On This Day, Eleven Years Ago

"Two women who had once worn each other's clothes were now speaking like strangers trying to remember how they had once known each other."

I am Palomi. I am thirty years old now. I live in Australia, sunny Sydney to be exact.

The last few days, I've found myself thinking a lot about my college years. Perhaps it's because I was scrolling through my phone when it buzzed with a notification.

On this day, eleven years ago.

The photograph stopped me in my tracks.

I had my arm around Divya. Her hair was loose, her head thrown back slightly as she laughed. The afternoon sunlight caught her eyes. A copy of Coma by Robin Cook rested casually in her hand. I was looking straight at the camera. She had been caught mid-laugh, an air of lightness and abandon surrounding her like a halo.

I stared at the photograph for a long time.

Funny how a single photograph can bring back a life you thought you'd packed away.

We were in our final year of college when it was taken. But my mind wandered much further back, to the day I first saw her.

She stood in the admissions queue with her father, waiting to collect an application form. Dressed in a simple pink salwar kameez, her hair neatly braided, she looked frightened, almost overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of it all. She kept glancing around as though everyone else knew exactly what they were doing.

A kindred soul, I remember thinking.

Just like me.

I walked up to her before I could lose my nerve.

"Hi."

She looked up.

"I'm Palomi."

A shy smile.

"Divya."

Her father glanced at me, puzzled by the stranger talking to his daughter. He looked to be in his early fifties, greying at the temples, dressed in brown trousers and a crisp white shirt. He seemed eager to finish everything and get home. I remember wondering if he'd taken the day off work to bring his daughter to college.

I smiled at him before turning back to Divya.

"Are you nervous?"

She nodded.

"So obvious?"

"It takes one to recognise one."

She smiled.

T

hat was the beginning of a friendship that lasted four years.

Or so I thought.

I

remember the evenings we spent sitting on the driveway, talking about books.

We both loved to read. While I was drawn to English classics, Divya devoured modern fiction. Medical thrillers and forensic mysteries were her favourites. Robin Cook, Michael Crichton and James Patterson were always tucked under her arm.

Divya was my safe space. The kind of person you call at three in the morning. I could tell her everything. My darkest thoughts. My worst fears. My silliest blunders on dates with boys. She never judged me.

She came from a small town in the Indian hinterland. Her father was a cashier in a bank. Her mother was a homemaker. She had a younger sister. With a twinkle in her eyes and her sights firmly set on her future, she had dared to come this far. I couldn't understand then what courage that must have taken.

I do now.

I was the more free spirited one. The short-haired one. The one with the boy cut. The one who rode a Yamaha and always wore boots, even on the most humid of afternoons.

I still remember that evening. I've replayed it countless times over the years.

College had ended for the day and we were walking down one of Bangalore's busiest streets.

"Divy... fancy a beer? There's a great place around the corner."

She looked at me aghast.

"My dad would never like it if he came to know."

"Why not? You've done it before."

She smiled awkwardly.

"Girls from our families don't do things like that."

I remember wincing.

A few moments later she nudged me gently.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I know."

"Things are different where I come from."

She was quiet for a few seconds before adding, almost to herself,

"Sometimes, out of anger, I call myself a child of a lesser God."

I turned to look at her.

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged.

"It just feels like some people are born with more choices than others."

Neither of us said anything after that.

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

The pub was dimly lit, hazy with cigarette smoke and heavy with the smell of beer. Def Leppard's Love Bites drifted softly through the speakers.

We spent hours talking about the girls in class, the blokes we had crushes on, our professors and life in general. She was quiet. I was the animated one. I spoke. She listened. That was our rhythm.

It was close to midnight when we left.

She climbed onto the back of my scooty.

The air was just right. Cool enough to brush against our faces, but not cold enough to warrant a jacket.

As we rode through the quiet streets, Divya leaned forward and whispered into my ear.

"I love you."

I chuckled.

"I'm sure you've said that to Raghav too."

"Why Raghav?"

"Because you spend more time with him than you do with me."

She laughed.

Then I laughed.

"I love you too, Divs."

At the time, I thought we were laughing about the same thing.

We weren't.

I pulled over in front of her hostel.

Divya climbed off the scooty, her bag hanging loosely from her shoulder. She thanked me, then stood there as though she wanted to say something.

"Palomi."

There was something different about her voice.

I looked at her.

She wasn't looking at me.

"When I said I loved you..."

She paused.

"I meant every word of it."

I smiled.

"I know."

She shook her head.

"No. You don't."

She took a deep breath.

"I've felt this way for a long time. I just wasn't sure about you."

I stood there stunned.

The earth shook beneath me and the sky thundered. At least, that's what it felt like.

I shook my head a few times. Maybe there was something wrong with my hearing. I thought she was joking.

Then I looked at her face.

She wasn't.

I knew a storm was coming.

The voices from the tea stall opposite the hostel seemed to fade into a whisper.

I didn't know what to say.

I loved Divya too.

She was my ally. My Google search. My person. The one I called when life made no sense. The one who celebrated every tiny victory of mine as though it were her own.

But I had never imagined this.

Not once.

Not even for a second.

I didn't know how to tell her what I was feeling, so I took the easiest way out.

"I'm straight, Divs."

The words hung between us.

She nodded.

There were no tears. No anger. No attempt to convince me otherwise.

Just a small smile that never quite reached her eyes.

"I know," she said quietly.

I started the bike.

For a second, I thought of saying something more. Anything more.

Instead, I rode away without looking back.

This was the beginning of our final year in college.

Standing on the precipice of adulthood, we were both preparing for our futures. I was planning to study overseas for a couple of years and perhaps return to India. I wasn't in a steady relationship, though I did like a boy.

She wanted to become a lawyer.

For days, I couldn't make sense of what had happened.

I felt betrayed. Not because she loved me, but because I had no idea she felt this way. I had no idea it was more than friendship to her.

I replayed every conversation we'd had over the previous few years. Every hug. Every high five. Every kiss on the cheek.

I flinched at memories that had never once made me uncomfortable while they were happening.

She had never made me feel uncomfortable.

Never touched me in a way that wasn't welcome.

Never crossed a line.

The line had existed only in my head.

I know that now.

At twenty, I didn't.

Why, on God's green earth, did I react like that?

Was it because we are conditioned to believe that love is only supposed to look one way?

Or was it because I was frightened that the friendship I thought I understood had suddenly become something I couldn't name?

Whatever the reason, one question has stayed with me for eleven years.

Why did I make her feel as though there was something wrong with loving someone?

She didn't come back to college the next day.

Priya told me she was under the weather.

I didn't call.

I didn't check on her.

The following day she left for her hometown.

She never came back.

That was the last time I saw Divya.

Life, as it often does, moved on.

We finished college. I left for Australia. New jobs, new cities and new responsibilities slowly replaced old friendships.

Every now and then, I'd think of Divya.

Usually when I walked past a bookstore.

Or heard a Def Leppard song.

She had become one of those people who quietly continue living inside you long after they've left your life.

Years later, I heard through a mutual friend that she had got married. The last I heard, she was the mother of an eight-year-old son. Her social media accounts were private, and I never found the courage to send her a request.

For years I wondered what I would say if I ever spoke to her again.

One evening, almost absent-mindedly, I dialled her number. I had got it from a common friend a few weeks earlier.

The phone rang twice.

"Hello?"

The voice hadn't changed.

"Divs..."

There was silence.

Then I heard her breathe softly into the phone.

"Palomi?"

"Yeah."

Another silence.

Then she laughed.

"So... Australia."

"So... Bangalore."

It struck me as strange.

Two women who had once worn each other's clothes were now speaking like strangers trying to remember how they had once known each other.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what?"

"I behaved like an ass."

She was quiet.

"I didn't understand then."

"And now?"

"I do."

I heard her sigh.

"I separated from my husband a year ago."

I didn't know what to say.

"Why did you disappear?" I finally asked.

She took her time answering.

"I didn't understand either. I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt trapped. I was terrified someone would find out. I thought I'd be treated like a pariah."

She paused.

"I didn't have your courage, Palomi."

I smiled.

"My courage?"

"You lived the way you wanted to. I always admired that."

I looked out of the window.

"I think that's why I fell in love with you," she said. "I liked who I became when I was with you."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

Finally she said quietly,

"That was a long time ago."

"I know."

"This is my life now."

"I know."

"I've made my peace with it."

"I hope I have too."

We stayed on the phone for a few more minutes, talking about ordinary things. Work. Her son. Sydney. Bangalore.

When the call ended, I stood there for a long time, the phone still in my hand.

I didn't know if I would ever see Divya again.

Perhaps there would be the occasional birthday message. A text on Diwali or Christmas. Maybe another phone call someday.

But the chasm that eleven years had carved between us would take far more than a handful of conversations to bridge.

Some distances cannot be measured in miles.

They are measured in silences.

In words left unsaid.

In apologies that arrive a decade too late.

I walked to the window.

Sydney glittered beneath me.

For a long time I stood there, looking out at the city we had once dreamed I would live in.

"Divs," I whispered.

Sometimes love is not about finding your way back to each other.

Sometimes it is simply about understanding, at last, the love that was always there.