But even if we knew that perhaps we saw entirely different rainbows, even then there was an inkling, some fire, that we had known each other for much longer than that first time we really spoke, under the sickening white tubelight light in a hospital corridor. 

And then again, almost five years later, we both sat, miles and miles apart, in the middle of the night, again thinking, how differently we both experience the world. You on your side of the phone, perhaps on your bed, me sitting cross-legged in my balcony watching the flashing reds-yellows of passing cars and streetlamps. And then we wondered, could anyone else on the planet -- two other girls, be doing what we are? Maybe they saw different colours, but weren’t there too many people on the planet, for it to be impossible that there weren’t two other girls - one sitting on her bed, the other watching reds-yellows of passing cars and streetlamps, who were also wondering about us? 

And then there is the red leaves of the tree when you turn around KFC towards our PG, red for you, red for me, who even knows what red is, but we would notice when the season came for them to change colour, walking down the road towards where white smoke would drift into grey clouds, white and grey for you, white and grey for me, but who knows what white and grey are. 

And somewhere, in this immense loneliness of having a rainbow that I only I know, there was another girl across the country wondering the exact same thing, maybe at the exact same time, and maybe then we wondered about each other too, and then, it couldn’t have been long before we met. 

And somehow, when these two girls met, it didn’t matter that they saw different colours or words meant different things to them, they had already wondered about each other long before they met. They’d already known each other for a long, long time. 

The universe must have been waiting for us to meet in that hospital corridor with sickening white tubelight light. 
- Shikha