It was 1974: my first year in the faculty of law. The road leading from the law library to the faculty stretched ahead, its asphalt ominously hot under the sweltering Sun. I clung to the few books in my sweaty hand, my breath feeling hot and humid in the morning air. I was late for my lecture—again.
As I turned the corner, I saw him: the boy.
I had noticed him nearly every day for the past week, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the lane, his head bowed, poking idly at a pile of leaves. The boy couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. He always looked alone; his small figure dwarfed by the vastness of the verdant trees around him.
Today, something was different. I slowed my pace, my heart tugged by a strange sense of recognition. The boy lifted his head, and our eyes met. It wasn’t just the boy’s expression—quiet and solemn, as though he carried secrets far too heavy for his age—it was his face.
He looked… familiar.
I shook my head and kept walking, but the boy’s image lingered. As the lecturer droned on about general principles of criminal liability, my mind kept wandering back to the road and the boy. By the time the sun was low in the sky, I decided I couldn’t let the question go unanswered.
On my way back home, I stopped at the road. The boy was still there, sitting on the same patch of earth.
“Hi,” I ventured, crouching beside him.
The boy glanced up, my gaze piercing. “Hi.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ayush.”
My stomach flipped. “Ayush,” I repeated, the name unsettlingly familiar on my tongue. “Do you live nearby?”
Ayush shrugged. “Not really.”
“Are you waiting for someone?”
The boy tilted his head, studying me with a strange intensity. “Maybe you.”
The words sent a shiver through me. “Why me?”
Ayush’s lips curved into a faint smile, the first trace of emotion I had seen on his face. “You seem like you’d care.”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt the truth in that. “Do you want to come with me? There is a place nearby, we could get something to eat”.
The boy hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
There was an open-air café close to the library and I took him there, and sat him at a table that seemed unstable. I ordered sandwiches and a pint of milk. Ayush sat at the rickety table, his hands clasped neatly in front of him, watching with a calmness that felt oddly adult.
“Here you go,” I said, setting the plate in front of him.
“Thanks,” Ayush murmured, nibbling at the bread.
I sat across from him, unable to shake the uncanny resemblance. I leaned forward. “Ayush, can I ask you something?”
The boy looked up, crumbs at the corner of his mouth.
“Do you… do you know me?”
Ayush’s gaze didn’t waver. “You could say that.”
“What does that mean?”
The boy’s small fingers toyed with the edge of the plate. “It means I’m not supposed to tell you.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“Because it’ll mess things up,” Ayush said simply. “But you’ll understand one day.”
I felt a strange pressure in my chest, as though he were teetering on the edge of some great revelation. “Ayush… are you—?”
“My name was your idea,” Ayush interrupted softly.
All around us fell silent. The air seemed to hum with something unspoken, something vast and incomprehensible.
“How is that possible?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
Ayush shrugged, his expression a curious mix of sadness and serenity. “I’m here because you needed to see me.”
“Why now?”
“Because you were starting to lose hope.”
I stared at the boy, my mind racing with questions, doubts, and an overwhelming sense of wonder. “So, you’re… my son? From the future?”
Ayush smiled, a soft, fleeting thing. “I think you already knew that.”
I let out a shaky breath, my head spinning. “How long can you stay?”
The boy stood, his small frame seeming impossibly steady against the weight of the moment. “Not long.”
“Wait,” I said, my voice breaking. “Will I be a good father?”
Ayush’s eyes softened. “You’ll be the best father.”
And just like that, Ayush stepped out of the premises, the sunlight casting him in a golden glow. He turned back one last time.
“Thank you for the sandwiches,” he said, and then he was gone.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the empty chair. The faint murmur of the trees mingled with the scent of damp, lush greenery and a mix of chlorophyll and humid earth with their faintly herbal undertones drifted through the open area in which I was sitting. I felt the warmth of something new: hope.
