Perfect Strangers

It was a warm, almost windless, July evening. A weekend excursion to a city from a stifling life in the village hadn’t exactly cheered me up. That, coupled with the fact that this might be the last time we would see each other.

The soccer match was boring, ending in a sad penalty shootout. There were the four of us, and another one too, although he wasn’t one of our company. It was almost as if it was a disconnected set of people, sitting together just for old times’ sake.

Some moons ago, it was another day when in front of the ol’ houses at the end of the road, she had told me everything. I guess. She had held my hand for a while as she had cried, said she just wanted to be out with it. ‘For old times’ sake,’ I thought, although guiltily I was not sure I didn’t want to hear it all.

‘A different life beckons now,’ I told her, ‘just make sure you got to a place because you wanted to go there, and not because you just got there.’ She seemed to nod. My shock and a sense of betrayal were yet to subside. After all, it is not every day that you cry for hours at end.

Before long, it actually materialized. She was heading out. I thought she might not return. I tried convincing myself that it didn’t matter. I lied to myself. As he said, I was never much of a convincing liar. ‘Lie’, he said, ‘flashes across your face so plainly it is painful for people who care so much about you.’

I remembered her birthday, she forgot mine. She was never the remembering types anyway. We spoke at times, but with less regularity. I tried to convince myself that fault was hers too. After all, she had herself pointed out, ‘why is it that your anger is directed towards him and not me?’ I thought hard, and didn’t have an answer, really. My biases have always been irrationally held.

As the summer waned away, the sight of clouds over the horizon became more common. It was a summer of discontent. Happiness seemed to be in short supply all around. A summer which was best forgotten, yet ironically, a summer that was the most difficult to forget.

A July weekend trip almost happened by chance. I did not know that it was the last I was to see her. The evening turned to the night, and for the four of us, the slowness of the progression was almost painful. Silently we trooped out, I was trying not to think anything. On the road she says, ‘I need to go to the place for which I don’t know the way.’ Just as before, he offered to drop her. On another day, I had offered to join in too, but that was when I had not known, but I was trying to understand. This time, I turned my face in cold nonchalance. To the fourth I said, ‘Let’s move our way. It is getting late’. For him, the world is still the same, not a motley collection of prickly glass shards as for me.

And we parted. Just like that. No goodbyes, no hugs, nothing. Months of friendship gone in a poof. An ideal way to end it, I thought ironically, just so there should be no pretences of good memories left. How much of pretensions can you weigh on your conscience anyway? And the weight of acting perfectly normal when everything around you has fallen down with a soundless crash?

‘I want to meet you before I leave,’ she messaged the next day, ‘there might not be time later’. ‘What is left to say anyway,’ I thought, ‘hadn’t we said enough, communicated enough?’ ‘I leave at 9,’ I replied back. ‘Come over’ I wanted to add, but checked myself just in time, lest I should myself start expecting. She never replied back. I took the train home at 9. Forgive and forget, they say. Assuming I have the right, I'll forgive. But never forget.

‘GIMME FUEL GIMME FIRE GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE…’ Hetfield shrieks and I wake up just in time for the morning Valuation class, mumbling sad nothings to myself.

So much time has gone past, and another birthday nears. Sigh!