Z & C (2)

"somewhere I never travelled, gladly beyond

           any experience, ..."

                                                                                         - E.E. Cummings 

       G & ZM were heading to Utrecht with me. All of us didn't know each other. We had friends in between, and had an awkward hello, all three of us, in the cafeteria. We didn't speak in person, thereafter. Leaving it to the numerous email chains to sort out the accommodation, the visa, and the air tickets. The question of "what kind of person are you" hung in the air, unanswered, deferred to after, after everything else, after it finally starts.

     When Y found out that ZM and I were heading to Utrecht, she was positively ecstatic. Despite our very different backgrounds and personality, we had both ended up with the same choice. Y enthused, "You are going to end up together."

    "We are going there together, but we are not going to be together."

   And there started the round-a-bout tongue twister game between Y and I, as we played with all the verbal permutations of how two people can be together but not be attached.

   I remember begging Y not to say the things she said to me to ZM (although I suspect she did), because it will be vastly awkward for two people, who have never met, to bear the huge weight of someone else's romantic expectation. It would be like a blind date, which will go on interminably for one year.

      Inevitably, something will fall, but not our hearts.


    And, so it went. Curiosity did form within me, since Y, close to my heart, thought we would like each other tremendously. But, I never took it seriously because one thing was always clear, ZM did not read. And, how could I love someone who did not read?

  
    As I write this now, I remember Y and I more than I remember ZM and I at this moment. For, ZM did not exist yet, only a figment of my imaginings at that point. I remember all the friends who so sweetly came to send me off. I remember Y coming for both of us - when she came, she excitedly pointed to a dot from far, "There's ZM." And, then she dropped her voice into a dramatic stage whisper, "His ex girlfriend came to send him off as well."

   I laughed, "That does puts a damper in your plans."

   "But you are better, " Y insisted.


   Y and I were closest before I left. We used to meet every week at the Children's Home and discuss the world's failings and feelings around us. She had this wonderful way of being profoundly distressed and moved by the world at the same time. Y, then, seemed always divided on whether to trust the world or believe in advance it was determined to disappoint.

   It didn't occur to me, all the things I would lose, before I went away. I thought it was just that - a journey away. Not a journey that I could not return from. It is only a few years later, looking back, that I slowly see all the intimacies we lose, when we become someone's else.

   "Come visit us if you can," I said as we hugged.

   "I will, and if you are not together by then, I will ask him why he has not fallen in love with you."