The Almost Kiss

“How much longer are you going to take to get here? It might rain; the sky is grumpy. Come soon. I have already arrived. I am ordering a cup of coffee for myself. Shall I order something for you as well?” Puhor asked Kunwoli over the phone.

“You go ahead with your first cup. I will take some more time. Guwahati’s traffic… You know how it is at this hour,” Kunwoli replied.

“But where have you reached?”

“The rotary at the Chandmari flyover.”

“Alright. You are still some twenty minutes away. Try to gas up. Else, you will be floating if it rains.”

“You and your PJs! Now disconnect the call and let me concentrate on the road.”

“Cool!”

Puhor and Kunwoli had been friends since school. They were not schoolmates as they studied at different schools. They met through common friends at an inter-school science exhibition.

After their matriculation, they had completed their higher secondary education at the same college. However, they enrolled in different colleges for their undergraduate studies, chose different fields of study, and went their separate ways academically. That, however, had never come in the way of their friendship.

They stayed in touch and met regularly, catching up over coffee, watching movies together, visiting the book fair, exchanging stories about their lives, and picking up conversations as though they had never been apart.

Things changed only after Kunwoli got married and moved to another city in a separate state, while Puhor continued living in Guwahati. Their meetings gradually became less frequent, and they could meet only when she visited Guwahati.

This time, however, they were meeting after a gap of several years. The last time they had met was just before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. Although they had stayed in touch through social media and over the phone, they couldn’t meet in person for one reason or another.

Puhor had just finished his coffee when Kunwoli arrived at the café, apologising for being late before she even set her bag down.

“I am sorry. The traffic at Chandmari… Who approved this rotary on a flyover? Sorry, sorry… So, finally! We meet!”

“Cool down, babes. Breathe in. The world is not ending today. I know how bad the traffic gets at that rotary at this hour.”

“This hour? Wrong. It is bad almost twenty-four hours a day.”

“Yeah! True.” Puhor paused, glanced out of the window and added, “I just hope it does not rain now. I don’t want to visit the Venice of Guwahati!”

“Venice of Guwahati? Gawd! From where do you milk out such PJs, buds?” Kunwoli burst out laughing, unable to hold it back.

“Err…!”

“What will you have? I am hungry,” Kunwoli asked, browsing through the café’s menu.

“American chop suey.”

She gave him a firm look and said, “Why do I even ask? Some things seldom change, don’t they?”

They burst out laughing. They ordered American chop suey and chicken manchow soup.

As their conversation wandered from one topic to another, Kunwoli kept her gaze fixed on him.

“You have aged a bit,” she remarked suddenly, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“Wha… What?”

“I said you have aged a bit. You have a little more grey in your hair this time than you did last time. And the lines around your eyes have deepened, too.”

“Do you remember when that last time was?”

She thought for a while before replying. “February… February 5, 2020. Umm… yes… February 5, 2020. It was Pori’s birthday.”

“2020? Whoa! It has been six years since we last met! I can’t believe time has passed so fast.”

“Sarcastic?”

“Sarcastic? No… no, not at all. I seriously mean it.”

Puhor opened the front camera on his mobile phone, studied his reflection and smirked. “I guess I need to dye my hair more frequently.”

“Dye? You dye your hair?”

“Yeah! Why? Well, it helps to hide my age a bit and makes me look a few years younger than I actually am.”

“Hmm.”

She said nothing more as the food arrived.

While they ate, she kept stealing glances at him. Whenever their eyes met, she smiled faintly, as though she had been caught doing something she didn’t want him to notice.

After a few moments of silence, she said, “You look well.”

“So do you.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, madam, you do.”

“Why am I having this feeling that you are saying this because I said it first, and you are returning my compliments because you don’t have anything new to offer?”

“Really? And why do you think I need to impress you with fake compliments? Bruuuh!”

“Now, how would I know why you’d try to impress me with fake compliments?”

“As if! By the way, how do you find the food here? This place is new.”

“Diverting from the topic?”

“Dhei!” He shook his head. “Not at all. Say na, how do you find the food here?”

“Tasty. It is good.”

They finished their food, and soon the waiter came and cleared the table.

“Do you know why this place is a hit?”

“Why? I am here for the first time. It seems you are a regular here.”

“Not a regular, exactly, but yes, I do come here often. Well, this place is a hit because of the smoking area it offers,” he replied, signalling towards the smoking area behind her at some distance with his eyes.

She glanced over her shoulder at the smoking zone before turning back to look at him.

“Since when did you start clogging your arteries?”

“I don’t remember the exact date and time, but perhaps it was sometime last year, after I lost custody of my child,” Puhor replied, heaving a deep sigh.

She asked nothing and said nothing further. She did not want to bring up the dark years he had been through.

“You go ahead and enjoy your smoke. I will use the washroom. Need a touch-up.”

“Alright.”

When Kunwoli returned from the washroom, she noticed Puhor enjoying his smoke in the smoking zone, laughing with a few strangers there for the same reason. She stood watching him for a while, her gaze fixed on him as she got lost in her own thoughts. She snapped back to reality when Puhor returned to the table and tapped it to get her attention.

“What’s up? Lost somewhere?”

“Haaa! Naa! Just.”

Looking out through the large glass window, she added, “It seems it is raining heavily outside.”

“Venice of Guwahati is all set to get rolling,” he remarked with a sarcastic smirk.

“Hmmm… Guwahati has turned bad… very bad indeed!”

“Heh! Leave Guwahati and its civic issues, man. Well, at that time I felt you left something half-said.”

“When? What?”

“Then, when I asked how you were doing. You said you were doing okay, but… but I feel something is off and also something is on. An oxymoronic situation… Are you?”

“Hmmm…” She said nothing and continued staring out of the window at the road.

“I think Venice will be here soon.”

“Kunwoli,” he said, reaching across the table and holding her palms firmly. “Look here, tell me, what’s it?”

She looked at him, smiled softly, scoffed and said, “Well… I don’t know how I put it. I don’t know if this has put me off, or if it’s switched something on in me, but… Well…”

“I no longer have a husband who thinks washing a cup after drinking tea is an unreasonable expectation. I don’t have a husband who thinks he owns my body and that he can devour it at his will,” she said, clearing her throat before continuing.

Puhor listened to her without blinking. He knew she had been having some issues in her marriage, but he had no idea about the divorce or what had followed.

As she paused to gather her thoughts, Puhor caught the waiter’s attention and ordered two cups of coffee. Neither seemed particularly concerned about how long they had been sitting there or how much longer they would stay.

The coffees kept coming, Kunwoli continued talking, and the rain outside grew heavier.

“…and that’s all. That’s everything about me. Ummm, sometimes it pains, not because the marriage failed, but because I wasted a decade in this marriage, trying to save it. But I am happy; finally, I am free.”

“Glad to know that you have the custody of your children.”

“He did not want to have anyone’s custody, as he wants to start life afresh with someone else. Good for him… actually, it is good for all.”

“Absolutely. Well, excuse me, I need another smoke break.”

Kunwoli wanted to say something, but stopped herself and let him go and enjoy his share.

By the time Puhor returned to the table, Kunwoli had ordered two more cups of coffee, some fish fingers and a platter of French fries.

“A colleague called. The Chandmari area is fully marooned. Seems like we are stuck in here for some more hours,” he said, pulling out his chair.

“It is 6:30 pm already. I hope your children can manage on their own if you reach home late tonight,” he added, glancing at his wristwatch.

“Not an issue. Maa and Papa are there to look after them,” she quickly replied.

“I have to tell you something. I have finished the screenplay for a two-part thriller movie, and a big-banner production house has shown interest in producing it,” he announced suddenly, catching Kunwoli by surprise.

“Hey, that’s great news. Congratulations, buds!”

“Thanks! But… but the issue is that they want me to direct the project as well.”

“So, what’s stopping you?”

“Me? And direction? It will be a disaster,” he scoffed.

“Why are you always so negative about yourself? You can always learn the trade. Take some time. Talk to them, take a year’s time, learn about the craft, shoot some short films as practice, and then go ahead with the big project.”

“Easier said than done. Ah, leave it. So, tell me about you. That time you were saying something about a novel and publication… what is that?”

“I am working on a novel, my debut novel. Fingers crossed.”

It was the sort of conversation they had always been good at, moving effortlessly from one subject to another without either of them feeling the need to fill every silence.

“Do you remember Sourav’s cousin’s wedding we went to in 2010?” Puhor asked.

“Sourav’s cousin’s wedding? Somewhere in Khanapara, right? Though it was late October, the temperature was still on the higher side. And that banquet hall had just one air-conditioner, which stopped working midway! How can I forget that epic wedding!” Kunwoli recalled.

“Yeah! That was a funny wedding. I have never been to a wedding where the bride’s uncle lectured the guests on wedding rituals and their importance,” Puhor said, almost bursting into laughter.

“GAWD! It was some torture.”

“You spent the whole speech whispering jokes to me, and then you complained that I was making you laugh.”

“You were making me laugh. You were drawing pictures of the uncle on napkins.”

“I was bored.”

“You were twenty-five. You were bored by everything that didn’t involve food or cricket.” Kunwoli tried hard not to laugh.

“That’s an unfair assessment of my character.”

“It’s a perfectly accurate assessment of your character.” She was still smiling.

“Do you remember how we got home that night?” she asked almost immediately, before Puhor could reply.

Puhor looked at her and said, “I think we walked almost two or three kilometres from the banquet hall to reach the main road and then took an auto. Didn’t we?”

“And… do you remember what happened during our walk from the banquet hall to the main road, before we took the auto?” she asked, her voice suddenly turning quieter.

Puhor paused, thought for a while and said, “I guess it began to pour down without any warning, and we took refuge under the awning of a closed shop. There was only a yellow bulb glowing above our heads. It was quite chilly too.”

“Yeah… it was chilly indeed,” she murmured, closing her eyes, as though trying to recall the events of that night exactly as they had unfolded.

“I remember the wet pavement, the smell of rain, the dim light above our heads. I was tired of all that walking. I was feeling cold too, and you gave me your blazer when the wind suddenly picked up. We waited for the rain to ease, but it seemed to have other plans,” Kunwoli said, smiling faintly.

“It seems that night is still fresh in your mind, as if it was just yesterday.”

“I’ve thought about that night quite a few times,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Have you?” He put his cup down and looked straight at her.

“Not the entire night; just that bit outside the shop, after you wrapped your blazer around me.”

He looked towards the window. A couple hurried past under a single umbrella, their shoulders pressed together.

“I remember it,” he said.

“I felt you might.”

For the next several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Kunwoli wondered whether she should leave it there. It was strange to bring it up after so many years, especially when both of them had built lives that had little to do with who they were at twenty-five.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked hesitantly, breaking the silence.

“You can ask me anything. Why are you hesitating?”

“Well…” She paused.

“Go on, don’t overthink it,” he urged.

“Well… that night… in 2010… under the awning of that shop, did you ever feel like…? I mean… holding me closer and kissing me?”

Puhor stared at her for a moment. Then he looked down at his cup and moved it a few inches to the left, though there was no apparent reason.

He seemed amused, but also visibly surprised. His expression said more than he could have managed with words.

“What? Why bring it up now, sixteen years later?”

“Yeah, right. Why bring it up now, sixteen years later? Leave it.” She looked away, visibly flustered.

“Hey, relax. It’s alright. There’s nothing to feel awkward about. You can ask me anything, you know that.”

“I already asked you. Say, did you ever feel like holding me closer and kissing me that rainy evening in 2010, when we were standing under the awning of that shop in a dark, almost deserted lane?”

He looked at her, more intently this time. He rubbed his forehead, laughed quietly and said, “I don’t know how to answer that without making myself sound foolish.”

“Well… I am not a judge sitting here. Speak out. I want to know what’s in your heart. Anyway, we are not going anywhere soon. The rain may have stopped, but the roads are still flooded.”

He lowered his eyes and said quietly, “I was frightened, Kunwoli.”

“Afraid? Afraid of whom? Of me?”

“Of what would happen afterwards.”

She waited for him to continue.

“I knew I wanted to kiss you,” he said. “I’d known it for longer than I wanted to admit. But I also knew that if I kissed you and you didn’t feel the same way, things would never be quite the same between us. And if you did, things still wouldn’t be the same. I didn’t know what to do with either possibility.”

Kunwoli listened without interrupting. She remembered how, that night, he had looked at her for a long time before suddenly asking whether she was cold. She had said yes, though she had not been cold at all. He moved closer, apparently to shield her from the wind, and for a few seconds she was certain he was going to kiss her. She had looked at his mouth and then back at his eyes. He lifted a hand toward her face, hesitated, and finally tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear.

Then he had stepped away and made a joke about how they would both catch pneumonia if they stayed out any longer.

“I wanted you to kiss me,” she said candidly.

He looked up so quickly that she almost laughed.

“You did?”

“Yes, Puhor. I wasn’t standing there admiring the architecture of the shop or the awning!”

He smiled, but his expression soon became serious again.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Fair enough.”

She ran a finger along the rim of her coffee cup and looked down.

“I think I was afraid of the same thing. We were very close then. You were the person I called when something went wrong, and the first person I wanted to tell when something good happened. I didn’t want to lose that because we had made one mistake,” she said after a brief pause.

“Would it have been a mistake?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Neither of us knew.”

Puhor nodded. He had thought about it occasionally over the years, though never for very long. There had been moments when he wondered what their lives might have looked like if he had been braver, particularly during the years when he and Kunwoli were both single. But those questions had never stayed with him. Life had continued, as it did, and eventually he had met Suparna and fallen in love with her.

“Do you ever regret it?” he asked.

She considered the question before answering.

“Sometimes I regret not knowing what would have happened. I don’t regret the life I’ve had. Those are two different things.”

He seemed relieved, although he might not have realised it himself.

“I used to think that if two people were right for each other, something would eventually happen,” she said.

“A kiss, a confession, some sort of moment when everything became obvious. I don’t think that anymore. People can care about each other and still be too frightened, too uncertain or simply too late. And sometimes, even when the feeling is real, it doesn’t mean you should build a life around it,” she continued.

“That’s a very sensible thing to say.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I am not surprised. I just remembered that incident you told me about, when you threw a plate at the wall because your husband forgot your anniversary.”

“Hmm… I guess the plate had already started to develop cracks by then, and I just helped it break free. It was a complicated evening. Things had just started getting complicated then, and it was my first outburst.”

He said nothing further. He merely smiled faintly, and she joined him. The tension that had settled between them eased, though neither seemed particularly keen to change the subject.

“Can I tell you something else?” he asked.

“Please do. I’m beginning to enjoy this conversation.”

“I don’t know why I was, but I was jealous when I saw you as a bride. Well, even though I wasn’t single then, something pinched and pierced my heart when I saw you in your bridal attire.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Was that the reason you left the wedding before the priest read out the final vows?” she asked.

“Maybe… perhaps!”

Kunwoli fell silent for a moment. She remembered her wedding and how Puhor had stayed beside her for most of the day, then left suddenly after the groom arrived. He had made an excuse before leaving and hadn’t even turned up at the reception hosted by the groom’s family two days later.

“Well, the jealousy was mutual then,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Mutual? I did not get you.”

“Aaah… Something pierced my heart too when you got married to Suparna.”

He looked at her, but she continued before he could respond.

“Not because I wanted you to leave her or because I thought you had made the wrong choice. I was happy for you. I just remember going home after the wedding and realising that whatever possibility had existed between us, even if it had existed only in our heads, was finally gone.”

“But… but you were already married and a mother of two when I got married. Then where was the possibility?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was thinking there was still an outside chance, as my marriage was falling apart. A woman with a broken heart is like a creeper plant, and I was looking at you as my support to stand upright again.”

She looked straight into his eyes as she said this, without flinching. She knew that some situations had no answers or solutions, and some regrets were simply illogical.

As the rain eased and the café grew quieter, the waiter who had served them all evening approached their table and asked if they wanted anything else, as the café would be closing soon. They glanced at their watches. It was almost 9:30 pm.

“Do you want to have anything else?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

Puhor asked for the bill. They argued over who would pay, as always, and eventually agreed to split it.

“Where’s your car?” Kunwoli asked as they stepped outside.

“I will walk. I don’t think I will get a cab at this hour, especially after the rain. I don’t have a car, and my motorcycle broke down yesterday.”

“Why book a cab? I will drop you. Come on,” she said, offering him a lift.

“I would have loved to, but not today. My area is flooded, and you should head straight home. You can take the flyovers; you won’t have to take the flooded Chandmari or the Zoo Road,” he replied, politely declining her offer.

They walked slowly toward Kunwoli’s car. Neither spoke.

The pavement was wet, and the air smelled of damp earth and exhaust fumes.

Her car sat parked under a tree some distance from the café. They walked unusually slowly, taking their time to cover those few metres. When they finally reached the car, neither seemed particularly keen to say goodbye.

“So…”

“So…?”

“I mean… it was nice meeting you after all these years.”

“Hmmm… Yeah, it was.”

“Puhor, I am glad we talked about it.”

“Me too.”

She looked at him for a moment, as though she wanted to say something more, but eventually stepped forward and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her. Neither spoke, and the embrace lasted longer than either had probably intended.

“Take care of yourself, Kunwoli.”

“You too.”

“Call me when you get home.”

“I will.”

She stepped away, opened the car door and got in. Before starting the engine, she looked at him once more through the open window. He was still standing there, his hands tucked into his pockets.

She smiled faintly and drove away.

Puhor remained where he was until the car disappeared around the corner. He then took out his cigarette packet, lit one and took a long drag. He looked up at the rain-heavy sky and smiled to himself.

His phone buzzed.

It was a message from Kunwoli.

“You know what? I wanted you to kiss me tonight.”

He read it once, then again.

Another message arrived.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this now. But when you held me tonight, for a moment, I was back there again… under that shop awning, with your blazer around me. Except that tonight, I was hoping you wouldn’t stop yourself.”

Puhor stood still, the cigarette burning between his fingers.

A third message appeared.

“Sixteen years, Puhor. Sixteen bloody years! And here I am, still wondering what would have happened if you had kissed me that night. Don’t laugh. I know how ridiculous that sounds.”

He smiled, but this time something was different. He started typing a reply, stopped, deleted it and tried again.

Finally, he sent:

“I wasn’t laughing. And for what it’s worth, I wanted to kiss you tonight, too.”

He slipped the phone into his pocket and took another drag.

For the first time that evening, he wished he had not let her drive away so soon.

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