The Final Break Up

The Final Break Up

After landing in India, the first thing I did was to invite Priya out for lunch. Samar warned me, “She has changed a lot—you won’t believe it. Life hasn’t been very kind to her.”

*

Until eighth standard, I only knew Priya as the tall, fair girl who stood at the end of the queue in assembly, talked the loudest in her group, and had a perpetual glee on her face. I was made to sit with her in the unit tests, because of which I developed an acquaintance with her.

My father had refused to buy me a motorcycle, which he had promised before the exams. I was in my room that day, punching the wall and crying. I turned on the internet, and saw that only Priya was online. I began to chat with her. Without realizing, I began telling her about my father’s broken promise and my wish to hurt him in return. She didn’t try to preach. She replied with smileys, a ‘yes’ or a ‘k’ – small gestures that said, “I understand.”

Three days later, I called her to clear some of my doubts in chemistry. Her voice was drab and melancholy. She had been crying. It didn’t take much effort to make her tell me what had happened. She told me that she had a fight with her mother, and had heard her crying in the other room; she loved her mother more than anything, but still fought with her, and never tried to console her; she was feeling guilty and couldn’t forgive herself.

I tried to speak, but she cut my words. She just wanted someone to listen. A silence followed her words. It was my turn. I revealed the cold relationship I shared with my mother, her uncaring attitude, and how I sometimes felt that I was her stepson.

Next day, I couldn’t help feeling that we had acted whimsically. We had handed over to each other an intimate part of ourselves. Whenever our eyes met in school, she gave me a gentle smile – a smile that said, “Your part is secure with me.”

We began calling each other often. From sharing sad incidents, we unwittingly ended up sharing the deepest secrets of our life. In school we shared reassuring and mischievous smiles, and talked little.

Priya was the first girl to have become my friend, so I didn’t really know how to behave with and talk to girls. In school, I tried to look my best, smile in the most appealing way, and walk with style, for there was always a feeling that, perhaps, she was looking at me.

She lied to her parents and went out with me. I couldn’t bring myself to chide her because she did it only for me. We went to Pizza Hut, CCD or Barista, and called each other Raj and Piyu. We realized how many hours had passed only after we had run out of secrets and got time to look at our watch. To delay our parting by a few more minutes, we would begin recounting the most trivial incidents of our day as if they were secrets. I would rest my chin on my palm, and look at her animated face. Her English was a mish-mash of key words thrown together, devoid of trifles like a, an, the; she moved her hands when she talked, like she wanted to express more than what language allowed; there was always something extreme on her face – extreme joy, extreme misery and extreme shock – as if she didn’t believe in mild expressions.

We were sitting at Pizza Hut. Piyu looked at me through her new Bob-cut hair and over-powdered face, and asked,

“Raj, I wanted to ask something. Be frank, ok? Don’t think if you lie it will make me happy. Be totally frank. Do you think I can be a model?”

“You want to become a model?” I said, shocked.

“Yes, it’s like—yesterday I was sitting and thinking what I want to do ahead in life, then suddenly Santosh Sir’s words rang in my ears – ‘Listen to your heart’ – and I realized that I wanted to become a model. I know it’s weird—”

She bought an array of perfumes, donned heavy makeup when we went out, and tried a new hairstyle every month – everything from a Bob cut to a bun – asking me each time if she looked better, like she was expecting a photographer to notice her.

*

I was sitting in Barista, reminiscing my school days while waiting for Priya. My ears were vigilant for a loud, “Hi Raj!” Priya used to greet me like that in school, turning many heads.

I raise my eyes from the magazine and saw Priya sitting in front of me. “Hello Rajesh,” she said in a muffled voice.

She was wearing a plain salwar kameez, and her long hair fell evenly on her shoulders. She shuffled her feet and played with her bangles. There was a hesitant smile on her face. I realized that my stare was making her uncomfortable.

“Hello,” I muttered, looking away.

She bent forward, “Huh?”

“Hello,” I repeated.

We were bound by an odd silence, and an odd willingness to break it.

“So, tell me . . . what are you doing nowadays?” I said in English, after the waiter had taken the order.

“I work at a Call Centre. What about you?” she said in a clear Hindi.

“I work for an investing firm, Oswin Goodsons.”

“Ok. Do you like America?”

“Well, yes, I do. It’s a . . . it’s a nice place.”

She had bent forward, but was hesitant to ask anything. So I continued,

“Things are very different there. I mean—less traffic, more jobs and less poverty and corruption and all that. It’s nice.”

She rested her chin on her palm and asked with a childish innocence, “Is it true that life is easy there?”

“No it’s—it’s not like that. We have luxuries, so people feel living is easy there. But no, life is equally hard—it’s just that we just have a different set of problems from here.”

Her face twitched. America had disappointed her. But she still looked at me in anticipation for more details.

I said, “Tell me something about you. What do you do? And how are Uncle, Aunty and Chintu?”

She reclined on her chair, and spoke in a drab voice, looking at her hands,

“I work in a call center.” She continued after a pause, “Papa passed away last year. Mummy is fine, but she remains ill for most of the days.

Chintu is in eleventh standard now. He is not defiant and reckless anymore. He takes care of Mummy when I am at the call center or attending lectures. It takes toll on his studies, but he manages it.”

She added, “After I complete my graduation, I’ll try to look for a better job.”

She looked into my eyes and gave me a smile that said, “But I am happy for you”.

I looked around, searching for appropriate words. When our eyes crossed, we exchanged an awkward smile.

*

It was Piyu’s birthday that Sunday, and I was supposed to call her. I was at my Nani’s house so it slipped out of my mind. When I entered my class the next morning, Piyu glared at me. I approached her to apologize for not calling. She pushed me aside and said, “What’s your problem? Let me go.”

In the recess, I tried approaching Piyu again. When I was within earshot, Sarita asked Piyu if we had had a fight. Piyu said loud enough for me to hear, “We are breaking off,” and walked away.

Piyu passed me a note in the last period:

‘meet me at CCD at 7, I want to break off

bring back my gifts’

I found Piyu sitting on a table next to the door, impatiently peering outside. When I went inside, she abruptly began speaking, “Raj why didn’t you call? What’s the problem? I was just sitting in my room, waiting like an idiot, thinking Raj would call—”

“I’m really sorry I forgot. I know it’s a big mistake, but . . . now you’re overreacting.”

“I am overreacting? Raj, it was my birthday, how could you not have called. I called you two times on your birthday. Raj, tell me frankly why didn’t you call.”

I sighed. “I told you—I forgot. Now what do you want—should I bang my head on the wall and say it?”

“I called you two times on your birthday. You should have called. I was really waiting. You should have called. How will we remain friends if you forget such things?”

She looked at me with furrowed brows, and childish innocence.

She added, “Raj, I really wanted to talk to you.”

There was a lump in her throat. This wasn’t her.

“Piyu, did something happen yesterday?”

She looked down and said, “I had a fight with Mummy and Daddy. I told them how I was serious about modeling, and Papa completely went mad, started yelling and threatening me. Then I said I am going to leave the house, and Papa said Do what you want. I went to my room and cried on my bed. Then I heard Mummy and Daddy arguing because of me, Mummy telling Papa that he was too harsh. Then their fight became bad, and after some time I heard Papa slapping Mummy.”

Our eyes met for a second.

“She got slapped because of me, but I didn’t even . . . go to her and say anything. I should have gone.

“Raj, I was feeling very sad and guilty. When I was in my room crying, I wanted to tell you about all this—I would have felt better. I was waiting for your call. I called you a hundred times but it kept showing switched off.

“Things won’t work like this. We need to call each other and talk to each other. Then only we can go on. My other friends called, but I couldn’t say anything to them. I only tell you about all this.” She looked down and added, “You really should have called.”

“I am sorry,” I said.

On our way out, Piyu lightly held my hand and leaned towards me. Her head searched for my shoulder. I cherished her touch, but I felt afraid of something.

I went to Ooty for a vacation, and forgot to tell Piyu about it. When I returned to school after seven days, she greeted me with cold stares. She snatched a copy from my desk, and returned it two minutes later with a thump on my table. I saw a piece of paper sticking out from between the pages. I knew what was coming.

‘meet at pizza hut at 6. I m tired of you n and I want break up

Go to hell!’

Our eyes met, and we exchanged a brief, mischievous smile.

If one of us didn’t call for a couple of days, all the other person had to do was to pass a break up note – a gesture that said, “I care for you.” She wrote her notes in an illegible handwriting, drawing smileys beneath them. I loved them – they were cute and made me feel special. By the end of eleventh standard, five notes had passed between us. Two were from my side.

*

Priya looked up from her plate, and our eyes met for a second.

“Do you like the food?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s nice,” I said.

She gave me a meek smile.

I had been observing her face and voice closely, trying to search for Piyu in her. She used a different set of expressions now. Her smiles were meek and brief. Her eyes betrayed a calm maturity. Nothing of Piyu had survived in her, except for an occasional movement of the hand or an arch of brows to remind me that she was the same person.

She was trying to conceal her sorrows with her newfound expressions, thinking she could hide them from me. I didn’t like this mask of hers. I couldn’t bare it anymore.

I kept my spoon down and bent forward. “Priya,” I said, “what has happened to you? You have changed so much—you don’t look so happy as before. You’re trying to hide something from me—please, please tell me. I will listen to you.”

Perhaps she was expecting this. She averted her eyes and said,

“Rajesh—I am not hiding anything. I am happy. I’m really happy.”

I said, “You wanted to become a model. See what you are doing right now—working in a call center, studying in the evening, and talking care of your mother and brother. I don’t—I don’t understand. Please tell me—I want to help you.”

Her face remained calm. She spoke in a slow and clear voice, like she was explaining something to an impatient child,

“You’re taking it all wrong—I am happy. Things have changed, but not for bad. I like my life – I have chosen it. I love my family. I am happy, really happy. All that modeling things was—”

She looked at her plate, as if she was searching it for the missing words. After a pause, she dragged out the unwilling words,

“—it was a long time back. Things are different now.”

She wanted to say more, but something was pulling her back.

She gave me a smile and went back to eating. Her new, perfect smiles were growing on me. My anger ebbed. I smiled back. She had perfected the trivialities of life – which words to pick, where to look, how much to arch the brow, how much to curve the lips in a smile – like she was living all over again. There was innocent beauty in every movement of hers. With a small gesture, she could express the most complex of thoughts, or hide the others.

She wrapped herself in her shawl, and gently rocked back and forth.

“Are you feeling cold?”

“It’s ok.”

“You can take my jacket. I’m fine.”

“No, it’s really ok. I’m comfortable.”

All these years I had just pitied her. Now I felt tenderness towards her.

She was shivering with cold, but didn’t ask for my jacket even though I had taken it off. I felt an urge to go up to her and embrace her to shield her from the cold air. I wanted to protect her. She wanted to hurt me with her indifference. She was trying to say, “You left be behind, thinking I couldn’t live without you. But look, I am happy without you.”

She turned towards me and asked me more about my life in USA. She rested her cheek on her palm and looked at me through her smiling face, as I recounted fictional anecdotes. For a second I felt that she was admiring my face, cherishing my presence, and not listening to my words. I saw a glimpse of Piyu in her. She abruptly came out of her trance, and looked at her watch.

“It is eight ten,” she said, “I have to go.”

“You can go after half an hour. Please,” I said.

“I wish I could stay,” she said.

I dropped her at her house, and before she could go inside I passed a note in her hand:

‘meet me at yoga park tomorrow at 6. i want to break up final time.

i m very serious this time’

I went home and put on Show Me The Meaning on my CD player. I wasn’t a fan of this song, but today it sounded strangely melodious, uncannily familiar. Just when the words, ‘Tell me why, I can’t be there where you are,’ came, I recalled Priya’s face and felt a friendly object piercing my heart. I waited impatiently for Samar to get back. I wanted to tell him that if I were to go back four years in time and be asked to make that decision again, I would choose something else; I had done a mistake then, and I wanted to undo it; I was in love with Priya.

*

Piyu and I met at CCD the day our Board result came. I had expected her to be sad because our encounters were to become infrequent from then on. She was as unperturbed about this as she had been about her poor result.

“So then, which college?” she asked.

“Excellence’s cut-off is just 82% this year. I guess I’ll apply there.”

“Come on! How do you expect a girl with 65% to enter into Excellence? Don’t be so hard on me.”

She continued, “What about STS? I know it’s not good but, what to do—you’ll have to work it. It is one of the only colleges I can join.”

I felt uneasy after this conversation. I was hesitant to tell her that I didn’t want to join a petty college just for being near her.

I explained my situation to Samar.

He gave a laugh and said, “Dude, you both love each other. You need to be together.”

The usual mockery was absent from his voice.

“We are not lovers,” I said.

“Rajesh, why can’t you just admit it? It’s not such a big thing anymore.”

“What makes you think we are lovers?”

He sighed. “You both give each other those kind of smiles, meet out every second day, talk for hours on the phone – it’s obvious. I mean, what’s wrong with you today? Why are you asking such stupid questions?”

Mine and Piyu’s relationship was routinely mocked by our classmates. When we met, we dismissed them as narrow-minded and base creatures. It was an understood fact that we were just friends. There was something in Samar’s voice that made me think over. I was in a state of distress for the whole day.

It was true that I and Piyu were close, but we were not lovers. We were just good friends who needed each other. Our exchanging of break up notes was a fun ritual, a pretending game.

Then, why was I feeling afraid. I had felt the same fear when Piyu had rested her head on my shoulder outside CCD, the day we had passed our first break up note. When we met, we never used the words ‘love’, ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’. I had never equated our relationship with love. But when I did so now, I felt a strange fear.

I checked my phone one day and noticed that Piyu had called me seven times in the last two days to ask me if I had made up my mind about SST College. Last week, we had called each other fifteen times, and had talked for over nine hours; among the numerous greeting-messages I had received from her, one had come on every Valentine’s Day, at twelve in the night. We liked greeting each other every now and then, irrespective of the sanctity of the occasion. It was fun. I had never looked at it the other way.

Over the next few days, my fear worsened as I realized how true Samar’s words were. I was so dumb. I had never understood Piyu. I hadn’t known any girl before her, so I didn’t know anything about love or friendship. I was so stupid – I thought that we were just two friends who needed each other. We lied to our parents to see each other, and shared secrets we couldn’t confide in the mirror. We had always been more than just friends.

The city had started suffocating me, and I wanted to run away. During his short visit to India, Uncle Harish asked my parents if they would like me to go with him and study in USA. I pressurized my parents to accept Uncle Harish’s offer. I didn’t talk to Piyu before leaving for USA. I wrote a note:

“I am going to USA to study. I am sorry I couldn’t tell you before. It happened in a hurry. Please forgive me if you can.”

I cut the last line, before sending her the note through a friend.

I knew Piyu had taken my number from my parents, but she didn’t call me. Then, perhaps, she realized that I really wasn’t coming back. It was my fourth month in USA when I started getting calls from her. I didn’t answer the phone. Then I got a letter from her. The whole page was blank, except for a small note hurriedly scribbled in one corner:

“come back to india and meet me at CCD on 27^th at 7 pm

I want a break up, this time I swear I am very serious.”

She sent me more letters. They were similar except for an occasional change in the line:

“plz plz plz plz plz plz come back! I really want to break up. get my heart also which I gave u, I need it back!”

A girl and a boy were neatly sketched on two farthest corners of the page. The boy’s corner was marked America, the girl’s India. The boy was holding a heart, and looking out of the page. The girl’s hand was on her bosom, where there was a hollow in the shape of a heart. She was looking at the boy and crying.

It was my fault. I was so stupid – I never realized that she loved me. And when I had become a necessity for her, I ran away. I felt guilty. I wanted to call her and apologize, but I kept delaying for the fear of having to confront her voice again.

Soon, her calls and letters decreased, and then seized altogether.

*

I reached Yoga Park at six, and waited for Priya while listening to Show Me The Meaning on my mp3 player. My phone beeped. I checked it: it was a spam mail. I hadn’t informed my peers and relatives in Chicago of my visit to India. My sudden disappearance would baffle them, I had thought. Stella, Ian, Gordon – nobody had called till now, except for Uncle Harish. I felt a lump in my throat. Only one day has passed – they will call, I told myself. I looked at park gate and the parking area. I was missing Priya.

The evening swept away and night dawned. The park was empty, except for a sporadic couple or a kid reluctant to part from the swing. Piyu hadn’t come. This possibility hadn’t remotely crossed my mind. Piyu had never refused me before. She needed me. I had seen secrets and sorrows in Piyu’s eyes yesterday – she wanted to share them with me. She was only a bit angry. Nothing more. I looked at the ring I had bought. It read,

‘Priya,

I Love You’

I felt a tightening around my heart. It was Priya, not Piyu. My phone beeped. It was Uncle Harish’s SMS: ‘why dont you pick up the phone? call me right now!’

Uncle Harish had repeatedly told me to stay away from Ian and his group. “Rajesh, those people don’t like you. You should not hang out with them. Try to understand, you don’t belong there. They don’t consider you a friend. I’ve told you before also – stop lying to yourself, come out of your fool’s paradise.”

A tear fell on the screen. Stella’s words rang in my ears, “You’re such a crybaby. Get a life man, get a life.” I wiped the screen with my thumb.

I recalled Piyu’s face and felt relief. I wanted to tell her everything – about Ian and Stella and others, and the way they treated me; about the loneliness I felt and how I often wanted to kill myself. Piyu would listen and understand. She cared for me. She always did. But then why hadn’t she come.

The park was closing. The guard politely asked me to leave. I flung the ring in the pond. As I walked out of the park, I felt the coldness of the night seeping inside me.

Why didn’t Piyu come. Even if she had learnt to live without me, she should have come. I needed her, and I was sure she understood this. She was the only one who understood me. Then why didn’t she come. I had done a mistake four years back. She should have forgiven me. She understands how I act foolishly at times. She understands me.

The night was getting darker and ominous. It seemed like the world was coming to an end. The vendors and peddlers were hurriedly gathering their wares, planning to follow the others who had already left for the new world.

I leaned by my car and shivered with cold. I needed an embrace.