The Catcher In The Rye...

Some two weeks later when I was returning to college from home in a rather lonely train journey, as a way of experiment I wanted to see what the longest message that my cell phone could write, so I wrote a message six times the normal length, writing about her and then I thought since I had written about her I might as well as send it to her. She responded by giving me a ‘missed-call’. And I replied by calling her back and telling her that I was a complete idiot and that I frequently gave into mood swings and that I hoped she didn’t feel bad about it. Then I had a rather long conversation with her, completely forgetting my frustration etc.

Back in college, I told my friends about what I had done. Weakling, Divij called me.

I said I couldn’t help it.

Valentine’s Day came by. At the stroke of midnight I received a message from her mentioning a yellow rose or something, the symbol for friendship I believe. I immediately called her up and repeated my vows of love. She giggled and thanked me.

During our college fest Adarsh painted my face in black and white and wrote the words ‘With or Without You.’

It was also the year that Lucky Ali came to perform in our college, and when he started singing ‘O Sanam’ I quickly dialed up her number, said this is for you, turned up the loud speaker and put the phone to the music. Later I messaged her asking her if she liked it. She said she didn’t know what I was talking about. I grew angry and told her that it was Lucky Ali on stage singing ‘O Sanam’ and I wanted to share the moment with her. She said she could hardly hear the song at all.

Damn.

She did send me her photographs though, and she looked pretty as hell in each one of me. It became a daily exercise for me to put up her picture on the full screen of the computer and run a playing list of my favorite songs in the back ground, usually including ‘With or Without You’ by U2 and ‘I am So Tired’ by Ozzy Osborne.

Meanwhile I tried some reverse psychology on her to make her believe she might start loving me, and it sorely backfired when she said that the only person she could ever love was Akshay. This sent me in a rather blue mood. And we went on the usual hiatus in our relationship.

However as always I couldn’t wait to get back in contact with her. In one long conversation, and perhaps the last long conversation I had with her ever. I made her take a vow that she would remain my friend no matter what I do. She promised me that. We discussed a lot of things, and I told her I had saved her pics on my mobile phone. She said that was okay with her as long as Akshay didn’t come to know about it. You see he had been rather averse to the idea of her sending those photographs to me, and when I said why she changed the topic. That day she was considerably sad because she had argued with one of her hostel friends. It was the last time she asked for and I gave her my advice. I told her to patch up things with her as soon as possible, because soon she might not get the chance to do it.

We ended that conversation of ours on a rather happy note and she said that if I came to Baroda this year she would make it a point to meet me and spend some time with me. I was happy with this, but I knew that some sort of end was near, and I was surprisingly geared up for that. I didn’t know why I thought such, but I had this premonition.

Perhaps it was better to end things when we were both happy than to have a violent break-off.

I didn’t call her after that and didn’t feel like doing so. She did call me up once, on the day of the Bengali New Year in the middle of April and it was a long time since she had called up. We had a brief chat and I reminded her that her birthday was coming up and I expected a treat if/when I came to Baroda.

My vacations began in May, and I was once on the verge of seriously planning to go to Baroda, after Shubhankar and co. tried to lure me into coming there, giving me the usual ‘senti’ about friendship and all that. I did not go or even plan to go eventually.

On the twenty sixth of May this year, I called her up. It was her birthday, and I was damn cheerful while wishing her, I talked to her about her vacation plans, about how things were in general and about what she intended to do on her Birthday. Then I kept the receiver down, and vowed to myself to never call her up again, nor contact her through any means. This was supposed to be the final phone call from me to her.

She didn’t know about that, of course. I was careful enough not to give her a hint that this was the final time I would be talking to her on the phone. Or off it, for that matter.

She did contact me after that, with the advent of orkut.com in which she added me as a friend. I removed myself from her friend list later and that as they say was that.

I also sent a poem that I had written for her called ‘The Art of Saying Goodbye’ to her mailing address. I came to know about it much later that she had changed her email address long ago, and I didn’t get my chance to give her a final goodbye gift.

Damn.

Holden Caulfield in ‘The Catcher of The Rye’ says that the one thing that people should not do is write about their experiences, because then they start missing everybody, especially those that they write about. I guess he was right.

Hiatus...

College began in the last week of July and I tried to turn my attention to other things to divert myself from this rather recent heartbreak. I did stop now and then to contemplate how things had become what they were now, and whether I ever had any sort of a relationship with her or was it all just some form of alternative reality. However I could not restrain myself from contacting her, so I sent her a sentimental sort of sms once, she replied wishing that I would not send such messages in future. I then sent a somewhat brusque message; she immediately called me up and pleaded with me to not send her any messages of ‘that sort.’ I said I wouldn’t send her messages of any sort.

Over the next couple of months I kept no contact with her but she kept sending me emails asking me about my college and life in general and she said that she was wondering why I wasn’t replying to her emails. And near Dussera she sent a mail in which she said that now she wanted a reply. I said to myself fine, I’ll give her a reply.

I wanted to be bitter, sarcastic, and mordant. Instead while composing the mail I let the flood gates of my emotions open more than the recommended level and told her all about what I wanted to talk to her had I met her, and that I was so hurt by the fact that she had not told me about Akshay and her that I refused to be rational. It was basically a pretty incoherent mail in which I wrote whatever came to my mind. While ending the mail I added that I still loved her and needed her and couldn’t do without her.

She replied saying it was nice of me to send that mail since it cleared stuff between us and perhaps was a step in normalizing relationships once more. She said that she knew I was hurt but it was the basic reason that she didn’t want to tell me about it, it’s some sort if a paradox. There was perhaps no way she could have escaped hurting me.

Never mind.

Then things as they say became normal between us and we continued on the phone calls and emails routine. There were a few memorable times when I was thinking about her when I received her phone call. (Of course, I was always thinking about her so this was not so much of a big deal).

On my birthday she was the first one to wish me at exactly twelve in the night. And I found this oddly significant since most of my friends called me the next day in the evening.

On the eve of the new year I called her up just a few minutes before midnight because I wanted my voice to be the last thing and the first thing she would get to hear in the new calendar year. I also kept on asking her to send me her photographs and (as some sort of a step in a getting-over process) I wanted her to discuss Akshay with me, as in the way she would discuss him with any other friend. This was a wish she never conceded to me, she always said she might mail me about it at a later time but she never did it. I personally thought that it might be a measure to normalize stuff with her, that I may behave as any other friend of her. However she kept me as a special-status friend, someone with whom she would never talk about Akshay.

In the middle of January I had this sudden attack of frustration which resulted in my writing a poem called ‘You don’t need me anymore’. It was a direct letter to her in which I pointed out what our friendship had become or was on the point of becoming. It was a heartfelt outpour and I sent it to her even before the ink had dried.

She rejected the poem simply, by telling me that it was a very nice piece of work, I wanted to shout at her and tell her that it was intended for her. I became upset over the fact that I knew I was stuck in some sort of a never ending and that although she would never be mine I could never stop thinking about her. I sent her a message, in which I asked her how she felt when I told her that I loved her. She sent a rather expected reply that she respected and admired my feelings. Damn, I had begun to hate those two words. I told her that this was not the answer to my question; I wanted to know how she felt when I told her that I loved her and that I couldn’t dream of a life without her. She did not give me a clear reply but again started asking me not to send such messages; she said that I was special to her and all that. I decided to not talk to her for a while.

Last Train Home...

This journey of mine was for the longest of times in the past three years, I had decided to stay there for three complete days giving me ample time to meet her. I also learnt that Akshay would be there too, but this time I decided not to make it a factor in meeting her.

I stayed with Sanshit for the trip. And on the first night of my stay we had a long talk about her and life in general. He mentioned that Shubhankar and he had gone to her house after waters from the flood had receded (for it was the year when Baroda had been flooded heavily by the rains). He also mentioned that I was the chief topic of conversation between her and Shubhankar. I asked him to give me details of the conversation but he expressed his inability to do so, the reason he gave that her mother had served them some great potato chips. So while Shubhankar had some sort of a heated argument with her he filled himself with wafers. I blasted him and the whole potato chips making industry, to which he replied that the chips might have been home made but the main thing was that he was too busy concentrating on eating to pay any heed to the words being spoken there between Shubhankar and her. He told me to forget about her, saying stuff about deserving and all that, then he turned around and said that he had smsed her regarding my arrival and my plans to meet her.

Goddamn.

I blasted him and went to sleep, however when I met Shubhankar the next day I asked him about the said tête-à-tête he had with her (you see, I have a certain curiosity about talks in which I am projected as the central theme. It’s just a general inquisitiveness, nothing special). He told me that it was indeed for talking to her about me that he’d gone there. He said that he had explained to her that she should not hang me in between (I commented briefly that I wouldn’t mind hanging…) and that either she should talk with me or end things completely. And that was what he considered a day’s work. I couldn’t say for sure whether this was a good thing or bad, but it was a thing. And say what you may, a thing is a thing.

Akshay arrived a day after me and I decided not to take up this issue with him too blatantly. There was still no clear reply from her about our supposed meeting. I did mention it to Akshay that I was rather hopeful of meeting her and that I also hoped he would make his person scarce of the place I would meet her. He said he agreed with what I said and that he had no issues with my meeting her anywhere anytime.

In the mean time I received a rather cryptic message from her which said that we might not be able to meet because of classes etc, I thought she was referring to some particular day and since I was available for use at Baroda for three whole days I didn’t consider this to be a big issue.

Then it happened, right in the middle of my trip, on the evening of the second day.

We were all sitting in the smokers zone of Barista, an outrageously high priced coffee store, Akshay and Shubhankar were smoking, while I was discussing with Akshay the best and the most comfortable way to reach the city of her college when Sanshit’s cell phone rang. It was a number with the code of Anand. He handed the phone to me saying that it was sure to be her number, I picked it up but the voice was not clear. So I cut the phone and kept it with me, almost willing it to ring. The phone did ring after goddamned five minutes and I picked it up with a childish hurry while motioning with my other hand to the idiots to be quiet. They heard me, they looked at me once and then they continued as they were.

After exchanging the usual pleasantries I sprang the fact upon her that I was coming a-visiting the day beginning midnight. She tried hard to show some enthusiasm to the fact but then she suddenly said that she remembered she had classes and extra classes and more classes after extra classes. The thing was that her whole schedule was so goddamn jam packed that it was hard for her to meet me in any case. I mentioned lunch breaks and other breaks and the end of colleges and all that but she said that the time was not enough and that I would not be able to find her or something, I joked with a heavy dose of sarcasm that it was obvious she did not want to meet me even though I had come from so far away just to meet her.

The answer was something I had seriously not expected, and not even suspected.

She replied asking if I wanted to know the truth.

I said that I damn well did want to know the truth.

She said the truth was she did not want to meet me, and that was that.

I said, is that so.

She said it was so.

I said fine and cut the phone, now becoming aware of the increasing silence around me. I looked up to see all my friends staring at me with a mixture of shock, pity and surprise.

I decided for the dramatics, and said it’s over. I couldn’t bear sitting there with all of them looking at me, so I motioned to Shubhankar and we left the place.

On the way sitting behind his two wheeler I had to listen to Shubhankar’s philosophy about how it was really nothing at all and that I had given too much hype to it and all that that I actually had to shout at him and tell him to shut the hell up. I continued the rest of my trip in a blue funk, cheering up only now and then on false pretences. We stayed the night at Akshay’s guest house where I tried talking about her with him but he stuck to the ‘we are just friends’ line and annoyed the hell out of me.

The next day of the trip was as worse as the previous one had been with my mood swinging continuously from bad to worse and then to bad again and to worse again. I got a call from her, in which she tried to act normal telling me that the reason she did not want to meet me was that she wanted to salvage our friendship (nice try) and that she thought I expected too much from her. I added that I only hoped and never expected. She said whatever but that I should take care and best of luck for the future and that I had forgotten to tell her about my counseling result (I had not, I had mailed her). And that as they say was that.

We spent the evening loafing around in front of multiplexes and all that when Sanshit suddenly mentioned having seen her two-wheeler parked somewhere. My heart paced slightly faster and I asked him to lead me to it, but when we reached there I saw it was a false alarm. Sanshit muttered something about how he could have sworn it was hers and all that.

I left Baroda that night, this time personally swearing to never return. I also made the decision never to contact her again.

You know, it was my fault; I was the one blindly in love that I believed in a farce that had gone on so far to the point of not being funny at all.

Feeling Slightly Shaken...

The next whole year I spent in preparation for JEE, and I kept regular contact with her on phone and emails. All through this period I tried to forget my feelings for her. I was concentrating on my part as the closest friend and all that. All through that year she was single. Although it was small comfort that Akshay was in the same city as she.

And as the case is, as hard as I tried to tone down my feelings for her, the more I became attracted to her. So after my exam results were out and I found out that I’d gotten selected, I decided at the spur of the moment to ask her to be mine. I guess I was being too optimistic and looking at the future and all that. (Did I get carried away?...yes).

I was chatting with Shubhankar on the day of my selection when I told him about my plans. He told me to call him up immediately, because there was something that I had to know. I called him up as fast as I could get my hands on a telephone receiver. He told me briefly that she was back with Akshay. I reeled slightly, and pretending that I’d heard him wrong I asked him to repeat what he’d just said.

She is back with Akshay, sorry dude.

Back? When? How? I mean…?

They are in the same city, and used to meet regularly…

When did…

Even I don’t know, must be a few months back…they are pretty secretive about this time.

I’ll say…

I kept the receiver down and pondered over what I’d just heard and comparing it with what my knowledge was, it wasn’t long back since I’d last talked with her, and she wasn’t even close to mentioning any thing about the above. An internal argument started inside my brain, a conversation of some sort. I asked my self several questions.

(a) Why did this bother me? She was just a friend, and this was all just déjà vu anyway.

(b) Just a friend? You’ve got to be kidding; she said that I was one of her closest friends.

(c) I see, she told me, so I assume it to be correct, but is it correct?

(d) Damn it, I am messing my own mind up.

(e) Wait a minute, where’s this leading to?

(f) Isn’t it a fact that you were in regular contact with her?

(g) Yes, but?

(h) But what?

(i) Maybe you are right.

(j) Of course I am, she could have told you anytime, but she didn’t.

(k) And that Akshay, what about him?

(l) What about him! He wouldn’t have told you anyway.

(m) Face the bleeding facts dude, she didn’t tell you. Period.

(n) I see, I wonder why that is.

(o) Because you aren’t as close to her as you think.

(p) She should have told me.

(q) You bet,

(r) But she didn’t.

(s) No she didn’t.

(t) So it does not bother me that she is with Akshay. But the fact that she didn’t tell me about it.

(u) Yes of course.

(v) I am nothing.

(w) Face it, you are nothing.

(x) Just a friend, a mailing address, to send chain letters.

(y) Perhaps lesser.

(z) And now I am out of alphabets.

As I’d mentioned before, my strongest link to her was email. So I went back to

my computer and typed a bitter letter in which I said that I knew I was nothing to her and I hoped that my trip to Baroda would not coincide with the trip to Daman that she was going to with Akshay.

Like all weak men, I let my heart decide before my mind.

Later in the evening I called her up to tell her about my selection in JEE. Her sweet voice which earlier used to make me go weak had no effect on me this time. She was happy and congratulated me and was about to build up conversation, I cut it short and slammed the phone down.

Ha’ah!

I meant it to sting.

I decided that I wouldn’t go to Baroda that year, but later on after my counseling results were out I finally made the decision to go there. In the meanwhile I did receive a reply to my mail from her, she told me to not take things so hard and to not give her the place which she thought she did not deserve. She told me to stop doing ‘this’ to myself, and that we had a long way to go and that I was very special to her and that she respected my feelings and that I should not feel insecure and the usual.

You know…

Then the devil entered my brain, I wanted to do something ‘dramatic’ on what I billed as my last trip to that city (and I’ve maintained this), some sort of a final goodbye or something. I wanted a last meeting with her, maybe to have a long chat to end it all, whatever.

The thing is that I desperately wanted to meet her, and maybe not totally with a negative intention. Perhaps talking things out would have helped salvage something. And it was possible that I could resolve whatever issues I had with her. It had taken me time but I had realized that she had paid me the supreme compliment by not telling me about Akshay; it was an effort on her part to prevent her from hurting me with this knowledge. It was because of her ‘respect’ for my feelings that she had not told me about him. However, I did get to know about it anyhow, and in the process I was hurt anyway. So I guess wasted effort on her part.

Still, I was angry, because I’d come to know about this from a third person even if that third person was a close friend like Shubhankar. And I refused to be rational. So I expected something on this so-called final trip off mine to Baroda.

And...

Then came the news of some tension between her and Akshay, she said something to me, Akshay also did say something about not being able to give her enough time and all, and she said that Akshay was not as close as he used to be, or so.

It was another year, and another Valentine’s Day. I called up Shubhankar to talk about bad luck and things in general, and he gave me the news that Akshay had broken up with her for no particular reason. Most probably because it seemed like a good idea at that time and so I immediately called up Akshay and confirmed this news from him. He said that what I’d heard was true and he had no reason for it as of yet, and as soon as he’d get a reason, I might be the first one he’d inform. Very well I said and asked her how she was taking the whole thing; he said she was fine and that basically it was all for the best and she now had studies on her mind. And then he added a little later that it was perhaps for studies that he’d broken up with her.

I don’t know whether I felt better or not, but it was certainly a nice feeling to know that she was single again. And this was one thought that never slipped my mind. However, she had the fault of being pretty and pretty girls find it hard to remain single for long. What with the fact that I was several states away from her, the only thing that excited me and made me (yes I admit it, it did) happy was that she was not with Akshay any more.

We had our Board exams then, and after that I had all my competitive exams, even though they all turned out to be sum-zero and I geared up for another year of JEE preparations. She joined a college that was near to Baroda, I talked to her now and then on the phone when I got the chance. Slowly, I don’t exactly remember what happened but we began to be a little distant. Perhaps Akshay had acted as a link between us, I don’t know, maybe I am just seeking excuses.

Meanwhile I heard that Akshay had a new girl friend, so I figured that she was pretty much out of his life.

Chance permitted me to have another trip to Baroda, exactly one year after my last trip, and this time I was to stay for a slightly longer duration than last year. I made her promise that she’d meet me, but it was difficult for her as her college had already started and although it was near to Baroda, it was still one hour’s distance and she lived in a hostel. This meant that during my stay in Baroda she’d be in her college and I’d have to go Anand to meet her. Thus lessening our chances of meeting at all. Still, I was going to Baroda, and it would have been unfair for us to not meet.

The thing was that I was unsure of the fact that whether I wanted to meet her or Akshay, myself being angry at the fact that throughout our relationship I’d been just a shoulder to cry on, and although I don’t know whether I was right or not on this count, I was pretty frustrated. So I planned my trip to Baroda, and didn’t keep a meeting with her as an essential item.

Nevertheless, I went there for a day and a half, my friends had all taken admissions in various colleges; I had decided to prepare for JEE one more year. The trip entailed the usual meeting after long time stuff, and for the larger part of the first day I stayed at Sanshit’s place. And she called up on his home phone number, I had a brief chat with her and she said that she won’t be able to come, and I’d have to go to her. I talked with my friends about this and I found out that none were too keen to come with me, all citing some technical reason or another. Then Akshay came over and I ended all discussion about her, because I didn’t want to talk about my meeting with her in front of him.

The day passed and in the evening Shubhankar made another half-baked attempt at planning a trip to meet her, he called up an old classmate who was also in the same college as her. I’d to leave at around five the next day, so it was necessary for me to meet her at some time during the morning. We planned something but didn’t finalize anything.

The next day Shubhankar came to meet me at a time much later than one suitable for going to Anand and meeting her and then coming back, we discussed this fact over lunch and I told him that I wasn’t to keen to meet her anyway. He chided me for keeping this point of view telling me that I had an important part in her life and that I shouldn’t behave like an imbecile. He cited certain examples which made me realize that he was more or less right, then I reproached him for making me realize the above rather late since now I hadn’t anytime left in which I could meet her. To make amends I decided to send her a card, I picked up one which said ‘I LOVE YOU DEAR FRIEND’ in multiple places. At the shop Shubhankar’s pen came undone when I was penning down her name and mine when I was rescued by a rather helpful shop girl who couldn’t stop gushing over the subject of the card. She gave me a glittery sort of writing instrument which left an annoying sparkle on the words. I added a small note in apology, and instructed Shubhankar to hand over the card to her personally with my words in entirety.

I left the city in the evening feeling rather happy about giving her the card, as something that she can keep with her, something to remember me by.

Much of my relationship with her was based on electronics mails, sent periodically, and used as a perfect means to express my feelings.

So, when I checked my mail on returning to Jhansi I found one by her, in which she said that she hoped my trip to Baroda had been satisfactory, and then she asked me whether we were growing apart as friends. She said that since Akshay left her, I had been a constant factor in her life but now I was also drifting away. She thought that the last conversation she had with me was forced on me by her. She said that she was getting increasingly insecure and was very afraid of losing her friends.

I replied giving my excuses for not showing up, generally blaming Shubhankar for everything, and mentioning the fact that Akshay had come over at Sanshit’s place and I didn’t want to talk about her in front of him. I said that I was sorry and she didn’t have to worry, I’d never drift away from her. I also played down my mistake a bit by saying that It was partly her fault too, since I’d come to Baroda from a place rather far away, she could have made the distance and come to Baroda for meeting me.

The next few mails between us were a love feast and a place for Akshay bashing, I asked her if she could ever give thought to falling in love with me, to which she replied that I was the best friend she had, and I believed that it was one of the times when I was very close to her.

Mailing...

Then another train of thought came to my mind, perhaps I should tell her my feelings after all. Since it was more of a safe preposition, as I already knew that her reaction would be a flat no, with some ‘please…’ etc thrown in for good measure. There was no more of the unsure factor; I believed I had nothing to worry about. There was this squabbling in my brain that getting this information out of my system would be something very necessary to do in the near future. Then I returned to the familiar grounds of ‘how-to…’ but there was a notable difference this time. I was in another city some hundreds of kilometers away and that this time I’d planned to the needful by the means of electronic mail. Due to certain physical restriction it was impossible for me to tell her my feelings face to face.

And I decided to tell her as a passing fact, something like hello, I love you. And thus there were various unsent mails in which I tried to pour my heart etc to her. Or I tried to hint that I love her. I was thoroughly unsuccessful in being able to compose the perfect mail, so I composed a poem about platonic love and all that and I filled it with words like love, attachment, friendship and something more and although it was quite clear that she was the subject of the said poem, I sent it to her as a poem commissioned to me by a non-existent friend who was in love with some girl. Goddamn lame.

Then sometime during the mid-session vacation which I was spending in Gorakhpur (my father had got posted there by now) I built up the courage to call her up. And I reasoned I had nothing to fear, nothing to lose and all that. So I picked up the phone and dialed her up, not caring about the STD costs etc, and then I had a short conversation with her in which I told her that I knew she was committed to Akshay and she said that she knew that I knew, then I told her about the poem and gave her my excuse for writing it. After which, for want of words I ended the conversation.

I emailed her later and told her that the poem was meant specifically for her and that I had lied to her over the phone and that might have been the first time when I’d been open about my feelings towards her. She replied saying she was fine with it and she was happy that we were friends, I don’t claim to get exactly what she meant but I didn’t try too much deciphering.

Then came along her birthday and I called her up again, this might have been only the second time that I was calling her up. That day I had a much longer conversation with her and I mentally recorded every word of it. Before keeping the receiver down I told her that I loved her. She laughed it off, but damn that felt good.

When I returned to my room, I felt like writing the whole conversation down, to preserve it, to make it last forever, to freeze those few minutes in time and replay them over and over.

I also went along and wrote her the email which I had tried to write on numerous other occasions, but never had the courage to do so. It was one of those mails which when you look back at, you’d be amazed at your own ability to write anything as corny as that. (Or am I blaming myself for writing that mail…no, that mail was true.)

So I started off with general topics and everything, and continued to a point where I began to write an appreciation for her voice. I told her that anyone can fall in love with her voice because it was so melodic, and then I laid on everything on the plate and served it by telling her that I couldn’t pass things as a joke now, and that I loved her. Then I continued on this general theme of love for about five hundred more words and made it quite clear to her that I was hopelessly in love with her, of course I added that this mail didn’t have anything to do with Akshay and that it was only incidental that she was committed to him. It did matter though, I said, because I knew that she’d not be able to reciprocate the feelings I had for her and that I did not expect her to, but I hoped that even after this mail she’d continue to be in touch with me, and not break off from my life. Although I knew quite well that adding the last bit was only a ploy from me to make her emotional, perhaps this whole email was a ploy by me to play with her sentiments. After a certain amount of time it becomes really hard to tell.

There were tense moments when I waited for her reply or reaction to the aforesaid mail, since I believed I had done something else apart from writing just a simple mail. After months of deliberation I had told her point blank how I felt about her. The thing with me then was I was just curious as to what her reaction would be to my love for her. Then I became worried, I called Sanshit up and told him to take care of stuff if anything goes wrong, that is if she gets angry or something like it. You know, pass the whole written email thing as a joke.

Something funny happened then, Nishant, my friend from Kota who was also an old schoolmate of Akshay got a mail from him in which he forwarded the whole of the mail that I’d sent to her. Akshay had given a header to the mail and he’d asked Nishant not to tell me about it. The funny thing was that I was with him in the cyber café where he’d gone to check his mail. So he couldn’t help but tell me about what Akshay had written, I was sitting next to him and although I am a dreamy sort of guy, I do not pass such things up. It was quite ironical, however since Nishant would have told me about this mail in any case. And I’d forewarned him that I’d sent a rather controversial mail to her, and that I was feeling tense.

Then I checked my mail account, in which I got two mails, one was from Akshay. He had expressed his sympathies over my unrequited love, and had hoped that by that mail I hadn’t hoped of bringing their relationship to an end. There was some other stuff too; he wanted me to tell him that she was the one I loved most in the world. My reply to this mail was kept short and cryptic.

After replying to Akshay I opened the mail sent by her, in which she had said that it was nice that I’d expressed my feelings for her, but it would have better had I told her about this some time ago. Ah well, easy to say, not easy to do, isn’t it? Then she said that she respected me (I really do not understand what girls mean when they say this) and she hoped that by this mail I’d given a fresh lease to our friendship.

Sure, why not. And then I wonder (and continue to wonder) what exactly is the right time to express your feelings, I have a close friend of mine who told the girl he loved the instant he fell head over heels and she immediately negated him. And he suffers even today, so I think aloud what might have been the right time for me to tell her my feelings. Or would there have been any right time at all. I mean, the real reason that I chose this time to tell her my feelings was because this time she had a real reason to refuse me, and it would have hurt more if she’d refused me without any rhyme behind it. I was more or less afraid, that’s it.

She said in her mail that I shouldn’t hide anything from her anymore; I thought what the use is now anyway. Still our relationship moved to another level that day, and continued more or less the same way for about a year or so. In the meanwhile I went to Baroda once for a day, mainly to meet her, also to meet my friends. I made sure to take a still camera with me and then I clicked photos of her like some Japanese tourist. That whole day I searched for moments where I could get some time to talk to her but all through she remained terribly silent. She did make a point to sit next to me or near to me at whatever cafes and restaurants we visited. Like all my trips to Baroda I was treating this as the final one. The day was like those days which have the habit of getting over too early, and I left back for Kota with a gift from her, it was a simple gift, couple of porcelain doves and all that. We maintained regular contact for the next few months.

Wondering...

While returning from the fete the only thought in my mind was how nice she looked that day, along with me were Shubhankar and Akshay. They discussed the girls that they found to be attractive that day, I mentioned her name and waited for their responses, Shubhankar claimed not seeing her that evening and Akshay offered a small rebuttal telling me that she looked average and compared her to a few other girls for effect.

I didn’t mind their not having anything positive to say about how she looked that day, because my mind was set. I definitely knew that I was attracted towards her.

Then comes the phase when the mind works on ways to convey the feelings of attraction, it cooks up situations where it can catch the other person somewhat unawares and give away itself. Or is it the heart thinking it all up. There are times when a person let’s the heart decide before the mind, and these situations become dangerous.

School was closed after the pre-boards for the preparatory leave and thus I had no opportunity to ‘tell her’ how I felt. In the mean time I kept myself busy drawing, eliminating and redrawing scenarios where I’d tell her how I felt, and I fixed up our valedictory function for the day I’d tell her that I am attracted to her. And I didn’t have a contingency plan or an aftermath plan, which is I didn’t know what I’d do after she would agree to or refuse to my proposal.

The tradition of our school to say fare-well to the passing out batch and give a party to the present class 10^th was somewhat rooted in the fact that many of the students left for want of (what they thought were) better schools. And the seniors made it a point to hold it as close to valentine’s day as possible. Just to juice up the situation a bit. It was supposed to be a formal sort of affair, with tie and all that. We all had to say something on the stage for a couple of minutes, reflecting thoughtfully on the past years spent in school. However, what the students were generally faced with were minutes of awkward silences and stammered thank-yous. Shubhankar, Sanshit and Akshay had all written down ‘speeches’ on bits of papers, because there was also some sort of competition where a Mr. and Miss Personality was chosen on the basis of their on stage ramblings. I on my part was contemplating the possibility of going on stage and declaring my love for her in front of the millions and millions…. It seemed like the perfect plan and I had seen so many goddamn movies that perhaps for some half fraction of a second I’d almost thought of carrying it out. It was after all, a farewell function, and I was pretty much sure I was going to leave the school after 10^th because my father had an impending transfer coming towards him. So I had this safety catch with me. I even practiced my self a couple of times in front of the mirror. I was waiting for the valedictory function for weeks, or to be exact I was waiting for this function ever since I fell for her.

However, on the final day when we all walked on stage accompanied by cheesy James Bond theme music, I forgot everything cause all I could see was the cheering and smiling faces of my class-mates, I cracked a lame joke about James Bond and an obscure communist country, sang a couple of lines from a linkin park song and then proceeded to walk down from the stage.

There was one precise moment which could be termed as slightly god-send. She was standing near the drinking water stall, waiting for someone (or something), and she was all alone, sipping water from a plastic cup. I thought that IF there was a moment, then this was it. So I darted towards her, clearing the crowds with my hands, I distinctly heard a couple of my friends call up my name but I paid no heed. I ran words through my mind, trying to pick up a suitable phrase. However I was beaten to her by her friends, God how I hated that gaggle of girls at that instant of time. They’d robbed me of the chance of a lifetime. Bless them.

After my board exams my father got shifted to Agra, and I went to Kota with the aim of preparing for IITJEE. I met her one last time when we were finally leaving Baroda, and that last meeting didn’t exactly result in a long and fruitful conversation in which lots of unsaid things were cleared out. Instead, it was just a few words from either side, so you are going? Yes I am going. Take care. I will. Bye. Bye. (I love you.)

For the next one year in Kota, I wasted my life away academically, and continued to do so through out my stay. My thoughts did turn to her now and then, and I found solace in the annual class photograph, which was the only photo that I had of her. Sometime in November I received a mail from her, usual stuff, how are you and all that. I fully suspected the mail account to be a dummy, made by perhaps Sanshit with the intent on playing a prank on me. So I quickly headed for the nearest PCO and called him up to give him an earful, but he told me that the account was genuine and she had indeed asked him for my e-mail address, which thankfully he had remembered and given to her right. I headed back to the cyber café from where I had checked my mail and quickly replied to her. This was with the hope of starting something, as always.

Then in January I got another mail, this time from Shubhankar, and it contained the news that the single status of two of my friends viz. Sanshit and Akshay had recently expired. And the fucker decided to keep the names of their respective girls as a national secret. So I repeated my running-to-nearest-PCO exercise, and called Shubhankar up. He kept me guessing on the names of the girls, and without remorse he told me that she had hooked up with Akshay. Oh, I said.

Akshay?

Yes.

Sure?

I had a pivotal hand in it!

Goddamn you.

What?

Nothing, Akshay?

Yes.

So it was Akshay, who got the girl. And in many cases there the story would have met with an end, and the guy who didn’t get the girl would say Oh well, or words to the effect and go out whistling in to the sunset.

However, I do not know how to whistle, and I had called up Shubhankar at a time when there was not even a hint of a sunset. So I persisted, at that time I tried to convince myself that I was a perfectly normal phenomenon for two persons to get into a relationship, and that it had not much to do with me. Because I reasoned that she was a friend, but perhaps not too close a friend. Hence, I played down the hooking up incident and continued existing normally.

The Prodding...

She confided in me, her infatuations, her sadness, even some amount of girlie gossip, and with me not being a very fluent speaker I turned out to be a very good listener. Although I admit that I didn’t pay deep heed to her, or tried to remember what she had said, I often offered her suggestions which she did take into considerations. Be it a spat with a friend or anything of life in general.

She used to surprise me, with the questions she asked me during class, ranging to the downright earthly to the forwardly whimsical, but I liked to bear the brunt of her trivial pursuit.

Our school had a fund raising fun-fair each year which was not fun and hardly fair with the overpriced food stalls. She asked me what would be the reason for coming to the fete, this time she supplied me the motive behind the question as her friends had simply said that the fete would interesting. She wanted to ask me what exactly people mean when they go to a fete and their excuse of going there is that it would be interesting. I had no explanation to offer for this basic human tendency.

‘Sleight of hand and twist of fate

On a bed of nails she makes me wait

And I wait without you’

There is also the presence of the prodder, the poker or the pusher in these stories. The role with the above occupation is played by the closest friends to the principal character. He constantly reminds the person about to fall in love his exact reasons for doing so. In my case they were my friends Shubhankar and Sanshit, the former in particular was quick to point out incidences where he thought he saw signs from her that were possibly directed towards me. The latter suggested that I was already in love with her and that I should convey my feelings to her in ASAP. Although I tried to push away the thoughts that were put inside my mind by the prodders, the thought mechanism is more complex than I thought. The thoughts that you try to push away are the ones that return without remorse etc. These thoughts are the most uncontrolled of all and are almost impossible to banish from the mind.

I said to myself that one friend may be wrong, but two would find it hard to be wrong at the same time and at the same place and on the same topic. So my mind dwelled on her and soon perfected an image I found hard to replace. She was nice, and she would be great. As of now she didn’t officially have a boy friend or any such hanger on, and we were close as friends, though not too close.

Still, there is always the left and the right part of the brain, so there was still a part of the brain which believed that it was just a crazy infatuation and that reality had nothing at all to do with it. And it blamed the prodders for all the prodding that they were doing. The right way was not this, and there was infinite risk.

The prodders (God Bless them) continued with their prodding and (I wouldn’t put all the blame on the prodders) I really did began to think that I was truly attracted to her. The only thing I was waiting for was a proper moment of realization when all the truth would come pouring out.

School continued, but with the approaching exams classes became less frequent and time spent with her became lesser. I had her number, but that was a time before mobile phones, and there was always the possibility that the landline phone would be picked up by an angry ladki ka baap. I did call her up once or twice, and listened to the ‘hullo, hullo’ from the other side, however I never conversed with her on the phone. And there was no school before the pre-boards. So it was after quite some time when I saw her again during the school fete, held in the last week of December.

And here I would make no excuses that on the day of fete I saw an inner light coming from her which lit up my life and that I saw her beauty in the deep sense. Nothing of that sort happened, it was pure physical attraction towards her that day as I was used to seeing her in a mundane pale khaki colored school dress, and that day she was wearing some sort of outfit that would have made any guy love her.

Sanshit rallied around and said that this was a ‘festive’ environment and that I could easily go up to her and tell her that I like her and that it will ‘suit’ the surroundings. Nothing could go wrong, he said, you can always say you were joking later because of the ‘festive’ atmosphere. For a few seconds I considered his idea, then I immediately considered it to be suicidal and instead just went up to her and complimented her on her looks. She thanked me; I turned around and walked back to where I was.

She comes...

We first met in school, when the year on the calendar was the first one of this millennium and it was the ninth year of our school lives. And we didn’t even become friends in this first year of our meeting, although as classmates we acknowledged each others presence and played a couple of keen games of table tennis (where I was thoroughly thrashed by her on numerous occasions) and that was our only point of contact. My perception of her was a decent looking girl, though perhaps debatable as to whether she was the prettiest girl in class or not, that year I had not yet decided to fall in love (or whatever).

Her perception of me could have been zilch, because I concede I was never a person people found striking or to be in the axis of things, I was (and perhaps still am) a day dreamer whose preoccupations deal with matters much smaller to normal human concern than others. So being ‘in flow’ with stuff was not something that I was particularly good at.

I remember asking her for the first impression I had on her, and I also recall that she couldn’t exactly recollect even a vague first impression; apart from the fact that she thought I was a south Indian because of my dark skin. Strange, true.

The Present although does not have a considerable control over The Past, but the one thing The Present does have control over is the human tendency to age. Thus when I was in 10^th, I was fifteen years ago, and today when I look at a fifteen year old, I say to myself that they are just kids. However, while experiencing the curious age of fifteen, one does not experience the same feelings as that of a kid, or that of the kid that he will look back and sigh about after half a decade or so.

That we were kids was a fact the teachers in school never really made us forget, with punishments like seat changes for talkative students and a ‘mixed gender’ seating arrangement to maintain discipline, and it so happened that discipline proved to be an ingredient of chance and she was placed on the same desk as me, with the teachers taking the common view that I was a silent sort, and she was a ‘talkative child’ and thus her exile, her kala-pani might have been sharing a seat with me.

And it so happens that a boy and a girl seating together on a bench (whether in a park, in a railway station or a class room, doesn’t matter) will finally muster words to talk, producing the smaller version of talk by comparing overlapping anecdotes. Our common grounds were few, but not too few. We talked about table tennis, and I reminded her now and then that those were fun days, and that I did beat her once or twice. She hid behind her memory and said that her recollection of losing a table tennis match to me was very dim.

She appeared to me as one of those girls defined by the puritans as lively. Her view of life was generally optimistic, and her mood didn’t like swinging and generally remained upbeat. I don’t know what I came across to her as, but soon we became close friends. She liked reading the book ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ during class periods and I made it a point to pick out the pop-cultural references to her, like telling her that ‘All we need is love’ is a quote by John Lennon. My friends said that she had a boy friend named Vishal, but she said that he was not her boy friend; rather he was a very close pal. It didn’t matter to me then, because I hadn’t figured out what mattered to me and what didn’t at that period of time.

The 10^th is a class when teachers really pressurize the students to study because it is a ‘board’ year and the ‘board’ in question is not the chalk-board but rather a Central Board of Secondary Education. The hype behind these exams is created on a tremendous scale by the teachers and by parents in general. They shouldn’t do it, because when the exams turn out to be lame in the end it is a big disappointment to all the build up created over the twelve months or so. The point I am trying to stress is that perhaps the 10^th was the only time in my life when I actually decided to study, and take a shot at trying to score marks.

(I involuntarily pause for a moment and think of the fact that we used to sit together on the same bench and talk for hours at length for months without end, and today…)

Intro...etc

On the twenty sixth of May this year, I called her up. It was her birthday, and I was damn cheerful while wishing her, I talked to her about her vacation plans, about how things were in general and about what she intended to do on her Birthday. Then I kept the receiver down, and vowed to myself to never call her up again, nor contact her through any means. This was supposed to be the final phone call from me to her.

She didn’t know about that, of course. I was careful enough not to give her a hint that this was the final time I would be talking to her on the phone. Or off it, for that matter.

There is no exact point at which this story can be said to have a start. Such stories occur in most peoples’ life, and many a times they are short, can be forgotten easily, or to put it simply, they do not last for around half a decade, and leave a mixed after taste,

So I am at a dilemma, where do I start? Should I start at the beginning? When was the beginning? Or was there a beginning at all?

I have narrated this ‘tale’ of mine to most of my friends, in bits and pieces, scratched together like a drunk rock guitarist trying to piece together a lengthy guitar solo at the best and the last rock concert of his life. Trying to bend all the requisite tones, trying to use the effect pedals to the maximum. He keeps on forgetting the next note, and then he is not quite capable of remembering the previous. In the end, he tries to hurry off to a finish line, when the guitar solo is over and done with, and with that he hopes to break his guitar on the stage, in a brutal but memorable finale. The guitar however turns to be unbreakable, and he leaves the stage where he wants to live hurriedly, hoping to salvage something from this performance. The drunken guitarist is however acutely aware of his failure, and also of the fact that his intoxication has rendered him incapable of sliding up and down the fret board.

Today however, I am not a drunk guitarist. This is me, I have my guitar in my hand, and I am going to play a long, uninterrupted solo.

Unplugged.

What is a cliché? Is it something that happens to everyone? Or is it something that happens to one person repeatedly, to the point of being redundant?

We search for coincidence (or comparable stories), and call it a cliché. And the biggest examples of these so-called Clichés are these ‘so-called’ stories of unrequited love.

To put it in a nutshell, boy loves girl, girl is not interested, boy persists, and girl desists. And it all leads to a somewhat convergent series sort of end to a sad and bad story.

Have I seen a movie with that story?

Have you?

Definitely, maybe.

So we have to start from a point somewhere in the past, since the future seems too far away. And here I proceed to throw a stone across the field of my past and wait for it to land somewhere that can serve as a legit starting position. And from there I might decide to throw a stone at another point or I may emulate the great runners and run across the field to the finish line. (The starting line in this case is heavily blurred, and is not clear; I would need a little help from my friends on that one).

‘See the stone set in your eyes

See the thorn twist in your side

I wait for you’

For starters, and for much of the main course, let’s see…who is she? How did she come into my life? Or, how did I come into her life for that matter (did I ever?).

I have been strumming up too many questions, I believe, and it’s time now to stop being fanciful and start something. There will be a time for everything, first impressions, handshakes, laughter, forgetting, Milan Kundera, you name it and before you want it you will have it in your hands.

(The guitar seems to be tuned properly now, all the strings taut and responding reflexively under my touch.)

And now the first thing I’ll have to curb is my tendency to become the drunken guitarist. No more scratchy pieced together solos, this is final, unplugged.