This is a little different from my usual posts. I mostly post poems here but I tried writing a short story this time. I hope you like it. ^_^
The coffee cup before me looked like the dirty puddle of rainwater I had splashed my foot into, an hour ago. You would think my day was ruined, but frankly, I had it coming. Who wears white on a rainy day? I didn’t really mind the brown patches that stained the hem of my kurti. It would make a nice conversation starter. “Oh hey, you have mud on your dress!” they’d say, smiling, and before they comment further on the gloomy weather, I’d chime in, “Haha, I’m so awkward…I didn’t see the pothole and stepped right into it,” I might even tuck my hair behind my ears and adjust my glasses- because, oh I’m so nervous and clumsy, don’t you see? People dig that, especially boys. It makes them think we need them. Well, I guess we do, otherwise why am I at a cafe waiting for my date?
I glanced at my phone. It was twenty past five. He had told me he’d meet me at five thirty, and his Instagram bio read ‘Meticulous| Merry| Marvel fan’. As much as you shouldn’t trust Instagram bios or any self-proclaimed declarations about one’s own conduct, I figured he would be punctual. I had reached the cafe by five, because I had wanted to look settled-in. A date is like a job interview, or worse; especially when it’s almost a blind date, so I needed myself to steady myself in a room full of strangers. That’s what a cafe is, isn’t it? Whatever soothing music you can hear in the background, don’t you feel eyes on you every second in a public place like that? The eyes of a stranger who you’ll potentially date are the heaviest of them all.
I had known him only for a day, after all. After I broke up with Rohan, I thought I was done with relationships, done with love, blah blah, all that nonsense that fills your brain right after you’ve dumped a piece of shit after realising (after six long years of not realising) what a piece of shit he was. The man sitting at the table to my right was holding a guitar by his side. It took me back to the hours we spent bunking classes and singing our lungs out on Rohan’s cousin’s terrace. I realised how much I missed that bunch of friends, and I heaved a sigh. The thing about nostalgia is, it somehow starts with making you happy but leaves you far worse than you were before. I wondered who he was singing to now, which of the two girls with whom he had cheated on me, or was there a new fresher he was advancing his friendly arm to. I looked away.
I sipped my coffee and pretended to read the novel I had brought with me. My date and I – we spoke about our love for reading, and I didn’t want to be a liar. I might not have touched a novel in more than five years or so, but I can surely bank on my adolescent years when I was indeed an avid reader. How do I explain that I was in love with books once, but that love has faltered? How do I tell him that I have an attention span shorter than the breath of a sparrow, that I skim through movies and series without actually taking anything in? It’s not easy to explain to anyone how day by day everything outside turns to nothing inside. It’s easier, in fact, to try to remember how you used to be, and maintain a facade solid enough to make the others think that you’re interesting enough, if not enough.
A loud noise of thunder crashed my train of thoughts. In a moment, a heavy downpour began. I looked at the hazy city outside the big glass doors of the cafe, and I asked myself, when was the last time I emptied myself, the way that the sky seems to do so easily? My friends were concerned when the break-up didn’t make me cry. To be honest, even I was surprised at myself. Surely something as grave as parting from a boyfriend of six years calls for some tears? It reminded me of that line from Tennyson’s poem- “She must weep or she will die.” I didn’t weep, so, did I die? In the poem the woman had lost her husband, a warrior in battle, and she was tear-less in shock. I had lost my love, but perhaps I wasn’t in shock. Somehow, I had always known. An individual is not a whole, there are so many selves inside one, don’t you think? I think that the betrayed lover, the girl who was never enough, has been hiding inside me since forever. Sometimes her imaginations come true, and I feel that I have known it all along.
It was quarter to six already, was he stuck in the rain? I picked up my phone to call him but I put it down. Of course he was trapped in the rain, I should be patient. I could see the waiter looking at me and my searching glances at the door, and I would bet any money that he was smiling at my loneliness. Perhaps he wasn’t smiling at all. Or was it because of my muddy dress? I can never tell what it is about me that makes all the mouths around me twist into a crooked smile- my large unshapely body, my blank perspiring face, or the ridiculous way that I walk. It sounds like a wretched conspiracy that the world has hatched against me, but I’d like to think it’s all in my head. No one should care enough to judge me in this busy city. Thank God I don’t live in a small town that thrives on petty gossips, I pity those who do.
I looked at my half-empty coffee cup and put down the book. I don’t even like coffee, why did I buy it? Then I remembered, I always drink coffee on early dates. It doesn’t do well if you’re not into coffee, how else are you supposed to gaze at each other inside a beautiful little cafe- where couples come to discover and rediscover their emotional connection over lengthy chats and romantic strumming of the guitar in the background. I hated myself for being dishonest with myself this way. It isn’t a crime not to like coffee. No one would bat an eye if I said I hate coffee. But how could I say so, when he was clearly so excited for me to try the coffee here? I’m sure it wouldn’t really break his heart if I said I don’t drink tea or coffee or whatever, but I’m sure it would break me before I could say that to him. I have an unhealthy need to please others, my friends often remark. It’s not that I can’t be a bitch, but I need to set my heart that I will be a bitch, you know? My phone buzzed. Was it him? I checked my phone. It was my best friend, she sent me a meme. I hadn’t even told her that I was on a blind date. I was a hundred per cent sure that she’d call me suicidal, since this guy could very well be a catfish, a serial killer – and what not. I didn’t usually behave this way. I had been using a dating app for a month now and the guys I had talked to the most, I had made sure to virtually stalk all of them. Of course any girl would do that. But something had come over me the previous evening. I was tired of everyone, tired of talking to a bunch of guys who were talking to a bunch of girls and we all seemed to a drowning in the dating pool.
Suddenly this one guy had texted me, telling me he had decided to go on a date with the very first girl that appears on his feed. I had happened to be that girl, apparently. The sceptic that I am, I asked him whether he had been texting the same thing to all girls he could find, to which he was unsurprisingly offended, and gave me his Instagram id and immediately deleted his dating app account. I was quite amused and surprised, it felt like a breath of fresh air; I almost seemed to have pushed my head out of the oppressing water and an arm seemed to be waiting outside to pull me up. I forced myself not to think much about anything else. We had an engaging conversation for an hour or two, and I decided to give this a shot.
It’s not impossible for this guy to turn out to be a serial killer indeed, or at the very least the usual quintessential creepy guy. But I didn’t want to think about that. It would only make it worse; after all I was already there. He wasn’t, yet. It was almost six o’clock. I debated whether I should finally send him a text, and that’s when I found that my cellular network was gone, even the cafe WiFi didn’t seem to work at all. So much for a fancy cafe, huh. What would I do now? It was still raining outside, but the downpour had thinned into a slow drizzle. The rain holding up my date was too boring. What if he was secretly a superhero, busy saving some helpless little boy from a speeding bus? Perhaps he was someone only I could see, an apparition- hundreds of years old- who had materialised again into human form only to enjoy the pleasures and pains of love. I laughed at my superfluous daydreams. I tried to imagine what he would be like. The very little time that I had known him gave me the impression that he was more or less an average guy, with perhaps an unusual urgency to meet a stranger like me. He was funny, but not too edgy, he was appreciative and nice without being redundant in his greetings and niceties. He was polite and seemingly decent. What struck me the most about him was his intensity of wanting to form passionate human connections. He seemed so eager to meet me that you’d think we were long lost friends, who must meet before time runs out and each has to catch their flights going opposite ways. But who was he, really? A two-hour conversation might entirely be a facade, and I sure do know how easy it is to pretend to be someone you’re not.
Was I being stood up? I had managed to keep these awful doubts away from my mind, but he was supposed to be here a long time ago. The sky had cleared by now, and darkened at the same time with the tresses of nightfall. The fears of the insecure girl inside me came true after all. I called the waiter and paid the bill, struggling to wear a nonchalant customer-like expression on my face, reminding myself that he had no way to know that I was supposed to meet someone. Looking happy was too suspicious, I tried to look busy – as if my time for a cosy solitary evening at a cafe was finally up and I must get back to my normal, hectic life. I stepped out of the large glass door that now revealed beautiful yellow inlaid lights. I opened my phone. A bunch of messages, none from him. The newsfeed read that heavier rainfall and thunderstorm was to be expected in the next few days. Oh, and it reported the death of a young man in Kolkata by thunder strike.
Can you blame me for wishing it was him?
mimimusing 