‘Come on! I wanna know who it is!’
‘I will tell you! I promise I will… But when the time comes…’
YES!
My doubts were finally confirmed… but I was still not sure. I mean… it seemed highly improbable… Neel and me? I mean… nothing absurd about it. But he would never fall in love with me… maybe, just MAYBE I would… or rather I could… but him? Fall in love with a tom-boy like me? Way nigh impossible.
But then, why would he not tell me the name of his new found love? I mean, he told me about everything! I swear he did! Then why wouldn’t he tell me about this? And what the hell was ‘when the time comes’ supposed to mean? As always, and as about everything, I set a meeting with my mentor; my friend, philosopher, and most of all, my conspirator, Ankita.
‘What? Are you kidding?’
‘No! This is exactly what he said! I swear!’ I said, as we sat on our favourite table at our favourite Café Coffee Day outlet on Law College road.
‘Well then; this could mean only one thing; you are now officially going to be your best friend’s girlfriend!’
I smiled… blushed ever-so-slightly. Up until that moment, I wasn’t aware I was capable of performing such girly feats as blushing. Really? Could this be? I couldn’t believe it… but come to think of it… it seemed almost the right thing to happen. Or rather the logical thing to happen in a sequence of event taken place over a period of about eleven months. Within the first two months of our friendship we had exchanged numbers. And over a period of time, we had started calling each other up every night, as I have mentioned before. Yes, I did like him. He had come to mean to me what no one had meant to me in a long time. Talking to him made me forget the worst of college fights; it made me get over the worst of depressions; and more than any of this, it just made me very very happy. I didn’t feel any of the things for Neel which I had felt when I had had brief crushes over several guys. But as I considered the possibility… I can’t say how I felt about going around with Neel. But it brought a smile to my lips. It brought a smile to my lips… it made me feel happy… and it made me feel… how should I put it… it made me feel secure… even though he was over 1100 kilometers away from me.
That is what love does to you.
God no! Wait! What the hell was I talking about?
‘What are you thinking about?’ Ankita asked (probably I was still smiling)
I told her what I was thinking about. She suddenly put her hands up in the air, and acted like she was playing the piano, and sang in an ultimately off-key voice:
‘’Tis the season to be jolly Fra-la-la-la-la-lala-la-la!’
I quickly held her hands and hushed her.
‘That’s not true! And even if it is, the whole world needn’t know about it!’
‘Whats not true? I didn’t even say anything! Did I say anything?’
That’s Ankita. There is no stopping her from going down hook, line and sinker once she decides to.
‘Oh my God! Look look! You are blushing!’ she squealed in delight. By now my ears were feeling real hot. I glanced at my watch. It was seven-forty five.
‘Bollocks! We must get going! It’s almost dinner time!’ I said, thankful for once that it was time-up. Otherwise me and Ankita could sit in a coffee shop and go on bantering till the end of time… and without getting bored… sometimes even without talking… that is what the thing is with best friends; it never gets uncomfortable even if you have nothing to say.
Back home, I waited for Neel’s nightly call. I waited for the call, and at the same time I wished he didn’t call me. I was getting that weird ‘butterflies-in-the-stomach’ feeling I had read about in many novels (no, not love stories). There was a whole valley of butterflies in my stomach! I kept trying to be normal. I actually took out a pen and a notebook and listed things I would talk about; in the fear that he would find my pauses too long, or would see that I was distracted. And the last thing I wanted was Neel to ask me why the hell was I acting so listless.
As the arms of the clock inched closer to ten, my anxiety grew. It climaxed and was off the peak by the time he called me.
‘Hi!’ his voice sounded welcome and unwelcome at the same time.
‘Hey… wassup?’ I said.
‘I can’t keep it. I have to tell you.’
OH MY GOD. Oh my god oh my god oh my god! No! No! Not so soon! Come on! Let’s do it like in the movies… First you talk, then I talk; small talk. Then we don’t talk. Then you clear your throat and I get the signal. But Neel had already begun talking.
‘Her name is M___’
‘Mrunal,’ I thought.
‘Maya.’
‘What?’
‘Maya!’
‘Hellow! I thought it was me!’
‘What? You are kidding. Say you are kidding, aren’t you?’
If Neel hadn’t asked me, I wouldn’t have believed I had actually said that. Within a minute… within a few seconds I was brought down to earth from my seventh, or seven hundredth heaven. Maya.
‘Hello? Mrunal you there?’
‘What? Yes... of course! I was kidding…’ I said. Neel further went on to describe Maya; how they met, what she looked like… but I still kept thinking… ‘I thought it was me’…
