As we stood on the beach under the starlit sky, we could see lights twinkling from the boats far out on the sea. Waves washed our feet. As the water receded, the sand slipped from beneath our feet. She held onto my finger and muttered “Look down!! It feels like we’re moving back” and giggled. She was a little tipsy from the drinking. Perfect place (Goa), perfect time, perhaps the perfect moment for the perfect girl.
I had known her for 6 years and had developed feelings for her somewhere along the way. Ofcourse it took me quite a while to admit to myself that I actually liked her so much. She had started dating my friend back then. And when I did get to know her well, I used to always sigh to myself “Oh mann!! I wish I had a girl in my life who was half as beautiful a person as she is, even if not half as physically attractive”. But then a couple of months back I got to know that my friend had done some hanky panky and they had broken off their relationship, and all those feelings rushed back and I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. I started getting restless and a voice inside me said “Dude THE GIRL is now single..don’t know for how long.. you surely don’t want to regret later on that you never spoke your heart out to her while she was single and around”. On second thoughts, I shared a great friendship with her. Ofcourse I was going to get a “NO” from her and end up ruining our friendship too.. This debate went on inside me for quite a while and after weeks of contemplation I decided to settle for the latter. I knew I didn’t stand a chance and I didn’t want her to start acting all weird and start avoiding me like plague which ,I was sure, she would do if she came to know that I had feelings for her. And that was the last thing I wanted as even those little interactions that we had as friends meant a lot to me. She meant a lot to me and I couldn’t afford to lose her by acting in a stupid manner.
All was fine until I got a call from my pal Raj, “Pack your bags bro. lets leave for Goa. Me , you, Nisha. We’ll put up at Pia’s place and have super fun..you’re gonna have a rocking 23rd birthday bro!!”
Ladoo footne lage..and ultimately I decided to go. I had decided that I wouldn’t talk to her about this, but if I get carried away in the heat of the moment, I would surely tell her.
As the sun rose at the Madgaon airport, I saw her waving out to us. It felt so good to see her after so long. We reached her place in an hour. Sleepy from having stayed up all night, Raj and Nisha hit the bed. I chose to stay up so I could get to spend some alone time with her. As we spoke, I realized how much this trip meant to me. “To say or not to say” took a back seat. I just wanted these 4 days to be perfect. Spend quality time with her. Gift myself memories worth remembering for a lifetime. “So Boli anything new, any love interest, any crush?” I froze like I had earlier, each time she had asked me that question. “Everytime I ask you this..tu ekdum chup kyu ho jaata hai boli?”
10 hours later that night, here I was, just a moment away from saying it, the words almost ready to come out of my mouth, when I thought to myself “You know what bro!! As perfect as this moment is, I think you should let it slip by. You pretty much know what you’re going to get for an answer, so you might as well enjoy yourself for the next 2 days and then say it, instead of making it too weird for her. I spent the next two days, entertaining her like I always had. I used to put my skills to good use everytime she was around. Doing stupid things, making a fool out of myself most of the times, just so I could see a smile on her face. I think the last time we had met in Mumbai, she had said “ aye boli..bore ho raha hai kuch karna “ and I had ended up dancing to sheela ki jawani.
We spent the next two days relaxing and checking out a couple of beaches in Goa.
My birthday was ushered in at midnight. To be honest, it was one of the best celebrations ever. They asked me to go to the balcony and then called me in when they were done. Out there on the table was a nice chocolate cake with gems sprinkled all over it, with candles. Raj smeared a piece all over my face and I got a warm bearhug from my best friend. It was genuinely one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for me. The next two days will be rocking too I said to myself. Little did I know, what a nightmare my 23rd birthday would turn into.
As we sat down to drink, her phone rang. I picked it up to give it to her and saw “Tony calling” flash on the screen. The phone had been ringing all evening and from the way she acted while talking on the phone I could make out something was up. But then she would have told me by now and she had never mentioned anything to me on the phone either. Late into the night, the party people dozed off and a little snooping around here and there by the birthday boy led to some revelations. Tony Briganza it was. HR exec in the same company she was working for. “Maybe they are just close friends. “, I said to myself as I chanced upon a pic of both of them.
The next morning Pia announced that we would go check out some nice places in Goa and Tony, her friend, would give us company through the day. As we reached a circle, a huge guy wearing a helmet rode upto us on a bike. Pia got out of the car and onto the bike. The guy said something to the driver in Konkani and they sped off. I realized then what a joke fate had played on me and watching her riding pillion with him holding on to him, I also realized that this was just the beginning of the joke which was going to be played out on me for the whole day. We went to a restaurant. She sat beside him. All through the meal, he kept whispering sweet nothings into her ear and she kept giggling like a teenage girl. All I could do was avoid seeing her. When you get into an extremely awkward situation you always have that one option of running away, but here I was left with no option but to put up with all the shit that was being thrown at me. And I knew it was only going to get worse. I got a call from Sneha and stepped out to answer it. I haven’t spoken to Sneha on the phone for more than half a minute in my entire life, but right now I didn’t want her to stop talking. I tried to stretch the call for as long as I could, and waited for 5 more minutes after she hung up. Then, left with no other option, I trudged back to the table.
This situation was getting so embarrassing for me. It’s unbelievable how I managed to sit quietly through all of this. We then went to the gymkhana and hung around for a while. I was completely amazed to see her this way. She looked completely smitten, had eyes only for him and acted like a lovestruck teenager.
He then took us to a beach which looked really beautiful. The sunset at the beach was a sight to behold. But I wasn’t in the mood to enjoy the breathtaking Goa view. I was burning inside by the time we reached the small pond at the other end. What followed was another hour of utter humiliation as I had to lay down there and watch the girl of my dreams play in the water with a huge dark balding shirtless guy.
He finally sealed it off with a kiss, I don’t know where. I didn’t look because by then I was looking up at the sky in despair. He bid goodbye to his lady love and as we sat in the car and headed to Britto’s she did sense something was amiss. She kept wondering what was possibly wrong and if I was angry with her for any reason. One of my weaknesses is that I can’t hide my disappointment; can’t put on a face. If I am annoyed about something I’ll make it known by acting in a very stupid manner. She did ask me if I was angry with her. I kept wondering whose fault it was really. Was it Tony’s fault for sweeping my girl off her feet in virtually no time? Was it her fault for not knowing about my feelings for her all this while, or not letting me know about this earlier? Or was it my fault for having feelings for her?
Next morning I tried talking to her about it while dropping her off to work. Couldn’t.
In the evening we put all our stuff into the tuk tuk and were on our way to the station when I popped up the question. “So Pia you seeing someone?” She got really excited and replied that she had an interesting story to share with us.
As the four of us made ourselves comfortable on the sideberth of the shatabdi, she started telling us about her little love story. I looked on blank. It was dark inside and nobody could see the expression on my face thankfully. The other 2 spoke about their love issues. And I was asked if I had anything to share and I replied in the negative.
Everyone went off to sleep. Raj and I were sharing a berth. I was distraught, wondering whether I really deserved this, when a thought occurred to me. This was the moment when I had to let her know. Ofcourse nothing was going to come out of it, but I had to let her know. This was one girl I genuinely liked and I wasn’t going to not let her know, just because she was seeing someone, and suffer for the rest of my life thinking “what if?”. She herself had told me over the phone once “you should let the other person know atleast” If I were to let go of this moment, I knew that years later I would regret that while THE girl was around and I didn’t bother to even let her know how I felt about her. Ofcourse the time, the place, the situation couldn’t have been more wrong. But this, I felt, was the best thing to do at the moment. After going through the agony of having to see her in the arms of another man, the prospect of ruining a nice friendship didn’t in the least matter to me. And so after hesitating thrice atleast and going back and forth literally, I finally woke her up. “can I talk to you for sometime?” She rubbed her eyes as she sat up. “Ya sure”
“Hey listen I’m really sorry for the way I behaved yesterday” and just when she started to speak up I went on “ its just that I have liked you since college ..”
She was a little stunned “oh ..oh ..i thought as much”was all she could manage. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness, just her silhouette. She was looking down. What followed was a brief spell of awkward silence. “For so long ..why didn’t you tell me earlier?” .. “.. “ I tried, at the beach that night..couldn’t and then I found out about this guy ..listen I don’t want any awkwardness between us due to all this ...” . and I couldn’t say anything more. I had rehearsed this moment a number of times while going off to sleep, but now the words didn’t come out, because in the rehearsals she was single . I had wanted to tell her how much she had meant to me all these years. How genuinely nice I found her to be, and how much I adored her. But I just sat there. Not a word was spoken for about 5 minutes. I then stood up to go and told her she needed to sleep now. She held my hand and told me to sit.
“Boli you are a great guy” She wanted me to go on and speak my heart perhaps, but I just sat there. I stood up again and went back to my place. I stayed up the whole night looking out of the window, thinking about all the wonderful moments that I had shared with her. The dance with her during the college fest, the first time I had seen her walk into the class, and then in the end this trip.
Almost a year has passed by, they are going strong. And I try behaving as normally as possible when we do happen to meet. But I still can’t… maybe I will, once I get over her. But I guess that is not going to happen for a long time.
