The Statesman
1,500 words
Between Friends
There was desolation all around
until you became my friend
the best companion I ever found
on the journey to life’s end
said the Hallmark card. Mushy, sing song, pretentious.
For someone who brings Hope to Life,
For someone who stands by us till Eternity,
For someone who is a True Friend
said the Archies one. Impersonal, clichéd, too many capitals.
Siddartha moved out of the greeting cards section and saw the little heart-shaped plaque of red velvet with silver lettering across it: I found a friend in you. He got it gift-wrapped and taped a card on it To Dear Sanjana.
Dear Sanjana, he found as expected, sitting alone at the table at the furthest end from the entrance in the cafeteria. The cafeteria was one place in the campus that was never empty, unlike the college library or the gymkhana, until it closed for the day. He strode along to her table and sat facing her.
“Knew you would be here.”
“Where else you know I am always here.” She did not seem surprised by his arrival. Her voice, husky, sounded as if she suffered from a perennial sore throat. But it went along with the rest of her appearance, as if God, in giving her a masculine frame, wanted to be incongruous all the way. Indeed, if she had a soft, girlish voice, it would have been all the more out of place.
“Well, happy birthday,” he said, holding out his hand to shake hers. She accepted his wishes, again without showing any surprise at his remembering, although he could see she was pleased. He then took out the gift-wrapped box from his pocket, rearranged the card and placed it before her. This evoked some reaction.
“Oh wow thanks can I open it here.” She spoke with the same lack of punctuation that she practiced in her emails. The wrapper was in her hands before he could speak. “Thanks Sid it is sweet,” she said, holding the plaque in her hand. He knew she meant it and felt pleased because she was.
He looked at the tables behind, anxious if anyone was watching them. From a distance, one would see only a red heart and not the wording on it, and the inference that would give rise to could be embarrassing. But no one was looking their way.
Would he feel embarrassed if the campus grapevine carried rumors linking Sanjana and him in a romantic escapade? Perhaps not. Rather, it would be funny. Of all the girls in the college, his friends would mock, Sid could not find anybody other than Sanju baba. But she had a heart of gold. What had happened with Ankita? Barbie doll like beauty, with a heart as plastic and cruel. Of course there should be no relation between a girl’s beauty and nature, but one example of either case in one’s life went a long way in establishing a hypothesis.
Sanjana sat hunched forward, elbows resting on the table, looking down at the cup of coffee between them. The arms of her denim jacket were folded back at the cuffs, revealing wrists a tennis player would have been proud of. Her hair barely reached her shoulders, and at the front they hung like stalactites, framing her face. Siddartha saw with a start that something in her face had altered. The eyebrows. She had got them shaped, apparently deciding that they did not have to be thick, bushy ones that met over the bridge of her nose.
The eyebrow-shaping did not make her look good all of a sudden, or perhaps he had simply got used to her earlier appearance. But it touched him. For never before had she shown the slightest concern about her looks, and now it looked as if the woman in her had at last decided to wake up from its dormancy.
“Something on your mind what are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly, laughing to himself. That was Sanjana—sometimes you feared she could read your thoughts, when you thought she was not even looking.
“Is it Ankita when will you forget her.”
“No, no. Long time since I thought of her.”
“Good.”
She had got it wrong this time; he was not thinking of Ankita at all. What he said was true, well almost true, because you never get over a first love, especially after it fails. But it had stopped hurting now, and that was what Sanjana wanted to hear.
The tears and the pangs were very much there—before he met Sanjana. Despite being sympathetic, none of his friends were able to comfort him. A pat on the back with the words, “It happens to everyone, dude. Move on,” were indicative of their support but did not provide solace. And an eighteen-year old in college cannot weep on the shoulders of other eighteen-year old guys.
One needs feminine shoulders for that, and the broad ones of Sanjana, although not less masculine in appearance, had come to his aid. He remembered quite clearly, soon after his break-up, coming to the cafeteria for lunch alone, unable to join in the usual banter of his classmates. The only vacant table was Sanjana’s. Shrugging his shoulders he sat opposite her and ate in silence, a blank stare fixed at his plate.
“Forget her she is not worth it.” The rapid-fire sentence coming from Sanjana, still bent over her plate, startled him. He started to get angry but then he imagined the despondent and ridiculous figure he must be making, so obvious to all, that he had to laugh. She looked up with an impish smile and their friendship took off from there.
Their meeting in the cafeteria at lunch and teatime became regular. At first he was kidded: Of all the girls, Sanju baba! The unkind name, alluding to the macho Bollywood hero Sanjay Dutt, was not without basis. He could not deny her masculine girth, her slouching gait and that she was the only girl in college who rode a geared bike, a 150 cc one at that.
But after some time, it stopped mattering. She was refreshingly different from the other girls he met; she talked with directness, bereft of any girlish airs or giggly behaviour, but with a sensitivity that was soothingly feminine.
His build, slighter in comparison to hers, must have made them seem an odd couple. The thought, coming to him while he watched her finish her coffee, surprised him. It was funny to think of themselves as a couple.
“So what’s the plan tonight? Where’s the birthday party?” he asked.
“No party I am here only.”
“Come on! Not even tonight?”
“No you know I don’t go out.”
Siddartha snorted in exasperation. He carried on, failing to notice that her smile had become fixed. “Don’t be silly. Let’s go out and have a wonderful dinner. Chinese, let’s say?”
“No thanks Sid I said no.” Even the fixed smile had vanished and this time he didn’t miss the seriousness.
“But why?”
“Because I don’t go out especially with guys it gives the wrong ideas.” After a pause, unusual for her, she added, “To others.”
He gaped at her.
“I am sorry you find me old fashioned,” she said and shrugged, the gesture belying her feeling sorry.
“But it’s me!” he said. “Not just some guy.”
“I know but…” she shrugged again. “Sorry.”
Anger writhed inside him like a serpent. It was a dent in his ego, an insult. He had offered the idea of dinner out of pure friendship and that she should misconstrue it as a cheap overture, was demeaning to him. Maybe his idea was not so pure, maybe there was an element of overture in it, but that she should turn it down mortified him.
Had it been Ankita he could have borne it. But Sanjana? The Sanjana who was so manly that the guys mocked her behind her back; the Sanjana who was so friendless that she had to eat alone—that Sanjana had turned down his harmless offer and was acting unapproachable. To him, who was so smart that even Ankita had been attracted. The wrathful serpent in his heart coiled up, ready to strike and spit venom.
“But it’s OK to meet here daily? That doesn’t give wrong ideas to others?”
Sanjana frowned. “You crazy or what?”
“Oh yes I am crazy. Meeting here is fine, but going out is wrong. Shaping your eyebrows and waiting for me here, that doesn’t give wrong ideas?”
She stared at him. A tear glistened briefly and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Her face hardened and smoothed out the creases in her forehead. She got up.
“Look, I didn’t mean that—” he began, but she had already pushed her chair back and was on her way out.
A motorbike engine burst into life and roared away.
After a few minutes, Siddartha too got up and went out slowly. The road was empty. On the side, on the top of a garbage pile, was a shiny red plaque. He kicked the rubbish over it until it was lost to sight.