I Remember.

“I guess when you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.”

“This is where I cycled and fell down ”, “this is the shortcut to home from school”, “I would go play basketball here”. The stories were coming in thick and fast as we strolled around her little town. The colours changed above us as she showed me glimpses of her childhood. She had let me into a world which had moulded her as a person. I felt special. “Dad is particular that we all have our last meal of the day together” she said as we increased pace towards home. Back then I knew this evening was going to be etched as one of my favorites. It still is.

I remember she had a weird fascination for vampires and even at times told me that she wanted to become one. She made me sit through the entire “Twilight” series which till date I hate to admit to enjoying. Team Jacob anyone ? How she tried her best to get me onto “Vampire Diaries” is still bewildering.

Cat topics were one of our favorites. I remember we toggled with the idea of adopting a kitten. Inspite of deciding on a name for her we failed to get to her in time. She was gone and with her went away our excitement of adopting a cat. Our cat obsession was so strong that our pet names for each other were based on a cat and mouse. I will die of embarrassment if I ever mention what it was or even worse which one was the cat and which one was the mouse.

Need for Speed was her favorite game and we would spend quite sometime gaming. She would still lose even after hours of practice and your frustration was always a sight. Come to think of it she rarely won any game against me, even the ones on mobile.

Once a year she would fall ill, without fail. I yanked work away from her inspite of all the calls of “just 5 mins”. The injections would scare her and the chaos she created at clinics across Hyderabad was nothing less than that of a little kid. She would scream, burst into tears and combine that with laughter. It was strange. She was strange.

Filled with pride and humility she would narrate stories of how clients would try to poach her into joining their company. She never failed to amaze me. She had immense dedication for everything Google and would force me into “dog fooding” anything that came out on email. Good times. Not.

A few summers later, I remember spending nights over how to get her away from the stagnation of the city. To see her get vulnerable with fears, anxiety and the desire to grow as a person was beautiful. We had plans in the air. We promised each other so many dreams. Ahh the facade of relationships.

I knew our time would come to an end as I waved her off at the airport. I just knew it. Distance filled us up. Daily updates turned into weekly, the weekly ones into monthly and then came the silence. This silence ate me up. As time progressed reality sunk in that things would be very different going forward. I took time to digest.

Years later as I sit here after scouring through our memories, a quote spoke to me as I scrambled my few memories left of her.

“The best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature.”

I am supremely lucky to have met her. I am happy I had a tiny part in her life, a life of a little town girl who dared to dream big.

Here is wishing you a very happy married life ahead.