Hello, Goodbye

October 22, 2007

Rose stood waiting at the canteen as I got off the Churchgate station and walked towards her. With a distance of about 30 yards between us I tried to drink in the reality. It was close to four years since the time we last met. In the winter of 2003, I was still a kid. Four long and eventful years in which so much had changed. I do not know if I felt more mature as I walked towards her. But somehow I've always felt that childhood had ended somewhere in that winter four years back. And this was merely a stop gad period before adulthood would set in.

As I got closer I took a long hard look at her. A thousand thought ran through my head. I wondered how much she had changed in these years. Had she put on weight? She certainly seemed a little different. Was she this tall when i last saw her?

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Long time."

"Long time."

"Were you this tall when i last saw you?"

It turns out she was. But minus the two inches of heels she sported now. She took off her sunglasses and smiled at me. The same black lustrous eyes. Keki Daruwalla once wrote of a woman that she was a hoor with eyes so bright that they could light up the darkness of the underworld. He might as well have been speaking of her.

Sunglasses, heels, kohl in her eyes. Some things had changed. Yet others hadn't. The same gold pendant which she always wore, small earrings like the ones she would buy somewhere near New Patna Market, a plain white top like many she had. ("Do all your clothes look the same?") But she looked different. I do not know in what way but the girl I had known most of my life had not been this beautiful.

Over milkshake in that college canteen, we broke the ice. My life in law school, hers in the hostel, my brother's wedding, her mother's illness, law and justice, movies and books. We spoke almost like two strangers. Why are we talking like this? Who cares about mundane things like old common friends? About what happened to old what's-his-name and what became of old so- and-so. Let's take a walk and throw Landor at each other or something or make non-executable plans to go trekking on the mountains or something.

Over beer and Fish n chips at Cafe Leopold, things got a little warmer. Past relationships and prospective ones. ("Forget about it. She's way out of your league.") Her bunch of suitors ranging from irritating to interesting. ("Give me call if you want me to beat them up or something." "Like the old times?" "Like the old times.")

"Are you still a virgin?"

Spechless and gaping.

"Oh God! You're blushing like a girl."

"Please. I am not blushing. I was just taken aback."

"So...?"

"What do you think?"

"Who'd ever agree to sleep with you?"

Over ragda patties at Chowpatty, things got a little better. We even threw a bit of Frost at each other. As i was about to graduate to Donne, she stopped me.

"Lets not get into poetry."

"Whats wrong with poetry?"

"Nothing. It just depresses me."

"Ok. Lets take a walk and I'll tell you about a story about how Sunny Gavaskar once got a haircut midway through a test match."

As i narrated the tale of how the great Dickie Bird was once approached by the little monster with the most peculiar of requests which Bird might initially have mistaken for some low form of Asiatic humor but on realising that the batsman was serious he produced a razor-blade and sliced off locks of his hair which were blowing into his eyes and the haircut had a very unSamsonlike effect on Gavaskar as he went from strength to strength and scored his first century in two years, she fell by my side and held on to my sleeve as we walked.

"Look at those dividers."
"Don't they look like Shiv-lings?"
"Imagine what a tough time a person would have pouring water over all of them."
"Do you know Shiv-lings are actually phallic symbols?"

Meeting her was like discovering my childhood again. Childhood juxtaposed with against my present. Old crushes, long forgotten and vehemently denied now, the first whiff of smoke coughed out on stolen cigarrettes and now both of us lit up like veterans("Not bad, you don't wet the butt anymore."), memories of ways through woods on snowy evenings and reading out Shakespeare aloud, plots of running away, planned and partly executed, revolutionary ideas and dream of changing the world.("You're still such a dreamer") But, times had changed. We were growing up.

"Hey, we're growing up!"
"Not we, you are."
"You mean you aren't."
"No, I already have. You're the one who's still a boy."

As she sat across me on the train, both of us were aware of the the very few minutes we had together. A thousand thoughts ran through my head. Four years this time, God knows how many more before we'd meet again. I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her but why increase the pain of parting. I do not know what was going through her mind. All the sarcasm was gone from her demeanour and she sat with her defenses down, her face small and her eyes sad. Why love someone? Life is so much simpler without it. I felt the burden of unwanted love heavy on me. At that moment, I thought of another on whom probably a similar burden lay heavy. We are a chain of a horrible cliche which is too much of a cliche to be even taken seriously.