[00:01.62]Yellow Post-Its
[00:04.90]Can you still find this day, my dear, among your possessions?
[00:10.48]Among the souvenirs of your trips to faraway lands,
[00:14.20]the textbooks from those halcyon days
[00:16.94]when you walked the hallowed portals of that engineering college,
[00:20.44]the cassettes whose covers were left behind
[00:23.29]after one of those bacchanalian sessions in the hostel,
[00:26.46]the photographs of those classmates whose names you can't remember?
[00:30.94]Or is it hidden in the darkness, put out of sight along with the book
[00:35.32]you bought but never read,
[00:37.07]the gift you never quite found a use for
[00:39.58]and the letters you never finished or sent?
[00:43.09]I can still find it here, in the city,
[00:45.93]in the house which you have never visited,
[00:48.22]in the kitchen where I have imaginary conversations with you.
[00:52.27] It is here even when I am not, for I go out now,
[00:56.53] leaving the light on and the music playing,
[00:58.93]so I can return home to the illusion of company.
[01:02.22]I am probably better off now.
[01:04.41]Without secrets to keep from my parents.
[01:07.14]Without someone to come between me and my friends,
[01:10.42] me and my pastimes, me and my work, me and my sensible,
[01:15.78]understandable, utilitarian life.
[01:18.84]The life that I keep trying,
[01:21.25]keep failing to bring in line with the expectations that
[01:24.64] I keep trying, keep failing to make my own.
[01:28.03]It is not that I always feel like this,
[01:30.87]sometimes I yearn for those days when tears and laughter both came easy,
[01:35.90]those easy and quick transitions from ecstasy to despair.
[01:40.82]When a compliment could keep my mind occupied for hours on end
[01:45.42]and a harsh word could prick like a pin the same skin
[01:49.57]which now seems dry and insensitive.
[01:52.09] Like probably millions around the world,
[01:54.71]I look outside the window of a crowded bus,
[01:57.78]lost in my own thoughts and wonder how it could happen to me.
[02:02.15]Was I not supposed to be different from the rest?
[02:05.10]Not for the silly schoolgirl infatuation with the football team captain
[02:10.35] or the fascination with the good for nothing,
[02:12.87]pot-smoking aspiring poet.
[02:15.27] Ours was a mature friendship that had blossomed into more.
[02:19.54]How could I feel a pang of envy then,
[02:22.17]when you lent a helping hand to another girl,
[02:24.90]when you spoke about someone who's far away and about to be married,
[02:29.16] when you were so involved in the book you were reading
[02:32.22] that you did not notice that we never met all day?
[02:35.95]Then came the rescue mission.
[02:38.24]The loud fights in the hostel wing,
[02:40.87]the long silences and the desperate angry notes.
[02:43.78] Frustration, anxiety
[02:45.96]and even love revealing itself in the ugliest possible ways.
[02:50.01]Then indifference, complacency and resignation.
[02:54.72]Calm, dispassionate discussions on how we could stay friends.
[02:58.98]The decision that we should always let the other know when we would be around.
[03:03.47] That's when I started leaving those yellow post-its on the door.
[03:07.62]Those yellow post-its which by the time
[03:10.90] I came back would have your coordinates that I never used.
[03:14.40]If we had all of them now,
[03:16.26]they would be telling this tale a lot better than I am now.
[03:19.65]Back home, I still continue leaving those post-its to this day,
[03:24.79] hoping that someone will write their whereabouts on them as well.
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