He sat at the corner table, gazing out the window. A faint breeze stirred his hair, flickering ever so slightly. His eyes were just as I remembered them, jet black with a reddish hue, glowing with a radiance like an expensive wine brought out only on special occasions to inspire envy. I, for one, never had the taste for it.
The boss woke me up in the morning, screaming from the other side of the phone that the client wanted to meet in person to finalize the designs.
I don’t think he’s usually mad; it’s just that his tone can be off-putting sometimes. I could almost picture his face contorting, cycling through emotions as he delivered every word in a deluge of provocativeness sharp enough to make anyone squirm.
The things money can make us do!
The client is a bit of a fussy one. Who even wants to meet face to face these days?
I had to go through my entire stack of clothes just to find something reasonable to wear. Meeting strange people isn’t really my cup of tea; they’re mostly rude and obnoxious, to be honest. Their eyes hold me in contempt for disturbing their sense of indulgence, and their physical presence intimidates me to the point where I’d rather stay away from everyone, tucked into a little corner, hostage to no one’s thoughts but my own.
So here I am, sitting at the table waiting for someone to arrive, when I see him walking past me. He’s still lean but much taller than I remember. Of course, that makes perfect sense — the last time I saw him was in the 9th grade. His face has lost the boyish charm I once knew, yet it still carries some of its poise and elegance.
When Ashwin and I crossed paths, we were halfway through the 7th grade. As we saw this new boy, hair neatly tucked to one side, wearing a full-sleeved uniform on a sweltering summer day, for God knows what reason, being introduced to the class, we were instantly intrigued — or at least I was.
His father had a transferable job, so they had to move from place to place.
Ashwin used to gloat about his father a lot — his job, the gifts, the clothes he could afford. The only caveat was that they couldn’t stay in one place for too long. Some people were jealous of him. Rita, for one, constantly nagged me, insisting that Ashwin’s family were a pack of thieves and that was the reason they couldn’t settle anywhere. I, for one, thought they were gypsies. The things young minds can conjure up out of sheer imagination are quite extraordinary when you think about it.
I kind of vaguely remember Rita, her odd-looking glasses, the strange way she styled her hair. The other girls in the class whispered that she was a witch perhaps, who took pleasure in other people's miseries. I am not sure about the witch part, but Rita was good at keeping secrets.
It was also around the time when I was struggling with my emotions, or rather, my hormones. The laws of attraction were twitching inside me as I tumbled from one side to the other. But it wasn’t just me; Ashwin had this magnetic personality that made everyone gravitate toward him. Even the girls who normally wouldn’t step outside their itchy, bitchy cliques started calling him their “special friend.” Seeing Ashwin with them — hands on his shoulders, the giggling, the pretentious smirks — did make me jealous. I’ve admitted that perhaps a thousand times over. I thought of it, slept on it, but nothing ever came of it.
Ashwin, for one, was quick to get around, making friends faster than Rounak’s math calculations, which, by the way, were pretty darn good. Rounak is stateside now, somewhere in sunny California, last I heard. Ashwin, on the other hand, turned out to be an all-rounder — like those annoying kids who are unbearably good at everything and whom your parents never stop comparing you to. But Ashwin never cared; he played football, became the captain of the volleyball team, and spoke English as if he hailed from that miserable place, all without breaking a sweat.
I wanted to talk to him, wanted to feel closer to him, but never got the chance. Then, in some miraculous way, Ashwin became roll number 11, just one after me, when we entered 8th grade. It wasn’t really a miracle, though; our parents had simply decided to arrange our names with particular letters suited to their imagination, thinking we would do wondrous things in the world, only to spend the rest of their lives in a deep abyss of disappointment.
So, as luck would have it, the only time I got close to Ashwin was when we sat for the exams. It’s not that we cheated, but we did get to talk a lot. My mother had never seen me so excited for an exam in her life; truly, it was a strange sight for all of us.
Those days were magical — the whispers, the slight eye contact, the brush of hands — my little heart felt like it might burst if not kept in check.
However, that was the limit.
Ashwin had his circle, or rather, circles, and I, on the other hand, was never good in circles, as if that shape repelled me.
Time was short: Ashwin’s father was transferred again midway through our 9th grade. People gave him farewell gifts — a pen and a diary. I couldn’t bring myself to give anything except my sad look. I wasn’t just sad; devastated would be a more accurate adjective. I wanted to hold him, to say goodbye properly, but little old me didn’t have the heart to do it. And just like that, he was gone, and with nothing to anchor them, my feelings started floating around like lost spirits.
Ashwin had a tenderness about him; he was like a human bag of candies. The way he talked and carried himself struck some of the boys as odd, and they whispered about it, smiling to themselves. Sometimes I wished I could have smacked the hell out of them, but I didn’t have the strength; I was a bit of a coward, to be honest.
As I went through various stages of self-realization, self-deprivation, and mockery, as my identity and self-being went for a tumble, I always wondered how Ashwin was doing.
Like, what was happening to him? Why wasn’t I a part of it?
Did he go to college?
Did he become a scientist or a writer?
Did he get married and have twins, one boy and one girl?
Did he become a celebrity? That possibility was rather grim. But there was always another: that he was quite dead.
To be honest, the thought of Ashwin living a life of his own somewhere else, completely ignorant of my pitiful existence, always intrigued me. It was like a mystery box. I had always imagined that we would cross paths again in unfamiliar places — on a gondola, on a beach, on pebbled streets riddled with history, like in those fancy films.
We would discover each other, fall in love, and then forget one another as if we had never existed. Then the cycle would repeat itself from time to time. We would change our names, change the places we visited, as if the world itself danced around my whims and fancies.
The reality is harsh and unrelenting and impossible to miss with the waiter staring at my face.
“Sir, can I get you anything?”
He had a strange expression on his face. It could have meant one of two things: either he had a fight at home, or his boss had scolded him for no fault of his own. His pockmarked face peeked out from beneath a hat that looked slightly too big for his head.
“Yes, I want to be left alone with my feelings, hoping they’ll eat me alive someday.”
“Excuse me?”
“Can I have a black coffee, please?”
“Sure, sir.”
Ashwin had a beautiful lady for company, pretty enough to be his girlfriend but old enough to probably be his wife. I could only make out her side profile and a hint of a smile as she spoke to him. They looked good together. I wondered when they met.
Was it love at first sight? Did Ashwin make the first move, or was it her?
Was it during their college days?
My college days were, how to put it, quite the adventure, you might say. When my head and body finally started speaking in more practical terms, I understood what they actually wanted. And so, as books and lectures sounded gibberish, it was the perfect time to have my first fling. Raghav had an interesting personality, quite different from Ashwin. He was brash, unapologetic, and wanted life on his own terms, or almost. Except for his hormones and me, everyone else was afraid of him.
The kisses, the teasing, the making out in corners where darkness had a permanent residence — my body reverberated, going through gears it never knew existed.
It was all good until it wasn’t. You can guess the problems we had. He was hesitant, careful, worried about what would happen to his reputation if someone knew about us. It wasn’t normal, was it? But then, what is normal? We were like those bad apples in the orchard, the ones everyone sees fit to blame for literally anything and everything that goes wrong.
Flings never really develop into anything. I guess it’s easier that way. What truly gets you, though, is when people start to resent you — not for what you’ve become, but for what you always were. You can see it in their eyes, feel it in their words. The sudden change of perception, the skin-piercing remarks, but most of all, the silence — the silence of the ones close to you.
It’s fine. Everything is fine. I forgive everyone, though I’m no one to do that. I suppose, at some point, I regretted not being open with my feelings, not telling people who I really am, and that’s completely on me. Should I have told Ashwin how I felt all those years ago? Did I even know myself what to make of those feelings? I mean, it’s never really a straight-cut answer, is it?
As I start sipping my coffee, a man walks up from my blind side and sticks out his hand.
“Hey, I’m Ashish. You are?”
Just the guy you’re looking for.
“Hey, nice to meet you. Please, do have a seat.”
I was severely underdressed, but Ashish didn’t seem to care. Clad in a blue suit with an expensive watch and cologne straight out of Le Marais, he looked every bit like someone who had descended from the pointy peaks of Corporate High just to meet a mere mortal.
“Shall we go over the designs once?”
“Yes, please.”
All of a sudden, the café is beaming with people, all of whose faces look identical, like long-lost siblings finally meeting up. I glance over at the window table to find it empty, a waiter doing his best to clean it up. Ashwin and his pretty lady must have left while I was tangled in thoughts of my own demise.
Though I am stubborn enough not to admit it, I wish he had remembered me. I wish he’d had that look on his face — that beaming smile you get when you recognize someone from a life long gone by. But here’s the thing: I have a feeling he did remember. He knew exactly who I was and chose to look away.
Is that normal? I guess it is. Not wanting to be embarrassed by someone you half-heartedly knew a lifetime ago, who secretly and strangely admired you for all the wrong reasons. I mean, I wouldn’t blame him.
We all go through it, don’t we? Phases, I mean. When our soul ruptures and then tries to stitch itself back together as if nothing has happened. But what if it’s too fractured to be mended, even by the finest materials money can buy? What becomes of it? Does it fade away in abject silence?
“Hey, you with me?”
Ashish, by now, had taken out his sleek-looking laptop and was going through some files.
“Yes, yes, I’m here.”
