Rohit and I were meeting after 20 years. We did a computer course two decades ago and then he moved on to join the Forces and I pursued an MBA (though I always wanted to get married and do nothing). Completely unaware of how life would unfold in the next few years. He got married and got blessed with a baby girl I too got married and got blessed with my monkeys.
It almost felt like I met my (destiny) doppelganger. We had chalked out different journeys for ourselves, yet they were the same for us. We laughed and remembered the good old days. We also spoke about Anubhav, our coursemate. He was an extremely shy boy, who came home only once, to give me an “All the Best” card before I left Dehradun. I never saw him after that.
Rohit: Can I ask you something? It has been bothering me for the past twenty years. Why did you marry your husband when you had a crush on Anubhav?
Me: Anubhav? What?
He: Yes, didn’t you?
Me: No, never!
He: Then would you leave those messages for him every day?
Me: What messages? Where?
He: At the computer centre? The Word documents that you left on the desktop!
Me: What?
And I tried recalling.
Me: Oh! Those! No, they were not for him they were for my (ex)husband, I did not have an email account in those days so I used to leave the messages (word doc) on the desktop for my Ma’am who would send them when she would connect to the internet.
(Yes, those were the days when jobless graduates did not have mobiles,
The STD Rates were too steep,
We did not have a Computer at home,
I did not have an email address,
Even the computer centre did not have a 24-hour internet connection
We had just graduated from the “Kabootar JaJa” phase
Yes, that ERA!)
He: What are you saying? And every time you would leave, he would stay back to practise, he would find a note on the desktop. He always thought those were for him. They never had a name. He was very happy to find them as he already liked you.
Me: I never called my would-be/ husband by name that’s why.
He: Haha, finally the mystery gets solved!
And we laughed like crazy.
That night when I came back home, I kept thinking, wish I had left those messages for Anubhav.
MAY BE he would have been here and I would have been still married.
(Anubhav had committed suicide, a few years ago, I didn’t ask for the reason, but Rohit told me some girl cheated on him and I...
I got divorced 6 months ago.)
