It was a Long Walk

This is what I remember of her. This diary entry is about her, her royal nose, her childlike demeanour and some mental notes.

X
.

"I don't know where this is coming from! Why can't you stop digging into the past?"

"You have always been like this! You have not changed at all!"

I walked to the phone booth. I was short on money, and I needed to make an urgent call home. I dug into my pockets to get a few coins out. Outside, the two people kept their voices loud enough for me to hear.

This isolated, broken down booth was the only thing left besides the architecture as heritage in this town.

"I can't be held responsible for things that you think are wrong, but clearly aren't so!"

I dialled.

The phone kept ringing. After four rings, a young womanly voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Kirti?"

We spoke for a few minutes.

After I hung up, I stared outside the booth. The young couple was still fighting, and I stood there, looking around.

The paint had chipped off from many places, and the glass was yellowed and patchy.

"I can't just go on like this!"

"Obviously! Look for the easy way out!"

I decided to stay on for a while, but then decided against it.

I walked towards the end of the lane. The book shop was nearby, and I always paused there to gaze at a few authors like I found them loitering in stacks, under each other's weight.

Just when I was about to turn from the bend, I looked back, instinctively to see if the couple was still there. I couldn't see them, and for a moment I was tempted to go back and see if everything was okay.

Within a minute I was back at the phone booth, looking for them. It was a foolish thing to do, but I had had a very difficult morning that day, and my nerves were rankled. I saw the girl stepping out of the adjacent lane, crying.

She looked at me once, and looked again. She must have thought this funny man likes to be in the booth. After a few seconds, I stepped back and started walking in the opposite direction.

The conversation I had over the phone was still in my ears and my head began to hurt. I had no money, no job, and I was losing someone very important to me. I tried to piece together the conversation again to possibly interpret it again before a voice behind me jerked me out of my trance.

"Hello..?"

I stopped and turned around to see the girl, standing behind me, her eyes red, her nose a cute cherry red.

"Helluh" I said awkwardly, as my throat gave away.

Her gaze kept shifting on the road, as if she was about to confess something.

I tried to read her face, and just before I could say something, she blurted, "Can you sit with me for sometime?"

I am probably the only stranger that day to have been witness to their fight, and obviously, she needed someone to talk to, to pour her heart.

"Sure, no problem. Except, that I am broke right now and I cannot be in a coffee shop, and as you could have seen, I was calling someone from the booth," I said. I immediately regretted it.

"Yes, I saw. But, it's okay. I need to sit."

As we walked quietly to a coffee shop close by, I sensed an easy calm around me. The day was clear, there was a slight breeze, which had gone unnoticed in the tumult that had occurred.

We sat in the open verandah outside the café, it was quiet. Her nose had sobered down or so it seemed to me it had peaked out. It was long and round at the end, giving off a bored smugness to the world.

She gave an irritated look, and I stopped and looked away.

I adjusted myself in the chair again. She kept silent for few minutes, possibly trying to disentangle her emotions, which seemed to have hobbled off in a hurry, outside of her control, the result of it all being me, a stranger sitting next to her. Or, so I imagined.


She apologised for her behaviour and spoke about how awfully low she felt after the altercation in the lane. She didn't mention much about what happened, neither did I ask. I simply watched her speak, her hands move, her eyes slow and heavy with confusion and sadness.

She bought me coffee and soon after asked me if I wanted to leave. I was jolted out of my reverie again. I hurriedly said that it was unnecessary to apologise and feel guilty.

That moment, her cell phone rang. Someone obviously wanted her somewhere else, and she immediately got up to leave.

We didn't even wish each other adieu. She gestured thank you from a distance before calling out to a taxi. I smiled and dug my hands into my pockets to hear the jingle of a few coins.