The Girl With The Glasses

(Statutory Warning: If this is you, enjoy the ball Cinderella!)

 She was a silent one. I didn’t see her even after being a full time scholar for two weeks. Why I noticed her that day was because of the way she reacted to a senior who attempted to mock her.

“You don’t understand,” a senior was talking to another senior. The day was hot and it must’ve done nothing less to people’s tempers. “Sometimes, talking about dieting and exercising and taking a break from all of this actually reduces the tension around here.” The senior had gestured to all of the room with that last word.

“Why are things so difficult for you? Don’t think so much. I mean look at some people here – like Devi. She doesn’t have to bother about her figure. She just doesn’t even eat, so less weight and less tension!” the senior had smirked in her direction.

Out of the corner of the room came a meek, yet adamant voice. “Didi, (transl.: elder sister in Hindi) if you want to say something to me or about me, I think it is manners if you speak in a language everyone understands.” The senior had spoken in Malayalam, and Devi, as I would discover later, spoke Hindi and English.

I glanced up at the voice and saw a girl with wide rimmed glasses in a slender form, bent over her work, smiling, celebrating her momentary verbal victory. I raised my eyebrow at a colleague sitting nearby and she explained that Devi was another scholar who had been in the college for the past six months, who also happened to be staying in my hostel. My gaze shifted back to the girl with the funny glasses. She must have felt something as I looked at her, because she looked up. Caught off guard, I only managed to blink twice and smile which she returned rather cautiously.

I decided to speak to her the same day before the evening prayer; and it seemed like she was the kind of person looking to fill the gap of a good friend whose convocation had led to my admission.

Time passed quickly. It felt like we were supposed to be friends from way before. Devi and I had become inseparable room-mates during the course of just nine months. Alas, little did I know that all of this was only in my head. It was during a busy week that I finally noticed that she was being distant to me, and it usually pissed me off when my friends wouldn’t talk to me about what mattered to them. This seemed no different!

“Hey. Are you okay?” I asked her one evening, unable to contain myself.

“Haan,” she looked up from her laptop. “Kyu (transl.: Yes, why)?” she asked.

“Nothing. Kuch hai to bolna teekh hai (transl.: If there is, just say so okay)?” I said back to her. She said nothing. I kept waiting for her to smirk or look up again or text. But nothing happened.

It was a week later. She hadn’t spoken and I had given up the need to make her do so. I had learnt long ago that it wasn’t going to be worth it if you forced someone to be with you.

“I’ll come in ten. You guys can go.” I told Didi, another room-mate when I sensed she may wait for me to go for dinner. Devi had already started walking. I was finishing typing up something important for the next day. Five minutes later, I shut my laptop and stretched. As I was straightening the clothes on the rope tied over Devi’s bed, her phone lit up and I saw a fellow colleague’s name. ‘Neena ne kya bola (transl.: what did Neena say)?’ it read. I frowned. My curiosity got the better of me. I remembered the password Devi had made me practice so many times and drew the pattern of her lock screen, waiting for the phone to take me to the WhatsApp message.

‘Mene aaj boldiya Neena ko (transl.: I told Neena today)’ the marked message read. It was from Devi. ‘Usne charger maanga. Mene bola ki nhi’ I kept reading, ‘ki merko problem hojaayegi. Aur MI ka bhi toh charger h na yr (transl.: She had asked me for my charger and I refused saying that the charger was of MI and it could create a problem for me.)’

‘Neena ne kya bola?’ The reply had come back less than ten minutes after.

‘It isn’t a big deal. It was just a situation that a friend was describing to another friend,’ my heart said.

‘Well, when you asked for the charger, she didn’t explain so much, did she?!’ my head countered. 

Would you both cut it out? It's just a charger! She said no. That's all. I glared at myself in a mental mirror. My head replayed the times Devi had taunted me about Didi on similar WhatsApp conversations and I sighed again as my heart grew silent with each memory. I hit the lock button and sighed. I should’ve seen this coming. If she talked to me about other people, then why did I not expect her to talk to others about me? If there were a list of things I could not stand, talking behind someone was definitely among the top ten, no matter how 'simple' the issue was. I gently placed the phone back on her bed. ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ I thought as I mentally closed the door of friendship that had both of their names on it.

Months passed. It was going to be her convocation soon. The day she left, Devi didn’t even say a full sentence to my face. I sensed her distress and decided against my inner voice’s desire for a confrontation. She still texts me occasionally and I do reply – sometimes in a few words, sometimes even less. The thing is – how can you pretend to engage someone if they have already been ousted from your mind? Would you behave as if nothing happened, or would you be interested in finding out what led to the distance in the first place? Eventually, if they’re intuitive enough, they may get that. Our story wasn’t going to be any different.

People ask me why I am cold and rude to others sometimes. (Heck, you'd probably be calling me 'immature', 'ridiculous' etc. by now, right?). People say I should change, that there’s good in me, so much good that the darkness in other people will fade away when I stay happy around them. I genuinely try, but not if that book has these chapters.

And I am proven to be right, yet again.