Lilac Lines

Chapter 1: Aman

Soulmates, Aman always thought soulmates were a myth, a story they made up in the folklores. And even if they existed, he assumed that soulmate marks were a myth.

Not that he hadn't seen a mark. When he was about five, he had spotted a blue line that almost looked like a wave of an ocean on his mother's wrist. And when he had inquired about the mark, she had covered it with her bangles and shrugged it off. That day, when he had spoken of it in the presence of his father, his parents had fought, so that's why Aman concluded that soulmates didn't exist because soulmates are supposed to love each other, not fight.

When Rajni turned 11, and he was 10, she had said that she hoped she got one and had spent her entire birthday checking her body for a soulmate mark. She was disappointed when there was no mark on her body, only confirming Aman's theory. Rajni was a person who deserved a soulmate more than anyone else, according to him.

But when he turned eleven, it hurt. His left ankle started burning, and he woke up, tears brimming in his eyes. He turned on the lights and almost shouted when he saw two lilac lines threading on his ankle intertwined in a beautiful pattern.

But then, life happened with Aman. He realized that his heartbeat became faster not when Kusum smiled at him, but when Jai did, he blushed when Sahil complimented his skills of solving Physics problems. Unlike the rest of the school who crushed on the beautiful Aditi Mam, he had a tiny crush on their Raghav Sir.

He knew it was wrong. Holy shit, was that messed up; he wasn't supposed to fall for men. When he heard that Sahil was beaten by the local bullies and they called him "f*g" for kissing a guy as a dare, he decided that he would hide his deepest secret to himself, and would take it to his grave, well, not grave, but the cremation ground.

He met a lot of girls in school, college, and at the school, he taught at and prayed to all the powers in the heavens that if the soulmate mark was to burn once again, let it be for a girl, let his body's messed up hormones be proved wrong. But maybe not all prayers are answered.

His soulmate mark burnt when he was on the banks of Ganga, and he saw a man forget his phone on the stairs of the ghats near him. He picked it up and ran to give it to him.

"Excuse me!" He yelled over the Sandhya artis that had just started but wasn't loud enough. He ran as fast as his legs could carry and finally reached the man.

He tapped on his shoulder, and his ankle started burning. He yelped in pain, not of the burn, but the hurt that his soulmate was a man.

Hazel brown eyes looked in his own, and then an arm held his own as he helped him walk to a quieter place.

"You," He mumbled, looking at the man's face. He was his age, maybe a year or two older, and deliciously handsome. The flames and the lights around the ghat made his brown eyes and the nose ring flicker. He was wearing a white T-shirt with a rainbow on it, a green jacket and printed jeans.

"Me," He said.

The two sat in silence, each looking at the other, trying to understand the situation and its gravity and at the same time, its beauty.

"Kartik, Kartik Singh," He smiled the most beautiful smile Aman had ever seen, second to Hritik Roshan's.

"Aman Tripathi," He replied.

"Do you hate me?" Kartik asked after a few seconds of looking at him.

Aman was confused.

"I could feel hatred though the soul mate mark, always loathing and anxiety and other such dark emotions,"

"I, I am so sorry," He stammered, trying to find words to explain his negative feelings.

"I don't hate you," Aman sighed and decided to come out clean. If Kartik wants to break the bond, then at least he will have a valid reason, but Aman could never bring himself to break his heart.

"My Maa has a soulmate mark, and she hides it because her love was never completed and that makes me fear my mark. Also, I have never seen a gay man be happy here, in Allahabad, and I am stuck here, so I cannot fully embrace my homosexuality," He winced at his own words, and Kartik stared at him, grasping the explanation.

"Do you feel my emotions?" Kartik asked after a few seconds.

"I tried not to pay any attention to the negative emotions you felt,"

"They were mostly towards my father, who thought that only f*gs have soulmate marks and that only f*gs make out with men. He caught me with a guy some three years back and beat me that I had a fracture in my arm."

Aman thought of the excruciating pain he had felt from the soulmate mark, three years ago. Only the strongest emotions could be expressed via the mark, and he had usually felt love, peace, fear, and pain via his mark.

"Where do you have your, umm, mark? I was always curious if we share the same mark or just the emotions and the pain," He asked, to change the topic,

"My lower back, it's a pattern of two lilac lines intertwined."

"Same, but on my left ankle," The two looked at each other and burst out laughing while the Sandhya artis continued in the background, covering their laughter.

The laughter that was throwing away all those years of self-loathing, hurt, guilt, embarrassment. Aman wished the moment to freeze, for Kartik to be there with him as the priests prayed to the Ganga for love and peace to thrive over the world, to fill the emptiness that he had carved in his heart, yet when Kartik decided to leave, he waved goodbye.

The next time the soulmate mark burnt was when three years later, Kartik came back to Allahabad and visited him in the school and watched him as he conducted the lecture, and they kissed in one of the empty classrooms.

Chapter 2: Kartik

For Kartik, soulmate marks were a memory associated with his Maa. Every night, she would tell him stories of princes and princesses, of merchants and lady servants, of army chiefs and the royal dancers, who had the soul marks and would fight the destiny and people around them so that they would get their happy endings.

"But why can't the army chief fall in love with a soldier?"

"Because many kings didn't allow women in their army," She would brush away his unruly hair from his eyes and forehead and smile softly at him.

"Then they can fall in love with the male soldiers, or just have women in their armies?" He would ask innocently, and she would giggle, telling him that his "revolutionary" (a big word for his six-year-old self) ideas were not welcomed in her fairytale stories, but maybe they would be welcomed in the real world hopefully.

Time passed and it was Kartik's birthday. At sharp midnight, he felt a burn in his lower back. Pain, was not a stranger to Kartik, for the last four years, since Maa had left them, Baba had seen it fit to punish him, before Maa's death, she at the receiving end of his beatings.

Kartik covered his mouth as the pain made it hard not to scream or cry. He rushed into the bathroom, threw away his T-shirt, and struggled to adjust to the small mirror to see his back's reflection to check for burn marks. After some struggling, he managed to see two lilac lines on his lower back, in a sort of a twisted pattern.

"What is that?" Devika gasped in surprised as he showed her the lines the next day. "I don't know," He shrugged.

"It a soul mark," Devika declared three days later."Rubbish, they are a myth!" He scoffed at his friend, but she shook her head.

"I asked my Maa, and she said that if you get a mark on your eleventh birthday, it is a soul mark, through this mark, you can feel the strongest emotions your soulmate feels towards the mark and you and when you meet the soulmate for the first time and acknowledge your love for your soulmate, the mark burns," She said in one breath. Kartik touched his lower back, the mark hidden away under his school uniform.

Four days after understanding the mark, he made the mistake of undressing infront of his father, revealing the mark to him. He had received the most painful beating that night, and this was after he had dyed his hair blue, where he had almost broken a rib.

"You vile, dirty pig! First, you start behaving like a girl and now bring this obscenity in my house!' This phrase made its appearance so many times that Kartik had lost the count.

A year and a half passed when he suddenly started feeling depressed as if the world had ended. He didn't realize when tears trickled down his cheek, even though Amitabh Bacchan was bashing a goon on the theater screen (he had sneaked out of the house to watch the movie at a theater hall after saving money for the screening for about three months now) He ran out of there and cried outside the theater hall. The next day, Devika made him realize that his soul mate had finally reacted to his soulmate mark.

Years passed with him falling in love with Akash, getting heartbroken, beaten to death by bullies after Akash told them he had proposed to him, Devika confessing that before he had received his mark, she was in love with him. Devika shifting to Vasant Kunj and therefore them almost losing contact (because of the confession and the awkwardness it brought with it). A month away from his twenty-seventh birthday, he left his home.

He went to Goa, got tattoos on his neck and arm (where the tattoo designer too was impressed with his soul mate mark, assuming it to be a tattoo) and got a piercing in his nose after being drunk out of his wits, lost his virginity to a foreign tourist whose name he didn't even remember, came back to Delhi, lost his job for reporting three days late to work, got a job (thanks to Devika) in a mall as a pseudo superhero fighting germs.

In this time, he felt only hatred and anger through his mark and sent only pain through. He did try to send his partner some good vibes and happiness but was feeling lonely himself.

He avoided thinking of who they were; because God forbid, it was a woman he knew he would be screwed and not in a satisfying way. So, he gave them the neutral gender and prayed to the almighty that either they should be a "he" or shouldn't come in his life, ever.

He then made a trip to Allahabad to visit his ailing Nani, some days after his 30th birthday. She insisted he should pay a visit to the Ganga ghat and attend the Sandhya artis, even though he was an atheist.

He watched the water flow, washing away dirt (literally and figuratively), and he wondered whether the water could wash away the anguish and pain that he was feeling. It wasn't that he was unhappy at this point in his life. He had ended a three-month-old relationship last year and had hooked up with guys since then and wasn't guilty or upset about it, he had friends, and he was happy but, the emotions from the mark affected him. He tried to tell his soulmate that everything is ok, but they would never listen; they would still hate the mark and hate him, and he failed to understand why.

He clicked a few pictures of the ghat when a small boy came to him asking for alms, and he kept the phone on the stairs to search for his wallet in his pockets, and after he left, Kartik too left as the Sandhya artis started. He climbed a few steps when he felt a tap on his shoulder and a sharp burn in his lower back. He turned to face the man, who had yelped in pain.

He looked into the dark brown eyes of a man a little shorter than him, and seeing that he couldn't stand straight because of his ankle, he helped him walk to a quieter place.

"You," He mumbled, looking at him. The man looked maybe a year or two younger and was very cute. He was looking at Kartik as if he was studying him.

"Me," Kartik replied, not knowing what to say, but knew that he was speaking of the soulmate mark.

They sat in companionable silence, looking at each other, trying to as the situation and its gravity and its beauty slowing started unfolding itself.

"Kartik, Kartik Singh," He smiled to introduced himself.

"Aman Tripathi," Came the reply.

The thought of the hatred through the mark snapped in his head, and before he could stop the question from escaping him, he asked, "Do you hate me?"

Aman looked at him in confusion.

"I could feel hatred though the soul mate mark, always loathing and anxiety and other such dark emotions," he explained.

"I, I am so sorry," He stammered. "I don't hate you, it's just," Aman sighed. Kartik prayed that he shouldn't say anything about breaking the bond. He could feel so much at peace right now, looking at Aman, and he didn't want this to be broken for anything in the world.

"My Maa has a soulmate mark, and she hides it because her love was never completed, and that makes me fear my mark. Also, I have never seen a gay man be happy here, in Allahabad, and I am stuck here, so I cannot fully embrace my homosexuality," He winced at his own words.

"Do you feel my emotions?" Kartik wondered out loud.

"I tried not to pay any attention to the negative emotions you felt,"

"They were mostly towards my father, who thought that only f*gs have soulmate marks and that only f*gs make out with men. He caught me with a guy some three years back and hit him so hard that I had a fracture in my arm." He explained himself, not wanting to hide anything from Aman.

Aman looked at him for a few seconds and nodded.

"Where do you have your, umm, mark? I was always curious if we share the same mark or just the emotions and the pain" He asked, and Kartik knew he was changing the topic.

"My lower back, it's a pattern of two lilac lines intertwined."

"Same, but on my left ankle," The two looked at each other and burst out laughing, while the Sandhya artis continued in the background, covering their laughter.

The laughter was throwing away all those years of self-loathing, hurt, guilt, and emptiness. Kartik looked at Aman, his eyes twinkling and wished for the moment to never end, for Aman to be there with him as the priests prayed to the Ganga for love and peace to thrive over the world, to fill the emptiness that he had harbored for so long. But Kartik had to leave and, failing to find words to express farewell and the wish to meet soon enough, he asked for Aman's contact number and, simply waved a goodbye.

But after that, they expressed love and peace to each other. Whenever one was upset, the other would be one call away from helping the other out. But Kartik realized he wanted more, so after three years, Kartik went back to Allahabad and visited Aman at the school he taught and watched him as he conducted the lecture. They kissed in one of the empty classrooms and promised each other the happy ending they deserved, even though his lower back and Aman's ankle were hurting.