Last Nights

We were at D’s place in Cal. The night before she left for Bombay. It was coming to an end. The lights were turned out. The music played slowly on the Sony sound system. We hadn’t started smoking yet. We started only a year later. We were high on alcohol. The door which led to the open terrace besides D’s room was open. The fragrance of jasmine flowers, planted in pots, strong and intoxicating, wafted in the humid summer breeze. The three of us, D, P and I lay under the whirring ceiling fan. Silent. Listening to the Anjan’s ‘Bondhu’. Finally P spoke.

So, this is it. This is how it ends. Our last night together. 15 years, and this is what remains.

It was difficult. Difficult, to accept that it would not be the same again. The times that we had left behind. The times spent in dingy classrooms of our school. Times, when we bunked tuitions and ate at cheap restaurants... when we roamed the streets of South Calcutta, singing newly learnt tunes from Bengali Rock Bands... the movies at the Lighthouse theatre... eating beef rolls at Nizam’s... Drinking old monk at Olypub... Our culinary misadventures at P’s place... the delightful fried rice and chicken at D’s place... The nights spend in ‘beckoning the spirits’... The musical endeavours on the brightly lit second floor of Barista at Park Street. This was life, as we knew it. This was our world. And now, D was leaving for Bombay... and the night was all we had.

Jump cut to three years later. And things hadn’t changed much. Sure, we had started smoking. Cigarette and other stuff. We were drinking Teacher’s instead of old Monk. The music, playing on the iPod was different. And yes, the city too. We were in the sleepless city. On the second floor of a bungalow called ‘West Virginia’, belonging to an irksome Christian family. But, well apart from that nothing much had changed. The three of us were still together. And it was the last night, one more time. D was leaving the sleepless city, and going back to Calcutta. The room was dark, barring the mellow yellow light streaming out of the rectangular Fab-India lamp. P sat slouching back on the cushion, fiddling with the guitar.

The last two years went exactly as we had planned... well almost. Our suburban existence, our own place, 1503, 800 square feet with a view of the Arabian Sea. It came with its ups and downs. Well ups mostly... with the stray, Bombay rains... train blasts... D getting lost... S meeting with an accident... friends walking out... financial crisis... you know the regular day to day stuff. We were out of our comfortable cocoons. We had grown up. But we didn’t outgrow each other. And so we smiled, sat back and talked about the good old times, raised a toast. But this time it was different. Because we had that this was not the end. There were more last nights to come.

Afterthought: I don’t know, how would life be without D and P. I guess I don’t want to know either. I just know that they will be there no matter what, thick and thin. And knowing this makes life a lot easier... makes me a happy person.