Ice-fruit

Long before she became Madonna Raj, before her name danced in stadium lights, she was Meenakshi, the girl who bit into orange candy, squinted at the sun, and whispered,

“You know what this tastes like? Ice-fruit.” 

“What’s that?” 

“It’s not a real fruit,” she said. “It’s something cold… that melts in your mouth… and makes you forget you’re in school.”

He was twelve. She, eleven. They lived in adjacent houses, roofs almost touching, sharing a wall and a hundred secrets. They fed squirrels, flicked marbles into cracked cups, and fought over who got to sit on the higher step during power cuts.

Sometimes—just sometimes—she’d lean in close and say,

“Say ‘ice-fruit’ when you want me to make everything okay.” “Even if we’re old?” “Especially then.”

But childhood doesn’t last. One summer, she left.

No real goodbye—just an uncle’s car, a mother’s new job in another city, and a rooftop that suddenly felt twice as wide.

Later came whispers: Modeling. Mumbai. Then music. Then Madonna Raj. A name the world learned to scream.

But he never screamed it. He just murmured ice-fruit now and then— when the rains came early, or when a woman passed him who smelled faintly of vetiver and soap.

He was forty-seven the day he saw her again—not in person, but in a flicker of glass and chance.

Venkatesh was at the Bangalore airport, waiting for a delayed flight to Coimbatore. A dull evening: weak coffee, emails, a cold seat by the window.

And then— a muted TV screen in the corner showed her at Cannes, laughing beside some European director. Her hair caught the wind. Her eyes half-closed.

The ticker said:

“Rumored affair with Cannes director fuels gossip back home.Madonna, India’s elusive pop mystic, spotted again…”

He didn’t need the name.

She laughed easily beside the European man—those who didn’t know her would see freedom. Those who once shared rooftops with her might sense something else.

For a moment, all the noise around him—the boarding calls, the clicks, the sighs—fell away. She had looked free, but not untethered. Like someone who had left home but always carried a folded piece of it.

That night, in a hotel bed, he wrote a note on his phone:

Dear Meenakshi, I saw you today. Not you-you. But a glimmer. You smiled like someone who remembers the smell of rain on iron gates.

There’s a part of me that never left our rooftop. Still waiting for you to throw a seed at my window. Still wanting to say “ice-fruit” just once, to see if you’d look up.

I know you won’t read this. But I wanted to say it anyway. Because memory—like music—doesn’t need a reply. — V

He saved the note. Didn’t send it.

It was grief, not longing, that took Venkatesh back to his native town.

Murugesan Sir, his old Tamil teacher, had passed away. A soft-spoken man who taught more poetry than grammar, who once told a noisy class, “Even silence has a syntax.”

Venkatesh hadn’t seen him in decades, but some teachers remain like scaffolding—silent, essential.

The cremation ground was quiet. A small crowd. A priest. The dry rustle of a fig tree in the wind.

Venkatesh stood near the back, under a patch of shade. No rituals to perform. No direct connection. Just respect—and a debt that couldn’t be paid in flowers.

And then, just beyond the sandalwood fire, near the peepul tree — her.

Not surrounded by handlers. Not hidden behind lenses. Just standing. Still.

A grey cotton saree. Sunglasses. A faint shadow beneath her eyes. The fabric moved lightly against her, wind-brushed at the waist. Even in stillness, there was a grace about her—unadorned, but quietly arresting.

He didn’t move. He didn’t know if he should. But she did. Took off her glasses. Looked straight at him. And the years fell away like sand from a tired hand.

“You knew him?” she asked gently.

“Yes,” he replied. “He taught me Tamil. And how to sit with difficult things.”

She nodded. “He was a distant relative. But he was very affectionate to my mom. She adored him.”

They fell silent.

Behind them, the priest was chanting. The wind changed, carrying the scent of ghee and smoke.

She glanced at the flame.

“He used to hum while correcting papers,” she said. “Old songs. Carnatic, I think. Off-key.”

“He once made us write love poems,” Venkatesh said. “Said it was the only honest grammar left in the world.”

She smiled. There was something tired about the way she smiled—like a melody paused too often, or a candle kept alight in wind.

“Do you still write?” she asked.

“Only when I don’t want to forget something.”

She looked down. Then, very quietly, pulled something from her cloth bag—a thin diary, worn at the corners.

She opened it, tore out a page, and handed it to him.

“He wrote this to my mother once. She kept it in her kitchen drawer. I found it last week.” “It’s not about you,” she added, catching herself. “It’s just… about memory. About how people stay in each other’s minds.”

He folded the page without reading it.

“Coffee?” she said suddenly. “At that old hotel by the bus stand?”

He blinked.

“You’re not afraid someone might recognize you?”

She shrugged.

“Not today. Today I came to be someone’s niece. And maybe… a neighbour again.”

Was this the same woman the tabloids claimed had found her muse—and her man—in Europe? Or was that just the camouflage of a long performance?

They walked side by side, not close, not distant. No one followed. No one stopped them.

And the town, which had once cradled both their beginnings, watched in silence as two figures slipped into the hush of the afternoon, toward a memory that still served coffee in steel tumblers, and sometimes—if you whispered it softly enough— still understood the word: ice-fruit.

Months passed. The seasons turned with the predictability that midlife demands. Venkatesh settled back into Bangalore’s quiet chaos: Emails. Elevator silences. Filter coffee that never quite got the strength right.

Then—one Thursday afternoon, as he stepped out of a review meeting and glanced at his phone— a message from an unknown number:

“I’m here in Bangalore for a film promotion event, wondering if we could meet, Have to consult something personal – M”

No emoji. No full stops either. Just that soft signature: M.

He stared at it for a long time. The last they met had been under a peepul tree. A funeral. Smoke. Shared silences. No promises.

And now— this.

His heart beat a little faster. But his mind had already started circling like a cautious hawk.

Consult something personal?

Could it be— Had she decided to walk out of her toxic marriage? Maybe that’s what she wanted to talk about. Maybe she wanted someone who remembered her from before the layers. Before the stage. Before the scrutiny.

That’s when it struck him.

She had never once asked him about his marriage. Not once.

Maybe she just assumed—like most do—that anyone his age with a receding hairline and a tired paunch had settled into a domestic rhythm.

She had even teased him about both—his hairline and his tummy. Casually. Kindly. Like only someone who used to throw seeds at his window could.

She would be in for a surprise if she brought up the topic today.

He smiled. Not broadly. Just enough to let his chest rise.

And almost unconsciously, he whispered—like an old habit, like a prayer stitched into memory:

“Ice-fruit.”