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.