As the World Turns

I got an email from an old friend this morning. She asked how I was. Funny how I was able to come up with a long letter when all she asked was just that one question. She and I came to know each other through a common friend. When that friend migrated to the provinces, maybe for some nostalgic reasons, we started hanging out.

We met at a time, when I was a teenager and we both were out of home for college and our adrenaline was so high that we could get into anything crazy at a snap of a finger. We used to experiment with pubs, discos, used to explore new restaurants, tried HipHop music, latest fashion, rock stars, bands and everything we could think of. Some nights would see us hanging out in rock bars and somehow we’d always manage to come home unscathed because we seem to give this impression that we were snobs.

Our interests went beyond music and alcohol. We would get into almost anything together: Mountain treks, working out, yoga, incense sticks, scented candles and trivial things such as fish balls.

She was also my protector when men she knows to be playing the field would ask her to be introduced to me. She’d dismiss them by either lying that I’m married or that I am that much of a snob that they wouldn’t live up to my standards. She was both an older sister and a friend.

I remember one summer when we ran off to Queensland for wind surfing. I could still remember how the sun felt on our skins and taste the salty air as it wove its way through my hair while we navigated our way over the calm waters. It was on that board when I noticed that watching the changing pallets of the sky couldn’t have been more beautiful than seeing it from atop the waves. I never really noticed the sunrise until then.

At day’s end, even as just about every limb screamed for warm covers, we stayed up with friends playing poker. I was never really one for card games and she poured the alcohol. When the conversations began to get louder and topics less comprehensible, I slipped away with a cigarette stick. I treaded on waiting for their laughter to fade and sat on the shores and waited for the sunset while allowing my thoughts to fade with the smoke wisps into the burning horizon.

I came home to bodies slumped over glasses, rum or beer bottles and cards haphazardly stacked in one place. A snore here and there, otherwise there was silence. I captured that moment when the world seemed to have stopped long enough for me to observe it. Alone with my thoughts and the clashing of waves against sand, I looked at them all. With her pending immigration papers, I knew one day all this would have to end.

That was the last summer we were to spend together. By Christmas, she was in Canada. She’d send me picture of the White Mountains, the miles she covers in her early morning runs, the places she has been to. The new life she leads in another country. She has always dreamed of this, she would say. And how she fitted well. The succeeding summers brought her a new job and truckloads of schoolwork for me that even the emails dwindled.

Eventually the surfing and the travels stopped the blaring music and the dances lost its luster, the cigarettes tasted stale and even alcohol gave way to water. The only thing that remained is the way my heart stops with every view of the sunset and the myriad lights at nighttime. And how, every now and then, I’d still capture that moment when the world stops long enough for me to observe it and know that when the world turns, all this will have to change along with it.

Sometimes I wonder if she, along with all the friends and relationships I have failed to keep, brought a chunk of happiness with them every time they leave that I have successfully trained myself to rely on logic than sentiments. Maybe getting so attached and being left behind over and over again has turned me into the less emotional person that I am. Or maybe I have just learned to move with every turn of the world.

She asked me how I was. "Well Sonia," I wrote, "…where do I begin?"