THE SECOND DAY

It was 18:57 when I last checked my mobile phone, (before I got inside, of course) I remember minimizing my music screen to facilitate that. ‘In the Sun’ by She & Him, and I stayed put for an unknown bit. Maybe 10 minutes, but I’m not sure and that’s the whole point. I’m not sure.

I’m not hung over, mind you. Kind of a pathetic way to begin a sincere narrative but I thought I had to stick to the trend to illustrate I’m not part of it. I hope that makes sense. I spent seventeen minutes between 18:30 and 18:47 at the exact place where I had boarded the vehicle yesterday, and my clock runs seven minutes fast, not that I intend it not to. And it’s not like I couldn’t wait longer, but I was struck by this better idea or at least something that looked better to me at that ‘lost’ point of time, so I stopped the next vehicle (a ‘share-auto’ if you must know). I asked for ‘Thirumangalam’ and he nodded. I hopped in.

Once right away, once when we turned at the arch and quite extensively from then. I remember ‘Ridin’ in my car’ pretty well, and I also remember me losing track of time and place at that point. I was doing it subconsciously, like a sort of normal emotional reaction. She had me hooked, yeah, I’d never deny that. I prayed that she wouldn’t get down at the next turn and she didn’t, thankfully. She only smiled even more at how I reacted to that fleeting rise she threw my way.

No, not here. Not here. I remember this illuminated white strip on an otherwise dark kind of road (it’s the same road, portions of which are darker than usual, a sign of uninhabited state). I didn’t have time on my side so I ought to be deciding fast, or so I thought. And I found no white rectangle.

How long would this go on anyway? How long… I mean, not that I didn’t want it to go on forever, but could I have trusted my near-hypnotized self? And I really thought she could hear my mind, I sort of highlighted that voice with whispers through my lips, forming phrases like, “Oh my…” and “this is so… odd, so… awkward!” and then I looked at her and she smiled and I smiled, and I swear I hadn’t smiled as broad before.

I was past it, pretty much and this self-assuredness gave me some weight, really. I was able to fully appreciate in a way that I could end up not seeing her again, but that didn’t have to stop me from trying, you know. Two things filled my mind, predominantly. One was that if I was past where she got down, then that would explain her absence in the autos that went past me, and the second was that if I was at a place before where she got down, then I simply had to be extra cautious, or I don’t know… Man, it’s a sick thing to be doing all the same.

Ten minutes? Of all the warmth that we had felt, and she could spare just ten minutes? What’s that, some super-miser, or just pure ‘femme fatale’? No, no way, this can’t be a test, this surely can’t be… and there’s this other girl sitting right in front, chic with a pair of lips glossing out from the oddest place for them to be, and… No, I was moving again and she was moving away. I couldn’t find voice enough to ask him to stop, to tell him that was where I should be getting down. She smiled at me, a distant smile from twenty metres away. The one next to me looked dumbstruck. And I was speechless, blank and misty.

Well before she got down, and all I had to do was wait. I thought I’d kip at a signal and peer into everything that went past, and that could uncomplicated things, an irony in itself. 19:28. I thought I had lost her already, you know. Recollections of how I wished to ask the girl in front of me if she liked what she was listening to and tell her what I thought of it, and... that didn’t make it out of my throat either.

“Are you looking at anything in particular, or are you just trying to not look at me?”. Of course I didn’t ask that! I didn’t ask her anything, I didn’t make the rhetoric I wanted to make, I didn’t progress on this front where I imagined me having a girlfriend like her, high-maintenance, lot of expectations, too much of promises that I couldn’t linger on for even a moment. Everyone else found a reason to get down before, and it was just me and her by the time we reached where I had to get down. She spoke in Tamil, much to my surprise, and she had successfully avoided looking at me for the whole of it. I tried to keep an eye out for her as I picked up a call on my phone. I answered it.

She was gone. I couldn’t explain this little tear that made its way out of my left eye. And I didn’t bother to look out for her either.

Umm nope, not answering. And I tried again, same result. 19:35. I thought of the things I said yesterday, things I wrote, things I wanted to write, encounters that never were and how chasing something that never was could only be a way into delusion; into believing what I want to believe as opposed to what needs belief. I thought of the only time when I had actually broken the ice, and how I had waited for dawn in my hostel-days so I could read what she had to say. A week, and they’d be back again, I thought. And that could be a level of happiness that could swallow this angst against myself, against this life that so denies itself in actuality, and cloud nine would be too low a place for me to be in then.

I thought of her, I thought of ‘seeking against living’, fidelity, trust, a stable mind and… my mother finally picked up, told me she’d be waiting where I usually get down, and I felt like something peppy to mark this change of direction. ‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana featuring Rob Thomas.

I headed home.