Never Say Never Again.

Never Say Never Again.

So Vee texted me this afternoon that she is back in India for the next few days and can we meet up somewhere to catch up on the lost years?  I read that text and was in a cold flutter. I mean, after what happened the last time she was here, did she seriously expect me to reply to her texts? Let alone actually meet her in person? If you are still wondering what I am getting so worked up about, let me take you along in a flashback mode to a couple years ago when Vee was again on one of her vacation visits back home from her university course in the USA. We were texting each other ever since she landed here in Chennai and then we decided to meet up and chat at least once before she took the flight back to Boston. So there we were one evening at a chic resto bar and we started off by reminiscing about the good old days of blogging when we were both active bloggers with lots of readers and fans- me slightly more popular than her (considering the number of crazy female stalkers I had for my blog).

After a few drinks (not more than a couple for me- I am a very light/social drinker) we bid adieu to each other till the next time – if ever there was a next time as she was planning to settle down in the US of A permanently- we could meet each other maybe decades down in time. And I came home and went to bed with nary an inkling of what was to come next. Around midnight my phone woke me up and I switched it on to see the call was from Vee. I was quite anxious to see why she was calling me at that time- didn’t she get home safely earlier? Was she in some kind of fix? Should I go out and see if she needed any help? All this went through my mind even as I switched on the phone and said “Hello, hello, what happened Vee? Are you all right? Do you need any help?” And you know what she said? She said “Yes, yes, yes a thousand times yes. I agree. Let’s talk to our respective parents and tell them the good news”.

Now remember that this was in the middle of the night and I had just woken up in a disoriented mood half-asleep and was anxious about how my friend was and what kind of fix she was in and I was hit with this. So after a speechless couple of second’s time I mustered up the courage to ask “Huh, but yes to what?” And she said, coolly “To your proposal of course” and she hung up on me. If I had been anxious before you should have seen me then- I was no longer in a cold sweat- I was in a hot steamy sweat- buckets and buckets of it. Never in my wildest dreams had I even thought about the possibility of a girl accepting my proposal when in fact I had made none such. No. Not to the best of my knowledge. Hell, to the farthest reaches of my memory I had made no such proposal to her at all in my life, leave alone during last evenings meet and greet get-together. We had just chatted polite chitchat about other peoples lives. And here she was claiming, falsely, that I had proposed to her. Now what should I do next?

Not able to think straight- it was the middle of the night after all- I immediately called up Jo and Gopi- my two 3AM buddies- woke them up and spent the rest of the night jabbering to them- over analyzing and cross examining and generally cribbing over what had happened. I am sure they must have cursed me all next day for their lost sleep. Anyway I drifted off to a troubled sleep somewhere in the early morning, wondering how on earth I was going to break the truth to Vee the next day- to break up with her after her high hopes and sheer pleasure of being prospectively allied to me- for it never occurred to my friends to doubt her words- they steadfastly assured me that I must have, in some indefinable manner, communicated to her- verbally or non verbally my desire to get hitched with her. In the face of such overwhelming evidence and unanimous reasoning by those closest to me I had non choice except to accept that yeah I must have inadvertently let something slip out of my big mouth.

Anyway when I woke up the next morning to check my phone, you know the first thing I found? A text from Vee apologizing that she was drunk last night and must have drunk texted me.  I have rarely felt such relief - except on exam results day when I am not sure of passing and I immediately forwarded the apology text to my two unbelieving friends to prove that i had been telling them the whole truth last night. And then I proceeded to delete Vee’s details from my contact list- one such night was enough to age me at least twenty years and I didn’t want a repeat. And then comes this text out of the blue…should I run for the hills and hide myself till she goes back to the United States again to complete her still pending Phd? Or should I just ignore her text or calls, if any and just get on with my life? Or should I meet her one more time, one final time and ask her in person what the hell happened last time? What do you think?

P.S. I still don’t know whether she drunk texted only me or if it was meant for someone else.