Whenever I leave Sydney and drive back to Canberra alone I remember Praz. I remember the one time he picked me up from the airport and we drank coffee because they did not make good coffee in America and he ate the left-overs from my packed lunch from 3 days ago that my cousins gave me as a back-up for bad food or complete lack of food on the plane. I am not quite sure why eating leftover lunch was such a big deal but I loved how easy it was love him that day. When I drive past Lake George, I remember us in the car together and that he said it reminded him of the Kurukshetra. I remember how much I enjoyed his company and this is where things get murky, because he left me. Said he wanted a break and then went ahead and had an arranged marriage - apparently because he mis-heard a friend say that I had gotten engaged. He never emailed to check. When I emailed to check, he broke up with me on the phone and that was that.
Today, after many many many years, I am in a job I am really enjoying and out of debt. For a lot of these years I pushed Praz out of my mind, because thinking about him was painful and hard, and there were other hard and painful things that were also urgent and important that I had to do - so why open a can of worms that you won't be able to clean up in time for dinner. Today, it suddenly came back to me that even before we dated how much we talked to each other, so many phone calls and so many emails. I wish I had time with him to unpack what those emails meant to him, but I think if I had that time we wouldn't have gone different ways. He was a monk managing an ashram, see, and people (like me) sometimes reach out to the monks managing an ashram as we study the Gita, try to understand what it means to our lives. I have no idea how many others were reaching out to him. I don't know what those emails meant to him. I deleted them long time ago, and as I write this, I remember the anger I felt over how easily and casually he threw it all away.
And then soon after I walked away from the ashram as I hated how it had created someone like him, who had hurt me so bad. It might have not been fair, I don't know, I have not regretted it, but I have regretted hurting some people, or actually exactly one person - Gopalji, another monk from the ashram who was nothing but kind to me. But I don't think I can talk to them till I have sorted this out, till I have put an end to this story. It also put distance between me and another lovely human being, a gorgeous friend. Because being with them sometimes reminds me of the times we all had together and it makes me feel sad for having missed out on more of them.
One day, long after Praz and I were broken up and he had got engaged and married to someone else, I accidentally saw them at the temple - his parents, wife and him. His wife was pregnant and all four of them were looking miserable - it made me laugh to see them miserable, thank god for small mercies I muttered as I left the temple, single, alone but definitely feeling less miserable than they looked. That was the last I ever saw or heard of him, and if I never hear of him again it'll be too soon! But there are moments burned into my brain or vivid memories that are just glorious and beautiful - like the first time we met was actually many years before we became friends. It was at a youth camp and it was instant chemistry - one that I entirely forgot about till we met again, this second time we had no chemistry ( and I thought he was a pest), when I did not recognise him nor he me, till he saw an old photo and realised we'd met before - he told me about it, and I was weirded out because girls don't like their photos taken with random guys and I was surprised that I had taken a photo with him and his friends. Till I saw his driving licence, recognised him and actually felt whiplashed by the memory, looked up and saw him nodding telling me how he knew exactly how I was feeling. I think he did.
I realise it is not a new thing that I talk about here, like most human experiences that affect us so much, they are incredibly common. But it is this contradiction that is hard to reconcile in myself - that the good times don't take away the bad time and the bad times don't take away the good one - and to make sense of whether it affected my life a lot or not at all. Am I single because Praz broke my heart or am I single because of me - I am leaning towards the latter now, as Praz has been gone a long time and I always find excuses.
And finally today I put that ghost to rest.
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