Pocket full of stars

9 [RAHI]

I always wondered what it meant for people to meet after a decade.

In that short moment, do they look at each other and momentarily drown in a sea of nostalgia?

Or do they stay afloat and zoom past the river of memories?

There was a short story in our class 7 textbook—"After Twenty Years" by O Henry.

I have read the story so many times that even after 13 years, there is quite a clear recollection.

A cop while patrolling the city comes across a man standing by a dark shop. The man, Bob, with a white mark near his left eye and a jewel in his necktie, hastily said that he was waiting for his friend, Jimmy, with whom he had made a promise twenty years ago to meet at that spot. The cop left saying that the man shouldn't stay out in the dark for long as times were bad. After a while, another man came and introduced himself as Bob's old friend, Jimmy Wells. Bob recognized the man to be an imposter as twenty years is not long enough to change the shape of the nose. The man who called himself Jimmy handed Bob a note from Officer Wells. It was written, "Bob, I was there at the promised time...I saw the face of the most wanted criminal...could not arrest you myself..."

The trembling hands with which Bob held the note always set me thinking as to how frantic he might have felt at that time.

How much did Jimmy steel his heart as he chose duty over friendship?

There was another story where two long-lost brothers met on the battlefield each unaware of the other's presence. They both were snipers aiming their guns at each other. One of them managed to land a hit and kill the other one. As heavy firing broke out, the one who was alive jumped next to the corpse out of curiosity to see the face of the man he had killed. When the firing stopped, the sniper turned over the corpse "to look at his brother's face".

I only remember the last line of the story.

Stories with heart-breaking twist-in-the-tail are fuels for daydreaming and overthinking.

It made me want to experience that kind of relationship where the loss of the person will stay with you forever.

The thrill and ecstasy of the guilt clawing up your skin, the regret crushing your mind and the ceaseless frustration shredding you to pieces.

I loved that nightmarish departure of people that left you numb and broken.

That depression and pressing desolation proved the intensity of the relationship.

Tragedy proves the importance of the bliss.

Absence glorifies the reputation of the presence.

When you don't know what darkness is like, the light won't matter to you at all.

The compulsion of choosing to lose someone, the forceful betrayal, the guilt of the unknown crime that chases you down for eternity—the drunken despair—it is exotic.

It was crueller and more sadistic than self-harm.

You are hurting yourself but you don't know how and where but you are bleeding and sinking into a deep dark quagmire of depression.

The crazy part is that you are secretly enjoying it.

The juxtaposition of sadism and masochism.

It is addictive.