Gosh, I have been waiting for this day for so many days. The day I bade my goodbyes to her at the Bangalore airport, it was quite a hard feeling and her face was forever etched into my memory forever.
Every day when I used to get up realizing that she is roughly 5,000 miles from me was not a good feeling and always thought about how cool it would be to fly there and surprised her. But, real life doesn’t work like Bollywood movies and the harsh reality settles in, bringing you to the ground zero and forcing you to start off with your day.
The mornings used to be quite pleasant as I used to get to see her and talk to her. She telling me how her day was going and me telling how tired I feel after a good night’s sleep. The moment I used to hang up the phone, I used to wish if I could have gotten some more time to talk to her. Anyway, I am derailing here, so let me get back into the meat of this blog post.
The reason she was returning after many months was to attend her brother’s wedding. It was once in a lifetime moment (well, for most of the Indians), so didn’t want to miss it and even myself and my friends were scheduled to attend the 3 day long festivities at her place. So, naturally, when she got back to India, she decided to land in Bangalore and do some shopping before heading to her place in Maharashtra. I felt so special that she was coming to Bangalore before Mumbai and my excitement knew no bounds.
During this time in my life, I didn’t have a bike as I didn’t have any plans to settle in Bangalore or India. As she was coming to visit and we were bound to go out for shopping, I had rented out a bike to explore Bangalore and shopping.
One of my ex-roommates had this type of bike and she loved sitting in the back seat and sometimes riding it too. It was an obvious choice to rent this bike and even I liked riding it as it gave me a sense of freedom. The browny point of having this bike with me was the SWAG that you get with it.
I remember doing a countdown of the number of days until I see her and the days didn’t seem to pass fast enough. During this time, I had quit my job at Accure and was relying on the classroom and online Big Data sessions to earn my living. I had some saving too fall back on, so life was good; even being jobless.
The day finally arrived. I remember getting up quite excited and talking to her over the phone when she was ready to get on the plane to India and looked excited too as she would see me after such a long time.
I had told my students about my future plans and if I remember correctly the previous day was the last day I bade goodbye to all my training students and colleagues for good. I was excited for new things in life and had so many plans in place to facilitate those changes.
She was supposed to land at around 7 PM, so as the evening grew closer, I remember getting butterflies in my stomach. Each second and minute seemed to go slower than I anticipated and never knew seeing someone would be so exciting and nervous at the same time.
One of my roommates took this picture when I was leaving for the airport. I knew she would have so many bags with her that it would be impossible for us to commute via bike. Plus, Bangalore airport is almost 30 miles from my place and I am as lazy as someone can get when it comes to driving a bike.
You can see I am smiling from cheek to cheek with the excitement of seeing her. You can also see the Guitar in my hand, which was a surprise for her. More to come on that!
I took a bus ride to the airport and couldn’t seem to hold myself together. I was smiling like I had been from the moment I took a step out of the apartment. I wonder how many people would have been weirded out because of my smiling face.
The culture in India is a little bit difference, where we don’t look at people and smile; rather, we stare at them until one of us back down and start looking to their toes. It must have been so weird for people to look at me looking at them with a smiling face and not knowing what’s going on with me.
The long bus ride dropped me at the airport and from that moment on, it was a waiting game. She didn’t have an Indian phone service, so, I didn’t know when she would actually walk out of those gates.
I knew her flight had landed and wasn’t aware about the international flight exit procedure, so, it was adding to the suspense to when I would get a chance to catch the first glimpse of her.
And that moment finally arrived.
It was such a surreal feeling to get to see her face and after so many days. I felt like I am lost in a gargantuan maze and finally saw someone I have known for a long time. I cannot tell you how soothing I felt when I saw her smiling face. It was a feeling of multitude of happiness and I seemed not to know how to express it.
If you have ever interacted with me, you know, I don’t express myself quite openly and usually take time to speak my heart and mind. With her, that was not the case. I could speak anything that I would have wanted and always seemed to be relieved at the end of the conversation. There were fights (one-sided unfortunately 🤪), for sure, but the amazing fact that we were together after so many fights was enough for me to hold onto her.
I welcomed her and realized nothing had changed even after months of separation. We exchanged our long overdue of hello and hearing her voice in person felt so good in my ears. It made me instantly happy and more.
Soon, she realized I had a guitar in my hand and was intrigued what I was up to. I took her away from the arrivals gate to a place in a buzzing Bangalore Airport where the two of us could be somewhat alone and I could surprise her with what I was up to for the last couple months.
You have to consider that I had been really bad at music. When I was in grade 7, my music teacher enrolled me in a music class and made me appear in some examination where I had to sing. I still remember barely clearing that examination and scoring, I think, just enough to pass the examination. From that moment onwards, I knew I couldn’t get along with the music and bade my goodbyes forever.
Until the moment when she told me her favorite song over the phone during one of our phone conversations. That was the moment I decided to learn the guitar song or at least try to learn it and sing it to her when we would meet. I had a good month or month and a half to practice and took some lessons at a local guitar store to hone in on it.
And, then it all came down to this. This was my first performance and looking back at it, it is safe to say, I SUCKED! I was and am not worried, though as I did it more for us than for anyone else.
Hope you get a good laugh out of it. If you wanna check the original Bollywood song, click here.
It was safe to say she loved and my friends didn’t leave a chance to make fun of me. That’s what friends are for, right? We headed home after that and had dinner and she showed all the things that she got for friends and we had a nice time.
I knew these few days that we were together would go like a blink of an eye, so I was trying to savor every moment with her and will always cherish those.
I hope I can safely end it here and can safely say the next few days are kind-of life changing for me!
stochasticity 