A story that illustrates the fine line between endings and beginnings.
I suppose a beginning always arrives after an end. And the end, I remember rather clearly.
Standing here, adjusting my tie, amidst the cacophony of trains and humans, I accidentally meet her gaze, a few feet away from me. The first, in many years. As she looks away, her lashes batting off recognition, I remember clearer than I have in these many years.
The end was more a process, than an event.
I met her in the summer of my last term at college. The days were long and hot and made life, on the whole, sticky and uncomfortable. Many afternoons passed while I sat reading under trees, the cricket team being the soundtrack to my existence. One particular afternoon, the blazing summer sun was overshadowed by dark clouds and soon came the first of the summer rains. I took to the library and it was there, that I met her. Steadily, the simple syllables of our first meeting advanced to long drawn conversations that we promptly ended at six in the evening, when the library closed.
I can't tell if it was a loyalty to our afternoons or guilt at not knowing how to say that I understood her words more than I did her, but I agreed to meet in the town, whenever I could. I didn't realize then, that this was the beginning of the end. In the town, where there was more freedom, she regularly pulled cigarettes out of her mouth while I spoke. Sometimes, I tried to do the same, but she reciprocated with laughter at my attempts to do it right.
When college was officially done with, we met for the last time, at a bus stop. We talked about how our meetings could no longer be held, because she was moving back home. As she boarded the bus, the weight of all our time together felt heavy and instinctively, I used one of her cigarettes, correctly this time, to lighten the burden.
And then, just like that, that life was over.
The end of that summer brought the beginning of another season. Perhaps it is only fitting to tell you about another beginning at the end of this narration. The end of our parley was my beginning of a habit, a pattern and as some call it, a weakness.
I now smoke three packs a day.
