He read one:

He began to speak, his voice rough as gravel. "This book is not a love story. It is a promise." He opened a leather journal. "For ten years, I have written one letter a day to a woman I left behind. I never sent them. I kept them in my vest pocket, over my heart."

Jab tak hai jaan. As long as there is this breath, this pain, this forgiveness… there is us.

Tears streamed down her face. People around her were weeping. A journalist asked, "Major Khan, if you could meet her now, what would you say?"

He took the paper with his hook and held it against his chest. "Zara. I don't have two hands to hold you anymore. But I have one heart. And it is yours. Jab tak yeh jaan hai… tab tak. "

He paused. "The poem says, Jab tak hai jaan, jab tak hai jaan – as long as there is life, there is love. But I have learned that the reverse is also true. Jab tak hai jaan … as long as there is love, there is life."

That evening, clutching a worn poetry book her father had left her, she went to the cathedral. The hall was packed. On stage sat a man in his early thirties with tired, kind eyes and a steel hook where his right hand used to be. It was Samar.

She pulled out a crumpled, yellowed piece of paper. On it, in elegant script, was the complete poem. But at the bottom, in a child’s handwriting, she had added a line: “But what if the jaan (life) is broken?”