It was 11:55 p.m. when he stepped out of Moscow’s Lefortovo Metro Station. His whole body ached; his legs trembled. His eyes were sleepy. He felt surrounded by unknown souls, all in a hurry to reach their destinations. He looked at the disappearing faces for a while. He wished he could speak to the person he loved most — two thousand kilometres away — without using any means of communication. He knew such self-talk was futile, yet Mirza Ghalib’s verse echoed in his mind: “To console the heart, Ghalib, this thought is a pleasant one.” It was just a short walk from the metro to his room, but it always turned into a conversation with an invisible person — invisible to the world, but not to him. Whenever he started speaking in the middle of the night, the world around him seemed to freeze; the pulse of life halted for…
