The Summer of Absolutely Nothing

6.

‘Your turn.’

‘Huh?’ I look up from my purple ice cream bar, to see both Asmita and Advaith looking at me expectantly.

We were sitting on the walls of the walkway at the beach, slurping at Paddlepop ice creams from the Qwality Walls stand; salty sea breeze ruffling our hair. A typical weekday evening scene - elderly men with and women on their evening walk, stringy hair slicked back, in loose grey tracks and t-shirts with sweat patches, or, in the case of the latter, salwar kurtas with running shoes peeping under it; groups of oldies (the beach regulars), school and college students (vacationers) alike congregating upon the walkway and loudly chatting. The hordes of weekend crowds were absent, so it still made for a peaceful yet bustling setting - the watery ink sky of 5:30 pm, the restless sea in the distance, the filth and thela-strewn sand ending with the body-builders lifting weights near the garish police booth and rat-filled garden.

Asmita, Advaith and I were discussing our love lives - the Spin-the-Bottle equivalent of getting to know one another. Asmita had an SRM boyfriend, a Chennai-ite, filed away somewhere in Kotturpuram. She declined to tell us the entire History of Boyfriends (‘Too long’ she said, absently, not a trace of self-consciousness).

Now, it was my turn.

‘Um, let Advaith go first.’ taking my loophole of escape.

‘I don’t want to.’ he hastily blurted.

Our eyes met, a brief acknowledgement of kinship.

‘Advaith dated this girl in school, Neha. He was Head Boy, and she, Head Girl. They started dating in their infancy, in ninth grade or something -’

‘We weren’t dating in ninth grade!’ Advaith interjected angrily.

‘Whatever, she had been stringing you along since then. Anyway, she wound up cheating on him in 12th. With one of the house captains. Hunky guy, basketball team captain. Not very smart though.’

Having finished this sordid monologue, she carefully wrapped her ice cream stick in the wrapper and threw it in the bin.

‘Your turn’ she said, reverting back to me with a beautiful single-trackness of mind attributed to Fortinbras, in Hamlet, by Agatha Christie (rather archaic writing, true, but incredibly comforting in its study of human nature).

‘I dated for almost three years. We - weren't getting along very well any more, and umm, we broke up. Recently. Yeah.’

I broke off awkwardly, unsure about how to condense the intense bitterness and attachment of our relationship into a two-line jacket blurb.

‘And now you two are single, so you can have some fun.’ Asmita said merrily, with a wicked smile.

Advaith, breaking out of his reverie, smiled charmingly.

‘Here?’ he said flirtatiously, his brown eyes sparkling with amusement.

‘Why not?’ I said, coolly, with my best sardonic smile, meeting his gaze quite unabashedly.

‘God, get a room already, you two.’ Asmita said, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

The three of us burst out laughing simultaneously. Engineering college jokes - everyone's immune to them, prudishness long since down the drain.