Across the Universe
A love story.
Who was he?
I could have sworn I had never seen him before, but there was something achingly familiar about him.
“Di, are you coming?” my younger sister, Sal, asked, tugging at my dupatta. “The mehendiwali aunty has come, Mumma has been calling nonstop”
“Yeah,” I replied, though my eyes were still locked on him.
He was looking around, almost like he was searching for someone. Was he lost? Was he at this hotel for some other wedding?
Finally, across the lobby, our eyes met. A shiver ran down my spine like a current. I couldn’t look away—and clearly, neither could he.
Then he waved, a small, hesitant wave, accompanied by a small, hesitant smile. A crooked smile, just one corner of his lips twisted up.
I found myself raising my hand to return his wave.
“Who is that, Di?”
“I.. um don’t know”
“Is he one of Nikhil’s friends?”
I shook my head, eyes still on this stranger, as Sal tugged towards the elevators. I had to go, my mother, no, my entire family was waiting in the large suite for my mehendi ceremony. Every aunt from both sides, my fiancé, Nikhil’s mother and all her relatives, they were all waiting.
This is silly, I thought, breaking eye contact. I let my sister pull me into the elevator, but as the doors closed, I saw him standing, just there, watching me. There was something in his expression. Something I couldn’t place.
I knew him from somewhere; I felt it in my gut. But from where?
He wasn’t Nikhil’s friend. Definitely didn’t work at my law firm. I’m in HR, it’s literally my job to know every employee.
So, why was he so familiar?
Thankfully, the day swept me up and carried me along. Nikhil and our crazy cousins turned the afternoon into a full-blown dance party—mental, considering we had the sangeet later, which went on till 3 a.m.
Just before I reached my room, my heels in hand, dupatta abandoned, Nikhil caught up with me. He was carrying a rectangular box in his hand.
“This is for you. But don’t open it till tomorrow morning— just before you become mine—officially” He kissed me and headed towards his room.
I placed the box by my bed. I couldn’t wait to open it.
Exhausted, Sal and I changed and collapsed into bed. My wedding was tomorrow—I needed to look every bit the fresh, rosy bride.
Unfortunately, I just couldn’t sleep; every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face.
Which was weird because I am head over heels in love with Nikhil. No doubt, no second-guessing. We’d been together three years now, and I couldn’t wait to live the rest of my life with him. Sure, we would fight. I was a very practical person, saw things for what they were, and he was a dreamer, always believing in a better tomorrow, against all odds.
But we had found a balance, a sense of understanding between us, which was filled with love.
So why was this man’s face stuck in my head?
I slipped out of bed and sneaked out of my room, making sure Sal didn’t wake up.
I just… had to know.
I checked the lobby, the restaurant, and the café.
Why I thought he’d just be walking around the hotel at 4 a.m., I have no idea.
But somehow, I felt like he was out there—waiting.
And he was.
I found him standing at the edge of the pool, overlooking the bay. Tall, hands in his pockets, broad-shouldered.
He turned the moment I got close, like he sensed me.
“Sandhya”, he said. He knew my name?
“Do I…?” I started “Do I know you?”
He smiled. That crooked smile again—beautiful, but with sadness behind it.
“I don’t know if you remember?” he said, “But we have met.”
“When?” I asked, trying desperately to think back to a time I would have met this person.
“Summer of 2016. You came to Xavier’s College for your admission,” he explained. “I was the senior assigned to take you and your friend around campus”
I dug deep into my memory bank.
Kiara and I had gone to Xavier’s to check out the campus. She was big on getting into it because it had the best programme for astrophysics, and I had simply tagged along.
But yes. There had been this guy, this senior student. He seemed like he had been tasked with showing us around against his will. I remembered now, I had kept ruining their very intellectual conversations about science and multiple universes and whatnot with silly jokes.
“Vedaksh. My name is Vedaksh”
“The boy who cannot perish”, I whispered. Shit, I did remember him.
I’d teased him about his name—it was apparently a blend of Vedant (knowledge) and Aksh (imperishable).
Back then, I had felt a strange pull towards him. His stoicism had made me want to cut through it, to poke him, to make him a little unserious. I even remembered thinking about his half smile back then, I’m pretty sure I had made fun of it too. I was the most unserious person in most places.
“Yeah. That’s me” he said.
Ok, so now I had placed him. Now what?
“Are you here for a wedding?” I asked him.
“No, it’s just….” He replied. I waited for him to continue. “It’s my wedding anniversary tomorrow”
“Oh.” Something tightened in my stomach. “Congratulations. That’s… great. Are you and your wife here to celebrate?”
He turned his gaze back to the bay. “She passed away last year”
Shit.
“I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard,” I felt horrible. Something about our wedding dates coinciding felt… heavy.
“Yeah. I miss her, insanely. I don’t think I was a good husband,” he confessed.
What could I say? It wasn’t like I knew either of them, but it seemed right to say, “I’m sure you were. It’s normal, I think, to feel guilty?”
He sighed a deep, soul-touching sigh. “No, Sandhya, I really wasn’t. I was so obsessed with work, I always kept you— her in the background.”
Me? A slip of the tongue, I’m sure.
“What do you do?” I asked instead.
“I’m an astrophysicist. I study the multiverse”
I laughed. Was he serious?
“Like in Doctor Strange?”
He smiled his silly half smile that I was really starting to like— a lot.
“Always with the Doctor Strange” he muttered, then said more clearly “Yes. Just like that”
“Okay, that was maybe cool in our twenties. But you don’t actually believe in that stuff now… right?”
“I always believed it, Sandhya, but today— I know it”
I looked around, the pool water shimmering in the pre-dawn light. What was I doing, on the eve of my wedding, talking about multiverses with a man I hadn’t seen in years?
“Why? Why today?”
“Because I’m standing here. With you”
What is he talking about? A shiver runs down my spine, but this one is cold. It makes me uncomfortable. Suddenly, I’m a little scared of this man. I don’t know him; and this conversation, it was getting weird.
“I need to go,” I said, backing away.
“Please, Sandhya” He reached out, gently touching my arm and it felt like my skin lit up. “Give me just two more minutes”
“For what? I don’t know you and you’re here..and for some reason I came looking for you,” I admitted. “This isn’t right”
“There is a reason you did”
“Why?”
“Because we are… we were connected”, he said.
Connected?
“You remember that day before you and Kiara left Xavier’s? You got a call from your mother?”
My heart dropped. How could I ever forget that call? My father had been in an accident.
“Yes”, I whispered. “How do you know about that?”
He took a deep breath in and said “Don’t freak out. But there was a split that day. Two realities were formed.”
“You’re not making any sense, Vedaksh”
“In the multiverse, it takes big events to split one’s universe into two. Your father’s accident, it was a big one for you. Here he survived, right?”
My body starts to shake.
“Here? You mean…?”
“Yeah. In ours, he didn’t.”
My ears rang. My knees buckled. He caught me and led me to a bench.
He had to be lying. Why would he lie to me, though? What did he want?
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice strained with emotion.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry lov— Sandhya.” He said, taking my hands in his. “I... all I wanted was to see you. I swore I would just look at you and leave.”
“Leave? Vedaksh?” I pulled away from him.
He folded his arms across his chest, like he was trying to stop himself from reaching out to me.
“I solved it,” he said quietly. “In my timeline, I figured out how to travel through multiverses.”
I was silent; this was all too much.
“My universe isn’t all that different from yours, but it’s definitely more advanced—technologically, anyway. We had breakthroughs years ahead of anything that’s happened here. And I was at the forefront of most of them. But it came at a price.”
He looked at me, his voice gentler now.
“You.”
Me?
“I was there when you got the call from your mother, and I offered to take you to the hospital. You were devastated— because by the time we arrived, your father had passed. I’d lost my mother a few years earlier, so I understood grief. But watching you break… that broke me. I swore I’d find a way. A universe where he survived. Just so you could say goodbye.”
My father, my rock. I couldn’t imagine not having him. That accident had been close; they said that if he had reached the hospital even fifteen minutes later, we would have lost him. The fact that I did, in another universe….
“Over time, we met often. Our grief brought us together, and the comfort we found in each other just turned into something special. And one day, just like that, we…” he smiled “We fell in love. I still don’t know how. You were, are, a ray of sunshine Sandy and I’m freaking Dr. Gloom. But you picked me”
I stared at his profile. I could see it. I could see myself breaking his walls, even back then, I remember wanting to.
“We were good,” he continued. His voice held memories I didn’t know, but I felt connected to. “Happy, for the most part. Apart from our fights about my work, we had a really good life, Sandy. Fuck, how I’ve loved you and you me. I loved your random hugs and your octopus-like cuddling, and you, for some reason, loved my cooking.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I was floating in some kind of weird, surreal multiverse right now.
“So you’re saying that I…?” My throat tightened. “Last year, you said I…”
He shifted in his seat. The question was visibly heavy for him.
“I came home last year, a month before our anniversary,” he said slowly. “I’d just made a major breakthrough. I was riding high. I couldn’t wait to tell you to celebrate. Instead, I found you. In the bathroom. You’d… had a fall. Hit your head on the sink. They said it was instant. They said you didn’t…”
He faltered. His voice cracked. Then he buried his head in his hands, shoulders trembling
I didn’t hesitate. I reached out and wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight. My heart broke for him. For losing… me
He straightened slowly, wiping his tears with the back of his hand.
“I went back to work like a man possessed”, he said, “Because now I had a bigger purpose. To find you. To tell some version of you that I … that I was sorry.”
Everything I knew in life seemed challenged right now. None of this could be true; this man could just be someone who was mentally ill and had, for some reason, decided to come mess with me.
But if it was true.
It meant this man here in my arms had defied the laws of the universe to come see me.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked gently as I removed my arms from his shoulders.
“I should have been home. With you. I should have spent more time, I should have prioritised better.” He turned towards me, eyes still glistening with tears. “You were the best thing in my life, Sandy, and I took you for granted”
“I’m sure I had my flaws as well.” I smiled faintly. “I mean, I know I do. Nikhil is always complaining about how messy I leave the bathroom or how I can’t cook to save my life.” He nods, which clearly goes to prove all versions of me are messy. “But I’m sure we both did our best”
“Does he prioritise you?”
“As much as he can, yes.” I replied “Vedaksh, one of the reasons I love Nikhil is because he is damn good at what he does. He has a climate tech start-up, and his company, while small, is doing major work in solving environmental problems like finding plastic alternatives, carbon capture, and figuring out food waste tech. It takes him across the country, sometimes across the world. But can you imagine if he solves things? What he could do for this world.”
Vedaksh was quiet.
“What you did, Vedaksh—solving something we still make movies about—is incredible. Any version of me would be proud of you.
His eyes snapped to mine like it wasn’t what he was expecting me to say.
“Sandhya…”
“I’m serious. It must be unbearable to lose someone like that. But please know, I’m-proud-of-you.”
Unable to look at me, he rubbed his face and turned away.
“That means the world to me. Thank you.” He said softly.
“What’s the plan now?” I asked as we both looked out onto the horizon. The sun was coming out slowly, shades of pink and orange in the sky.
“I’ll go back. Work more, I suppose. It’s what I do best”
I smiled at him, “Why don’t you travel more? Find a version of me that’s single?!”
That made him laugh. I finally got a chance to see his full smile— and it was gorgeous.
“Maybe.” He said. The. Standing up, he offered me his hand. “I’m just glad I got to meet you. To see you again.”
I took it and stood with him.
“Your hair is different”, he said softly. “But you’re just as beautiful”
Standing so close, I had to tilt my head to look at him. This man, who was in love with a version of me.
His hand was warm, strong. I could feel the love. But I had none to give, because my heart was firmly placed somewhere else.
So I gave his hand a gentle squeeze and let go.
“I hope you find the perfect work-life balance, Vedaksh. You deserve it”
He smiled, knowing I had taken away a moment we could have had.
“You too, Sandhya. You deserve the world. I really hope Nikhil gives you everything you dream of.”
We stood there looking at each other, two people connected in the strangest way, across time, across universes. It was something out of a movie, and yet I was right there experiencing it.
“I’m going to go now. Thanks for.. um.. coming?” I said with a small laugh.
“Thank you for not… freaking out. And for giving me this,” he said.
As I walked away, I kept looking back. As if to make sure he was real or not, just a figment of my imagination.
But he was right there.
Still standing tall against the backdrop of the bay and the beautiful sun now rising above him.
As I slipped back into bed, I found myself thinking about love—how differently it unfolds for each of us. One thing I knew for certain now: I would never let Nikhil and I take our time together for granted.
Watching Vedaksh defy the very fabric of the universe just to say sorry to the one he lost made me want to hold my own love tighter, speak more gently, and cherish even the ordinary moments.
His journey reminded me that love, no matter the universe, is always worth fighting for—and even more so, worth nurturing while we still have it.
I turned and saw the box Nikhil had given me. Well, technically, it was morning.
I unwrapped it to find a book inside with a picture of us from three years ago on the cover.
The pages inside were full— of memories.
A receipt from our first date at Starbucks. A napkin with my lipstick mark—the one I gave him before his first work trip. A list titled ‘Ten Things That Made Me Fall in Love With You.’
A sketch we once made of our future home. A photo of his grandmother and me, labelled ‘My favourite women in one frame.’
Page after page from our dating years, each one more tender than the last.
Then, a bookmark before the rest of the empty pages. The bookmark had a little note:
“I know I get caught up in work. I know I miss the small things sometimes. But I see you, Sandy. Every day. In every universe. Can’t wait to make more memories with you”
I smiled and hugged the book. It was so easy to look at a love like Vedakh’s and think of how epic a love that was… but for me, this little book of memories that Nikhil had made meant more than anything. It showed me that he had never taken me, us, for granted.