A Peace Within You

After that night at Veer's, something subtle began shifting between us. We weren't just colleagues anymore — we became friends, the kind who'd huddle over chai and grumble about impossible deadlines, confusing briefs, or bosses who thought "urgent" was a personality trait.

Some days, Myra would dramatically announce she was quitting to become a florist in Manali. Veer kept a running list of every client email that made him question capitalism. And Riya? She became the unofficial therapist of the group — equal parts empathy and eye-rolls.

As for Kabir... it was different. I don't know what it was exactly — not yet. But we started talking more. Regularly. Almost every night. Sometimes about nothing at all, sometimes about things that made the rest of the world feel quiet.

It wasn't dramatic or romantic—nothing like the Bollywood films we grew up watching, where everything is declared with songs and dramatic monologues. But it felt intentional. Quietly unfolding, like monsoon clouds gathering before the first rain.

We still weren't exactly friends—not in the way I was with Myra or Veer or Nishant, where everything was loud laughter and shared secrets over cutting chai. And yet, there was something about our silences. Comfortable. Familiar. Like the pause between two familiar ragas.

He never tried to talk to me in front of others. At work, he barely acknowledged me beyond a nod—the kind you'd give to any colleague passing by the water cooler. But every time I stepped out for a smoke, he showed up. As if we were synced somehow—two strangers tied together by the shared rhythm of ash and silence, like street musicians who've learned each other's beats.

On Wednesday, we found ourselves at the terrace again.

The sky was turning a soft orange, painting the chaos of Mumbai in gentle hues. The city hummed far below us—auto-rickshaws honking, vendors calling out, the distant sound of a train pulling into Andheri station. This was our hour, when the corporate world took a breath and the real city came alive.

Kabir lit my cigarette without asking, like he always did now.

He leaned back against the wall, looking tired but not saying anything. His sleeves were rolled up, and I noticed a small scar near his wrist—probably from childhood, probably from climbing too many compound walls like every boy does.

After a while, he broke the silence. "You know what I've been thinking? Food tastes different after 2 AM. Better somehow."

I chuckled, tapping ash over the edge. "Oh God, yes. Maggi with extra masala. Pizza that's been sitting in the fridge. Those terrible but amazing rolls from the tapri outside our PG. Midnight is when junk food becomes gourmet."

His eyes lit up with recognition. "Cold pizza at 3 AM is basically a religious experience. Better than any five-star meal."

"That's a terrible religion," I said, laughing despite myself.

"But we'd both be devoted followers, wouldn't we?" he smirked, and I realized he was right. There was something about us—the way we both understood the strange comfort of midnight hunger, the way we both found solace in small, imperfect things.

And just like that, a real conversation started. Not the polite office chatter or the surface-level small talk, but something that felt like sharing space in each other's thoughts.

Later that night, my phone buzzed. I was lying in bed, scrolling through Instagram stories of friends from college who seemed to have their lives figured out—engagements, promotions, vacation photos from Goa and Thailand.

Kabir: Top 3 movies you can rewatch endlessly? The ones that feel like comfort food for your brain?

I smiled at the specificity of the question. This wasn't just asking for favorites—this was asking for the movies that felt like home.

Me:

Jab We Met  Harry Potter series  Maze Runner 

Kabir: Solid choices. Mine:

Interstellar  Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara  The Dark Knight

Me: What a classic 'emotionally complex guy' list 😂

Kabir: You mean a 'refined, emotionally damaged man with excellent taste' list? Absolutely correct.

I found myself grinning at my phone screen like a teenager.

Me: Okay, deeper question. What's your actual comfort food? Not what you tell people, but what you actually crave when the world feels heavy?

Kabir: Pav bhaji. But it has to be street-style—the kind where the bhaji is swimming in butter and the uncle at the stall recognizes you. Fancy restaurant versions don't count. They lack soul.

Me: You've officially passed the authenticity test.

He sent a thumbs-up emoji, then another message appeared:

Kabir: Question for you. What's one thing you'd do if fear wasn't a factor? If you could silence that voice that says 'but what if...?'

I stared at the screen for a long moment. This felt different from our usual banter—heavier, more honest.

Me: Book a one-way ticket somewhere. Maybe Europe, maybe Southeast Asia. Disappear for a year and figure out who I am when nobody's watching. You?

Kabir: Stand on a stage somewhere and talk about my life. Loudly. Honestly. For once, not to hide behind small talk and professional smiles.

I paused, reading his message twice. That felt deeply personal—like he'd opened a door he usually kept locked.

But I didn't ask for more details. Because sometimes, vulnerability isn't an open wound demanding examination. It's a sentence dropped at midnight and left untouched, like a shared secret that doesn't need explanation.

The next day, everything was normal. Unremarkable.

He passed me in the hallway without a second glance—just another colleague in the maze of our office building. I passed him in the cafeteria while he was laughing with his usual group, didn't stop or wave. We were back to being workplace strangers, as if our midnight conversations existed in a parallel universe.

But that evening, as I was getting ready to leave, my phone buzzed again.

Kabir: Random question—you still watching Crash Landing on You?

Me: I finished it months ago. Then rewatched it twice because I'm apparently a masochist for beautiful love stories that make me cry.

Kabir: Sounds about right for you. Still think It's Okay to Not Be Okay beats it though?

Me: Always. That show destroyed me in the best possible way. Kim Soo-hyun's performance? Unmatched.

Kabir: And the way they handled mental health, childhood trauma... honest. Raw. It stayed with me.

Me: Finally, a show that doesn't pretend healing is pretty or linear.

Then came the message that changed everything:

Kabir: What if we rewatch it together? One episode at a time. Your place, maybe?

I stared at my phone, realizing this was crossing some invisible line we'd been dancing around.

Me: Saturday evening? I'll stock up on tissues and emotional support chocolate.

The typing indicator appeared and disappeared several times before his response came:

Kabir: Deal. I'll bring real food. And I warn you—I have commentary prepared.

Saturday evening arrived quietly, like a secret neither of us had fully acknowledged but both had been anticipating.

He showed up at exactly seven, wearing dark jeans, a navy hoodie, and a baseball cap pulled low—the universal uniform of someone trying to look casual while feeling nervous. He carried a bag with momos from that place in Bandra everyone talks about, two bottles of Thums Up, and an energy that felt both familiar and entirely new.

"Still gives me chills," he said as the opening credits rolled, settling onto the opposite end of my couch with careful distance between us.

We started Episode 1, and I was immediately transported back to the emotional intensity of Gang-tae and Mun-yeong's story. The show's visual language was stunning—every frame looked like a painting, every emotion felt magnified and raw.

"You know what I love about this show?" Kabir said during the scene where Mun-yeong first appears at the hospital. "It doesn't pretend that broken people become whole by finding love. It shows them learning to be broken together."

I looked at him, surprised by the insight. "That's exactly why it felt so real. Love doesn't fix people—it just gives them someone to be unfixed with."

We fell into a comfortable rhythm after that. Sometimes I would comment on the cinematography, sitting in complete silence as the heavier scenes played out. When the butterfly metaphor appeared, we both went quiet, absorbed in the poetry of transformation and memory.

"That scene," he said softly, "about letting beautiful things go so they can come back when they're ready... it stays with you, doesn't it?"

"Too much," I admitted. "I think about it more than I should."

Around Episode 3, I realized we'd unconsciously moved closer together on the couch—not touching, but sharing the same throw blanket, reaching for momos from the same container without awkwardness. It felt intimate in the quietest way possible.

"Do you always rewatch K-dramas?" I asked during a pause between episodes.

He gave me a soft smile, the kind that reached his eyes. "Only the ones that feel like coming home. The ones that understand something about loneliness that I can't explain in regular conversations."

That sentence lodged itself somewhere in my chest and refused to leave.

We ended the night after Episode 4—Gang-tae's breakthrough moment with his brother, Mun-yeong's recognition of her patterns. Both of us were emotionally drained in the best way.

He got up to leave, pulling his hoodie over his head, eyes slightly red from the emotional weight of what we'd watched.

"Same time next weekend?" I asked, trying to sound casual while my heart did something complicated.

He nodded once, then smiled. "If we're continuing this emotional marathon, I'm bringing proper chocolate. The expensive kind. We're going to need it."

After he left, the apartment felt different—heavier with shared experience, warmer with the memory of comfortable silence and synchronized laughter.

I realized then that K-dramas weren't just entertainment for us. They were a language we both spoke fluently—the language of beautiful sadness, of characters who were trying to figure out how to be human, of stories that didn't promise easy answers but offered the comfort of shared understanding.

In a city of twenty million people, we'd found each other through cigarette smoke and late-night texts and the mutual recognition that some connections don't need labels to be real.

They just need space to exist, quietly, in the moments between everything else.