Finding Y.

    Coupools! No, that is how a professor in college would pronounce it. Coupools were the main reason why we would flock the nearest coffee outlet. Not the coffee, no. We, however, would always end up in odd numbers, purely because we had no couples in the gang. It felt great to act cheap in a group, observing couples with the corner of the eye and go nudge-nudge, wink-wink with the gang!

   
                      

   There was one interesting pair that would frequent the place. There wasn’t anything unique about them, just that we managed to find them every time we were there. Let us call them X and Y. X being the girl and Y the boy(.. did that require an explanation?) Anyway, there was nothing unique about the pair. They were the usual pair who would occupy a corner and whisper sweet nothings to each other, holding hands and playing footsie. Y would say something that would make X blush and smile coyly and then she would notice the eyeballs that they were grabbing. She’d do her best to shrug off all the attention.

    Then came the day everything changed. The mood was different. X was weeping bitterly while Y was trying to offer an explanation in a very reassuring tone. Day two, X was still weeping. Y also looked glum. Day three, X was quiet while Y wept like a child. For the days that followed, there was no trace of them.

     Gradually, there was other stuff that grabbed our interest, and they were forgotten. Surprisingly, one day, a couple of months later, we found a very familiar looking person. It was X! and she looked like she was married owing to her loud make-up and heavy jewellery. The man she was walking hand-in hand with wasn’t Y, he was Z (say)! Oh no, another case where the woman turned out to be the bitch! There was a surge of sympathy that arose for Y. Poor Y!

     Y had to be found! What must he haven been through in these 2 months?! He must have become a majnoo by now! There was no way we could remember his face because we always saw him sideways from the corner of the eye! He must be nursing the heart-ache that X had to be thanked for! Maybe he kept a beard now. Maybe he had stopped moving out of his house out of depression. Maybe he had resorted to alcohol. Maybe he had fled home. Maybe the girl’s family had beaten him up and thrown him away somewhere. Maybe he had committed suicide!!

     No, we made no efforts to look for him. Who had the time?! The only place we could find him was deep down the memory lane. Every time X would end up being cursed. Soon Y was also a distant memory. There was a huge party thrown at the best club in the city. In the middle of freely flowing booze and loud music was seen this young man dancing the night away. It didn’t take us much time to recollect who he was. He was Y! He looked like he was having the time of his life.

     It was quite a set-back. And now he was dancing very closely with another woman (say W). Our eyes were fixed on him. Some time later he excused himself for a drink at the counter. Now was the best opportunity to talk to him. We explained how we had seen him with X ever so often and everything that we had thought he must have been through. He laughed. “What do you do when you lose a pen? Fret over it, try to look for it and when you cannot find it, you go ahead and buy a new one!” Okay, that was something to ponder upon. Very soon he was seen making his way back into the crowd again. He turned back and in a low voice asked us not to discuss this any further or he might end up losing W!

     Y had been found. What we had also found was that we CAN move on. Happily. With no regrets. Why find Y? In the words of the great Ranbir Kapoor-Keep it simple silly :D