Trivia

“What’s up?”

“Hey, what took you so long?” The other person on the phone was worried because the previous call was unattended.

I don’t pick up calls lately. I wish I could say that.

“Can you hear me? What’s wrong?” Now, it was the silence that wasn’t expected.

“Yeah, the firecrackers are music to my ears.” I finally answered.

“Everybody knows, It’s Diwali. Happy Diwali!” the other person replied.

“We call it Deepavali here and that’s not what we’re supposed to talk right now. So, get to the point.” I was stern.

“Do you know what you did last night?” He said gleefully.

“Wait, did I crack racist jokes? I don’t think so! Okay, what did I do?” I was curious because I wasn’t sure about anything that had happened.

“It’s hard to explain. I’m unable to control my laughter right now. I’ll send a voice message right after we hang up. Just listen to that. It’s so fu…” I hung up as he never seemed to stop talking about something that had happened on the previous day.

I was tired. Two messages popped up and I decided to take a nap and then get back to it.

Two messages.

One of them was a voice clip and the other one was “This is funny.”

“We were so close, just like the two of you. Not physically though. We live a thousand miles away from each other. I didn’t have enough time back then.” The voice sounded like me and I still believe that I was in the middle of something.

“So you’ve got enough time now and you’re selling it in the market, right?” Said another voice.

“Shut up!”

Something fell on the floor and broke itself into a thousand pieces. It sounded like it really did.

“Okay, we’re sorry. Please continue.” Said the third voice.

“Yeah, we were good. I didn’t have the time to talk. Hey, give me another one. Open it. Cool. So, where was I?”

“At ‘you didn’t have the time’. You stopped there.” Prompted the second voice.

“Yes. I said that I loved her. I said that I loved her, a lot of times. But I don’t think that she loved me back because she wasn’t sure. Who would agree to love a stranger anyway? That’s crazy! I wanted to be a part of her life and I listened to whatever she told me. I just listened. I also laughed whenever she sounded funny. I used to crack jokes when things got serious but she didn’t want that. I did that only to calm her down. I never thought that I’d be misunderstood.”

This time, I was interrupted.

“It’s late. I think we should…”

“Hey! You sit down. Both of you aren’t going anywhere.” My voice was funny. Something was wrong with me!

“Let me continue. She always talked about herself and told whatever she wished. She often reminded me that we had nothing to talk about. But I did. I wanted to talk about a lot of things that was happening in my life and I tried my best to work that out. But I was spellbound. I wanted to listen to her and I did just that. Whenever I thought that ‘things are going to be alright’, new misunderstandings would arise and we’d end up fighting. That’s what we used to do at the end of the day.” I paused to breathe.

“That has happened between us a number of times but we’re still together.” The two chuckled.

“Okay. This is serious. I knew that she was sad and her problems were worth listening to but I wasn’t the happiest person either. She said that nobody could ever solve her problems but she didn’t know that someone was trying to listen to her. I was there. I wanted to know much more than what I’d known and the distance didn’t matter. We met online and I liked her because she was genuine. She was real. I tried my best to impress her but they didn’t work. I was quiet when I was supposed to talk.” I stopped again.

“This might be the juice that’s talking but I swear to God that people are only bothered about their own lives and they don’t give a damn about what other people do for them. They just emphasise their pain. Everything else is trivial.

We’re humans. We make mistakes. We learn from it and it’s completely normal. But sometimes, we cross the line. We hurt people. We also hurt the ones we love and also the ones who love us. Sometimes, it’s done on purpose. Well, that’s unacceptable. You can’t hurt somebody after you know that you’re the reason behind their pain. You shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter who the other person is. You just can’t say things about another person just because something has happened to yourself.

You’ll never know what the other person is going through unless you ask them. Ahem! You girls are so annoying. You are never considerate. You always talk about equality and use the same against us, as an advantage. This guy who is sitting here, right next to me was tortured. Thanks to you. You’ve played enough. Stop pretending that you love him and go away! Boys aren’t toys to play and toss them over. Do you understand? Now, it’s your turn. Why are you still hanging around with this girl anyway? Is it because you fought for her? I really need to know the reason behind it.

Let me tell you this.

All girls are…”

I had to stop that. I couldn’t listen to myself anymore.