The mind really messes with you

I've thought long and hard if I should write this one or not. Ultimately I decided to write it. I'm not a person who believes in auguries or premonitions but sometimes there's an indomitable force that compels you to do something. The good part is that you do it voluntarily and have no hazy memories about it the next morning. The motivation behind this is that unknown feeling. And perhaps the opportunity to write this hasn't come at a better moment. With the entire house to myself alone and the whole night to type it out. It's not one of those eerie supernatural feelings but something a lot more peaceful and tranquil.

This post might be extremely obnoxious to a few of my good friends. So "losciento mucho" to you guys. Translates to very sorry. But it's one of those flow of words which cant really be stopped.

I hope certain people never know this post exists. Let alone read it.

Well since its a tad sensitive, I won't spell out names. But the people involved will surely know what this is about. And for those who aren't involved, this is a true story.

From a distance she wasn't someone who caught your attention. But, if you looked closely, you wouldn't miss her.

I first saw her in the dining hall at a remote ashram in deep interior Karnataka. We were a bunch of school kids put together in a big block, with rooms that could hold no more than 7. But ours had 15 of the most outspoken people that batch had ever seen. I knew 3 of them, my classmates and the rest I got to know on the very first day.

At lunch on the first day, out of a week away from home, I noticed her amidst a group of girls. Nothing too fancy. She was just in a salwar kameez and dint pay heed to the bunch of guys trying to broach conversation.

As a couple of days passed, she was the most talked about in the guys block. Some of guys among the 15 knew her and soon the whole group of us 15 guys got to know her bunch of girls. I stayed away from it all. I was an introvert (still am) so making conversation with strangers has never been my forte. But the stronger reason for me staying away from it all was because I was intimidated by her. Yup, I was pretty sure of embarrassing myself with my attitude if I ever made conversation with her.

We had a couple of activities during that week. One of it involved drawing or painting something. The first to finish won something which doesn't come to mind immediately. So my team and I were doing our bit. She walked up to me. "Hey do you have a brown sketch?"

"Nop sorry, just ask around you'll find one." "Sure thanks".

There are people whom you look up to for their attitude and respect them. As she smiled n walked away, she'd earned mine. I probably was the only one amongst us who'd never really talked to them. So amidst all of us, she chose to come n talk to me. Maybe to break the ice. Maybe I was standing closest to her at that point of time. Or just maybe I looked like the guy who might have a brown sketch.

Either way, her approach to getting people comfortable in her presence was astonishing. Direct, yet friendly and yet not giving herself away and making pointless conversation for the sake of it, like so many others do.

By the end of the week, I'd realized that she was a smart girl. And
"Nop sorry, just ask around you'll find one." had been the only words that I'd said to her all week. As we got off the bus at Bangalore, I said "bye", not knowing if she even remembered me. And that was it. My brain decided to shove her into some tiny unused space it had. But the respect I had for her never dwindled.

Life moved on, and a month or two rolled by. My classmate, who'd also come with me to the ashram walks up to me n says. "Dude, I'm dating her!".

This chap has probably been one of my best friends before the two of us were born. Our mothers were good friends since they were our age. And honestly, I don't think I've picked on anyone else in school more than him. All in good spirit of course.

He seemed to have found a new lease of life somewhere. It was a good feeling all around. One of my best friends dating a girl whom I'd respected after speaking a couple of words. So, it came to be that this was sort of a serious affair, and we picked on him for it, in jest of course.

There were conversations about his marriage and his kids and good times to be. Again, my poor social skills meant that I wasn't really up to date with happenings but the other 2 guys who'd also come to the ashram were. So the 3 of us made it a hobby of talking about this guys future.

He finally forced me to speak to her on phone again. I got a lot of stick from her for being a dimwit and not talking to her properly. Hell I should know.

That conversation kick started a host of others. Yahoo messenger took center stage with that familiar chime sounding every second. Our conversations turned from biweekly to daily to twice a day. Lost count of the number of things we'd argued about and the number of jokes we'd create about the poor fellow.

It so happened that she hadn't really told her friends bout her guy. When she did tell them, it became a furor and I'm not sure why women are so keen to meet their friend's boyfriends. Maybe its a social thing that I don't get.

Now, they lived across the city, so meeting him in person wasn't really that easy. So the next best option was yahoo messenger. (I'm not sure why they overlooked phone).

The problem with yahoo was that this jackass of my friend was and still is anti- internet. Chat applications, social networking, twitter hes never on even on of them.

She pinged my one afternoon and wanted me to be him for a while. This idiot probably never had a yahoo ID then so I was the scapegoat.
Before I could reply, I was in a group chat with 3-4 of her friends. The chat room sort of resembled this.

Friend 1: Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Howa u doin??
Friend 2: tell us tell us tell us everything about you.
Friend 3: what do you like about her??
Friend 4: do you know what her likes n dislikes are?? We're gonna quiz you about it...

Friend 3: What does your ID mean (ash_thatscool was my yahoo ID those days, and it resembled his name not to the slightest )

Me: Errr...


Barclays Premier League and insanely fast copy pasting from her private window to the group chat saved my ass. Not his of course, for it felt the force of my shoes.

Oh and about the ID, there was a footballer by name Dean Ashton who played for Norwich city those days. Apparently, I was a Norwich city fan and he was my favorite player, hence the ID.

At least, that's what came off the top of my head and I typed it out. It was BULL--- wait for it SHIT. Fortunately, those girls dint watch football.

Now if that wasn't hard enough, Friend 2 adds me on her chat list, and I had to pretend to be him for a whole month, before I decided to "get my ID hacked" and create a new ID, unknown to Friend 2.

So things went smooth for a long time, and the future looked ruddy. What could possibly go wrong?

A day after her board exams results were out, I was reading the newspaper. I read an article which I dint pay too much heed to. It could have been anyone from that big school. As soon as I got to school, he came up to me and said to me lugubriously "Hey, its her".

Disbelief, shock, and speechlessness followed. It was insane. She'd put a noose round her neck and kicked the chair from underneath. Before the results were announced. Turned out that she did okay. It was one of those days where we never said anything to each other. The same with the following day, which was when the rest of them found out. I wrote her a farewell mail, to a dead inbox, which will probably never open again.

I tried to wrap my head around why she did it. It's never made sense to this day.

I remembered her this morning. I don't know why. It was just one of those thoughts that popped into my head. I guess that's why I'm up at 1 AM writing this post. It's a force which makes you do something you never planned to.