You could almost hear it in her voice, whatever the words might’ve been. Something about it, the skimpiest bit slightly softer, infinitesimally less imperative, ever so wanly warmer. For all it mattered, it might’ve been a figment of my long addled mind, but I almost seemed like even she felt the presence of impending endings, and for once ‘twas something she couldn’t just take in that breath-taking stride. Never the one to suffer sentimental fools, here she was sending out whispered messages in a voice no longer dark as smoke, but thick as mead. Maudlin she was well incapable of, so even this tiny tingling tinge of emotion betrayed, was more than anything you’d ever know. If naïve ‘nuff you were to look, Aye. You could it hear it in her voice. This was a siren’s last call.
Beyond her misty grey eyes, made of the clouds themselves, or those torrential tresses and blazing smiles, there was something deeper, more hard to place that’d long swept you off your first year feet, and long had you in her snare. Love, hate, fear & loathing. You’d been there, done that, but always kept coming back for more. Beyond, that endless infatuation, and the pointless longings, and the metronomic interminable separations, she’d come to grow on you.
I wish leave neither as jilted lover, nor the sappy fool. Not the insecure exes for us, neither the “good friends”. I’d wish to part not at all, indeed, but that we must. So I pray we may be spared the long distance dystopia. Because what are we, if not floating embers, kindled? Because spontaneous reactions occur not afar.
And even though you’d like to point out how embers would hardly embrace for goodbyes (notwithstanding how such embraces would indeed cause farewell) , that’s exactly the kind of horrible, terrible, utterly delicious, mad idea that you go for. A hair of the dog that bit oughta be the cure, nay? And for a week, you try, harder each day, to live by that credo and perhaps plaster away at the gnawing feeling that may or may not be your stomach.
And somewhere in the middle of all that you finally knew. In some godforsaken moment, it hits you like a bottle to the back of the head. That despite all your foibles, and incessant whining, despite all the empty threats of leaving her, what you had, was real. As real as the welt that bottle would leave. Simply because who else would bother showering in the middle of the night, just because you liked the way she smelt after.
And thus, we decide to part ways. Not as lovers, nor as friends.
We part not because the society can no longer see us together. We part so we can move on. And come back, to revel. Always.
In the end, it was everything, and nothing like you thought it’d be.
And thus you decide to leave. Not as exes, neither fools.
To the only kind of girl who could make you dance at blues. The kind who’d kick you in public, and call you to the lake. The kind who would down another’s drink and get them to get two more. The kind to push you off onto others, and reel you in harder by your tie. The kind of girl who wanted to take you downtown, and when you wanted was a jackshack. The kind who’d make you walk till end point, when all you wanted was a rack & whack. The kind you’d never really get over, come Scarlett O’hara, or Johansson.
To my kind of girl.
To a girl called Manipal.
About the author: Purvabh Surana is an alumnus of Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal. He graduated in 2013 and this is his ode to the Manipal experience.
That was b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l!