Circa 2000

Sydney, Australia

My Wish at Their Command

Somebody called out for me. I can hear it. Somebody who knows me. Somebody who is close to me. I turn around.

“Hey. It’s you.”

I am frozen. That too at the sight of a person I have known only from a distance, though for a good five years. Pia rented a room on the same floor as me in a high-rise serviced accommodation. Had it been my best friend from home standing in front of me, I would have melted and spread all over the platform of this suburban station; I would have chewed the whole suburb in my smile; I would have let my joy spray all over my suburb.

I stand still.

“I never thought I would see you again. Last I heard you were leaving for Australia? How are you?” howled Pia.

She always howled. Got used to speaking at a high volume since she had to teach intricacies of Shakespeare and Joyce to her mob of young adults. My hands started moving, wanting to pull Pia towards me in an embrace. I saw her rushing into me. I was ecstatic to see her.

I don’t know how she felt. Don’t know if she could see the huge waves of pain lurking underneath my ecstatic self – this was the pain of living away in ‘exile’. My eyes swelled up with tears. I tried to hold back my tears. I still had to catch a train and walk back home from the station. I couldn’t let the world get a glimpse of my vulnerable self.

“You are brave, living by yourself in a foreign country. Back home we all talk about you. In a way we all miss you. You know most of us now live in our own apartments and some of us continue to socialise with each other. Wish you too were there, a member of our loosely-knit ‘community’ of independent women,” moaned Pia.

I wished this to happen every moment of my life in Sydney – on the streets, in the university. To have a long lost friend calling out for me. To turn into a statue in the middle of the road at the sight of a friend from back home. To have my gaze float around as I went about my daily travels only to encounter the loving gaze of a friend.

Every time I rushed to attend to unexpected knocks at my door – I wanted it to be a friend from back home. A friend, who from travels around the world would have decided to stop in Sydney and surprise me.

It never happened. No long lost friend called out for me. I never had any unexpected arrivals knocking at my door.

I have new friends, new commitments, new responsibilities for the same me. Old wine in a new bottle. Perhaps old wine building its own bottle, its context of being…

©sumeghaagarwal