I found his old diary the next day. 2005. A year after the film's release. He wrote about a woman—not my mother. A woman named Kiran he'd met at a bus stand in Delhi during a monsoon. She was lost. He offered his umbrella. They talked for two hours. She was engaged to someone else. He never saw her again.

My father's voice. Not speaking. Singing.

"Like Veer and Zaara," he wrote. "But without the happy ending. Without the 22 years of hope. Just… the waiting. Forever."

The file remains on my desktop. Unplayable. Incomplete. I'll never delete it.

Zaara smiles. "You kept it."