The Girl I Last Loved (12 page)

A collage captured my attention from the other side of the room. I was wrong, it wasn’t a collage; it was her life. Some of the Smiley badges she no longer sported.

Few earrings pasted with the help of cello-tapes – she might have lost one in the pair.

Stickers from the events she might have organised in college; a few volunteer I-cards.

Some stick-notes over which few random notes were written. A picture of Priya kissing her cheek.

Her family picture with her fake smile; an ATM slip – probably of her first salary… few roses she used to make with ribbons, but I got glued to a picture of her in a
lehenga
.

“Coffee,” Kasam said cheerfully.

“You look very different in this picture.” Why I didn’t say beautiful… does different makes any sense at all? What was wrong with me?

When I was done with self-analysing, I noticed Kasam’s pale face.

“That’s my engage…,” she looked away.

“You were engaged?”

She turned, tried to fake a smile.

“You remember Utsav?”

I nodded.

“We dated in college. Our families were close, so our parents decided to get us engaged.”

“So, congrats! What’s he doing… where he is now?” I managed to stay normal though my heart ached. He again did it – took her away from me.

“Living a life that could have been mine,” she went outside.

I followed her.

“I was the first topper with him being the second. Our university was offering full scholarship for doing mass-comm in Columbia University. If I stepped down, Utsav would have been the sole contender. Everyone was convinced that it would be a better idea if Utsav went. I believed in their conviction. Utsav left, but never to return. He found someone there.”

She said it in plain simple tone but I knew she wouldn’t let people to know her pain.

It tore me that she didn’t even confide in me.

We ended up having more than ‘one cup of coffee’.

“I left Lucknow, joined a job, but wasn’t much happy in that. So my cousin helped me to establish ‘Prayas’. Being with all my participants never allowed me to peek into the past…

“I stayed so engrossed in disentangling their lives, never thought there are some knots in mine as well.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes,” she smiled.

“Yeah… I am happy. I have everything… it’s wonderful,” she said smiling.

Those were more ‘yes’ than required. You don’t assert when you really are happy.

“I should go,” I whispered.

“Yeah.”

“No need to step outside, just close the door,” I asked Kasam, while stepping out.

“Mr Akash Kashyap, don’t forget I have been living on my own since you came along,” Kasam teased me.

I let out a smile. But she accepted what I asked for her to do and stayed there. I walked far from her, continually looking at her and staggered as I encountered the stairs.

Kasam’s laugh crackled over my ear. It was the first genuine smile she gave that entire evening.

I was glad for stumbling.

Chapter 11

I was searching different ways to write a resume.

As I typed in Google ‘different ways to’, it gave me the predictions in the same ranking.

Different ways to say I love you.

Different ways to kiss.

Different ways to create departments in an organisation.

Different ways to create objects in Java.

I had very little idea about the last two things in the list but they sure looked kind of tough and the stuff for which you Google. Still, saying ‘I love you’ tops the list. Is it just that now people Google everything before doing or it is kind of hard to express your feelings. I don’t know – the first time when I told Kasam it was kind of easy. I went ahead and told her how I felt. I didn’t even know her, and now when I know all about her, I can’t tell her. Lately she has been kind of busy and when available, she is all about Utsav.

So, I did what guys like us do best in that kind of a situation. I focused on things that were more important than Kasam. Actually there wasn’t any, so I focused on making the less important things more important. Things like studying. Things like resuming jogging. Things like hanging out with my friends and watching daily soaps with my three elder sisters. Things like indulging in aimless discussions with Dad about what aired on the Discovery Channel.

I kept on stuffing my mind with useless things so that I didn’t think about her. But somehow she sneaked in and in those moments I used to wonder...

What might she be doing?

Where did that Utsav guy might be taking her?

Does she even think about me?

Does she notice that I was kind of avoiding her?

Doesn’t she miss me, not being around?

It was one of those moments when I still cherished the fact of her being mine.

It was one of those days when I immersed myself in studies in order to wipe her thoughts. Books were my saviour, my escape… my best friends.

I even avoided her at school. Though it wasn’t that hard as she was most of the time bunking classes to be with Utsav since he was from another school. As my friends had been replaced by Kasam’s earlier, now hers were replaced by Utsav’s.

Obviously she would pick him. He came from an army family, who owned high enough legacy. He had a nice built, was bright at studies. Confident. Athletic. Unbelievingly well mannered. He was the male incarnation of Kasam.

They both together looked like winners of the genetic lottery.

When I look at myself, I qualify as good in height. Built has a question mark over it. But it definitely isn’t in an impossible situation – wheatish complexion, slightly on the darker side. I am sort of smart but not much confident to show it to everyone. Athletics never ran in my mind. Mannerism, well I used to think I am still a kid before I had feelings for Kasam.

So, if it was a race we had a clear winner.

And he kept on winning again and again.

It happened the other day.

“Hoo…hooo Akash.”

“Yo Akash…”

“Hey buddy, come and sit with us.”

“For whom are you waiting?”

“Why are you sitting in the front?”

“Hey for whom are you keeping a seat for?”

“Is it a girl?”

“It’s a girl… it’s a girl.”

As my friends who were sitting at the back in the bus kept on shouting back at me, I focused my sight on every other girl in expectation that the next one will turn out to be Kasam. Then she jumped in the bus, following a wait of ten minutes. I slid my bag to make space for her. When she was just about to slide in, she shouted ‘Utsav!’.

I looked outside and there he was honking his bike. It was split seconds when she wasn’t by my side but beside him. Surprisingly my friends (the real ones; not the ones borrowed from her) were mum on this whole event.

I stood up. They were all looking at me.

I announced, “What goes?”

With that I returned to what my place was. At the back with those guys…

After having a whirlwind trip of the ‘girl world’, I returned to my own self. What did I want?

What did I have to do? What do people who love me expect of me?

I realised the problem with me and Kasam was…

Before meeting her, my life was about ‘I’…

After meeting her, it was ‘she’…

After she left it was ‘I’ again…

It was never about ‘us’…

That’s why we never made it.

I realised when a guy likes a girl, they don’t remain friends. Nothing between them is like friends. Thus, when somebody else comes along, their so-called friendship has to end. The saddest part is you don’t realise it before that somebody else comes along.

I am wrong; the saddest part isn’t that. The saddest part is when the girl tries to pretend everything is normal.

It was one of those days.

I was studying in the library after school, ‘because that’s what I used to do and now returned back to doing that again.

Suddenly she walked in. I knew she wasn’t there to study, so she definitely came to see me. I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed her and restricted my gaze to my book only.

Then a paper slid into my restricted area.

‘Do you wish to go shopping with me… now?’

‘Why don’t you go with Utsav?’ I tried to skip that question.

‘Why can’t you go?’

‘Why can’t you go with him?’

‘Because I don’t want to show him my crazy shopping
avatar
.’

‘Why can’t you take Priya?’

‘If you want an accomplice for a bar, who can stop you from over-drinking? You aren’t going take another drunkard. You take someone who is sober. Me and Priya together in Flat 50 per cent off Sale – it will be like two drunkards in an open bar.’

‘Okay,’ I wrote as of now I hadn’t learn how to say ‘no’ to her.

Next, we knew we were at Forum Mall where flat 50 per cent sales were going on. The girls’ section ‘not surprisingly at all’ was full. Even ‘full’ is an understatement. It was jam-packed. Girls were leaving with lot of bags. Girls were fighting over grabbing the exact size. Girls were buying the stuff they didn’t even need. Girls were buying oversized dresses only ‘because they were cheap. The trial room line looked longer than the voting line. I thought of taking a sneak peek at the men’s section. Blame it on the afternoon, but I spotted only a few men here and there. Most of them were employees arranging the stuff. A few people were passing time like me by surfing through the shirts. Finally I spotted a guy moving towards the billing counter. Clearly he was obsessed with socks as he carried two packs (a pack of three) with which one pack of three was free. After a little more browsing, I returned back and waited for Kasam.

She came running to me with two pairs of jeans.

“Can you believe it?”

She shook the jeans at my face.

“What?” I asked.

“These are just for Rs 150.”

“But these are damn big; they will never fit you,” I warned.

“I will put on some weight.” Seeing her conviction, I didn’t argue any further.

“Hey, want to catch a movie?” Why the hell did I ask that. It was just that it had been so long we’d been anywhere together and I was just longing for being with her. It just came out. My desperation was evident from the number of ‘justs’ I used in my thoughts.

“Okay cool,” she said.

After a few minutes, she got a call from Utsav inviting her to the very same movie.

All I had by my side was a ‘sorry’.

Next day she came to meet me, wearing those jeans. Exactly fulfilling my expectation – they looked huge.

“I told you so.”

She twisted her lips.

“I will make them look hot. I will eat… eat and eat. Then they will fit and I will look super
-
hot.”

“You won’t,” I paused before completing my ‘you won’t look hot if you gain that much weight to make it fit right’.

“What?”

“Never mind,” I smiled.

It was one of those days when she noticed Utsav’s arrival had created a rift between us.

Then she tried extracting time and being with me without mentioning Utsav.

Just one usual day at school, I was in my class when she bumped at the door.

Upon spotting a faculty, she ushered, “I want Akash.”

Everyone was mum. I lowered my head down.

“I mean Mrs Bakshi is calling him for the cultural society meeting,” she corrected herself.

Our math’s faculty Sinha ji indicated me to go. Then he looked at Kasam and smirked, ‘I think you wanted him’.

The whole class burst into laughter. Kasam gave her elongated lips smile which she does when she is embarrassed.

Then we went to see that movie, but I knew I was the second person with whom she watched it.

That was probably the last interaction of that kind we had. Otherwise it was limited to accidental bumping during classes, when some of the common friends invited us both. It was mostly awkward. Gradually we lost on topics to be discussed. Earlier we used to talk on anything and everything. Now most of the things seemed out of context. A few seemed way too personal. Later on, we struck to the usual, ‘Hey, how you doing?’