14 February 2000
It’s been days since I have talked to Rishab or Sahil or Arundhati. My attendance in school has been sketchy the past couple of months. I had made Maa–Baba realize that school was a waste of time and I needed more time at home to complete my IIT modules. Maa–Baba had promptly called the principal and eked out an arrangement. The principal had summarily objected but he knew that an IIT ranker in their alumni is just what they needed. My seniors were nincompoops and no one was expected to clear IIT. I was their shining light. I don’t miss my school fellows at all. I don’t miss Maa–Baba and Dada as they were. And of all the people I don’t miss, it’s Brahmi. I don’t miss her voice, I don’t miss her touch, I don’t miss her presence—yes, I don’t miss her at all. And why will I miss her? It’s not as if I think she was a part of me. It’s not as if the last few days of my life have been spent in abject despair, or as if I spent every waking minute reliving everything that we shared, everything that seemed real and true and everlasting, or as if I have mourned the loss of every possible future I have seen with her, or as if sometimes the pain is so hard to bear that I fiddle with the paper cutter.
So imagine my consternation when I found Brahmi waiting outside my school. Like a child running away from a swarm of bees I ran away from her. I ran and ran till I thought I would run out of solid ground to run on. But she was there too. Like a ghost.
‘This is what you meant when you said you didn’t want anything to do with me?’ said Brahmi.
My heart thumped with a ferocity I had not felt before. Was it happiness? Was it sadness? Was it the exhaustion of running?
‘Why are you here? I thought I had made it plenty clear that we shouldn’t have to do anything with each other.’
‘I just came here to see how you were doing.’
‘What would happen to me? I’m fine,’ I said.
‘You don’t look fine,’ she said. ‘Come, sit.’
‘I don’t want to sit. I want to go.’
‘Don’t throw a tantrum now. Come and sit here.’
She patted the pavement she sat on.
Begrudgingly, I did as asked. As much as it pained me to see her, I couldn’t budge, like I was under her spell. She seemed to have become even more beautiful, if that was possible.
‘You haven’t been talking to anyone,’ said Brahmi.
‘Isn’t that entirely my choice?’
‘It is but they are your friends. You don’t pick up their calls, you don’t meet them, you don’t even sit with them. Why?’
‘I don’t think of them as my friends.’
‘Why not?’
‘They don’t matter.’
‘That’s—’
‘I never had the need of making friends, Brahmi. And I don’t want your advice. I think I was plenty clear that we shouldn’t be in touch any more. So now I will get up and go home and you won’t reach out to me.’
‘But why, Raghu?’
‘Because I don’t see any reason why we should be in touch. You are not the person I was in love with and it’s impossible for me to accept that. I will continue loving you till the time I can and it’s unfair on both of us to be in an unrequited relationship. I know you don’t feel the same way as you once did and that’s fine. Just as that is your prerogative, this is mine.’
Brahmi sighed deeply and said, ‘Raghu. There are things that are out of your hand. You can’t do anything about it. The world’s a shitty place and we have got to accept it. Maybe you’re not meant to save me or I to save you.’
‘I know that. But we were meant to suffer together, weren’t we?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think I can be there for you, Raghu.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said and got up.
I walked away from her. A stupid, stupid, stupid part of me wanted her to come and stop me. So when I turned a corner, I hid to see if she was following me. She was still on the pavement, tossing pebbles, staring out in the distance. When the pebbles around her disappeared, she started to weep. At first softly and then her whole body shook. I wanted to run to her, hold her, ask what’s troubling her but I chose to stand and watch for the next half an hour. Why should I be around to comfort her when she so brutally ripped herself out of my life?
And when has she ever opened up to me? She would talk in riddles and only make me sadder, if that’s possible. She quietened after a while and then drove off on her scooter. I came back home.
Richa shouted from the balcony, ‘Did you meet her?’
I waved my middle finger at her and what I assume was a celebratory look because of my break-up on her face. I have seen my seniors do that. Richa would have seen that too because she disappeared into her house.
It was late in the evening when Baba came home with an opened envelope addressed to me. It was without any stamps.
‘Has the girl still not left you?’ asked Maa.
‘I have nothing to do with her.’
‘You don’t?’ said Baba, mockingly. ‘Then what should I do with this card?’
‘Burn it,’ I said.
Maa–Baba would have sensed the seriousness in my tone because they left the card on the table. Boudi picked it up.
‘Why are the hearts cut out? Seems more like a break-up card,’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said and took the card from her.
Now as I’m looking at it the writing is Richa’s, not Brahmi’s. She seemed to have been heartbroken about me abusing her, or seeing Brahmi again. If only she would have known that there’s nothing left between Brahmi and me.