Both And None

By Aakarsh Sharma

They met on a bench that had forgotten most of city’s worry . A pigeon argued with a sugar wrapper , and the sun arranged itself into a polite half-apology across pavement . 

One of the two friends called Ariv held his palm out like a small shrine , tracing the rim of a healed cut as if it were a map . The other , Veer , leaned back with his hands sunk into his pocket , a grin balanced somewhere between kindness and mischief .

“I got this wound while doing that ridiculous thing,” Ariv said ,smiling the way in which people usually do while making a room for a memory . “You remember rushing into the river to fetch the kite , climbing the wrong roof , saying the wrong truth at wrong time . It hurt . It changed me . It made me who I am.”

There was a pride in that sentence like the humble one that keep its medals in pocket and not the theatrical kind . Ariv’s voice carried gratitude , even affection , for the pain itself . The scar , pale and fine like a hairline river , seemed to glow in the evening light as if it is narrating its very own story .

Veer gently snorted . It was a soft , embarrassed sound of someone who thinks laughter can save a conversation from sentiments . “ So you worship your wound now?” he said . “You wear it like a badge and call it proof of courage . But if you bow down to the thing that hurt you , how will you ever surpass it ? How will you grow past the story your wound keeps telling ?”

Ariv laughed as it was an inward amused sound that lit up his eyes . “And if you refuse to remember , what becomes of the lesson ?” he replied . “If I pretend it didn’t shape me , I erase the portion of my map . The wound is a teacher , after all . We should thank our teachers.”

They volleyed words like children tossing pebbles into a river , each pebble making a different ring . Around them , the city moved as if it had made peace with its own indifference . They spoke of wounds the way people exchange talisman : reverently  , carelessly , so that the object becomes a stand – in for the truth itself .

Veer’s voice thinned , impatience caught in a jar . “There’s difference between remembering and worshipping my fellow dancer . To worship is to make a shrine . You begin to visit it daily , light small holders of fire , and take elixir like comfort in how noble your hurt looks when framed , That’s how one gets glitched .”

Ariv gazed at his palm again . The scar was only a scar . He traced it as though reading a sentence  he’d written in a language both loved and mistrusted . “But if I keep the wound small...If it is a memory and not an altar...Then it’s both a map and a warning . I am learning because of it.”

They laughed together then , but their laughter carried two different meanings . Ariv’s laugh said , This is life; of course the wound helped . Veer’s said , And of course you poeticize every bruise so it looks like wisdom . the same sound , split like light through glass .

A woman walked past with a child in a blue scarf . The child’s finger reached toward air , curious and unafraid . The woman did not see the two men on the bench . The city had kindly agreed to look away .

When the conversation loosened , Veer leaned forward . His tone softened into something almost tender. “Tell me this Ariv , if wounds becomes the thing you point to when someone asks what defines you , have you not made it stronger ? If every story you tell starts with that hurt , doesn’t it walk ahead of you?”

Ariv just swiped through all the possible occasions he would have played the story on a high pitch . He remembered how the story sometimes extended the wound , how listeners would fumble with their own scars and nod as if confirming a shared truth . 

“And yet,” he said slowly, “If I erase it , who will I be when the memory stop shaping me ? Some parts of us are sewn from pain . They are legitimate threads .”

It was a small fierce debate . Neither voice won . Neither wanted to . The point wasn’t conquest but to keep the idea alive between them , glowing like a firefly .

Later , when the pigeons had taken their sugar treaty and the sun had surrendered its last politeness , Ariv stood and stretched . He felt the old ache of the wound and not the wound itself , but the shadow it had long cast . He closed his eyes , opened them again , and looked at Veer with something kinder than defiance .

“I am both” he said , almost to himself . “I have worshipped the wound and lit the candles for it to remember that I survived . I have also tried to step pat it , to make it quiet . Sometimes I bow; sometimes I walk away . And sometimes I just stand and watch the two of us argue.”

Veer raised a brow . “And none ?”  

“Yes.” Ariv smiled , the kind that feels more like a permission than a reply . “I am none when I stop letting the wound be my referee . when I stop asking it to give me legitimacy or excuse my fear . Them I am not my wound , or my triumph over it . I am simply... moving .”

They laughed again , softly this time . It was not dismissal but recognition . The city’s indifference remained , and that indifference felt oddly merciful . The two men rose as if from different pages of the same book or different sites of the same browser , walking in opposite direction , not to part , but because paths in a dance must sometimes cross and uncross like that.

Ariv walked with his hand in his pocket , where the scar lay like a tiny coin . He did not worship it; he did not burn it or peeled it off . He carried it the way one carries a compass which is useful , rarely consulted , and never in control of the journey .

That night , as the house listened to its own shadows , Ariv thought of the bench , the pigeon , the child with a blue scarf . He thought of how laughter could hold two meanings , how memory could be a map or a cell , how grace sometimes looked like a defiance . He breathed and let the thought settle like a dust that might one day make a photograph worth more for its grain . 

He smiled without deciding which of the two friends he admired more . Both were right in ways that did not cancel each other out . Both were wrong in ways that did not cancel each other out . Both were wrong that did not ruin anything . He folded that double truth into his pocket with the scar and the coin and went on a learning to dance in a light that belonged neither to the wound nor to the forgetting .

He was both , and none of them . 

By Aakarsh Sharma