He keeps on calling it 'her town'
(uska shehar). Never does he address the town by its name, in private or
in public. "It was raining in her town yesterday" or "I was
meeting a sales team in her town last month", is what he says. His friends
don't consider it eccentric anymore. They know him. They don't blame him.
A major part of his work is
associated with 'her town' and he goes there often to attend seminars, training
sessions and meetings. He longs to be in her town, where she is a professor at the university and lives alone in a one bedroom flat; having broken off a
live-in relationship with one of her colleagues two years back.
She is an old acquaintance of
his, a batch mate, from college. They were strongly attracted towards each
other then, but nothing concrete came out of it. He blames himself for it. He
was too immature then, too moody, indifferent. Life doesn't give you second
chances. Ever.
But he isn't entirely
disillusioned or disgruntled with life. A small part of him is happy. Happy to
be somewhere in the radar of her life. That somewhere, is being able to visit
her town a couple of times in a month, being able to breathe the same air that
she breathes in, visit shops she probably buys her groceries from.
There are talks that she has gone to Mumbai for a new job. He has mixed emotions
about this. The additional physical distance will now hurt him. But now, he knows, he wouldn't have to worry about accidentally meeting her on a bus, at a restaurant or at the university.
He hopes that one day he might move in permanently to 'her town', maybe work in the same locality where she worked, live in the same housing colony, visit the same parks. These are the only things he expects from her - the air that she took in, water from the same supply, autos that she traveled in, theaters she visited, local news from local dailies.
By having 'her town', he knows;
he has her.
