Aakash never stopped adoring the cypress trees. In every painting, he placed them at the edge of the canvas, just like his master, Vincent Van Gogh. After reading that cypress trees symbolize eternity, he began to see her eyes within them, adoring them even more.
Payal was his eternity and his starry night. Just like Vincent’s paintings, his life burst with colors in her presence. Aakash adored yellow, reminiscent of the swirling stars in Starry Night. Every brushstroke was deliberate, every detail painstakingly refined. He painted her almond-shaped eyes, adorned with hundreds of glittering stars. Those eyes gazed into his eyes with such love that even Payal sometimes lost herself in them.
“Death calls me, Payal,” he whispered to her one evening, growing paler, and coughing with increasing intensity.
Aakash coughed incessantly and Payal’s heart felt the jolt in each cough. She watched, her doe eyes heavy with grief, as his chest heaved in silence. Her lips quivered to watch his entire body which had taken on a pallid hue. His face was marked by swollen, inflamed areas, and the Adam’s apple had become so enlarged that it seemed on the verge of bursting through his skin.
Aakash, a slender man, looked unbearably fragile. Just thirty, he had been living under the shadow of death since last December, when he became fully aware of his incurable illness. And since then, consumed by thoughts of mortality, he often brooded, despising his fate, confined to a square room where his lung cancer heaved with his very breath.
Payal watched his peeling lips twitch. She was sitting beside him with her hand gently locked in his. She looked into Aakash’s eyes. Jubilantly, her eyes fluttered while Aakash gazed into them with a smile. He ran his trembling hands into the curve of her ears, tucking a stray strand behind it. Payal smiled, a sad smile that one has when one realizes that never again will this moment be repeated. Her eyes welled and she looked to the lonely moon through the rusty windows.
Aakash whispered again, “Payal...” A violent cough seized him this time. Wiping away her tears, she turned her gaze from the lonely moon to the loneliness staring back at her from the eyes of her tormented beloved. Blood seeped from his lips onto the blue sheets, a faint, metallic scent filling the air. Payal’s heart pounded behind her chest as her palpating eyes stared at the crimson-stained rag. A shadow of dread fell across her as she gently dabbed at Aakash’s wounds. His cold skin sent a shiver down her spine. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, not after all they’d been through together.
As Payal turned to look at the sparrow that was teetering on the windowsill she noticed that Aakash was also struggling to turn his head. She helped him do so and found both their eyes meet the sparrow’s soft gaze at once. As Payal watched the sparrow’s quick, blinking eyes, a wave of nostalgia washed over her tender heart.
Van Gogh’s death: Suicide or murder?
Years ago, when Aakash was just twenty-one, his young eyes had searched hers, so full of hope, so certain when he had come to her, cradling a trembling sparrow in his hands. She had been kneeling by the river at the village gorge, scrubbing mud from her legs, the water cool against her skin. He stood there for a moment, his breath uneven, before gently placing the bird in her hands.
“Marry me, Payal,” he had said, his voice full of love and devotion.
She hadn’t answered right away. Instead, she had curled her fingers around the tiny, fragile creature, feeling its heartbeat flutter against her palm. The river whispered at her ankles, the pebbles shifting beneath her bare feet. Aakash was still watching her, waiting. She had looked down at the bird, at its delicate wings, knowing it would fly away the moment she loosened her grip. Something in her chest had ached, though back then, she hadn’t understood why.
Now, parched and frail, Aakash lay on his deathbed. A suffocating sorrow seized her, one that mirrored the grief she had felt when the sparrow he had once placed in her hands had withered and died. That same agony flickered in his eyes now, so raw, so unrelenting, that it felt as though her body might shatter beneath its weight.
“Payal… this sparrow… it seems like the one I gifted you. Could it be its next life?” Aakash murmured, nudging her gently. The bird, as if disturbed by his voice, fluttered its wings and flew out of sight.
“Payal, the afterlife... do you think it exists?” Aakash whispered, his face illuminated by a fragile smile, a smile born from the hope that still clung to him, though his body betrayed him with every breath.
“Aakash, please... rest,” Payal murmured, brushing away a tear, her voice breaking with the weight of grief. She could feel her own body trembling, trying to hold itself together, yet the sorrow inside her was a storm she couldn’t calm.
“Tell me, Payal… please,” he urged, his voice weak, a tremor in each word.
“I don’t know the answers to your questions,” she whispered, her voice fragile, as though each word was carved from the same sorrow that consumed her. “All I know is that we are here, together, now.”
Her chest tightened, the words sinking into her, her heart heavy with the unbearable knowledge that moments like these were slipping away too quickly. “And what about tomorrow, Payal? What about the day when I’m not with you?”
A long pause stretched between them. She looked away, collecting herself, her heart thrumming painfully in her chest. We all suffer in life, she thought, but dwelling on death, the certainty that shadows us from the moment we are born, only deepens our wounds. Perhaps it’s our nature to seek an end to suffering, to long for something beyond the present. But life… life has its purpose too, even in its fragility. Her voice quivered, “It’s the fear of the unknown that torments us, Aakash. And in that torment, we forget to live fully in the moments we still have.”
A soft sob escaped her lips, fragile like the flutter of a dying leaf. She met his gaze again, seeing the pain reflected in his eyes like an echo of her own.
Aakash reached for her hand, and for a moment, everything faded—the pain, the sorrow, the ticking clock that measured his life. In that simple touch, she forgot the world around them, as if time itself held its breath. He pulled her close, his arms around her as though he needed her to stay alive, to breathe for him.
“Let those tears find a home in my heart,” he whispered, his voice soft, fragile as a sigh carried on the wind.
“Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter’s life,” he murmured again, quoting Vincent, his voice a fragile comfort, like the soft caress of a distant memory. “Don’t cry, my love. Tomorrow, my heart won’t be here to take your tears.”
His smile faltered, his breath shallow and ragged, a hollow ache spreading through him. It was for the life they would never share, for the love he would never fully see unfold.
As Payal’s sobs reverberated within his chest, Aakash closed his eyes, surrendering to the weight of it all. Time, like the sand slipping through his fingers, seemed to stretch endlessly, yet he knew this was his final brushstroke; his last masterpiece to leave behind.
The room fell into quiet stillness. Payal had fallen asleep. And Akash, despite his own failing strength, gently rose from the bed, his heart heavy with love and grief, each step a silent goodbye.
He moved toward the canvas, his hands trembling but determined, as though this was the only thing he could still control. His brush danced across the canvas, creating a starry night—a scene that had always felt like home to both of them. Her almond-shaped eyes, forever etched in his heart, appeared among the glittering stars. He painted them with all the longing he could muster, for he knew this would be the last time he could capture her like this. If you stared long enough, you would see the love in those eyes, and you would fall in love with them, just as he had.
The dawn tore itself into the room. Payal woke to its light, her breath caught in her throat. The floor was a chaos of splattered paint, and a starry night with a half-finished cypress tree hung before her on an easel. A sudden chill crept over her hands. Her eyes darted to the side, only to meet the sight of Aakash, his chest still and lifeless on the iron bed.
