The Summer of Absolutely Nothing

17.

The summer was drawing to a close.

I had written the entrance exam, and attended the interview. Two weeks before college was due to start, I received intimation that I had been accepted into University of Delhi, Batch of 2016.

A week before I was due to leave, my ex-boyfriend called. An hour or so after this, I was seated opposite him in a coffee shop near by, fancifully christened as CCD Lounge.

Never at ease with himself, he fidgeted at awkward angles in the plush faded red armchair, as he quietly spoke, with a force of confidence at variance with nervous demeanour - words of explanation. He’d worried about me, he finally got a hold of my landline number. He heard about my UD admission. He still loved me, we could make it work long distance. Flickering looks at me from time to time, up from his long intertwined fingers. 'So?’ he asked, finally looking at me, steadfastly, the closest to a proposal I had ever got from him (I asked him out, three years ago).

'Yes.’ Less of a declaration, more of a statement, or a sentence.

Notoriously shying away from publicly displaying affection, he smiled, leaned across the table, and took my hand in his, gently squeezing it.

Who ever said that it was happy thing, to be meant for someone? It leaves you with no choices. As they say in marriage, you are his, for better or worse - through anger, indifference as well as joy, affection and caring.

We were packing, ready to leave soon - Advaith and I to Delhi, Asmita merely to SRM, few days after our departure.

The morning dawned, brightly efficient as the day of a trip is apt to be. Lugging our over-stuffed suitcases down to the taxi, shoving them into the dickey, agonizing over anything left unpacked, and frenzied last minute good-bye through the taxi windows. Asmita, frantically waving and trying not to look upset, and Rahul, one arm around her, having come specifically to see us off, grew small at the gate, as we drew away from the apartments.

Sitting next to my mom, Advaith at the back, I finally had the time to think of the room I had left painfully bare, stripped, and the past summer.

'This is not a love story, but a story about love.’ A quote from a Ruskin Bond story; another favourite author of mine, because of the warmth and familiarity with which his simple stories set in a different time slip through the pages. I do him a great injustice, having never mentioned him until now.

A story about love. The last evening the four of us sat together on the terrace, long after the sun had set. We didn't talk about our impending separation, or reminisce about the summer. We just sat, flitting from one topic to the next, with a familiarity which brooks no boredom, in words or silence. Until it was time to get down, when we, all four of us, cried, and hugged.

Another Ruskin Bond quote comes to me, as I board the plane, Advaith beside me. 'I may stop loving you, but I will never stop loving the days I loved you.’