1
A Brief Reunion
Dayal Punjabi
He was astonished at even being recognized. He was so tongue-tied that he stood there like a fool, his eyes as wide and round as a cherry pie. As a schoolboy, he’d never really mustered up the courage to walk up to David, always scared of either being punched in the face or laughed at. They did have a moment, though, when they had been asked to share a presentation on environmental studies in high school. Although David had contributed nothing, he’d showed up on the final day, looked at the slides and blabbered details on the screen as if he knew everything.
Rustom only wished he had a moment where they could share some work again—at least he would be able to handle the uncomfortable silence between them.
‘Long t-t-time no s-s-see,’ he stammered, wishing he had worn a better shirt or his new shoes or at least a jacket to cover the wet patches under his arms.
‘Doesn’t really seem like it,’ David replied casually with a simple smile. ‘Seems like just yesterday we were presenting the three R’s of EVS!’
He began unbuttoning and folding the sleeves of his shirt, his eyebrows furrowed because of the scorching sun on his face. A bead of sweat made its way down his forehead, barely missing his left eye. He sucked in his lips.
Rustom couldn’t believe how this man, who hadn’t even bothered to touch the pen drive so many years back, remembered a moment so brief. A moment he had hoped had vanished by now. He looked at David and then looked away, remembering that there were a lot of people around who knew both of them; perhaps even the unchanged walls of the school building had their memory imprinted on them. The old principal was giving her speech on the tiny concrete stage, her voice fragile.
‘So,’ David resumed, ‘what are you up to now?’
‘O-oh,’ Rustom stammered again, embarrassed, to say the least. What would David think if he told him he still wrote stories for a living? ‘Um . . . I’m an author, fiction . . . I write fiction,’ he said, managing to find his voice.
‘Wow! Sounds fun. Do tell me the name of your book. I’ll be interested in reading it,’ he said with a sort of pout, obviously uninterested, and then turned to look in front.
There was a round of applause when the speech was over and Rustom joined in. He looked at the carefully combed hair, jet-black and shimmering, and the slim-fit shirt pressing against David’s back. His scent was almost hypnotizing, indicative of a masculinity only David was capable of. A slight breeze ruffled his hair ever so slightly and they seemed to dance. He then suddenly looked back, and Rustom went red, like a rose petal.
‘What about getting out of here? We could have some ice cream. It’s pretty humid up here.’
For a moment Rustom was paralysed, his eyes wide and his lips parted slightly. He couldn’t believe those words had slipped out of David’s mouth. They’d never even greeted each other when they were in school! He wouldn’t know how to talk, to walk or to look better. And even though he’d mentally pictured them walking together, and even though he’d done it plenty of times as a young boy, it seemed so disconnected from his reality now—a lie. He couldn’t react at first—it was as if his lips had lost their ability to move and his mind was clouded. His vocal cords felt as though they had collapsed and there was a lump stuck in his throat. He nevertheless nodded.
Before he knew it, they were outside the school building and walking down the sidewalk of the main road, the sound of the city buzzing in their ears, the sun so bright that one could watch the vapour rising in the thick, polluted air. They were walking so close that their hands brushed against each other. David didn’t seem bothered at all. But Rustom was flushed; he almost took a couple of steps back. After all, he’d only ever touched him with his eyes. David’s skin felt smooth, and Rustom could feel the soft hair on his wrist brush against his skin as their hands touched. From the corner of his eye, he risked a peek at the emotionally distant man walking beside him, and the shadow of a tree fell on them. As they kept walking, the shade stayed with them, and suddenly, almost like an epiphany, Rustom realized he still loved David.
Though it seemed like a lifetime ago that he had yearned for this man, and it had seemed lost when they parted ways, now, with David so close that he could reach out and touch him, Rustom felt like there was no other feeling deeper than this, and that he had never known anything more expansive. Certainly, he thought, no other love had started so far back in time—and now it had only grown and spread throughout his body.
While walking among the sea of people, Rustom bumped into a woman. He quickly mouthed a sorry but the woman didn’t bother; she seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. But when Rustom turned around to look at David, he was nowhere to be seen. He looked around frantically, a pit in his stomach, as if he had suddenly been abandoned. He panicked and felt unsteady for a moment, and took the support of the tree he was standing under.
This can’t be it! I just saw him after years! Is this all it was going to be? I hadn’t even spoken to him properly! His eyes began to well up. But then, suddenly, in the midst of the incessant honking of cars and buses, and the un-rhythmic chorus of people, he heard his name being called out. He recognized that voice, even though he’d just heard it, like a brand-new favourite song. He spun on his heels to find the man of his dreams standing across the street, waving at him.
David called out his name again, and Rustom, in dumbfounded fascination, watched his own name form on the lips of the man he’d always wanted. He heard it so close to his ear his body shivered. Everything around them went silent for that moment, and he heard his name again closely, clearly, echoing throughout his being, under his coffee-colour shirt, under his darker skin, so warm and real that his body suddenly went hot.
He raised his hand and waved back. He crossed the road clumsily, almost getting hit by an autorickshaw. Now he was sweating.
When they leaned against an ice-cream truck, David took his vanilla cone, while Rustom took a tiny cup of double chocolate. Then they went and sat on a bench outside a garden. This was what showed Rustom the absolute difference between the two of them, which summed up his hesitation in going up and talking to David in the first place when they were kids. They were opposites! Vanilla and chocolate. North Pole and South Pole. Longitude and latitude. Dark and bright.
And, like always, even now, in this moment when they were sharing a seat, Rustom’s voice rang out inside him, praying for some ray of hope. But what sat between them like a ghost was uncertainty. In this clear light of day and the stifling heat and the hoarse cry of the city, silence loomed like a fishing eagle. Escaping that still quietness that had settled on the bench with them would take a reckless roar from inside of Rustom, a vehement articulation of everything he was feeling sitting there beside David.
The silence soon broke like shards of glass.
‘What have you been doing all these years, you know, besides writing?’ David asked as he sucked on a corner of his melting ice-cream scoop.
The question caught Rustom off-guard. His discomfort grew, with sweat slipping down his face like raindrops from a roof. It uncovered the hollow question of Rustom’s own doubts. What had he been doing all his life that he could even talk about? Especially compared to David’s achievements that the entire school knew about. Rustom always found himself gathering information on David’s career as an indie publisher, who published books in the local languages and had blogs written about him. How could he not? It was the only way to know him. And while he kept abreast of David’s activities, David clearly had no knowledge of Rustom’s dull and obviously less-documented life.