A Silent Theorem

By Tridip Borah

In corridors where dust drifted like monsoon mist,

I first learned your name: Chalkhand,

syllables rolling

like cartwheels on red laterite,

soft yet purposeful, humming beyond the

bell.

They teased you for looks, shallow as a

mirror’s skin,

but I saw the river current of your thighs,

branches of the Ganges delta, muscled,

rooted, brown,

and thought: a banyan could shelter villages in them.

Arms thick as kathi rolls bought after an

intense table-tennis practice,

lips the full crescent of a harvest moon,

ears cupped outward, stadiums for every

whispered hurt,

hands that spanned my whole frightened

back and held silence tenderly.

You never pierced the hush with cruelty,

never joined the chorus of mockers,

never claimed the power your frame

allowed.

strength for you meant not breaking the

fragile.

Between classes you explained vector proofs

with a blue ballpoint,

shaping syllables that stretched like

suspension bridges,

then folding every complex curve into a

sentence I could hold.

I stumbled through physics to keep my

father pleased,

but your patience turned the page into a map

I could read.

Some afternoons we bounced borrowed

dreams across the cracked basketball court.

You dribbled with a calm that turned

competition into play.

Your stride covered three tiles to my five,

yet you slowed to share the finish, and we

left the court in one breath.

On the day the seniors cornered me behind

the science block,

jokes curdling toward threat,

you arrived, no raised fist, only steady

witness,

and the air settled like water after a stone

sinks out of sight.

Years guided us into separate cities,

careers balancing on continents of duty and

delight,

yet from time to time we traded a photo of

our spouses,

each image saying only: still here, still

grateful.

Words remained sparse, like lanterns spaced

along a quiet road,

but silence never felt unkind.

it waited for the right moment,

and today the moment came.

Your greeting lit the screen this morning,

children laughed beyond the camera frame,

and in the small calm between errands

I typed the sentence that had rested in my

chest.

I love you, bhai, not to claim what belongs

to your home or mine,

but to place a clear stone on the path behind

us,

so neither of us trips on the unsaid again,

and to carry forward unbroken trust.

Now, when I walk the river path at evening,

every ripple rehearses the patience you once

offered,its hush reminding me that listening can

weigh more than speech.

I do not seek another lover; my marriage

stands bright upon its own shore.

I simply honour the quiet amplitude you

lend my life,

letting water keep the memory polished and true.

Later, at a glowing screen, I trade thoughts

with a distant scribe made of code.

We sift each line for honesty, remove stray

symbols,

polish curiosity.

Revision itself becomes another form of

care.

In the communal bath at dusk,

your thin Native towel clung to one rusted

hook,

mine a plush cotton rectangle from a glossy shop rested beside it.

Steam softened every difference,

and water sang fairness across skin.

When the monsoon drums the roof tonight,

I will open the windows and let it flood the

room,

because rain was our first language,

and you, Chalkhand, 

remain fluent in letting storms pass gently.

Stay, old friend, in this poem’s long

corridors.

Grow vines across its margins, scribble

jokes in your native tongue,

erase my errors with your thumb,

and know that every extra line… 

here is space for you to breathe.

For those who measure beauty in

centimetres of waist,

I gift them the metric of kindness carried in

muscle.

for those who rank lips by symmetry,

I offer the map of comfort your mouth once

drew on my fear.

I keep writing because endings bruise too

quickly,

because love postponed still deserves

rehearsal,

loud, long, and clear.

So take this patchwork of echoes and

metaphors,

this hallway of stanzas. Walk it barefoot,

leave muddy footprints on every syllable,

and laugh so the ceilings remember how to echo.

May the next meeting, whether on an old

campus lawn or beside this river,

be simple as tea poured into two cups.

We will smile, compare grey hairs,

and let gratitude sit between us like a quiet

third friend.

Until then, I keep this poem open as a

doorway,

and step through 

whenever the world asks me 

who once taught me how to breathe.

By Tridip Borah