The Yellow Umbrella

“She was walking right towards me, and she was carrying a yellow umbrella! Can you believe that?”, Santhosh narrated, animatedly.

“Gosh, The Yellow Umbrella!” Reshma exclaimed.

“Wait, what’s so special about a yellow umbrella?” Shashank interjected.

Santhosh was leaning against the guava tree near the cafeteria. The others were sitting on the stone bench facing him.

Reshma began to explain, “In How I Met Your Mother, the yellow umbrella is considered the symbol of love and hope, and it represented-”

“Okay, enough. We get the picture. Don’t you start gushing over the series” Pooja cut her off.

Reshma rolled her eyes.

“Well, what happened then”? Shashank asked, as he smiled at one of his juniors who walked towards another stone bench.

“She walked into the library, I followed her. I went around, pretending as if I was searching for a book, while I saw her pick Men Without Women”

“Oh my! She reads Murakami’s!” Reshma said, her voice shrill with excitement.

Shashank and Pooja exchanged glances. Sometimes, they wondered why they chose to be friends with those two.They could be so naive, and downright dramatic at times.

“That was the moment I realized she was my Tracy, it had to be her. The universe was shouting it out for me. Well then, I sat opposite to her. We hit it off so well. We started discussing about books, writing, Murakami and-”

Shashank shifted his weight. “Okay, let’s cut to the chase; you got her number?”

“Actually, I did. And not just that, I asked her out too. We’re meeting at CCD on Saturday”

“Whoa!” the girls cried in unison.

“Lucky bastard”, Shashank muttered as he rose from the bench to whack Santhosh’s back.

“Thanks to the yellow umbrella”, he said, flashing his usual lop-sided grin at Reshma. She smiled back, revealing the joy of a shared secret and a faint touch of supressed melancholy.

*****

“500 days of summer?” Santhosh asked, meddling with the remote.

“Nope, I watched it only recently. What about Liberal Arts?” Reshma asked him.

He simply shook his head.

“How I Met Your Mother?”

He looked at her with a pretentious sense of awe. “And this is why you’re the best, Resh!”

She giggled softly as she sank onto the sofa, next to him.

Santhosh carefully pulled the table, on which she had placed two plates loaded with samosas and cupcakes, closer to the sofa.

“I can’t believe you agreed to stop by my house before your first date with your yellow umbrella girl”

“Can’t say no to your cupcakes and samosas”

“You came only for the cupcakes and samosas? Not for the best relationship advices or rather first date tips?”, she asked, looking at him through the corner of her eye.

“Well, you’re better than my roommates, I should say”, he admitted, with a smirk.

The pit-pats of the first raindrops almost drowned the title song and the petrichor filled the space between them like a thick blanket they never asked for.

“It’s raining”, she whispered, glancing towards the window.

He grinned. “Well, well, yet another sign from the universe” he said, as he wrapped his arms around around her shoulders.

After two and half episodes, he said, “I better get going. I don’t want to be late”, with a hint of surprise in his voice, as if he had lost track of time.

She grabbed his hand. “But it’s pouring! Wait for a while, man”

“No way. I really got to leave now. Just get me an umbrella, quick!”

She wouldn’t budge from her comfortable position on the sofa. “You’ll find the umbrella bin near the main door, pick one from that”

He walked hurriedly towards the door.

However, almost immediately, he returned to where she was sitting.

“Reshma”, he called out, his voice scratchy, standing at the entrance of the room. He noticed she had switched off the TV, as if she disliked the idea of watching the episodes without him.

Still being seated on the sofa, she turned around to face him.

He looked pale.

“What’s wrong?”, she asked, slowly rising up from the sofa.

“I found this in the….umbrella bin. How did I miss this? How did we miss this?” holding up the yellow umbrella.

“Oh don’t bother with that. That’s broken”

“No, that’s the point. It’s the yellow umbrella!”

She walked past him to pick another umbrella, ignoring his statement

“I’m not done yet”, he said with an edge to his voice.

She turned around.

“Since when do you have it?”

“I don’t know, she answered, noncommittally. “My mom might have bought it when I was in school, I guess”

“Back in school?” He paused. “Do you realize what this means, Reshma?”, he asked, touching her arm.

She let out a loud, pretentious laugh. “Oh wait, let me guess. So, if I had carried the yellow umbrella today, we would have gone on a date, instead of you and that girl?”

“No”, he said, quietly, his expression sombre. “We would have dated for years now. I wouldn’t have wasted time on random dates, nor would I have gone after girls who didn’t give a shit about me”

She remained silent and let the rain fill the silence in the room. She kept her eyes on the floor, not wanting to look into his liquid, brown eyes.

“Come on, tell me, why didn’t you mention this before?, he questioned, willing her to meet his gaze.

“I didn’t mention because it didn’t matter to me. Yellow umbrella or not, I’d have been in love with you, anyway!”

“What?” he gasped, suddenly unable to feel his legs.

She sighed. “Since high school. It would have made things awkward between us, so I didn’t talk about it.
And for a while, I did hope for it to pass, but it didn’t. Instead, it stayed and grew into something ugly and painful”

“Okay. Just a second, let me sit down. This is too overwhelming” he said as he walked to the sofa, and sat on it, feeling weak and confused.

“I’m sorry”, she muttered sheepishly.

“How could you do this to me, Reshma? “he asked, his voice almost quivering.

She shrugged.

“We had been friends for too long that I couldn’t even begin to think we might work as a couple. And, I didn’t want to spoil what existed between us. So, I decided to keep it to myself, even it meant watching you go on dates with random girls. It did hurt, but I didn’t want to lose you. I just wanted you to stay in my life, as my best friend, as my go-to-person, as the one I can get drunk with on Saturday nights and bitch about the fucked-up government, our college or about some random stranger who ruined my day”

“I almost fooled myself into believing that I had lost interest in you, until you spoke about the girl with the yellow umbrella. I hate to admit, but I had decided to do everything possible to make you cancel your date” She grasped his arm. “But I realized, best friends don’t do that, Santhosh”

She was slightly out of breath, but felt relieved.

“Wow. Just wow” he muttered as he shook his head.

“And, in case you’re wondering, nothing’s changed, okay?”

He could only look at her, with an expression that was a mixture of awe and disbelief. He knew in his heart that everything’s changed. Suddenly, he remembered the times he had missed her with a sense of longing that he was totally unfamiliar to him, the times he had felt irritated when she hit it off well with other guys, the times he had imagined how nice it would be to grow old with her. The realization came like a blow to his chest. Except that the pain felt good, the suffocation felt exhilarating.

“But I thought you believed in yellow umbrella…”, he persisted.

She laughed. “Is that the only thing bothering you now? Well listen, if I find a hundred men holding yellow umbrellas on the road, and you’re standing near a dingy corner, all drenched and shivering, your hair sticking out in weird cowlicks, I’d choose you, within a heartbeat. Santhosh, when it comes to you, I don’t look for signs from the universe. Your lop-sided grin is the only sign I’ll ever need”

She looked down at her hands suddenly feeling silly and self-conscious. “Did I get a bit cheesy there? Chuck it. You got to get going man!”

He crossed his arms. “The date isn’t happening, not after this, you jerk. I’ll make a call, and be right back. Some things need fixing”, he said, giving the yellow umbrella a little shake.

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh God, you’re obsessed about it”

“Yeah, I can be stupid like that, you got to bear with me. But yes, it is never too late to fix things”, he said with a wink.

She smiled at him, he gave her his best lop-sided grin.

When he interlocked his fingers with hers, as they walked on the street, it seemed like the most natural thing to do. She pointed at the beautiful rainbow over the clouds, that made the sky look like it was blushing in seven different colours. He nodded, looking into her eyes. Then, nodded again, as if to say that he knew what exactly was running on her mind. She thought of all the words that she could tell, now that there was nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of. But she knew, words wouldn’t suffice when they were being engulfed in the enormity of all the love that had been supressed for too long, of all the beautiful times that awaited them, of all the rainbows they would watch together after showers like these.

Originally posted in my blog