The Road To Ithaca – 11

I came home with mixed feelings. On one hand, I was upset about losing her. As far as I knew, this was probably my last conversation with her. Once she left for college, which was a little more than a month away, she might as well be on Mars. In case you’re puzzled by that statement, do consider that communication at that time, at least where I come from, wasn’t what it is nowadays. Cellphones were just getting through to suburbs, and they were prohibitively expensive. For a middle-class family like the one I come from, buying your kid a cellphone was considered a wasteful luxury and a surefire way of spoiling him/her. And of course, I couldn’t send her letters. That would’ve been way too mushy and awkward.

On the other hand, a part of me was…content. I had seen her, I had talked to her, I had more or less said goodbye. Maybe, I told myself, this is the perfect closure to the chapter. She would go on with her life and her ambitions, and I would go on with mine. I mean, it wasn’t like I had expected much else. A girl as beautiful and smart as her would willingly go through a sex-change operation before considering the possibility of a romantic involvement with someone like me. So perhaps this was the next best thing. She had been a friend for an evening. And that was good enough for me.

Despite all those lofty philosophical ideals, It took me no more than two days to want to speak to her again. This was easier said than done. Yes, of course I had her phone number. And I was fairly certain that she wouldn’t really scream murder if I called. But I was kinda unhappy with my display of emotion on our meet. Also, for some reason I didn’t want to seem too eager. So I resisted the urge to call, and also the urge to make blank calls like before. By the way, during our conversation she had also cheerfully mentioned that they did have a caller ID installed. Apparently, I had escaped both hers and her father’s wrath because I had not made “too many” of those calls.

Anyways, I kept playing and re-playing the two conversations I had had with her over and over in my head as I set about picking up the broken pieces of my career. There were frequent heated debates in my house. My parents wanted me to try the Medical/Engineering entrance tests again next year. I kept on trying to convince them that it wasn’t a very good idea. I had never really wanted to be a doctor. Don’t get me wrong. I have immense respect for people in that profession. It’s just that the idea of spending my entire life among the sick and diseased was not very appealing to me, no matter how much money was in it. As for Engineering, truth be told, it used to be my childhood dream. Machines, especially heavy one, and computers had always fascinated me. Now that might give you the idea that engineering would have been the perfect choice for me. But there were other considerations. First, this whole idea of a second attempt didn’t seem right to me. This was my ego speaking, of course, but it seemed to me like an act of desperation. Besides, I knew my family could hardly afford the fees of one of those private colleges. And I didn’t really think I would be able to do so well in the entrance test as to get a seat in one of the top-rated but cheap government institutions. There was still some time before we had to make a decision either way. So the debates and arguments went on. With me dividing my time between defending my plans (which ranged from confused to non-existent), trying to make better plans, and thinking of her.

A couple of weeks after the day we had met, she called.

Links to previous chapters :

• The Road To Ithaca – 10 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 9 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road to Ithaca – 8 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 7 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 6 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 5 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 4 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 3 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 2 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)
• The Road To Ithaca – 1 (thecleverdog.wordpress.com)