Day 2: Of love stories — Short and Sweet
As a naive teenage girl, I had this dream of living alone in a far away land. Sometimes such wishes, even if they never made any sense, do come true. That is how I ended up in Shanghai in the year 2017. It was a rare opportunity to make new connections and live a life of my dreams. And I met him there.
I don't remember the first time I met him. When I think about it now, it was not an infatuation. But I rather grew fond of him during the time we spent together. I clearly remember the initial days when we used to walk together to the bus stop, the forced conversations while sharing a cab, getting on each other's nerves doing silly things, my attempt to learn his language, his stupidity in understanding my mother tongue, making him break open a coconut for me when he first visited my apartment, an entire evening of having hookah and long island iced tea in different pubs just when I was about to leave the place - very sweet memories. Somehow I never had the courage to ask him out and soon it was time for me to leave Shanghai. But he had decided to go for a vacation and in an attempt to say goodbye he came over to my apartment with a bunch of onions that were about to rot, a bit of green peas and last not the least - s bottle of beer. Ideal way to say goodbye, no? What strange human beings are we?
By that time I knew we were never going to meet again. So I planned to file this under my sweet and failed romantic attempts and leave it there. But sometimes life takes some unexpected turns and even though it never changes the course of our lives, we are grateful for such surprises. It is like adding some really spicy tadka to our plain daal. So yeah, there is a twist to our story as well.
I had decided to take a 12 hour lay over in Singapore Airport just to delay the process of landing in my homeland and facing life as it is. I landed in Changi Airport around 6 in the morning. I was tired and really didn't know what I was going to do in the next 12 hours.I cannot take a tour of Singapore with the Indian passport. So the time had to be spent moving around in the different terminals and window shopping. I went to the washroom to freshen up and when I came out of it, my crush was in front of me. Both of us were stunned. I thought that I am having some hallucinatory experience. But it was really him.
After the usual leg pulling, we decided to grab breakfast. We went to the food court and ordered dosa. He was coming back from India and I don't know why he felt the need to order dosa. There was this beautiful girl in the food court and I had to exchange my seat with him so that he can ogle at her without any disturbance. Oh the things we do for love! But it was fun. We walked around, talked a lot and he even told me that he decided to read a book because I always used to tease him about his ignorance. Little did he know, I was tired of the guys who read a lot and belittled other humans. It was his kindness that I find attractive. Such men are so rare. He paid for my food and made me take the remaining singapore dollars he had. I owed him big and wish there was a way to buy him a drink whenever we meet in this lifetime. His flight was around noon and we parted again. By that time the heaviness of going back to India has struck me. May be God wanted me to have a little play time before I reached India. That's why our paths were crossed again.
It has been three years since. He moved back to India last year. Hopefully, one day when this pandemic is over, we will be able to meet again. We all need some motivation to live, no?
