I met her on the second day at college. We were standing outside the classroom, looking down at the morning bustle of students arriving, excited squeals of friends meeting, and high decibel chatter.
I sensed her watching me and looked up at her. She seemed uncaring of trends and her clear creamy skin and round bespectacled face gave her a neat and comely appearance. She was in a printed salwar kameez, and her frizzy hair hung as a short braid and her red felt dot on her forehead was underlined with a little smear of vibuthi. I smiled. She smiled back asking, “Lit?” I nodded and we introduced ourselves.
As the class began to fill in, I walked in to take a seat at the last row. She found a seat next to mine. Good girl, looks studious but isn’t square, I thought. We giggled at nothing. Perhaps we struck an odd pair. She, studious and prim and I looked like a moll yet to catch religion at the last hour. It was at lunch we found a kinship. My tiffin box’s content was vegetarian as was hers.
“Iyer-a?’ she asked. I nodded.
“I am a Saiva Pillai from Tirunelveli”, she said by way of explaining.
It was sealed then. The respective mothers were informed the same evening, names of aunts and uncles were dropped and family connections were established. We hung around and she played along to all my caprices, my shrieks and scenes gamely. We felt a jolly pair together. I’d discuss cinema heroes in breathless whispers in class, exchange vilest of suggestions, wicked jokes, the works. She would notice me even across the room or the canteen or campus and her eyes would pierce through mine and she would always hold her look a little longer when we chatted. She gamboled along when I bunked college and landed at the cinema. I never probed about a boyfriend or some fling in the past and she would always say, “I can’t remember having a crush like that at all”.
As the year went by, I had become everyone’s friend. I would jump from first row to the last, run off to watch films with the girls who had an extra ticket, to the beach with my school pals, tag along to the British Council library with the ‘pazhams’. My grades were consistently good and so the faculty indulged my whims.
And then she stopped talking to me. Everyone asked why. I had no answer. No phone calls. I said ‘Hi’ and she looked away. But I had no time to feel crushed. I was not tethered to anyone in college and everyone was a pal. And regularly I would go missing from the college group for my bonds with my school chums were unwavering. The class-clown’s loyalty was never demanded by a single group so I had everyone to hang around. “She is jealous because you are friends with too many people”, someone said. She kept to herself and even began to sit out in the front row.
On the week before graduation we bumped into each other at close quarters by the loo. I giggled, she giggled too.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
She replied, “Uh, dunno”.
I held her hand and she squeezed it back. But our connections snapped for she left to pursue law and I, to study further.
A year later she called out of the blue to announce her marriage.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. He looks respectable and our parents find us well matched and we are off to America”, she said.
Well, she had always seemed sane to my flightiness and I wished her well. The class attended her wedding, the first among our crowd, created appropriate ruckus, made inappropriate suggestions and left.
We were past letter writing and e mails had not yet been in vogue, so we went our ways.
Some eight years later I got a phone call from her.
“Remember me? I am home”, she said.
She wanted to meet me. We met at a coffee shop.
“You are looking drawn and tired”, she accused.
“You look different too”, I smiled a little too widely unable to check my surprise.
She looked butch. Her hair was cut in a severe boyish mop, the spectacles were steel, and she wore baggy jeans and a shapeless shirt.
“I am divorced”, she said.
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t”, she said.
“Oh”, I said knowingly, “It happens. Counselling can help frigidity”, I said sounding adult, wise and comforting. “There’s a long life ahead of you”, I said.
“No, you don’t understand”, she said sounding stern. “I couldn’t”.
“Oh, okay. Where do you live?” I changed tack.
“Back in Madras, with my parents who don’t understand me, working as a legal advisory for a foreign organisation”, she said, curt.
She paused at her drink. “What about you?” she asked, “Still holding out?”
I tried the old giggle. “I am dating”.
“Will you marry him?” she asked, without a smile.
“Uh-huh”, I said nodding.
I can’t recall what we said after that. A bit about the watermelon juice being too sugary, the clouds gathering, and that I had to chase some work. She promised to give me her phone number and left without sharing it. And that was that. It’s been another decade since then and we’ve lost touch.
***
This morning, the Indian newspapers are splashed in colour, celebrating the Delhi High Court’s decriminalization of a redundant colonial law, Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
I wonder: did I fail to read her right in my youthful ignorance?
Or am I imagining, now that I am slightly better informed?
