Once upon a love story

I knew them both since I was a kid. That was then long ago.
Chetan and Chechi. Which later became Chechi and Chetan as priorities changed.

I knew them from a time I was convinced no boy and girl could be friends and just at that, to a time when I went about fighting for the cause of just-friends.

They were friends. Too.

But there was more. I noticed it immediately and remarked ever so casually to my mother. But Amma is very naïve when it comes to such things- for which I have shamelessly exploited her many a times. Still do.

She shussed me. So I learnt to keep quiet about it.

And then when I was older and I caught up with them, she told me about it. He was long gone. From Pondicherry. But he remained, a distant memory in my mind and a love worth waiting for, in hers.

She would often talk about remember-whens and do-you-knows. I would always listen.

Then those anecdotes stopped. He’d moved on and away, I guessed.

To outdo him, she plunged into a fit of trying to love and be loved. Each time I saw her, she would tell me of a new love of hers. And I wouldn’t ask her about him. Chetan. She was lovable. If only she didn’t try so hard.

Her heart was broken many a times, but she wondered about the ease with which she rebounded. But I knew, it was because it had never healed.

Many years and many loves later, he returned. To a country he had left. Or tried to.

That phone call was one she had waited for, without even realizing it. Feigning a nonchalance that didn’t suit her, she laughed, she pretended, she agreed to meet him.

And this is what she didn’t tell me. On how she would have tried to dress up for him. On how she would have cleaned her tiny room. On how she would have trimmed her hair, shaved her leg and dabbed herself in perfume. How she would have tried to leave a book casually on the table pretending to have been reading it instead of waiting by the window or even sitting simply in anticipation. How she would have stocked her fridge with something she thought he would have liked but would never even eat. On how she would have spent every minute the two hours agreed upon, in innumerable ways and not liked any of them…

And this is what she told me. While we sat at one of the benches at the beach looking at ships that weren’t there. He didn’t come.