A letter to You...

Dear You,


Do you remember the day we first met? I do.

I was seven years old and so were you. It was the first day of a new term in school. You were the new boy in class and Mrs. L made you sit next to me. I was very angry with you. I had wanted to sit next to Div – the girl I wanted as my newest best friend. For two years, I had tried to attract her attention and she had ignored me. Everyone wanted to be friends with Div and she had smiled at me that day for the first time, which had made me hope that I would be her newest friend. You spoiled that.

You tentatively grinned at me. I turned my head away. You offered me a sugar sprinkled chocolate biscuit in the break. I pulled out a white chalk from my green skirt pocket and drew a shaky white line on the dirty orange desk we had to share and primly told you, “My half, your half – Don’t cross”. You looked so shattered. I ignored you and smiled broadly at Div to try capturing her attention and therefore her friendship. She ignored me. Do you know how much I blamed and hated you at that moment?

Do you remember when we became friends? I don’t.

It was probably after I gave up expecting Div to be my friend. All the boys teased you – teased you for hanging out with a girl. You didn’t care. What an unlikely combination – The oily haired, pig tailed, loud voiced termagant with her brown streaked crumpled white shirt over chalk stained skirt and the polite, well-mannered boy who always wore sparkling white pressed shirts and never had a speck of dirt on his face. I failed Math and Science. You aced the class. The teachers adored you. You were so beautiful. What an unexpected friendship. Tuesday’s child and Wednesday’s child.

Do you remember the day you made me cry? I do.

We were building a castle of sand together in the playground. I wanted the castle to have moats, you didn’t. I ignored you and started to clump sand together making my moat. I never saw you get angry the way you did that day. I don’t know why you did. It was just a moat. So callously, you swept your hand against my moat. I watched my scattered sand in dismay and then looked up at you, hoping to see remorse in your face. But it was not to be. You looked at me defiantly. I lost my temper then. I rose to my knees, leaned forward and beat my arms downwards destroying our castle. I didn’t stop until all that was left were mounds of ruffled sand. I looked up at you; my anger gone, with a gleeful smile. I didn’t expect you to react the way you did that day. You were always so even tempered and placating. But that day, no. Your ears turned pink as did your cheeks. Your face seemed to puff up in rage as you stared at the destroyed remains and my sand coated self. I don’t know what ran in your mind at that moment. You knelt downwards, picking up clumps of sand in your fist and then in one furious moment flung it at my face. I was in shock for a moment as I raised my hands to my face and my eyes covered with sand. And then I started to cry. I cried for the sand in my eyes, I cried for your treating me so bad, I cried for our castle and I cried for the friendship I was going to say goodbye to.

I didn’t speak to you for months. You tried so much. You rubbed away the chalk lines that I started to draw again dividing our desk. You brought me sugar coated coconut biscuits which you knew I loved so much. I wouldn’t touch them. You tried to loan me pencils when I forgot to bring mine. I would stare at my empty notebook rather than touch your pencils. I was so hard and unforgiving.

Do you know when I fell in love with you? I do.

It was the last day of the year. By then Div had chosen me to be her friend. And you had moved on to start playing football with the other boys. That day I was sitting in the playground reading ‘Little Princess’ imagining I was Sarah. You shuffled up to me and cleared your throat to catch my attention. When I looked up frowningly from my book you smiled tentatively. I stared at you blankly. You reached your hand out towards me palm faced upwards. In it lay a tiny bar of soap. I looked at you quizzically. You softly told me, “Sorry. I got this for you to wash your face. For the, for the – sand I threw in it”. I nodded my head and took the soap from your hand and said, “Thank you”. In that moment, all my anger melted away. That was when I fell in love with you.

Do you know when you broke my heart? I do.

You told me in a voice filled with wistful regret, “My father has got a job in Delhi. We leave tomorrow. I will miss you forever”.

Love,
Dee

I FIND YOU BORING -PART TWO

Read part one before attempting this...


What would you do
if you were looked in the eye
and told “Girl! I find you boring!”
with a hurt and desperate cry
would you rush into the room
bang the door on the way
and sob hearty fits 99
or would you stand up and say
in a rather sneering way
in a voice loud and clear
“I only wish you’d told me this before
you see, the feelings are mutual, my dear!”

Deepti

I FIND YOU BORING - PART ONE

Sometimes in life you end up meeting people whom you long to have a conversation with. Long to smile at, laugh with and share ideas and beliefs. So first you start with those ‘looks’ along corridors, canteens or bus-stops. Once you know for sure that the other person knows you exist, you proceed to tentative smiles, quickly look aside turning to the person next to you as if absorbed into some deep conversation that you are apparently carrying out with them. Yet, mostly abstracted, you pay scant attention to the conversation and through the corner of your eye watch the person as they pass by. After this routine gets established you accompany the smile with a ‘hi’. That would be the point where you know you could start to call the person an acquaintance and probably a friend.

Slowly as weeks drift by, you start to exchange pleasantries and then phone numbers. On reaching this juncture, you feel a dart of pleasure go through you. You say to yourself, at last we can be friends. (This Para comes with the statutory warning that until here you come from a rather cloistered environment where ready smiles and speeches in the absence of introduction would in all likelihood brand you a flirt even though all you desired was friendship! If you directly reached the final stage please skip to the second Para treating the first as quite invisible.)

After such a promising beginning, where the seeds of friendship were well planted and nurtured by you, you would expect the friendship to blossom into something –special. But have you noticed that not all friendships which start exceedingly well proceed with all the smoothness you expect of it. I do not refer to rough rides. Friendship without argument would be like eating nothing but sweets for your meal. Beyond a point it makes you want to puke. I refer to 'conversation'. The connection between minds. The sharing of ideals, beliefs or probably even the most mundane occurrences in your daily life ( irrespective of whether you agree or disagree). They portray the signs of a good friendship, if not superlative.

Yet there are a few friendships in which you struggle for conversation. You desperately hunt in the deepest crevices of your mind, hoping to find things to say, cover those blanks that enter in the conversation. Deep inside you wonder, ‘Am I boring the other person? Does she/he think I am tedious?’. Stop. The overused cliché states ‘It takes two hands to clap’. Reality states that it takes two people to make an interesting conversation. Start thinking. Does not the fact that you struggle for words to fill the occasion suggest that the other person is filling it no better? Does not the fact that you find the conversation unsatisfying imply that neither is the other person succeeding in keeping YOU riveted? So ask yourself when you face this.

Am I really boring or is the other person boring me?

WHEN FRIENDS LEAVE....

Last night, a very close friend of mine- Anu, left to do her M.S in the U.S. A frequently occurring phenomenon, nothing unusual about it, I know. Yet I can’t help but feel a little bit lost. No more when I am bored can I just pick up the phone, dial her number and talk endlessly, just meaningful nothings. Gone are the sleep-overs, theatre visits, restaurants, gang get tog ethers, private conversations, laughter and tears. It’s all going to be purely virtual. She and I have known each other for sixteen years. We studied in the same school right from Ist standard and continued our entwined lives in the same college.

What makes her leaving more painful is that those twelve years together in school, did nothing to make us close. Yeah, we were friends. I do not deny it. But, were yesterday a reflection of four years ago, when she was leaving for her boarding and we said our last byes, I could easily have said,” Bye! Have a good time the next few years”, turned away and walked off unaffected. Instead, as she left, when we said our last byes my heart could not but will her as she walked away to turn around and wave again hoping for one last bye and a wave. And when she did, hope again for another last bye right until she disappeared from all our sights.

I shall miss her. Miss all the things we did together. But what truly makes me feel low is a fear. A fear of whether things will really be the same when she comes back. In those last few moments when we all exchanged those last statements of ‘promise you will mail regularly, don’t dare forget, scan all photos you take there” all that kept running in my mind was “What if she slowly forgets to mail back? What if the new friends she makes might not be too nice? What if distance in miles leads to a distance in our minds? What if she changes and will no more be that amazing mixture of wise beyond her years, yet charmingly innocent?” .A thousand ‘Ifs’ that were running through my head, a thousand ‘Ifs’ unanswered. Only time can answer these questions. And time is a cruel mate who makes you wait and at the end of it all wont necessarily give you the answers you would want from it.

In the end, during those final hugs and farewells unable to contain myself, I burst out and told her, “Just one thing I want from you. Please don’t ever change. Come back the same person”. And when we all walked off, everyone of us were silent and had no words to say. Yet, we knew exactly what the other was thinking about. ’Anu’.