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.