Pessimistic Romantic

I wished to move my arm but did not; I feared she, who was leaning on it, might wake up. Thus the arm remained in situ through out the bus journey. The joy of juvenile affection.

Yes, I was juvenile in college. Freedom they say is a difficult bird to cage, well so is a man’s heart. We gave our hearts’ out for free. Every girl could take it, it was up for sale. And then there was this beautiful female in our batch. They say a thing of beauty is joy forever, even if she is committed to some other guy. She was a joy to watch, to talk to. But then I stood no chance with her. You see I had gained sense by my second year of college. I had realized life is not about running after dreams. It is about realizing achievable goals and, god damn, achieving it.
She was an achievable goal. We did hang out in the same group and we had spoken before. But now things were different, I had an aim in life, temporarily. (In the future, I wanted to open up a coffee shop cum pub in bourgeoisie Mumbai but more on that later.) I wish 12th standard biology also explained the process of attracting human females, I had no clue. How is one supposed to change your daily banter in to love-talk? When does friendship become love? What the hell is this love anyways? I made efforts. I am ashamed of them of course; I was juvenile as has been mentioned earlier too. But boy, I did try. To be fair though, she didn’t mind it. I wanted her to. I wanted her to ask me to fuck off. She didn’t. I fear she was half-waiting for it.

Locate Target. Aim target. Shoot.

I love McD. Cheap food, upper-middle class crowd and A.C. I held her hands, looked into her eyes and spoke my brains out. I knew not what, but speak I did. What else was there to do? And so, was the aim achieved. Houston, the eagle has landed.
And then what? What’s a boy supposed to do? We spoke a lot. I had asked her to not to make a public declaration of our co-dependence but it seemed the college were co-signees. Everyone knew, everyone gazed. Pretty soon everyone started speaking, but then so were both of us.

Days passed by. Talking continued. We knew each other a lot. This is not good. If you stare at Monalisa a lot, you will eventually find a flaw and then whenever you look at it, the flaw will surface. The flaw will dominate the view. The twitch in the movement of brush across her face will destroy the magic of her beauty. It did for me.

I didn’t want to hint anything to her. I wasn’t in love but I wasn’t a heart-breaking ogre either. Distances increased. Pauses became frequent and talks smaller. Days passed by. CAT happened (but that’s a tale for some other day). And then one day abruptly, in cafeteria she said she didn’t love me. I didn’t break her heart after all. But suddenly the glow on her face was gone, the sparkle was lost. There was a hint of moisture in my eyes. So this is how it ends. So this is it. It’s over. When did it begin? 2 weeks after the McD episode, I think. And that folks was the end of second love story of my life.

We are friends still. Not a good position though it is. There’s always that hope. That lingering question. Don’t matter though, ‘coz I ain’t gonna ask it.