Long Drive

I release my left foot at the same speed as I press down my right one, and the vehicle jolts ahead as it always does, reminding me that I still haven’t really got hold of putting my car into a smooth motion. The gravel crunches under the tyres and I think about how I have always liked the words “gravel crunched” more than the actual crunching of the gravel.

My heart suddenly races, and I feel as if it is going to jump out of my chest any moment. Contrary to my fear, it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t stop thudding against my ribcage. I feel a shiver run down my spine and I want to jump out of my beat-up hatchback. For a moment, I’m almost tempted to, but I gather myself and the car keeps moving in the second gear.

It was bound to happen. The panic, the anxiety, the feeling of choking and losing breath and something heavy sitting right on my chest—my heart, making it ram faster and faster. I would’ve been surprised if it wouldn’t have. I take a right and join the highway without messing up with the clutch handling, and saving myself the trouble of killing the engine right in the middle of the highway.

And then, while the car cruises along the two lane highway—which turns into a three-lane one in fifteen minutes of cruising, I wait. I wait for the feeling in my heart to subside. I wait for the panic to go away. The panic that has been there since the moment I came to know about this. The anxiety that has been there since a month—an actual month of me wishing for God, or whoever it is up in the skies, to work his/her magic and turn things back the way they were, to make things normal, to make them okay.

But as I think about how much I have dreaded the moment I’m in right now, I realize I am missing something. Something really important. She’s here. I turn to my right, and sure, there she is—looking out the window, straightening her sunglasses and swaying a little with the wind. And I realize I don’t have to be so scared. I realize that though the panic isn’t going to go away altogether, I’ve got someone to make it a little better, to share it with. I’ve got her.

I reach over to the iPod connected to the stereo and start looking for playlists as I take long breaths, counting numbers, telling myself it is okay. It will be okay. I find the playlist I’m looking for, and hit play. Dil Chahta Hai starts taking over the silence in the car with its nice bass and occasional guitar and that feeling of the wind messing with your hair.

She looks at me, and I’m grooving my neck to the beat—just a little. She turns herself completely, her back to the passenger side door, sitting with her legs folded under her on the seat, and resting her chin on the fist of her right hand with her elbow on her lap. I steal a glance and notice that she’s looking at me with curiosity—her eyebrow raised, a smile finding its way into her cheek.
“What?” I ask, not looking at her.

“Well, looks like someone pretended about not knowing how to dance.” Her voice is teasing.

“Shut it,” I say. “I was just grooving to the beat. 

More like nodding in a rhythm. That’s not dance.” I sense myself blush. God!

“Oh. Then what is dance?”

I keep my eyes on the road ahead through the windshield, pursing my lips. I know she loves dancing, and I know she’s dying for me to dance with her, and I know she’s desperately trying to make me do it since ages. But I also know that I cannot dance, and that I’m too shy to do it even if I could.

“You know,” she says after we’ve driven in silence for fifteen odd minutes. “I’m really proud of you. I didn’t think you could actually pull this off—this trip.”

“Thanks,” I say, not knowing what else to say in return.

She doesn’t say anything either. Maybe, she too doesn’t know what else to say. But then, she does know what else to do. She grabs my left hand with her right one, and kisses the back of my palm. I tell her to stop it, and that I am driving, and that I don’t want to die this soon. As soon as I say it, I bite my tongue a little too hard. She doesn’t say a word—just smiles at me. Before some time, I might have pulled out my hand from her grasp, but now I don’t.

The highway being mostly vacant, helps, as my hand rests intertwined with hers on her leg. She lets go of my fingers after some time, and traces alphabets and hearts on my forearm. I’m scared—I am. But I don’t let go of her knee. It’s the last thing I want to do right now. Even if it meant I ended up in an accident, breathing my last. I don’t care about that anymore.

You never know what is going to happen next, do you? Life is all about uncertainties. One moment you’re having the best day of your life. The next moment, your heart is smashed into a million pieces. You can’t be sure about anything. You can only hope. And you can only make sure that you do all you’ve wanted to, before the thing you never thought would happen, happens.

Right now, I don’t know what will happen. Maybe this isn’t the last time I will be with her. Maybe this is it. And if this is it, I don’t want to spend my last time with her disappointing her—disappointing us. So I trace circles on her knee. I know it tickles her, but she also loves it. I look at her, and she’s smiling at me, in her ‘The Flash’ tank top and her denim shorts, and I wonder whether there could be anything more beautiful than the sight of the person you love smiling at you, reciprocating your feelings, spending the best moment of your life with you. And right there, in that moment, I lean towards her—not caring that I have reached my destination, not caring that I have parked the car already, not caring that people might look, not caring—and my lips touch hers and we kiss like it is our first and it is our last and like all of humanity depended on this kiss of ours.

When I pull back, reality strikes me. I don’t want to get out of the car. I can’t get out of the car. My hands start trembling and I don’t know what to do, and as if sensing it, she cups my face in her hands. She looks in my eyes.

“I love you,” she says. “Always have and always will. Do this for me. Do this for yourself. But even if you don’t, I’ll love you all the same.”

She pulls me into a hug and I hug back a little too hard and she does the same back to me, and then I pull away. I give her a smile. I click the door open, step out in the open air, take a long breath and start walking towards my girlfriend’s house with flowers in my hand to meet her mother on the first anniversary of the demise of the love of my life.