2. Strong Winds (the kind that makes your eyes teary)
One day, during our one-week-short, mid-term vacation - which was really only a collective ploy by all the lecturers to allow them to set us a cluster of unrealistic deadlines - Kabir and I (and the gang) went to watch a movie. Now the guys insisted that we watch a thriller and the girls were adamant on a cheesy chick flick. As soon as it was conceded that no consensus could be reached and that we would need to split up and opt for one of the two cinema halls, I entered the fray I had amusedly been observing, and said that I would opt for the thriller.
Only Kabir who was hovering nearby heard me, and immediately construed it as an excuse I was making to be able to hang out with him. I vehemently opposed this interpretation, my real reason being in fact the sheer predictability and plastic shallowness of the said chick flick as was clearly evidenced in its trailer. But he had only thrown me his characteristic impish smile (yes, dimples and all).
I should have probably realised then that he did not know me, as I thought he did. I was definitely not one to lie and hide behind excuses. But when he announced that he would watch the chick flick with the girls - earning him, unsurprisingly, an array of playful jeers from the other guys that would endure in the days to come - I could not help but forget my initial annoyance. He was so unbelievably cute! I stopped insisting that I really had wanted to watch the thriller because that would have made his undoubtedly very, very noble sacrifice most heartbreakingly redundant.
Of course that meant that we were both stuck watching a stupid movie neither of us actually wanted to watch. But I did not mind in the least. We sat next to each and when the stupid guy in the movie finally realised that he loved the even stupider cheerleader, and knelt to the ground with his hand on his heart, Kabir's hand found mine. I looked at him quizzically, and he whispered, his hand still clasped onto mine, warmly, "Do you want some popcorn?"
There must have been more than popcorn at hand. I thought his eyes said so. But I, for one, liked that whatever it was, had not been spelt out explicitly. It would have been too soon and I would not have known how to react. And then, wasn't there a depth, a charm to unspoken emotions? Wouldn't translating them into the mundane words of our humdrum world, render them somewhat banal, like the story of the stupid guy and the even stupider cheerleader?
I smiled to myself, with the air of a conspirator, and happily recorded the moment into the Kabir compartment of my brain, along with the other sweet gestures of his and the tell-tale signs that he dropped from time to time, for instance, the way he would get ever so slightly jealous when I mentioned other boys and try to mask his feelings by making the forced attempt at an odd joke.
It had perhaps not been the wisest thing to do though, to so meticulously store away the littlest of incidents for subsequent reminiscing. It made forgetting impossibly difficult. The most meaningless of objects, the most commonplace of places, even words, had now been infused with myriad memories. How could they ever be made neutral again? And, how could I move on, when I was compelled by my recollections into trying to reconcile present and past and wondering if those memories had been real after all?
But I had not seen it coming: the change. Perhaps my naive expectations of consistency and stability had to do with the fact that my life up until the point when I had left for university had been very sheltered. Although we did move from one army cantonment to the next, as Daddy was posted in different parts of the country, truth was, I was quite like a ship that had never really ventured beyond its harbour.
I had never resented this, and although it did get somewhat lonely at times, particularly during the period when I was home-schooled, I had those silly flights of fancy that I could always weave myself into. I would be the princess, albeit a somewhat skinny, gawky, pimply, and obstinately nerdy one; and my utterly devoted prince, a golden-hearted fellow who understood me to perfection and cherished every idiosyncrasy of mine. I had never actually expected those lazy whimsies to transcend into reality. They were just juvenile indulgences of mine, for which I blamed Jane Austen, Raj Kapoor and a host of Urdu poets.
And maybe, without realising it, I had been trying to place Kabir into my mould of perfection, making excuses on his behalf when he did not quite fit in. So, I had never really known him at all. Or maybe, he had changed and managed to change so much that I had to doubt the sincerity of his former self.
It was hard to decipher what had really happened, but if change it really was, then not only had the change been gradual, but also, there were brief periods of relapse when things would almost go back to the way they once were, making me doubt my own doubts. That is perhaps why I did not see it at first, which is what crushed me the most when I finally zeroed in on the most plausible truth. The fact that I had been, not fooled, but a fool, in the end.
There were a number of ways I could have reacted to my eventual acceptance of the truth. I chose to sweep my hurt under the proverbial rug and bury myself in my studies with a furious passion. I chose to convince myself that I had forgotten everything, that I had forgotten how he had begun to drift away, positively avoid me, and set his sights... elsewhere. I had also forgotten all the other memories prior to that most confusing time. After all, those memories were not solely my own anymore - they were experiences that I shared with other girls. What I had thought to be special gestures designated for me, were only generic ways in which he behaved with everybody else - one at a time.
I politely blocked everybody else out of my innermost emotions, and they all assumed I was only taken up with work. When I went back to India at the end of the first semester exams, to gorge on that heavenly home-cooked food I had once most inexplicably disliked, I found that there were some other bits of me that had been immortalised in my diary and my parents' stories of me that I felt I would never be able to identify with again. Maybe it was all part of growing up. Or maybe my ego was more bruised than I could dare to admit to myself.
Edited by ..kiran.. - 12 years ago
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