YOU SAID GOODBYE AND HE SAYS HULLO

You are leaving this week. Seems this is a season of farewells. D left too without a word three weeks back. All he bothered sending me was an insipid reply to a message I sent him. He stopped talking to me slowly and steadily as the day for his departure came closer. I guess I stopped caring . I knew it was futile. Trying to hold on to something that was never there. Now you are leaving too. My best buddy for the last 6 months, someone who popped out of nowhere that day on g talk. I’d never thought that one evening of music, laughter, bloody mary’s and crispy lamb at TC would materialize into countless conversations, silly fights, drinking sessions, discussions on life, philosophizing, dreaming together, arguing, and bickering over trivialities. But then we always knew that this was the way it was gonna be. I adored the birthday present you gave me. You wanted to give me something different and so you thoughtfully bought me two pure silk scarves from the old shop where your grandmother use to purchase her silk sarees from. I am gonna treasure those notes you wrote for me during a drunken reverie swearing your undying affection . You were always leaving and you and I would make plans on how we’ll meet a few years later but this time in New York and we’d go drinking yet again to some shady little bar. Yeah even if you and I are married to different people we shall surely meet up and our spouses can go take a hike cos it would just be old friends bonding. Trust you to come up with such run of the mill ideas P.


The other day we finally managed meeting up after a week of misunderstandings and plans gone awry. I was looking forward to meeting you one last time. For a change I reached earlier and I was waiting patiently outside TGIF browsing through the menu, trying to make up my mind between Thai Spring Rolls and Pork Ribs when you said “BOOOOOO” and I turn around to find you standing; you had your backpack on and your funny shades. You were looking quite adorable although I refrained myself from saying so. Suddenly I noticed that there was someone standing beside you. You introduced him as your friend T and my first thought was hell couldn’t you have come alone since this was our last meeting for a long long time to come. Not that I wanted this to be a maudlin and weepy affair but again a stranger is not welcome at all at such inopportune instances. I gave a quick glance and said Hi as we went inside and sat on our table. I couldn’t really care because I was under the impression he’d be a non-participant in our conversations. Yeah those first few minutes T hardly spoke and I lambasted you for behaving in such a juvenile manner and sending me melodramatic messages. T was silent just smiling now and then. Then he started talking, with an exclamation here, a question there, passing some lewd joke about how much both of you loved each other and then both of you would yell “bitch” in unison to each other. I was so mortified as both of you made a mockery of each other confessing your eternal love in public. ( Feigning homosexuality is the flavour of the season ;) )

Somewhere in the course of the afternoon that wistful feeling in me that arose out of the endless goodbyes was replaced by something lighter and bubblier that threatend to come out on the surface, something that made me want to chuckle in delight as I got the better of T as we indulged in a fanciful repartee or ganged up against you and playfully ridiculed the female attention showered on you and he changed from P's friend to T for me. Bizarre as it sounds but meeting T was delightful , and left me with a smile long after both of you left. I can’t even point out what exactly it was or was it meeting a kindred soul in the last place I would expect to. Ironic isn’t it that our last meeting was the first time I met him. As if unknowingly you left me with a going away present. I know I’ll meet him again, I don’t know if we’ll be best pals like you and I were. But there is something. It is almost as if you said good-bye and he says hullo. Hullo, hullo, I don’t know why you said goodbye he says hullo.”