I jolted awake to the shrill ring of a telephone—not my smartphone, but an actual landline with a rotary dial. The unfamiliar sound had me scrambling upright in a bed I didn't recognize, in a room painted a color I would never choose.
"Hello?" I croaked into the receiver.
"Are you still sleeping? Class starts in an hour. I'm not covering for you again." It was Nimrat's voice—Nimrat, who hadn't spoken to me in three months since our breakup.
"Nimrat?" My voice caught on her name.
"Who else would it be? Hurry up. I'll meet you at the south gate." She hung up before I could respond.
I stared at the phone, then at the room around me. Posters of bands I didn't recognize adorned the walls. Textbooks were stacked on a desk in the corner—engineering subjects, just like in my real life, but the editions were different. A calendar on the wall read April 15, 2015. Three years in the past.
When I finally gathered the courage to look in the mirror over the dresser, it was my face that stared back—slightly younger, with longer hair than I'd worn in years, but unmistakably me.
Somehow, I had woken up in a different world—one where Nimrat and I were still together, still in engineering college, still...happy?
My hands trembled as I got dressed, finding clothes in the closet that were mine but not quite—styles I used to wear, brands I used to favor. In the wallet on the nightstand, I found my ID card and a photo booth strip of Nimrat and me, laughing together.
Outside, Mumbai looked the same but different. The construction site that had become a high-rise in my world was still just scaffolding here. The coffee shop where Kaushal and I had spent countless evenings discussing my breakup was a bookstore instead.
I made my way to campus on autopilot, my feet remembering a route my mind had tried to forget. And there she was at the south gate—Nimrat, her hair long again, wearing the green kurta I had always loved, scrolling through a phone that looked ancient by my standards.
"Finally," she said when she spotted me, rising on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. "I thought you'd never get here."
I stood frozen, the casual affection hitting me like a physical blow.
"What's wrong with you today?" She peered at my face. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
In a way, I had. The ghost of what we used to be.
"I'm... just tired," I managed. "Bad dreams."
She linked her arm through mine, the familiar scent of her jasmine perfume enveloping me. "Well, wake up. We have Sharma's presentation today, and you know how he gets if anyone looks sleepy."
As she led me through the campus, my mind raced. Was this real? Had I somehow traveled back in time? Or sideways, into some parallel universe where we never broke up? Or was this just an elaborate dream, my subconscious torturing me with visions of happiness lost?
If it was a dream, it was the most detailed one I'd ever had. The weight of textbooks in my backpack, the humidity in the air, the pressure of Nimrat's hand in mine—it all felt real.
In class, I struggled to focus as Professor Sharma droned on about structural integrity. Instead, I studied Nimrat from the corner of my eye, noting the differences and similarities to the woman who had walked away from me three months ago in my world. This Nimrat laughed more easily. She didn't have the shadow behind her eyes that I'd noticed in the weeks before our breakup.
At lunch, another shock: Kaushal joined us, dropping casually into a seat across from me.
"Did you finish the lab report?" he asked, stealing a samosa from my plate—just as he always had.
In my world, Kaushal and I had only recently repaired our friendship, months after the breakup that had initially driven us apart. But here, the three of us appeared to be exactly what we once were—inseparable.
As the day progressed, I pieced together the differences in this reality. In this world, Nimrat's parents had never arranged her marriage. In this world, my conflict with Kaushal had been a minor disagreement, quickly resolved. In this world, we were still the "best couple in coaching," as we had once been called.
By evening, as Nimrat and I walked hand-in-hand toward her hostel, I was no closer to understanding what had happened or why. But I had made a decision. If this was a dream, I would enjoy it while it lasted. If it was something more—a second chance, a glimpse of an alternate path—I wouldn't waste it.
"What are you thinking about?" Nimrat asked, nudging me gently. "You've been strange all day."
I stopped walking and turned to face her. In my world, I had spent three months rehearsing all the things I wished I had said before she left. Here, I had a chance to say them.
"I'm thinking about how much I love you," I said simply. "And how I never want to take that for granted."
She blinked, surprised by the intensity in my voice. "Where is this coming from?"
"Let's just say I had a vision of a world without you," I said. "And it's not a world I want to live in."
She smiled, that same smile that had haunted my dreams for months. "You're such a dramatic sometimes. I'm not going anywhere."
As I leaned in to kiss her—a kiss that in my world was three months in the past—my phone buzzed in my pocket. Not the strange, outdated phone I'd found in this world, but my actual smartphone. I pulled back, confused, and reached for it.
The screen showed a text from an unknown number: *It's Nimrat. Can we talk?*
The world around me blurred, the campus dissolving like mist, Nimrat's concerned face fading before my eyes. I jolted awake—really awake this time—in my familiar bedroom in Virar, 2018, clutching my phone with its life-changing message.
For a moment, I mourned the loss of that other world, where we had never fallen apart. But as I stared at the text message glowing in the darkness, I realized something: perhaps the dream had been a message. A reminder of what we had been. A glimpse of what we could be again.
My fingers trembled as I typed a reply: *Yes. When and where?*
Three days later, we met at the coffee shop near Churchgate station. She looked different—her hair was shorter, her eyes carried the weight of the months we'd spent apart. But when she smiled hesitantly across the table, I saw a flash of the Nimrat from my dream.
"Thank you for meeting me," she said. "I've been thinking about us, about what happened..."
I listened as she explained about her parents' expectations, about the pressure she'd been under, about how breaking up had seemed like the only option at the time. As she spoke, I thought about that other world—the world where we had somehow avoided these obstacles—and wondered if there was a way to build a bridge between that reality and this one.
When she finished speaking, she looked at me expectantly, vulnerability written across her face.
"I had a dream about you," I said quietly. "About us, actually. About a world where we never broke up."
"Was it a good world?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
I reached across the table, not quite touching her hand but letting mine rest close enough that she could take it if she wanted to.
"It was," I said. "But I think this world could be even better. Because in this one, we know what it's like to lose each other. And that makes finding our way back all the more precious."
She hesitated for just a moment before interlacing her fingers with mine. It wasn't the same as in my dream—we were both more cautious, more scarred—but it was real.
Later that evening, I called Kaushal to tell him everything—about the dream, about meeting Nimrat, about the fragile new beginning we were considering.
"You know what this reminds me of?" he said after listening patiently. "That night we went looking for ice cream at midnight. You were so lost then. But maybe you needed to be lost to find your way here."
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I had needed to wake up in a different world—even if only in my dreams—to understand what I wanted in this one.
As I drifted to sleep that night, I thought about worlds within worlds, about paths taken and not taken, about how sometimes the longest route home is the one that teaches you to appreciate the journey. In the morning, I would wake up in this imperfect, real world and continue writing our story—not the one from my dream, but one that was uniquely ours, with all its complications and possibilities.
And that, I decided, was a world worth fighting for.
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