The Perfect Photo

Chapter 21

Three weeks later

It was 3:30 AM in the morning, and I was up in my hostel room getting ready. There was a rented car standing in front of Pritam's PG. I had to catch a cab to his place as I would be the one driving that car. Pritam didn't know how to drive. It was cold outside, but it was me who had proposed this plan, and I could not back out now. I dragged my lazy body out and booked an Uber. With absolutely no traffic, I was in front of Pritam's place in no time. I cut the cab off and called him from the street. He attended and said that he would come down in a couple of minutes. I stood in front of his PG shivering beneath the many layers of woolen I was wearing. I wasn't sure if my body could survive for two more minutes. I wished I had retained the key to the car.

In precisely two minutes he came down carrying a huge backpack, almost half the size of him. He threw the keys at me expecting me to catch. But my hands were inside my jacket pocket, and I was not prepared to take them out till I was inside the car. He understood that and came over and picked up the key. He opened the car and kept his bag on the back seat and got in front beside me.

Had we been a couple I would have hugged him till I would have stopped shivering. But the situation was different now, and I had to wait for my body to do its thing.

"Are you alright?", asked Pritam.

I nodded and started the car. I have driven my Dad's car back in Hubli, but this was the first time I have rented a car in Bengaluru. Driving on the empty roads after so long felt like heaven. I had a lot to look forward that today.

"Why is your bag so tightly packed? It seems to weigh as much as I do", I said. Pritam started explaining, and I phased out for some time while he spoke.

It has been three weeks since Pritam told me that he was going to quit my college and join the NDA. That incident broke me; I remained broken for a whole week. The first crush always has a special place in everyone's heart, and when that happens so late in life, then that memory is even more deeply etched as I came to find out with my experience. Pritam will be leaving me and my life in two days. I didn't want to talk him out of it. I heard that the academy prohibits students from possessing a cell phone. So basically, this was going to be the end.

So where am I driving Pritam? I was driving him 100 km outside of the city. This was my idea, one last outing together. But it actually had more significance to it.

It all started when I stared into his picture on Facebook for the very first time. It was entirely unreasonable on my part, but I wanted to be in that picture with him. There was no logic behind my blind obsession. I kept going back to that picture every day after college imagining myself to be in that picture. I even ended up setting it as my wallpaper. So when Pritam asked me if there was anything else he could do, I revealed to him that I wanted to take a picture at the precise spot, with him. He agreed to it without hesitation. He was going to leave me anyways, and at the least I wanted that picture to be with me.

"I have two sets of each, in case one doesn't work properly. That makes it look huge. Are you listening, Harsha?", he called out after finding me in a pensive mood.

"Yeah, I'm fine.", I said. He was explaining his rock climbing gear to me.

Next to that hill was an outdoor rock climbing location to which Pritam has been to a couple of times with his climbing partner. He asked me if he could club that with my plan and I had agreed. Now I felt that I should have been a bit more selfish and made this day only about me. We would be meeting up with his partner Aaron, and they would do their climbing for an hour. We would then drive up to the top of the hill. I had not planned the rest of the day out, but I knew I could be spontaneous for once in my lifetime.