Memories are so stubborn.<\/p>\n
I can’t seem to get them off my mind.<\/p>\n
As YouTube plays a recommended song, I think of my friends. Where are they today? What are they up to? What’s the day today? What year?<\/p>\n
I have lost track of time. There’s nobody to yell at me to mention today’s date on the top of my notebook. On the left, if it’s an English date. On the right, if Nepali. How many years since we last hugged, not knowing it would be the last? Had we known, would that have been any different?<\/p>\n
I need some time to think. It’s two-thirty and I walk out the office passing smiles for smiles and waves for waves. I think of Bikash Books and Bakes, just 15 minutes away. I smile at myself, how happy we would have been in those days to have a cafe sort of thing close to our workplace. Though it had been nearly 8 years of me working here, I had never stopped there before. Today, it seems, is the day.<\/p>\n
Ordering a cup of coffee, I take the farthest seat from the door, avoiding glances. I am not much of a talker now, am I? How time changes people! How we can never predict ourselves, never be sure of our future!<\/p>\n
The coffee arrives at my table. The little girl at my side makes me smile. How excited she is to be here! How foreign all this looks. How new. How exciting, she finds this. She looks thirteen. “Have you been here before?” I ask. “No”, she answers. In fact, she mentions, this is the first one she’s ever been to.<\/p>\n
Then as an afterthought, “this is not the only time”, she says. I reply with no words but a deep hollow smile and a look that is pensive. Am I married? “No.” Do I work? She is a talkative little girl. “Yes.” Around? “Yes.” Do I come here often? “No, why?” She’s just curious. “Do I have friends?” I’m replying with the same kind of smile again, only smiles.<\/p>\n
Something about her looks familiar. Is it the hair: braided on each side, hanging to her shoulders? Is it her skirt: its straps challenging her hair? Or, is it her palm: colored with sign-pens’ inks?<\/p>\n
Why is she here? Books. She loves books. Enid Blyton. Roald Dahl. Alice. She talks about them like they are her friends she meets every day at school, the ones she shares her lunch with, troubles the teachers with.<\/p>\n
“Do you want some ice cream?” I ask. “No”, she replies. I go to the counter and get one for each anyway. Do I work at night? “Why?” I seem to stay here for long, she says. You want me to go? “No”, she says. “I’ve worked enough”, I say, “enough to be camping here for a week.” Both of us smile. “Don’t you miss your friends?”<\/p>\n
Don’t I miss my friends? “Of course”, I do. “Tell me more”, she says, with a smile. We have switched roles, haven’t we? I tell her about my house in Kapan and my friends scattered all over the world. Some married, some not. I tell her of all the dreams we dreamed, promises promised. And when I pause, leaving the memories to come by themselves, not forcing too much, she adds about herself, her friends. I tell her about our favorite spot on the hills of Kapan, covered with pine trees. The pines we brought home, as a souvenir. The pebbles. The poems we wrote for one another. The letters.<\/p>\n
The sky changed its color from blue to pink, clouds cleared off. In this crowded city, people hustling and bustling about their busy lives, here we are. Here in this cafe – its interior filled with smells of books, milk, and coffee – this little girl and I talking about our lives that seem of little importance if it weren’t about our friends, those we shared words with, and the words themselves.<\/p>\n
“Talk to your friends, why don’t you?” she’s commanding me now. “I will”, I say. “Promise?”<\/p>\n
Again, I do not speak in words, I only smile. Do you want me to drop you home? I ask. “Yes”, she replies. “I like tea, do you like tea?” She likes coffee better.<\/p>\n
Her mother’s tea reminds me of my own. I look at my watch, it’s already past 7. I thank both girl and her mother for their hospitality.<\/p>\n
Home after so long and I am on the telephone, dialing and redialing numbers. It’s natural for my mom to complain. “Friends”, I clarify her. I see her go. A minute later, she returns, with a tiny notebook. “It’s Jyoti”, she says, “She left some contact numbers, just in case you returned.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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