Why Did I Visit Shillong?

Resuming writing on 05.04.2020

Authoritatively she’d keep me from visiting the gym (Relax, I have a tummy bigger than yours!), make me gargle late in the night when I caught a cold, and with “Erom toh?”s and “Thik ache.”s in her pampered voice she started filling in my fifteen-minute breaks. She’d complain that I wanted to hang up and I had to explain that wasn’t the case. Sweet, right? 🙂

And then I get this call. I pick up the phone and the number rings a bell.

+91 8931XXXX39 – It was Sanjukta.

Sanjukta and I had history. She was one of the prettiest in the town. Guys would drool over her. We had been good friends. Long story short, I liked her, I proposed, she accepted, and then I got dumped.

Growing Apart

I didn’t talk to Upeksha the next day. And she didn’t either (surprising). One part of me wanted her to text me but the other part better had it delayed. I felt guilty to have ‘chatted’ with Sanjukta for some time that day.

It was almost a week, she had vanished. Almost suddenly, after I had just got down at Tea Board to get to work, I received her text. We talked; a little.

It was one of the moments I required some talking to myself. Did I love Upeksha? I did like her though. I was not convinced.

“We need to talk… This, whatever this is… I do not think I’m quite ready.” the conversation ceased unpleasantly for both of I us, I figured. I explained the Sanjukta Episode and how she had a soft spot I always kept going back to.

The phone call had the worst possible ending. Sanjukta was trying my number. I wanted to pick it up and not do it at the same time and Upeksha got the message. We both decided to hang up.

I pulled a bed sheet as I went to bed, thinking that I did the right thing – the confrontation part… mmm

And that was the end of it.

The Scientist

I continued to miss her presence. I was no longer waking her up in the morning and she was no longer fighting back in her sleepy voice. I no longer had to convince her that a carrot for dinner was not suffice.

A few months had passed and bamm! A late-night “Hi” popped up on Messenger. Before I could gather myself I realised that she had tagged me in a Facebook post. It was a song and it went:

Come up to meet you
Tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart

….

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start

As the words appeared, I went numb. It was The Scientist from Coldplay. Tinka would play it on Sunday evenings on Sourav’s terrace but the words never touched me so ever before. In fact, I had never related to a song so strongly. Incoming was a huge rush of dopamine. She said she wanted me.

My thoughts, like bubbles of soapy water, kept occurring with very little stir. I was falling for her, convinced that it was not for how she looked but for the little subtleties of her voice, audible only to a percipient listener, her articulations of very specific phrases, how her lips curled a certain way when she smiled and the quick hand to her face just after her cheeks went flush.

I could only talk about it to Saikat and Saikat would only talk about us going to Shillong. 😊 I wouldn’t tell her about it though. If I was to visit her, it had to be a surprise.

The following days were cherished. You could tell.

Every day is a Sunday, until

Suddenly I wouldn’t mind Mondays – as long as I could sneak out of my desk for a sip of tea every evening. My favourite spot would be a shack opposite the Kona Dukan at the Stock Exchange gali. I traded the aroma of their elaichi chai for the silence I would have here. She would join me on the other side of the call with a cup, some water off the boiler and a bag of green tea.

I was already dreaming up my visit – getting to see her, wondering how she’d react, what I would take for her and a hundred more things that crossed my mind. 😊

However, slowly our breaks wouldn’t match and we would talk less. I guess that I must have done something wrong.

Yes, we stopped talking altogether. A G A I N. Bummer.

Okay, wait. Before I write further, here’s a small clip of my visit to Shillong. 🙂