Though I do not know if it was deliberate, we have been spending lot of time together lately. More than enough to suspect a tacit consent. Over past few weeks we met frequently, even twice in one week, and spent long hours, some times 4-6 hours, together either at a coffee shop or in restaurants. To me, these hours always seemed shorter afterwards, as if time has gone by tiptoeing, rather than thumping its heavy feet on my consciousness. The time spent with her seemed perfect replica of happy moments, but I resisted recognising it as such to keep the frothing beast of guilt in my conscience pacified. For, I was not sure if I deserved them - for the reasons I can’t say here. I feel little more eligible now, still unfairly though.
These meeting did not have any deeper intellectual significance. We discussed many things ranging from fashion sense of people to, sometimes- once may be, mathematics; latter, specially, being my moment of glory as it led her to express appreciation with a shine of genuine awe in her eyes. I really liked those few rare seconds of her complete intellectual surrender while discussing mathematics, for discussing everything else her never daunted self-belief and confident tone always made up for the gap in her understanding of subject being discussed.
She insisted on being equal partner in these discussions; discussions would always get stretched unnecessarily as both of us competed to have the last word. I would be the one to give up eventually, when either discussion went in to a loop for too long, or when I felt that my argument was thinning to the level of her’s. But, once in a while, with quite regular frequency, she would surprise me by saying something which I would not be expecting her to know at all. One such time she quoted Proust from “In Search of Lost Time” and shook me enough to raise the level of my expectation from her, only to erode it to the original level over next few days.
Mostly, we discussed office colleagues who both of us knew, or, sometimes, individuals who only one of us knew, like my relatives or her’s. Their personal lives, whatever we knew of it directly or having heard from other, were bluntly dissected- why they behaved the way they did, how (and why!) they dressed the way they did, their situations in life, their crushes and affairs. Majority of the discussions were frivolous and we, basically, passed judgment on people in the name of psychoanalysing them. What was interesting, however, was that there was no sense of judging each other between us. Both of us were eager to participate in any discussion, however shallow, as long as it was a reason for us to be together and interact. Not intellectual, but for us these meetings seemed to have a deeper emotional significance.
She bought coffee for us, and at meals took charge of ordering food items. Always ordering a different item on menu, never repeating the one that we had ordered in past. Not even the ones we had agreed to have liked a lot. Each of the new items she would admire for taste or presentation but would never repeated it the next time. Her obsession with “exploring” always filled me with a strange sensation, leading me to imagine my self to be one of the items on the menu! Then I would know, soon she would get over me too. For, the charm of exploring is in touching and knowing the unknown. Much more in touching, than knowing!
-Pulastya
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