfort grew deeper.

Every evening, when the workday ended, we walked out of the office together few time I was just waiting to without knowing my self for her to walk out together. The road outside would split at a certain point—one path toward her room, the other toward mine. Until we reached that corner, we walked side by side.

Those walks carried their own quiet magic.

Sometimes we joked so much that we forgot how tired we were. Sometimes we argued playfully about the most ridiculous things—movies, food, music—pretending to be serious until one of us laughed first. Occasionally we even fought a little, stubbornly defending our pointless opinions as we walked along the roadside, only to laugh about it minutes later.

And some days we didn’t speak much at all.

Silence simply walked beside us.

Yet even in that quiet, there was understanding. A strange, gentle closeness that didn’t need words to exist.

And still, I did not call it love. I let it exist without a name.

Now as I’m growing older, those moments don’t feel like distant memories. They return as feelings—warm, familiar, and unexpectedly alive. I remember us as two best friends laughing, walking through ordinary evenings, sharing quiet silences.

And somewhere inside those ordinary days, I was slowly falling for her without even realizing it.

Looking back now, it feels strange to understand what I was living through at the time. The comfort I felt with her, the ease of being near her, the quiet pull that kept drawing me closer—it all existed long before I knew what it meant.

Back then, I didn’t question it. I didn’t try to analyze it or give it meaning.

I simply lived inside it.

There was no fear in those days. No expectations pressing on us. No need to define what we were becoming.

She was simply someone whose presence softened the world around me. Someone who made long days feel lighter. Someone beside whom time moved more gently.

Only now do I understand what that feeling was!.

Love does not always arrive announcing itself. It does not always come with grand gestures or dramatic moments.

Sometimes it enters quietly—disguised as friendship, dressed as comfort—asking only to be felt, not understood.

Those were the days before love had learned its name.

Some moments from that time were so small that they should have disappeared. Yet they stretched endlessly in my memory—minutes that felt like hours simply because she was there.

My mind should have been empty, but instead it was filled with a strange anticipation. The soft tapping of her fingers on the desk, the small pauses in her voice, the quiet laugh she let out during the call—every tiny detail felt enormous.

Time slowed.

Sometimes we lingered near the coffee machine longer than necessary, pretending to check our phones or refill our mugs. But the truth was simple: we were both waiting for the same small moment.

A quick greeting. A short conversation. Even a simple “good morning.”

Love, in its truest form, is a simple thing.

It does not always arrive loudly. It does not demand attention.

It comes quietly, at the moment when you are ready to feel it—even if you don’t yet know that you are.

But somehow, they always felt like the best part of the day I was in love with her friendship that I don’t want to end.