(More Than) Empty Conversations

Note: Another long one. Be warned.

I’d had one of those days, when everything was well on its way downhill, and going further down. It was late at night, way past the time I’d be allowed to walk into my hostel. ‘Guess I’ll just have to jump the wall again’ I’d thought, as I made my way down to the sea facing promenade. It was, as it always is, almost full of couples. I found a spot that was well lit and therefore relatively couple-free. I’d settled on the concrete and was blankly staring at the water, almost black in the dark, crashing onto the rocks. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, and was sort of glad as it was finally letting me blank out a bit.

‘Those rocks’, (I’d jumped a foot into the air), ‘are sharp. They’ll bruise pretty badly. And the water. If the tide catches up, it could get real tricky.’ I’d been trying to get my breath back as he finished with ‘Could hurt someone real bad, but probably won’t kill’. With my senses (and my ass back on the concrete) back, I’d realized I knew the guy. Correction, I knew of him. He’d been one of those guys, that everyone knew, popular, and not necessarily in a good way. I had an easy way of categorizing people like him – Jerk. Great! And he has to be suicidal. Excuse me if I’m not out saving the world and its mortals tonight. ‘Not worth it, if you wanna kill yourself’, he smirked. I decided he wasn’t worth a response, gave him my best What-is-your-f-ing-problem? look and went back to staring at the dark rocks and water.

‘I almost didn’t recognize you.’ Yeah well, remind me to thank all the Gods there might be. As if he’d heard me, and yet, as though he was talking to himself he continued, ‘Your camera. You always seem to be behind it, you seem incomplete without it.’ Before I could think it through, I pointed at my back-pack and said ‘It’s in here. Not feeling much like taking pictures tonight.’ Now I wondered why I was justifying myself to him. And what the hell does he mean, incomplete without it? I’m without it lots of times… sometimes…occasionally. And how did he notice anyway? He’d have to be around to notice, and he pretty sure wasn’t., was he?

I’d never spoken to him, never so much as acknowledged or been acknowledged by him, and I sure didn’t want to start now, when I was at my anti-social best. ‘So, what is a girl like you doing here at a time like this?’ he asked. Two questions immediately arose in my mind. He wanted to be all chatty now? And Girl like me? Again, thoughtlessly, and a bit irritated, I answered ‘My boyfriend ran away with my best friend, so...’ As can be expected, I was greeted with silence. It was my turn to smirk when I looked around and saw his look that screamed too-much-information. Surprising even myself, I let out a laugh, and then laughed some more when he gave me another look that clearly said he thought I’d lost it. Between laughs, I confessed ‘It’s just a phrase my friend uses.’ His look didn’t change, and I explained further, ‘You know when you have a problem that seems to be bigger than the world to you, but insignificant to most people? This phrase is the mother of all such problems’. He nodded, but he still looked a bit unsure of my sanity.

We’d sat for a few more minutes in silence and strangely, I wasn’t minding the company. Even stranger, once I’d started, I wanted to talk more. So I continued. ‘It’s been a really bad day. Just had to get away from it all, you know.’ I didn’t know what I’d expected, but certainly not his ‘Yes, I do.’ I’d waited for him to continue, say something more, but right from the start he’d be the one who controlled our ‘conversation’, and he said nothing more. As time passed us by, and waves crashed at out feet dangling over the edge, we rifted in and out of conversations. Him doing most of the talking, me getting in a few questions, but not all the answers. Turned out, we’d both frequented this place often, but never bumped into each other. I’d thought that in my year and a half in this city, I’d been the most regular visitor at this spot, even counting the couples, but he’d beaten me at that.

Randomly he’d ask me a question like ‘So then what is your boyfriend-ran-away-with-your-best-friend-problem?’ that would follow a completely harmless question like, ‘what other places in the city do you haunt?’ Maybe it was that I’d had a crappy day, or just that I was expecting some deep introspection tonight, but I felt myself open up, like I hadn’t in ages. Maybe I’d sub-consciously known what was in store for the future of this conversation. More times than one, I was more than halfway through saying something, before I myself comprehended the magnitude of what I was telling him. Like ‘when I left home, I was so sure of myself, I knew what I wanted, and I knew I could never get that back home.’ He didn’t prompt, he didn’t assume, he didn’t judge. Maybe that was what made me continue, ‘I left everything behind there, everything. And now, I don’t even know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it or even whom I’m doing it for.’ ‘Sometimes you’re not supposed to. Until the end. But no matter what you do, there is almost always the time and concession to go back a few steps and correct your mistakes.’ While I stared in shock at the profundity in his words, it was his turn to laugh out aloud, as he said ‘that’s a phrase I read somewhere. Personally I think you’re screwed. Maybe you ought to jump.’ I’d almost pushed him into the water then.

Couples around us left, a few more came, but even they left before we’d moved. Mostly it had been just long periods of silence. Twice, I distinctly remembered, he’d handed me those small glasses of coffee. I’d never even noticed when he’d gone and come back. He’d probably got it from one of those vendors, which set up stalls for creatures of the night like us. To my question, ‘Why do you pretend to be such a jerk?’, he’d answered, ‘the same reason you pretend not to care.’ No direct answers. While I’d learnt a lot more about him; that he hated movies, just had to always listen to music (I could see his earplugs dangling beneath his collar, and some music blasting from it), and surprise, surprise, that he was actually well read, I still didn’t know anything about him. But even as I asked the questions, I didn’t push him for the answers.

We’d danced around the questions the other asked, at some point we’d gotten up and walked a bit along the promenade, thrown pebbles into the sea trying to see who could throw it the farthest (even though we couldn’t actually see the stones), none of the things I’d ever imagined I’d be doing that night, much less with him. Honestly, before I’d realized it, we noticed it getting lighter around us, the sun was rising. I’d taken out my camera, for a few morning shots, shots that I never would have gotten considering the unearthly hour for me. He’d got us more coffee, and as we sat drinking it, I managed to get a few candid shots of his, as he answered, or avoided answering a question of mine. ‘What is a guy like you doing here at a time like this?’ I asked. ‘Remember your phrase?’ he asked me. ‘Yes’. ‘I was the boyfriend’. Even though it didn’t answer my question, I thought that was all I was going to get, and went back to my coffee. Surprising me for the umpteenth time, he said, softly, ‘I cheated on my girlfriend, with her best friend’. Needless to say, I didn’t have a response, preferring to slurp at that last bit of bitter black liquid at the bottom of the glass. ‘So you see, I am a jerk.’ We sat in silence for a few minutes, till I heard and was nearly blinded by the flash of my own camera. ‘The hunter becomes the hunted’, he grinned. And a smile crept onto my face, as I looked at the picture. I hated pictures of myself, but this was a good one. Nothing pretty about it, just candid. Me staring out at the ocean, with some of it in the frame, and the soft light of sunrise.

‘Anyway, time for me to go’. Just like that. Abrupt. Just like everything the night had been. Weirdly, I didn’t find it awkward, or rude. ‘Yeah, me too. My roomie’s gonna …’ I stopped at his too-much-information look and smiled, as he stood up and turned to walk away. No goodbye. ‘Hey’, I called out, ‘what were you really doing here tonight?’ I don’t know why I’d asked him that. It wasn’t that he’d have given me an answer then. But then he stopped mid stride, turned around and said ‘Considering jumping down onto those rocks.’ He smiled at the look on my face and waved.

I saw him next a couple of days later in college. We passed each other along a corridor, him with those jerk friends of his, me rushing out. We looked at each other, but there wasn’t recognition on either of our faces, no acknowledgement of that night.

When I’d been uploading my most recent batch of pictures that night, I suddenly realized, I had none of those shots of his I’d taken. Mine, of course was still there. The only evidence.

That was the last I saw him.

That was two years ago.

A couple of nights ago, I happened to go back to that place, not unlike the several other times I had done since then. But that night, I saw him there. He was sitting there at the same spot, where we’d had our last coffee. This time, when we looked at each other, we acknowledged it.

As happens sometimes a moment settled... and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped… for much, much more than a moment. And then the moment was gone.

Note: Credit to my friend (who doesn't want it), for the phrase 'My Boyfriend Ran Away with my Best Friend' as a categorization for earth-shattering problems :-p


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Song Recommendation: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd