Loving is so short, forgetting is so long.

- Pablo Neruda

The last rain of this year dribbled from the crevices of the train door and one fat drop plummeted on the middle of my head, titillating a sneaky chill down my body. The chill was cut short when a girl at the door who was soaked with rainwater struggled in with her large bags, pushing me into the stifling, exasperated crowd. People clicked their tongues, pushed back and threw me the dirtiest glares. A loud groan arose from the centre and it was from Jazz who was smothered from all the sides. She was listlessly shaking the damp collar of her hoodie, allowing whatever ventilation of leftover air for her insides. This was not how she had pictured her romanticized morning to be when she had selected that outfit. She had imagined a cosy morning with the gentle pitter-patter of the rain on the window as she sat and watched the drops roll down while listening to some Atif Aslam songs.

She had forgotten that this was a Mumbai local train where even ants couldn't find an inch to breathe.

There was another push from the other end of the train and the crowd surged like the waves in a concert, only less fun and more threats of being stomped on. She groaned again, louder this time and all of us unanimously empathised with her. Outside, the rain poured in torrents without any mercy and one of the doors flew open.

Nobody was willing to close it and risk getting drenched or thrown on the tracks so the rain sprayed on us till the courageous Jazz pushed through and pulled the rusty latch up. Of course, she did it so violently to express her displeasure that we were afraid she would break the door. She swore too, but all of us feigned ignorance. Huffing, she shoved people to stand next to me and nobody dared to curse her for her bloodthirsty eyes were brimming with desire to unleash her inner malice on anyone who ruffled as much as a strand of her hair. Even ordinary people had the potential to become ninjas and assassins in Mumbai local trains for a place to stand or if luckiest, sit.

"God, kill me right now! Right now! Not again!" she exclaimed as the train halted in between the two stations for the hundredth time, the greedy water fast filling the tracks. "At this rate, we will reach college in our next lives. Oh no, I don't want to be born here in my next life. God, take me away, take me to a sex club in a first world country!"

All shocked eyes were on us and I dropped my head, burying my chin in the collar of my striped shirt and murmuring to her, "I'm sure God will prioritize your sex life over poverty or starvation." Honestly, her sex life was poor and starved so her prayers were valid.

"What did you say?" She glanced at me, the beads of sweat fixed on her waxed upper lips. I shook my head dismissively and she picked up her whining at where she had left off like the clicking on a resume button of a videotape. The hairy Jaspreet whose long, oiled pigtails in school were tied up such that they resembled two hoop earrings had transformed into this chic girl with blonde highlights. Now, she wore the trendiest outfits, being millions of kilometres away from the girl in the plain uniform that I used to see every day.

She had been determined to make her college life nothing short of the ones they showed in the movies and her efforts had paid off. With her enthusiasm and interest in other people's affairs, she had become one of the most popular girls in the college. She hugged a person every two seconds on the campus and participated in every event that took place while I trailed after like an invisible, lost spirit.

Jazz had been in her rebellious phase when she decided to join my bandwagon of pursuing something in Arts, what exactly, neither of us knew. We had scored the same percentage and she ensured that we went to the same college. A woman's determination could break all bounds of limitation till even miracles could come into fruition. And voila! Here we were, heading towards the same college on the same train next to each other.

"I think we should get down at the next station and take a train back home. It can flood today," I interrupted her complaining, imagining us wading through 4 feet of water and holding our bags above our heads like village women fetching water from the well.

"What? Noo, come on. We're literally three stops away from college."

If this was school, she would have readily agreed to go back home. But this was college. She had worn her new H and M hoodie today. Besides, I knew that she had read one of Oscar Wilde's plays that some of her friends were discussing. I had been surprised hearing them since I thought their personality didn't go beyond Zara outfits, gossips about who hooked up with who and smoking in the shed behind our college while discussing pseudo-intellectual quotes. Fortunately, Jazz never went there, her inner scaredy-cat always made excuses to attend some festival happening in some college. Yet, she claimed to be a pot smoker and a raging alcoholic in front of her friends.

Jazz dragged me to the college like she was lugging a piece of enormous baggage after her (baggage being me of course). It had been a long while since she held my hand like that, tenaciously, leaving no free will for me to move on my own. I rarely saw her after mornings on the train since she would be engrossed in the tattles that sparked in different corners of the college. She slipped in and out of the classrooms during lectures like a thief, her and her group of friends. So different from how she was in school, yet her childhood qualities of stubbornness and hope persisted . . .

How differently we burned as grown-ups, trying to keep the last embers of our childhood alive. I could never stop mourning the loss of my childhood . . . The last summer . . . Lila. The girl who embodied childhood with her effervescent giggles, unrealistic dreams, optimism and a candid way to live.

Not her again, a sigh escaped my lips and I halted on my tracks. "It's pointless. Let's just go home."

"You're coming and that's final," Jazz said firmly, tucking my hand under her arm and marching towards the station exit. Why was she so insistent on taking me to college when she had so many of her friends there? It was my chance to complain and complain I did. She was behaving obstinately as she did in school . . .

In school, she used to attend every lecture religiously, raising her hand at every question that the teacher would get fed up with her. I remembered once when Lila had come fluttering to my desk in the middle of a lecture for playing a game of X and Zeros, but Jazz had snatched the pencil from her, scribbled aggressively "pay attention" across the page and sent Lila back to her bench. She was behaving like that day today, protective and forceful, unlike how she behaved on usual college days. On usual college days, there was a big rift between us, she was deep into her friends and fests and I spent my breaks alone in the library.

We arrived at the college, my jeans soggy and heavy with rainwater and my sandals sticky with sludge. I stooped down in the corridor to remove a stray leaf wrapped around my toe when I saw multiple pairs of shoes excitedly approaching us. Jazz's friends were here, all of them looking gravely disappointed. One of them said in a bored tone, "All lectures are cancelled. They couldn't have informed us before. Assholes."

I stared hard and coldly at Jazz who pretended to not see me and said, "That sucks real bad."

"Sucks" was an addition to her vocabulary. I was going to suggest to go back home before the trains would get cancelled as well when some topic about the play they had selected for the English assignment cropped up. The topic began with them teasing and taunting each other as being nerds, but someone mentioned Anton Chekov with a casual air and suddenly everybody had something to say. Nobody wanted to be seen as less intellectual and if they had nothing to say, they agreed to some point and chimed in vacuous criticisms. I took a glimpse of Jazz who appeared nervous since she was prepared with Oscar Wilde's plays, not the Russian dude's.

"Oscar Wilde's humour is peak comedy," quipped Jazz, a small voice in the sea of overlapping voices. "I chose 'The Importance of being Earnest' for my assignment. Absolutely hilarious." Nobody heard her and she looked shaken. She tried again, this time more desperately, "You guys should take up his plays too. They're so funny and profound. Unlike this shit."

"Did you say 'shit'?" came an offended voice and all the other voices faded into silence. "Did you even understand the symbolism in 'The Seagull'?"

Jazz laughed now, a shrill, unnatural laugh. "Yeah, of course. It was pretty obvious."

"Really?" came another challenging voice. 

I quickly stepped in, "The change in what the seagull signified at the beginning then at the end was remarkable, right? I think both Nina and Treplyov share of part in the symbol of the seagull. Both are under the control of others. Which reminds me . . . Jazz and I need to go. We're under the control of our parents." I let out an easy laugh and tugged at Jazz's backpack. All of them appeared faintly interested, not amused. "We will see you all tomorrow."

I waited patiently despite my urge to leave till Jazz had hugged each and every one of them and as we parted from them like two little boats floating away from the noisy shore, I heard one of the rich one's say, "Oh yeah, they travel by trains. How they manage in those crowds . . . Chills. Literal chills."

They broke out cackling, hopefully, more so at the B99 sitcom reference. Jazz pretended to not hear as we climbed down the flight of stairs and set out towards the station. The wind blew fiercely this time and my floral umbrella upturned, rather Pavitra's umbrella that I had absently borrowed. Anyway, Pavitra had barely any use for umbrellas, shoes, hats or anything used outdoors. Six months since last summer and the only thing that had changed in her life was the sitcom that she binge-watched. Her husband was still estranged and she was jobless.

My mother had badgered her about talking to Lila's parents so she could get her old job back at their textile company, but both Pavitra and I had staunchly refused. My parents harboured some hope though, they were going to call her husband's family to our house for Diwali to talk things through. It was a common sight to see my mother praying in the evening and roaming around the house, especially around Pavitra with incense sticks or a Pooja thali.

The moment I stepped on the platform, I knew that all the trains were cancelled. The immobile trains, the lack of announcements and anxious people clicking on their smartphones for available buses or taxis, I was familiar with them all. While Jazz insisted on waiting for a train to arrive, I booked an Ola cab for us and she sheepishly followed me when it had arrived. We plopped down inside, putting away our dripping umbrellas on the floor, grumbling about how expensive this ride was and distancing ourselves so we could have some room to breathe.

"It's been a long time since we talked to each other," Jazz said when our grumbling ceased, gazing at the rain streaming down the window. "You know what I mean? Proper talk." I was mildly stunned that she was aware of this since she had been so carried away by her cool friends and her cool life like a petal soaring with the breeze and never falling back to reality. "Why didn't you ever come and visit me during summer? Or even text?"

It had been six months and yet, there she was. Lila. She had a free ticket to my dreams where I saw her at school doing some mischief or at the beach in Tarkarli during twilight when her face glowed softly or under the mango trees with sunlight slipping between the canopy of leaves and kissing her skin. Only the days when I cried myself to sleep, those days were when I didn't dream of her but woke up with heavy eyes that reminded me of how much I had loved her. My love for her had been a delicious secret, sweetening like a ripening fruit, every time I used to see her. But that secret was no more and the emptiness soured like a rotting fruit over time. I wanted to fill this emptiness so desperately that I stopped in the middle of roads when I got a whiff of her father's cologne that she used or when I spotted the back of a girl with wavy hair and a slight frizz in it.

It was that emptiness which drove me to join a dating app and talk to another girl, a girl who looked the exact opposite of Lila, a girl who made me smile at times.

"It was difficult for me then. I couldn't do anything. After my break up---"

"Break up?" Jazz turned to me now, a wild, incredulous look in her eyes as she tried to compose herself. "I talked to Anthony the other day. He told me you both never dated." Her voice grew smaller and smaller as that summer grew larger and larger in my mind. I didn't have anything to say when she continued in a quietness that was unlike her, "You didn't have to lie to me. If you weren't interested in meeting me, you could have just said so. I understand that I'm not like your best friend, that Lila, but I wasn't so bad to you. You were friends with me first then she came and . . . " She paused, never spoke again and decided it was the best to leave me drowning in my thoughts. 

And she was gone.

*

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