We met after twenty-four years. In a restaurant. A well-lighted one where they are discrete and interactive without making you feel you’re being stalked. She looked around and saw the paintings on the walls.

‘Nice paintings,’ she murmured.

‘Yes ma’am,’ said the waiter emerging out of nowhere, ‘the entire décor is inspired by the Southern states. The paintings depict scenes from Ram’s attempt to cross over to Lanka. The carpet here has a design that the Vijainagar palace has. The pillars and the geometry of the interiors is the same that you find in our temple in Rameshwaram.’

‘Lovely,’ she murmured and then asked Babu, her friend and heart-throb from her past, ‘Hope you remember this place?’

Babu looked around, smiled, and said, ‘My memory is too full of restaurants from all over the world and this one probably needs some prompting and clues.’

This was the moment when anyone looking into her eyes would have known how intensely she remembered every moment that was connected to her. She even remembered her telling Babu not to let his stubble grow as she found that look too unruly and… well, smelly.

She said, ‘We’re sitting on the table where we sat together for the last time before you went to the US. I came here so that we could start from where we left off then.’

Babu smiled and replied, ‘Same table? You remember all the details? What else do you remember?’

‘Your stubble,’ she said, ‘and I hated that smelly stubble of yours then.’

Babu leaned forward and asked, ‘And now?’

She said nothing. They finished their meal in silence and parted. She scribbled a quick note that she handed over to Babu before leaving. Babu read it later: ‘I hate that smelly stubble of yours. Even now.’

After 24 years

After 24 years

 

This post is a part of the Protest Against Smelly Stubble Activity in association with BlogAdda.
Accepting tags from these friends: Ekta Khetan Sarav

My series of 10 posts on smelly stubbles:

ONE
Poets write, stubbles don’t

Poets write, stubbles don’t

TWO
Autobiography of that unclean stubble

Autobiography of that unclean stubble

THREE
There’s more to stubble than you really know

There’s more to stubble than you really know

FOUR
The stubble debate

The stubble debate

FIVE
The tricky twins!

The tricky twins!

SIX
Men in pursuit

Men in pursuit

SEVEN
Part and parcel

Part and parcel

EIGHT
Twenty-four years later

Twenty-four years later

NINE
We-can-we-will
https://passey.info/2013/12/we-can-we-will/ 

TEN
This happened at three in the morning

This happened at three in the morning

 

 

 

 

 

Arvind Passey
07 December 2013