And she still smiles

He met Aarti for the first time during trek, both of them somehow forced into trekking. She was a simple, soft spoken girl who had only few friends. The thing that brought them close as friends was that they were partners in misery. I will tell you what their misery was.

They had never imagined that there are places with absolutely no communication with the outside world. But when they marched a little on their trek, they realized that they were completely cut off. The only thing left for them was to wait.

So they became friends in such a situation. He could never know whether she really liked him or it was just lack of other familiar faces but he became her confidante. They talked a lot, tried to keep each other happy and distracted from the fact that they were missing someone. While sharing their lives, he had come to know that Aarti was into a relationship.

The boy was from the same college and they had known each other for quite sometime. Initially they worked together in a firm and then both decided to enter the civil services. She succeeded but he failed.

There were other complications too. When Aarti told her parents about this, they were completely against it. The emotional blackmailing began and she was given the option of choosing either of them.

He discussed with Aarti for hours what she will do then and how they can still get their way. As an interested audience, he also discussed how they fell in love, how their relation was and how restless the boy must be now when she could not talk to him. In a weak moment, she confessed that she could not imagine her life without him.

He prayed for them and sincerely wished that their relation has a happy ending. Days passed and their trek became over. Their ‘Trek Friendship’ did not continue with the same enthusiasm and they went back to their original friends.

After nearly a month, he decided meet Aarti again. The truth was he missed a friend with whom he could share his life. He called her for a cup of coffee. She agreed but somehow he did not sense the same enthusiasm in her. They met and he eagerly told her everything that had happened in his life in last one month. And after that, she began.

She said that her relationship was over. Now she felt that theirs was an unequal relation which was destined to fail. When she herself had such doubts, she could not sacrifice the happiness of her parents. She gave a kind of philosophical talk. Among the vague words he could listen, there were that about how with time, many things change and people get mature.

He was completely lost and the only thing he remembered was that her face did not show even slight signs of strain while saying this.

She may be right, she may be wrong, but he only knew a girl who was madly in love. He thought about that boy, whose image he had formed after hearing so much about him and tried to feel his pain. That day he realized he was friends not with her, but with her relationship, and now when that was gone, he had one friend less.

After that whenever he saw her smiling, he wondered how just some time ago it was impossible for her to live without that boy!