Hiccups, p.15
Hiccups, page 15
“This edition of Fastermind was by far the most exciting and engaging of all. Each and every team performed extremely well. But the nail biting finish which enthralled the audience was courtesy The Nameless Victors. Not only were they involved in an astonishing comeback, they also won the tie breaker round with ease. That required great skill, ability and teamwork. Which is what Fastermind is all about…”
As she read the remainder of the article and took a look at the photograph again, she felt worse about how she had behaved with him. In her heart of hearts, she knew that he hadn’t come to college because of her. He probably was feeling hurt and each time she read the sms that he had sent to her, it reinforced that belief.
Suparna tried to get her best friend into a positive frame of mind and forget about what had happened.
“Time heals everything” Suparna said to her best friend.
“Not everything. Some things get worse with time” she replied.
He made his first appearance in college, three days after the quiz victory. He tried to avoid her all day, but when he was walking towards the lab for a practical, she finally caught up with him.
“Hey, can we talk? Please” she said to him, as the rest of their batch made their way to the laboratory. He looked at her and after a short pause, nodded and walked away from the lab building and approached a peepal tree, under the shade of which they stopped to talk.
“Look, I am really sorry about what happened that evening. I was going through such a roller-coaster ride of emotions all through the quiz that I sort of lost it when I found out that you weren’t coming for the party. I was just really keen on the party and you know the reason for that right? We had spoken about why such things matter a lot to me. But I’m drifting away from the point.
There’s no justification for the way I behaved. I don’t know how hurt you felt, but I felt horrible about it, the moment you left that place. When I read your message and realized what had happened, you cannot imagine the guilt I went through. And I tried calling you up as soon as I read your sms but your phone was switched off. All through that evening I kept trying your number, but it was no use. Even the past three days, I’ve been waiting to talk to you so that I could apologize. Now that you finally showed up, you’ve been avoiding me. Which sort of makes me think you are still very upset and rightly so.
Now, I can’t take back what I said, but here I am, telling you that I can’t possibly convey to you how sorry I am and how bad I’ve felt about what happened. Please can you forgive me and forget the whole episode ever happened?” she said in a long drawn out apology.
She looked at him; he had a troubled expression on his face, as though he was debating something in his mind. He wasn’t even looking at her; he was staring at the base of the tree.
“So what do you say? Are we cool?” she said, urging him to accept her apology. He finally made eye contact with her. She waited for his response.
“Yeah, we’re cool” he said and started to turn around, but she caught his arm and stopped him.
“Look, don’t do this, please. Believe me; I am very sorry about what I said. How can I possibly convey that to you, so you’d believe me” she replied, pleading with him to forgive her.
“I believe you” he said and started to walk towards the lab.
She walked ahead of him and stood in his way.
“Just let it go naa? I’m sorry, really. Just tell me what I can do to make things better?” she asked him, desperate to resolve the matter. He took a deep breath, his mind was filled with conflicting thoughts, on one hand he knew that her apology was genuine, but on the other hand, he was still hurt. After another period of silence, he finally decided to tell her what he felt.
“Listen. I believe you, believe me. And it’s OK; I know that it wasn’t completely your fault. I know that my rushing off after the quiz seemed inexplicable. But I had my reasons… and… you know what…. there’s another side to the story and why I am upset.
There is a reason why I stay away from people in college and keep a distance. I have some things to look after that don’t allow me to mingle with everyone else. I simply do not have that kind of time.
You think I like staying away from the good things in life? I really did want to go to that party, believe me. But I couldn’t have gone for it, for reasons I’d rather keep to myself. And I did feel bad about what you said. But it wasn’t just that. It’s one thing knowing that the whole class thinks I suck, but it’s another thing altogether when someone like you says it to me.
In anger we do say a lot of things that we shouldn’t, but there is an element of truth in it. And no matter what you say today, we both know that to some extent you do think I am an arrogant, aloof, selfish, secretive lunatic. Isn’t it?
That’s why I don’t make friends in class. Because friendship comes with its own responsibilities and duties. Things which I cannot take up right now in my life. You were completely right in expecting me to be there with you at that party and that’s why I understand why you got so upset. But the fact of the matter is, I cannot live up to the expectations that people have of me as a friend. And I would rather be alone and go through college life by myself and have people think whatever they want than become friends with someone like you and reach a stage where you begin to hate me.
So, I don’t want you to torture yourself about this. It’s fine, we’re cool. But I just want to be left alone, I’m better off that way.
One more thing, even I want to apologize to you; for not telling you the reason why I had to leave that day. But I haven’t told anyone and I want to keep it that way. I hope you can understand that” he said to her.
She couldn’t forget the expression on his face as he finished speaking his piece. It was as though he was battling with himself. Each sentence he spoke had been laboured, with a lot of thought behind it. Where she had expected an outburst of anger from him, she had received a calm, straight from the heart response about his state of mind. She marvelled at how measured and balanced he had been in conveying to her that she had hurt him without going overboard and criticising her behaviour that evening. She knew what she had to tell him.
“Since I know you don’t want to talk about it, I will not ask you what it is that you are going through. But just remember, if you ever need a friend to talk to, I will always be there” she said to him.
He responded with a smile and for a second she thought that things had been mended. But then he turned around and walked away; the smile was gone and he had the same troubled expression on his face. He made his way to the lab for the practical and even though she was present for the same practical, she did not make an effort to talk to him. She left him alone as he had requested.
Later that evening she looked on from a distance as he, like always, rushed off on his cycle. She hoped that in a few days or weeks he’d be able to get over what he was going through and then she would try and resume their friendship. They had barely become friends for a month and she had already started to miss his company, his stories and cheeky sense of humour. She decided to wait.
That wait carried on for weeks that turned into months, until the semester exams were over and done with. On the last day, when everyone was celebrating the end of the fifth semester of engineering and taking photographs outside the exam hall, she saw him slip away towards the parking. She followed him and he saw her just as he was about to get on his cycle.
“Hey, how was the exam?” he asked her.
“It was fine. I’ll pass” she said.
“And by that you mean, you’ll probably end up amongst the toppers” he replied with a smile.
“If only you’d allow someone else to top for a change” she said with a wink. He laughed.
“Hey, you want to grab some lunch? It’s been a long time since we caught up and it’s not evening time right now, so I don’t think you need to rush off to your secret lair” she said to him, cheekily.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at her ‘secret lair’ statement. But he looked at her and thought about what had happened when they had gotten close to each other the last time as friends. He didn’t want to go through another episode where he’d have his feelings hurt.
“No. I’ll skip; you have fun with the others. I think there’s a movie plan being made. You should go for that. I’ll be fine” he said to her. Something about his expression reminded her of the expression he had on his face the day she had apologized to him. Which meant that he still hadn’t gotten over the incident completely.
“OK” she said with a hint of dejection and turned around to walk away.
“Hey, listen…” he said as she stopped in her tracks and looked at him.
“What?” she asked.
“Thanks for being so nice to me. Don’t think I’m ungrateful, I am glad that I have a friend like you” he said to her. She did not fail to notice the emotion in his voice when he said those words. She was glad; she knew he had finally forgiven her.
“You’re welcome. By the way, I’m off to Bangalore for the vacations; I’ll be back in a month. Anytime in between if you feel like talking, you have my number” she replied, smiled at him and then walked away. He watched her leave, her words making him feel better.
That night when she was on the train to Bangalore, she thought about the entire semester, how the thread of her friendship with him had added so much to her life during the six months she had spent in the city. What had started off as curiosity about the class topper, had started turning into a really nice friendship before going through a major upheaval and finally settling into a relationship that threatened to fizzle out but was still alive.
It had been close to a month since the semester vacations had started and that night he was busy surfing the web when he saw her come online on his chat list. He was invisible as always, but her status showed up as ‘Available’.
India… u der? She wrote in a chat message to him that brought a smile to his face. Despite the fact that he felt like replying to her chat, he chose not to. It was the third time during the month that she had pinged him. Like the previous two occasions, he decided to drop her an email late into the night, so that she didn’t think he was avoiding her. But he wanted to keep his distance from her. He closed his laptop and looked at the gold-plated trophy on his study table. It reminded him of the best moments of the semester that had just gone by. He was now well and truly over the incident that had occurred after the quiz. However he was still adamant to stick to the decision he had taken regarding his friendship with her. Right now they were neither at loggerheads, nor strangers to each other and they surely weren’t as close as they had become during the quiz.
As he walked to the trophy to touch it and hold it in his hands he had a thought. Maybe, that was the purpose of their friendship; to win that trophy. They became friends thanks to the quiz, their friendship deepened during the preparation and peaked during the two days of the main event. The moment they had won the trophy, their friendship unravelled in a fight that was triggered by a fairly trivial reason. He didn’t know if that theory was correct, but it helped him avoid thoughts of getting close to her again.
The time that they had spent had been such a mixed bag for him. He felt free and relaxed while he was with her; she just had that effect on him. At times he felt so at ease with her that he shared stories of his past. Somehow she reminded him of the times when he was genuinely happy and it made him feel like those days could still return. But that was when he spent time talking to her, which wasn’t enough; she wanted more. She wanted him to go for college outings and movies and parties, things that he did not want to indulge in. Their fight had been triggered due to these expectations she had. Why couldn’t they just restrict their friendship to spending time in college? Why wasn’t that enough for her?
Maybe it wasn’t about her, maybe it was his fault. He was the one who did not want to go for outings and movies and parties. He wanted to restrict their friendship to just spending time talking to each other. Maybe that’s not how it worked. With time, friendship always progressed. It wasn’t stationary unlike the way he lived his life. There was no status quo in friendship. The more time you spent together, the deeper it got. And the lesser time you spent together, the weaker it got. But it somehow never ceased to exist. That was what he hoped; he did not want his friendship with her to end. Maybe a time would come when he could be completely free, maybe someday his mother would recover and he would no longer have the immense burden of responsibilities that he carried right now. Would he then be able to have normalcy in his relationship with a friend like her? Time will tell, he thought to himself.
A month after the fifth semester exams were done, she was back from her vacation in Bangalore. It had been a refreshing change, meeting her parents and all her childhood friends. Despite the fact that she had stayed at her real home, she probably spoke lesser to her parents than she did while staying away for her studies. All her time in Bangalore had been spent meeting relatives and cousins. The fun parts were the night outs with her school friends. She felt a little guilty about not spending enough time with her parents, she decided to make up for it the next time she visited the city.
The worst part had been meeting the relatives; all the conversations started the same way. With an aunt or an uncle exclaiming how little she was when they had first seen her and how much she had grown. That was followed by questions on what she was doing right now. Within the first week she had told her college name and engineering branch to a dozen different relatives, who, she knew did not give a damn about what college she studied in. The discussion then soon shifted to her having reached the ‘marriageable age’. She hated those discussions. It was almost as if all those aunts, who seemed pretty unhappy with their own marriages, wanted her to join the bandwagon of suffering as soon as possible. The disappointment on their faces was evident when her parents informed them that she wanted to work for a few years after marriage and that they were fine with it. She was glad that her parents had given her a fair amount of freedom to live her life the way she wanted to.
As she lay down in her room, at her uncle’s house in the city; she had just one thought on her mind – her upcoming birthday celebrations. For the first time she had a major pile of money in the bank and she wanted to have the best birthday celebration yet. She also thought it would be a good occasion to resume her friendship with him. He was the one person she always thought of during her time at Bangalore. The more she thought about the way he had responded with restraint all through the time she was yelling at him after the quiz, the more she admired him.
Even when she apologized to him, the way he reacted was so measured and composed. She had begun to think very highly of him. Then those two days during the quiz, where she had really started to see him open up. She could never forget the determination on his face, when he had wrenched victory from the grip of defeat. She also remembered how he still believed in himself when all hope had been lost. The incredible fightback by him during the Specialty Round, still gave her goosebumps. She felt a little embarrassed about the hugs she had given him on stage. But even during those moments, he never took advantage of the situation; he did not try to cop a feel under the garb of the excitement of winning the quiz. He was a genuinely decent guy.
Although she admired him for all these qualities, she disliked the fact that he held himself back and covered himself in layers of secrecy and isolation. Maybe if he shared what he was going through, she could help him out. But as of now, she had no clue what it was that troubled him and she did not want to risk asking him again. That’s when she thought of inviting him for her birthday party on the very first day of the new semester. Even though it would be a week ahead of her birthday, it would give them time to get some of their lost chemistry back as friends and ensure that they have fun together on her birthday. It would also make up for the Fastermind party that he had skipped. With those thoughts in mind, she fell asleep, waiting for college to resume.
When she reached college that day, she was late and Jacko had already entered the classroom. Damn, she thought to herself, now she’d have to wait for three back-to-back lectures before getting a chance to talk to him. But while she walked into the lecture hall, he did acknowledge her presence when their eyes met. That was an encouraging sign from the days when he had been avoiding her towards the end of the previous semester. She switched off her brain for the next three hours and was lost in thoughts of the birthday party she had planned on Saturday night at Hiccups.
As soon as the third lecture was done, she walked towards him to have a conversation. He saw her approach and waited outside the lecture room. He greeted her with a smile.
“Hey, how was your vacation in Bangalore?” he asked her.
“It was fun, late night parties, lavish lunches and dinners every day. I even managed to escape the clutches of the rishtaa hawks” she replied.
“What are rishtaa hawks?”
“You know, those aunties who just find out you’re above eighteen and want to get you married. So they walk around as unsolicited marriage agents, mouthing off resumes of candidates the moment they see you” she replied as he laughed.
“Anyway, I don’t know if you know this, but it’s my birthday, this coming Saturday. I am giving a party at Hiccups and you have to come” she said, finally telling him what she wanted to all day.
“What time is it?” he asked, even though he knew he would not attend it no matter what time it was to be held.
“It’s in the evening, anytime after seven and I’m inviting you a week in advance, so that you can finish off whatever you have to do in the evening quickly and come to the party” she replied.
“I’ll try my best to make it” he replied.
She did not find his reply very reassuring.
“Are you still angry about what happened?” she asked.
“No. Not at all. Just forget about whatever happened. It’s just that I am not cent percent sure of being able to make it there, I’ll let you know by Friday” he replied.
