The eye liner rolled down under the bed…shit! Another 2 minutes gone. The cab’s waiting for the past 15 minutes now and the episode of rolling eye liners, smudged kajal, last hugs, tears and farewells doesn’t seem to end at all. We were waiting for the tears from last night, it never came! It seemed the usual “bye, see you” and then back again after two weeks. It’s only after Raju bhaiya had taken down all the suitcases down near the cab, the big black suitcase below the TV stand gone…the array of her shoes packed and her big fat blanket packed and stuffed back in its place, that we realized it’s over. Over and done with…one and a half years of staying together, laughing at the same PJs, sleeping at the same hour after turning off the same lights…watching the same TV soaps, ordering the same food and cleaning the same room. We shared a part of us with each other. My first roommate ever, Shreya’s leaving today...with some more dreams, a chalked out career plan and some fond memories.
We crawled under the bed and fished out the eye liner, wiped off the smudged part and did our eyes yet once again. Promised, no more tears! Hugs, “miss u”s and goodbye kisses…will we ever meet again? Locked our room and went down. A photo clicked, some more tears held back and a final hug…the cab was soon turning down the end of the road. And, I headed for my daily destination, my office. A heavy heart behind a pair of dry eyes...it’s not easy, I said!
The day passed away, just another day. A couple of extra calls…”Did u reach the station?”, “Take care of your stuff” and “Did you board the train?”
I returned home early, 7 in the evening. It was strange to unlock and enter. I suddenly realized that Shreya had always returned home before me, all through these one and a half years, saving me the trouble of hunting for my keys, unlocking the door, entering a dark room and switching on the lights and AC. I entered, switched on the lights, fan, AC, kept the lock in place, threw my bag on the bed…and I looked around…
Lesser jeans on the hook behind the door, two handbags gone…empty bathroom shelves…the red lifebuoy hand-wash gone, and the blue dove shampoo and the clothes brush and her body-wash which always used to fall off (so messy she was!)…Gosh! I couldn’t take this anymore…I sat on her bed and cried…for all that we were to each other…
Arya came late…was she dreading to come back? Dreading the emptiness that Shreya had left behind? We had been a family after all…We had been each others’ for so long now. When feeling low after a bad day at office, when we missed home, missed our siblings, missed our parents, missed our old friends, when we went all emotional about our ex-s…when we wanted to talk about our latest infatuation in office, our latest crush at the shopping mall…we were each others’!
A lovely picture of the three of us, Shreya, Arya and me, we roommates for the last one and a half years adorned my laptop wallpaper now. Arya and me stared at it, teary eyed…
…and, life it is…
